East Timor Bulletin

TNI Asia programme feels it is timely to highlight for our subscribers some of the issues arising from and material available on the tragic events unfolding in East Timor.

We begin with the Statement issued by the Council of Europe last Monday, the 13th of September. Although the Council has now placed an embargo on arms trade with the Indonesian government for a period of 4 months, individual member states, up to recently, continued to offer aid to the Indonesian government for the purchase of arms.

We include a number of resolutions, demands and statements of support from both parliaments and NGO organisations in both Asia and Europe.

Also included is an article written by John Pilger entitled 'We Helped Them to Descend in to Hell'.

TNI, together with Burma Centrum Nederland, XminY Solidariteits Fonds, Komitee Indonesia and the Filippijnen Groep Nederland held a Solidarity Protest for East Timor on Thursday the 9th of September where up to 300 people attended.

The Protest especially called on the Dutch Govt., in their current role as chair of the Security Council, to act decisively to oversee the removal of Indonesian Troops from East Timor and to put in place an armed Multilateral Peacekeeping Mission.

Contents:

1. European Council of Ministers - Statement on East Timor
2. British Ministers Under Fire Over Arms Deals - Agence France Presse
3. Council for Alternative Secuirty in the Asia-Pacific - Focus on the Global South
4. House Resolution No. 1128 - House of Representatives, the Philippines
5. Indonesian Unionists back East Timor Freedom Struggle
6. 'We helped Them to Descend into Hell' - John Pilger
7. Quarter of Enclave 'facing starvation' - South China Morning Post

European Council of Ministers
EAST TIMOR - Conclusions
Monday the 13th of September

(NOTE ON THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE: The Council of the European Union is an institution which exercises legislative and decision-making powers. At the same time, it is the forum in which the representatives of the Governments of the 15 Member States can assert their interests and try to reach compromises. In addition, the Council is responsible for intergovernmental cooperation, in common foreign and security
policy (CFSP) and in the areas of justice and home affairs (JHA), including for example matters of immigration.

The Council warmly welcomed the result of the popular consultation of the East Timorese people on 30 August 1999. The Council considers imperative Indonesia's commitment to the full implementation of the 5 May 1999 Agreement between Portugal and Indonesia. The EU is committed to seeing the people of East Timor enjoy the independence which they have freely chosen. The Council paid tribute to the United Nations
for the organisation of the popular consultation and to the courage and extraordinary work of the personnel of the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) in the most challenging of circumstances.

The Council condemned in the strongest terms the atrocious acts of terror in East Timor which have followed the announcement of the result of the popular consultation and which have been perpetrated with the complicity of the Indonesian armed forces and police. The Government of
Indonesia remains responsible for law and order in the territory.

The Council took note of President Habibie's announcement yesterday that Indonesia would be ready to accept an international force to help create peace in East Timor, protect the population of the territory and implement the outcome of the popular consultation. It underlined the need
for the earliest possible deployment of an international force. Order, security and the rule of law must be restored immediately. The EU supports rapid action by the Security Council to decide the mandate of an international presence. The attitude of the EU towards Indonesia will depend on the implementation, without delay and without conditions, of the undertakings given by the President of Indonesia.

The Council has agreed, for a period of four months, on an embargo on the export of arms, munitions and military equipment, a ban on the supply of equipment which might be used for internal repression or terrorism, and a suspension of bilateral military cooperation. The Council will decide, in the light of the situation after that period, on a possible further suspension, of a period to be determined. It invited its competent bodies and the Commission urgently to complete the necessary legal acts.

The Council stressed that an urgent priority is to remedy the grave humanitarian situation. It expressed its deepest indignation at the attacks which have been mounted on humanitarian personnel, church members and human rights defenders. It urges the Indonesian Government to allow the safe return of international humanitarian organisations and agencies to East Timor without delay. They must have secure access to displaced people to allow them safe return to their homes. It welcomed the Commission's intention to pursue urgently the implementation of humanitarian aid and to provide, in coordination with international organisations and notably the UNDP, further humanitarian assistance to those in need. The Council also supports the call of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for the convening of a Special Session of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). TheCouncil called for an investigative mission by the CHR to gather the facts and ascertain responsibilities for the campaign of terror which followed the holding of the referendum.

