– Robaird O’Cearbhaill
Hong Kong Correspondent
It took long weeks to get a seat on a flight to East Timor. All flights were full of UN, NGO staff, and volunteers flying in for a ballot on independence or autonomy from Indonesia. My flight was a day after the hugely pro-independence vote won. Hours later began a well-planned army devastation of East Timor and killing of independence activists, whose leaders were top priority on hit lists. Dili, the capital, went from a functioning to a devastated city in two days of violence and destruction. Neither transport nor shops nor commercial establishments and government offices were operating. There were no clinics or hospitals except the military one. People were fleeing en masse. I had arrived in an apocalypse due to the murder of the head of the Indonesian backed militia and his two colleagues, a senior Indonesia army officer, a UN security official, and a lost tourist who had no idea what was awaiting him. The airport departure lounge was full mostly of westerners connected to the UN or the ballot process and dozens of journalists.
I have not come here for four years and now this has become a hot issue worldwide. The chances of staying with no transport hotels at all but ransacked and little chance of food and water were not hopeful. But I stayed on during these hair-raising dangerous weeks, even after the last reporters fled. In the run-up to the vote and after two journalists were murdered, nearly dozens others were attacked. A few days after the Australian-led peacekeepers arrived to begin restoring order, I was evacuated to a hospital in Australia after three weeks in and around Dili suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, and dengue fever.
Well, it has been 20 years since the independence ballot won. How has the first new nation of the 21st century evolved? The UN for East Timor mission prepared independence from late 1999 and the new governments took office in 2002. Overall, they have solidly maintained democracy, have made great improvements in education and health provision. On the weak side, poverty is prevalent in the countryside, people and road quality remain poor, and 90% of the economy is centred on oil and gas. But there’s hope for that bonanza to come, much more if the newly-signed, long-negotiated deal in improving the country’s share of revenues kicks in and much more so when the gas refinery plant in the country is set up. But given that the pipes will be laid at a never-before-depth of 3000 to 4000 metres, some experts are concerned that these could burst.
Historically, apart from the arrival of the captain who was expelled from his ship in the Mutiny on the Bounty, East Timor has barely ever been mentioned either in the West or the East over the centuries of Portuguese rule. It was distantly isolated and economically very modest. But that would change briefly after the 1974 brutal illegal Indonesian invasion, with no media or resistance news getting out and the collusion of the US Australia and the UK was forgotten. Again came a brief moment, this time a lull in the 1980’s and enduringly through the 1990’s for a much more sinister reason.
News of Pope John Paul visit to Dili broke the silence in 1989. News broke more sadly in 1992 when the world heard that hundreds of protestors were killed by soldiers of the illegal occupier of the territory, Indonesia. An award-winning documentary shocked viewers in many countries and started a movement that, by luck in 1999, allowed the East Timorese to win freedom. From the 1975 invasion to 1981, 44% of them died, the highest per capita genocide of the 20th century, mostly by the Indonesian army or by starvation from concentration camps and aerial bombardments and destruction of agriculture resulting in spread of diseases. This figure is ahead of the 33% of Jews in the world killed by the Nazis in World War II.
During the last few years of the terror, international activists helped sway citizens and politicians in the West and East Asia, leading to freedom. However, in occupied East Timor, the Catholic Church was the leading source of support, when it was able to help. It was the glue that bound the population together against the almost all Moslem invaders. Although the invasion devastated the territory, it tripled Catholic numbers. Before the Indonesian marched with guns in 1975, blazing Catholics were a minority amongst their animist neighbours and a tiny sprinkling of other religious faiths. The invaders brought Indonesian rules forcing people to be one faith or another. Culturally different from Indonesia, shocked by the violence of the soldiers, including the large numbers of killings, and forced from their homes, almost all non-Christians became Catholics.
The strength of the Church was shown not just by Pope John Paul’s visit but by the international community as evidenced by the 1996 Nobel Peace prize given to the senior clergyman of East Timor, Bishop Belo, a joint laureate with Jose Ramos Horta, exiled foreign minister of East Timor. Ramos Horta was part of a short-lived government after declaring independence from Portugal; the last spark that led to the invasion which had been mulled over for over a year and planned for months, though illegal. The United Nations listed all colonies to be allowed choice of independence. In a process that began soon after the beginning of the institution after World War II, there was a pressure to decolonize the Western empires. Portugal, run by a dictatorship, resisted long after the other European nations began to let go of their colonies but was finally exhausted economically and socially from 13 years of wars, against local resistance armies in all but one of their African colonies. Tired of war and led by young army captains, the Portuguese at home rebelled and started a revolution.
East Timor was in the process of decolonization when the Indonesians had other plans. While some Portuguese in the colony were right wing, some especially those from East Timorese blood and the local population were more left-leaning socialists but not communists. East Timor became a Cold War victim. With the struggle for world power and supremacy between communist Russia and capitalist United States, every potentially left-wing country, whether communist or not, was a source of threat to the US, as a potential Soviet Union ally or worse, a puppet.
In the South East Asia, with the loss of neighbouring countries Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to communist regimes and strong communist activity in Indonesia and Malaysia, the Americans called this the domino theory, that another neighbouring country could fall to communism. East Timor’s neighbour Indonesia could not fall into communist hands, the US decided. The UK and Australia who were strong US allies in the Cold War agreed and wanted to maintain profitable trade with Indonesia.
Australia had two other reasons not to have an independent East Timor: one is military and the other is economic. Only 10% of the population of Indonesia and economically rising Australian government were concerned that the country’s growing military could become aggressive if they were not on the same side politically over East Timor. Economically, there was a jewel only just discovered under the sea crossing or nearby to Portuguese Timor and Indonesian maritime boundaries. If Australia could rewrite the sea boundaries with Indonesia in their favour for pumping gas and oil, they would not have to negotiate with a more reluctant Portugal. Perhaps, likewise, leftist Independent East Timor and Australia would have a good playing card for the Indonesian deal.
They quietly told Jakarta in mid 1974, well before the December invasion, that Australia would be fine with Indonesian occupation of the Portuguese colony. After that understanding, Jakarta’s eyes were set on taking over the colony whose political popular left wing parties were not negotiating much aside from the weak Portuguese ruler. As military counter information, Operation Komodo, set main East Timorese parties at each other’s throats, a brief civil war began, the exact excuse for the desire to invade, to quell the conflict and stabilize the situation – one they had created. The stage was set for invasion. All they needed was the blessing of the Americans. President Gerald Ford and his right-hand man, the strategist, made plans for a December meeting with the dictator Suharto. The takeover of East Timor happened under only one condition, when the two American politicians had left, hours later on that same day.
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