Subject: WP Editorial: Indonesia's Opportunity
Date: Sun, 01 Aug 1999 11:41:54 -0400
From: "John M. Miller" <fbp@igc.apc.org>Received from Joyo Indonesian
News:
Washington Post Friday, July 30, 1999
lead Editorial
Indonesia's Opportunity
TENS OF THOUSANDS of people from East Timor have been forced out of their homes and
villages in an evident effort by Indonesian military and police elements to keep the
territory from voting for independence. The effort casts a pall over what is otherwise a
more hopeful scenario for political democracy and economic revival in a major Asian
country.
East Timor, long a Portuguese colony, was nearing independence in the mid-1970s when it
was grabbed by Indonesia, recolonized and brutally repressed. But the collapse of the
Suharto regime last year reopened the door for a new East Timor bid for independence,
under U.N. auspices. Nationalistic Indonesians are now trying to blunt this bid and keep
East Timor under Indonesian lock and key.
The United Nations and member states, including the United States, have repeatedly
urged Jakarta to halt its harassment of internally displaced people. Meanwhile, the United
Nations, reluctant to slow down movement toward an August autonomy-or-independence choice
by the East Timorese, has begun voter registration. Whether a vote will actually take
place on Aug. 30 as now scheduled will depend on whether the U.N. finds Indonesians to be
following through on their pledges of a fair and free ballot.
Indonesia is a country of consequence, strategically and economically. Its many
American friends beam in anticipation of the restoration of its confidence and place in
the world. With a bright future beckoning, why does the Indonesian establishment not
resolve the costly, nagging East Timor question once and for all in a way that turns a
burden into an opportunity and strengthens Indonesia's international and democratic
standing at the same time?
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