After the resounding vote in the popular consultation, East Timor's independence must proceed without delay, as provided for in the Agreement of 5 May. The Member States of the European Union look forward to recognising East Timor once the process towards independence is complete.

The Council emphasised its desire to see a strong, democratic and united Indonesia.

British ministers under fire over Arms Financial Deals
Agence France Presse - September 15, 1999

London-British ministers were under fire Wednesday after it emerged that millions of pounds of public money had been used to help Indonesia buy jets and secure industrial contracts, newspapers reported.

The Times newspaper said 130 million pounds (195 million dollars) of public funds was used to help the Indonesian military-accused of orchestrating a campaign of violence against supporters of independence in East Timor-buy Hawk fighter planes from Britain.

The revelation will further embarrass Foreign Secretary Robin Cook whose "ethical" foreign policy was challenged by human rights activists after a British- made plane was used to intimidate East Timorese ahead of a referendum on the future of the territory.

Britain's Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD) underwrote payments to British Aerospace after the Indonesian economy ran into trouble last year. The money was used to help Jakarta reschedule payments on contracts for Hawks, The Times said.

Britain suspended export licences for the sale of arms, including nine Hawk jets, to Indonesia at the weekend, in the wake of the bloodshed in East Timor.

Meanwhile, the Guardian daily said Britain's National Audit Office was considering an investigation after it emerged that Trade Secretary Stephen Byers had overruled civil servants and given the go ahead for financial help to Indonesia.

The daily said according to official documents, Byers ignored warnings from senior civil servants who refused to back the help because they deemed Indonesia too risky for the investment of taxpayers' money.

Byers authorised the payment, however, "in view of the importance we attach to our relations with Indonesia," the Guardian reported.

Byers ordered the ECGD to underwrite a 1.1-million-dollar loan for a British engineering company, Va Tech Reyrolle Projects, to help the company win business building new power transmission lines in Indonesia.

The Guardian said Byers' decision was taken on July 19 against a background of a virtual moratorium on financial support for Indonesia amid alarm that Britain was already exposed should the country default on heavy loans.

Britain's dealings with Indonesia have been the subject of scrutiny since early September when pro-Jakarta militia went on the rampage, killing and driving out supporters of independence for the territory.

The violence follows a UN-organised ballot on the future of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975, in which East Timorese voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence.

Council for Alternative Security in the Asia-Pacific (CASAP)
Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, Thailand

The international community demands:

THE IMMEDIATE DEPLOYMENT OF A UN ARMED PEACE-KEEPING FORCE, WITH NO RESTRICTIONS ON ITS HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS

THE IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF INDONESIAN TROOPS FROM EAST TIMOR AND THE DISMANTLING OF INDONESIA-BACKED MILITIA FORCES

THE ARREST AND TRIAL OF THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MASSACRES IN EAST TIMOR FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

To Secretary General Kofi Annan. United Nations; Secretary General Rodolfo Severino, Association of Southeast Asian Nations; all heads of state; the community of nations.

The world failed East Timor once, in 1975, when it offered little protest to the bloody annexation of that country by Indonesia. Key international actors, including Australia, the United States, and ASEAN, either supported the takeover behind the scenes or tacitly approved of it. For the next 24 years, many governments engaged in a conspiracy of silence as over 200,000 Timorese lost their lives under Jakarta's harsh rule.

The world cannot afford to fail the people of East Timor again. As Indonesian troops and Indonesia-supported militiamen wreak mayhem on the people after the historic vote for independence last week, it is imperative that we act to prevent an act of ethnic cleansing on the scale of Bosnia and Kosovo.

The United Nations must immediately constitute an armed peacekeeping mission and send it to East Timor within the next few hours. Every minute now counts if we are to prevent a massive massacre.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must condemn the Indonesian government's abetting the massacre and offer police and troops from its member countries-with the exception of Indonesia-to serve as the core of the peacekeeping mission.

Indonesia must immediately withdraw its police and soldiers, disarm the militiamen, and stop expelling Timorese from their homeland on the pretext of helping them escape the violence.

Indonesia must immediately recognize the overwhelming vote for independence and guarantee the safety of East Timorese leaders Xanana Gusmao, Jose Ramos Horta, Archbishop Carlos Belo, and other key East Timorese personalities so they can freely travel through Indonesia and to East Timor as the people of that country constitute a new sovereign state.

The UN General Assembly must convoke a special session to immediately recognize East Timor's independence and impose sanctions on Indonesia for failing to provide the order and security that it promised in the Tripartite Agreement of May 5, 1999.

The big powers, as well as Australia and New Zealand, must refrain from taking unilateral military action, the short term gains of which would be outweighed by the long-term instability to which such an action would plunge Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

All commitments of peace-keeping personnel must be done under the UN mandate.

The international community must act now to spare a small nation whose identity was forged in 24 years of heroic defiance of repression from further bloodshed.

HOUSE RESOLUTION NO. 1128
House of Representatives
11th Congress
Republic of the Philippines

Introduced by representatives Loretta Ann P. Rosales, Patricia M. Sarenas, J.R. Nereus Acosta, and Heherson Alvarez

RESOLUTION EXPRESSING THE SENS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES FOR THE PEACEFUL TRANSITION OF EAST TIMOR TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE

WHEREAS, the East Timorese people have long been struggling for their right to self-determination over the past twenty-four (24) years against Indonesian military rule. And through the years of international relations work, the people of East Timor have sought the assistance of the United Nations for the conduct of a free, fair and peaceful consultation on the political status of East Timor;

WHEREAS, the East Timorese people's appeal to the United Nations and the international community resulted in the signing of the three (3) Agreements done in New York on May 5, 1999 by the Republic of Indonesia, the Republic of Portugal and the United Nations Secretary General Kofi A. Annan, with the following important provisions:

1. That Indonesia and Portugal request United Nations Secretary General Kofi A. Annan to organize a United Nations mission that would conduct a popular consultation on whether the people accept or reject autnomy for East Timor;

2. That the Government of Indonesia shall be responsible for maintaining peace and security in East Timor to ensure that the popular consultation is carried out in a fair and peaceful way, in an atmosphere free of intimidation, violence or interference from any side;

3. That if the Secretary general determines, on the basis of the result of the popular consultation and in accordance with the Agreements that the proposed constitutional framework for special autonomy is not acceptable to the East Timorese people, the Government of Indonesia shall take the constitutional steps necessary to terminate its links with East Timor, thus restoring under Indonesian law the status of East Timor held prior to 17 July 1976, and the Governments of Indonesia and Portugal and the Secretary General shall agree on arrangements for a peaceful and orderly transfer of authority in East Timor to the United Nations. The Secretary general, shal, subject to the appropriate legislative mandate, initiate the procedure enabling East Timor to begin a process of transition towards independence;

4. That during the interim period between the conclusion of the popular consultation and the start of the implementation of either option, the parties request the Secretary General to maintain an adequate United Nations presence in East Timor;

WHEREAS, in the context of these agreements, the United Nations agreed and successfully held a referendum on August 30, 1999 under their supervision;

WHEREAS, the results of the August 30 referendum showed the overwhelming vote for independence by the East Timorese people. Of the 450,000 registered voters, the referendum yielded an impressive 98.6% turn-out or 433,580 votes of which 78.5% or 344,580 voted overwhelmingly for independence while only 21.5% or 94,388 voted for autonomy;

WHEREAS, violations of the agreements have been committed. Since the day of referendum, violence has escalated in alarming rates. A climate of fear and terror has reigned as militi attacks have resulted in rampage, loss of lives and properties and the forced evacuation of members of
the United Nations an dthe international community supporting East Timor's peaceful struggle towards independence;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, as it is hereby resolved, That the House of Representatives urge the Philippine government to recognize the independence vote of East Timor and to urge the Indonesian government to respect the resulst of the August 30 referendum which reflects the collective voice of the East Timorese people for independence;

Be it resolved further, That, for the full and faithful enforcement of the New York Agreements, the Philippine government is urged to fully support and work for the immediate intervention of the United Nations and the international community for East Timor's peaceful transition towards independence;

Be it resolved further, That, the House of Representatives urge the Philippine Government to support the United Nations in the immediate provision of humanitarian aid for the people of East Timor;

Approved.

Indonesian Unionists back East Timor freedom struggle
FNPBI statement on East Timor

The ballot, offered as a way to resolve the 24-year old crisis in East Timor has been completed. The results show that the Timorese people reject the special autonomy offered by the Indonesian government and have chosen to be a free nation.

The Timorese struggle to be a free nation have gone on for many centuries against Portuguese colonialism and then against the militaristic Indonesian government. They have paid a high price, both physically and materially to wage that struggle. The Indonesian military invasion since 1975 has cost more than 200,000 lives and led to many human rights abuses including beatings and rapes. The international community's response to the military acts of Indonesia depended on the Cold War interests of each country at the time.

After the ballot was completed and a series massacres of pro-independence forces, UN staff and journalists by pro-integration militia members (supported by Indonesian military and police) commenced, the international community has again taken a position on the issue of East Timor. In this case, the international community has condemned the Indonesian government who are thought of as no longer able to provide security in the territory.

Condemnation and international pressure has come from Australia from its government and through the call for bans on Indonesian products by Australian trade unions. In one instance, there was even the incident of flag burning at a demonstration outside an Indonesian consulate. The response to this by several forces was to retaliate and burn the Australian flag and to invade the Australian Embassy in Indonesia.

These actions show the low level of understanding of the history of the struggle in East Timor and the shifting of the conflict from the massacres carried out in East Timor to a conflict between two countries. In responding to the situation that has arisen since the ballot in East Timor, the
National Front for Indonesian Labour Struggle (FNBPI) hereby express:

• Our full support for the results of the ballot in East Timor, as a reflection of the aspirations of the East Timorese to determine their own fate
• Our condemnation of the anti democratic acts committed by the pro-autonomy forces of TNI and POLRI (Indonesian police)
• Our condemnation of all acts of murder and destruction by TNI and POLRI committed against the innocent civilians of East Timor
• Our condemnation of all acts of violence by TNI and POLRI which have driven out the Timorese from their own country

The FNPBI therefore demand:

Immediate withdrawal of TNI and POLRI from East Timor

Disbanding of militias which are supported and armed by TNI and POLRI

Formation and entry of international peacekeeping forces into East Timor

That all forces to respect the results of the ballot which is a reflection of the aspirations of the Timorese

End to all support given by the Indonesian government to the militias

End to the sending of Indonesian security forces to East Timor

We declare our full support for all the solidarity actions and strikes conducted by trade unions worldwide.

We call on the international community, especially the workers to maintain pressure on the Indonesian government through strikes/industrial action, economic sanctions and other forms of pressure.

Jakarta 11 September 1999
National Front for Indonesian Labour Struggle
Dita Indah Sari
Chairperson
Ilham Syah
General Secretary

We helped them descend into hell
By John Pilger
September 13 1999

It had been a long night of waiting for the Indonesian troop convoy to pass. Two of us then crossed the border into East Timor clandestinely, through a forest of dead, petrified trees that appeared as silhouetted needles around which skeins of fine white sand drifted, like mist. As the sun rose, there stood the surreal crosses.

They were almost everywhere; great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road, overlooking white slabs. They littered the earth and crowded the eye. As we trudged through dense scrub, we came upon them: on a riverbank, an escarpment, commanding all before them. The inscriptions on some were normal: those of generations departed in proper time and sequence. However, the dates of these were all prior to 1975, when proper time and sequence ended. The majority revealed the extinction of whole families, wiped out in the space of a year, a month, a day: "RIP Mendoca, Crismina, 7.6.77 . . . Filismina . . . 7.6.77 . . . Ada- lino . . . 7.6.77 . . . Alisa . . . 7.6.77 . . . Rosa . . . 7.6.77 . . . Anita . . . 7.6.77."

I carried with me hand-drawn maps of other, unmarked graves where some of those murdered by Indonesian troops at the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre had been buried; I had no idea that so much of the country was a vast grave, marked by paths that ended abruptly, and fields inexplicably bulldozed, and earth inexplicably covered with tarmac, and villages that are not so much human entities as memorials.

Kraras is one of them. It is known as the "village of the widows", because the whole community of 287 people was slaugh-tered by the Indonesians. In a meticulous hand that carried on from a faded typewriter ribbon, a priest recorded the name, age, cause of death and date and place of the killing of every victim. In the last column, he identified the Indonesian battalion responsible for each murder. I have the document, which I always find difficult to put down, as if the blood of East Timor is fresh on its pages. Like the ubiquitous crosses, it records the Calvary of perhaps 40 families, among them the dos Anjos family.

In 1987, I interviewed Arthur ("Steve") Stevenson, a former Australian commando who had fought the Japanese in Timor. He told me the story of Celestino dos Anjos, whose ingenuity and courage had saved his life, and other Australian lives, behind Japanese lines - the kind of man to whom leaflets dropped by the Royal Australian Air Force were addressed, as the Australians retreated, leaving the Timorese to their fate. "We shall never forget you," the leaflets said.

In 1986, Steve Stevenson received a letter from Celestino's son, Virgillo, who was the same age as his own son. He wrote that his father had survived the Indonesian invasion in 1975, but he went on: "In August 1983, Indonesian forces entered our village, Kraras. They looted,
burned and massacred, with fighter aircraft overhead. On 27 September 1983, they made my father and my wife dig their own graves and they machine-gunned them. My wife was pregnant." On the Kraras list, I found the name of Cacildo dos Anjos. The priest has recorded him as "aged 2 ... shot". He was Celestino's grandson, the last to be executed.

The Kraras list is among my most valued possessions. Not only is it true evidence of genocide, it is an extraordinary political document that shames Indonesia's Faustian partners in the western democracies. The priest, whose name I shall not use because he may still be there, wrote on the final page the following appeal to the world: "The international community continues to miss the point in the case of East Timor. There is only one crime . . . To the capitalist governors of the world, Timor's petroleum smells better than Timorese blood and tears. It even seems as if the United Nations itself is easing the path of the aggressor, giving it the time and conditions necessary to execute the ethnic and cultural genocide of the Timorese people and, finally, declare that East Timor is definitely integrated into the Indonesian republic . . . Who will take the truth to the world?" In my experience, East Timor is the greatest, most enduring crime of the late 20th century. Not only do the horrors committed by the Suharto dynasty lay claim to this distinction - proportionally, not even Pol Pot put to death as many people - but no other recent crime against humanity, from the American devastation of Indochina to Rwanda, offers such a comprehensive charge sheet. "Descent into violence" has become the most worked media cliche of the past few weeks, as if a collective, almost wilful amnesia prevents the current crop of western politicians and commentators remembering when the descent really began, and who were Indonesia's partners in its crime.

On 7 December 1975, when Air Force One, carrying President Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, had climbed out of Indonesian airspace, Indonesian paratroopers dropped on Dili, East Timor's capital, and the bloodbath began.

"[Ford and Kissinger] came and gave Suharto the green light," Philip Liechty, the CIA desk officer in Jakarta at the time, told me. "The invasion was delayed two days so they could get the hell out. We were ordered to give the Indonesians everything they wanted, and US arms were shipped straight to East Timor without Congress knowing. I saw all the hard intelligence; the place was a free fire zone... and all because we didn't want some little country being neutral or leftist at the UN."

There were other, more pressing reasons. "With the region's richest hoard of natural resources," wrote Richard Nixon in 1967, "Indonesia is the greatest prize in South-east Asia."

When Suharto came to power in the mid-1960s, exterminating more than half a million Indonesians in what a CIA report called "the greatest single mass murder of modern times", Michael Stewart, Harold Wilson's mild-mannered foreign secretary, visited Jakarta and reported that the "economic chaos of Indonesia" promised "great potential opportunities for British exporters ... I think we ought to take an active part and try to secure a slice of the cake ourselves". The Americans, Japanese, Europeans, Australians,

Singaporeans, Koreans and Thais all had the same idea. The petroleum referred to by the Kraras priest comes from the Timor Sea, believed to contain the seventh-largest oil and gas reserves on Earth. Gareth Evans, the former Australian foreign minister who toasted his Indonesian counterpart in champagne as they flew over the Timor Sea in 1989, having signed a piratical treaty to share the spoils below, was asked to estimate the potential profit. "Zillions," he said. Since then, western multinationals have, in effect, annexed East Timorese maritime territory. The British empire was reborn in Indonesia. Britain is the largest investor in chemicals, paper, electricity and weapons. Name a major British multinational and you can bet it is "investing" in Indonesia. The list ranges from Shell and BP, to the BOC Group and Marks & Spencer, to Unilever and Glaxo Wellcome, to Rio Tinto, which has a huge holding in the $3 billion Freeport copper-and-gold mining operation in West Papua - a territory virtually handed to Indonesia in 1960 by the United Nations. However, it is the British war industry that has provided the Jakarta gang with its most vital prop since 1978. In that year, the then Labour foreign secretary David Owen dismissed estimates of East Timorese dead as "exaggerated" and approved the first Hawk fighter-bombers to Indonesia. As many as 40 Hawks, made by British Aerospace, have since been supplied or will be in the near future. Then there are the Wasp helicopters, Sea Wolf and Rapier SAM missiles, Tribal class frigates, battlefield communication systems, seabed mine disposal equipment, armoured vehicles, a fully equipped Institute of Technology for the Indonesian army, and training for Indonesian officers in Britain.

The Blair government, clearly guided by its crusading leader's "new kind of moral internationalism", has been the biggest arms suppliers. Last year, Blair's ministers approved the sale of £6.25 billion in arms throughout the world, most of it to countries with appalling human rights records. This figure was never reached by the Tories and is surpassed only by the United States.

The shame of East Timor's betrayal might finally enlighten those still smitten by the ridiculous notion that their Labour government is an "ethical" agent. While the Indonesian military and its death squads "cleanse" Dili, Blair has refused to use Britain's considerable clout. On Tuesday, the Foreign Office minister, John Battle, refused even to consider economic sanctions or to freeze arms sales. On Newsnight, his colleague, Tony Lloyd, appeared as a memorably unctuous apologist for the government's complicity.

None, however, can match Robin Cook who, in 1994, told parliament that Hawk aircraft had been "observed on bombing runs in East Timor in most years since 1984". He then denied his own words and, once in government, allowed his Foreign Office underlings to lie that no Hawks were operational in East Timor. The 1998 Human Rights Report, produced by the Foreign Office, makes not a single reference to arms sales, while there is a colour photograph of Cook smiling at Suharto, the genocidist.

Britain and the United States could probably stop the Indonesians in their tracks if they wanted to. At this weekend's meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (Apec) in New Zealand, President Bill Clinton could say that the �£27 billion economic aid promised to restore Indonesia's collapsed economy, funds that the US controls, would be withheld until Indonesian troops left East Timor, taking their militia goons with them. The precedent is South Africa. It was only when Congress forced Ronald Reagan to end "constructive engagement" with the Pretoria regime and forced American capital to pull out of South Africa that F W de Klerk made his historic compromises.

If Blair announced an immediate freeze on all investment, loans and especially arms sales to Jakarta, the rapid-firing machine-guns supplied to the Kopassus Gestapo by British Aerospace would not stop firing, but the psychological and political impact would be immense; the Indonesian military, already unsure of itself since the resignation of Suharto, would begin to be isolated.

Without pressure from their godfathers in Washington and London, the Indonesians are telling the United Nations and the world to go to hell; and the UN is scuttling, which means, in many respects, the beginning of its demise. Public opinion in the west is a greater force for change than most people realise. Are we going to let the East Timorese people, bravest of the brave, who have defied the genocidists and come out to vote for democracy and freedom, fall before our eyes? Are we really going to let the Blairs and Battles and Lloyds and Cooks get away with their cynicism and complicity, applied in our name?