| Subject: Australia's
sorry record in Timor
The Age [Melbourne] Thursday 30 December
1999
Features
Big-noting obscures our sorry record in
Timor
"... the story of Australia at the
moment is a story of immense achievement, of great strength and enormous
pride. I don't think the country has stood taller in the chanceries of the
world than it does at the present time."
- John Howard, Millennium Fund speech, 30
November. WHO freed East Timor? Was it President B.J. Habibie, who granted
the Timorese a vote on either autonomy within Indonesia or independence?
Was it Jose "Xanana" Gusmao,
the military leader and political strategist who for years led a tiny
guerrilla army, unaided by the rest of the world, and grew to
international stature while in a Jakarta prison cell?
Maybe it was Bishop Carlos Belo,
undaunted by years of intimidation from Jakarta, who refused to be
silenced by the diplomatic pragmatists of the Vatican and the patronising
disdain of foreign governments.
What about Jose Ramos Horta, the tireless
diplomat, unbroken by 24 years of international indifference?
Or the Timorese people - did they free
themselves with their endurance, their refusal to accept the unacceptable,
their defiance of terror?
And what about the international support
groups and activists, who continued to lobby hostile governments and media
"experts", only to be told they were fighting a lost cause. Did
they help free East Timor?
Not according to John Howard. He claims
the honor for himself. While from the Timorese leadership, Gusmao in
particular, we have profound magnanimity in victory, from the Prime
Minister we have hubris and military triumphalism.
In his Millennium Fund speech he said
this year had been "incredibly intensive" for him and his
Government. There had been tax and industrial relations reform, and
"above all the achievement of bringing to the people of East Timor
the freedom that they had voted for". So freedom is something
"we" have given to the Timorese. Even by the normal Australian
standards of political hyperbole, this is a breathtaking claim, indicating
that Paul Keating's wishful thinking in relation to Indonesia has been
supplanted by Howard's delusions of grandeur.
Howard and the Australian people can take
some pride in the performance of the Australian troops in East Timor.
Their landing on 20 September was fraught with danger. There was ample
scope for a clash with ill-disciplined and demoralised Indonesian troops.
Those who have seen at close hand the
behavior of the Australian troops have been impressed with their
restrained toughness, their discipline and the decency and humanity that
have won them an easy rapport with the local people.
It is not the fault of the troops that,
by the time they arrived, the damage had been done. The country was
wrecked, its people scattered, an unknown number murdered, more than
100,000 forced into exile. The troops have helped atone for what Howard
has described as "25 years of over-accommodation of Indonesia by
governments on both sides of politics in this country".
But he lets the coalition off lightly,
preferring to point the finger at Keating's alleged obsequiousness. The
historical record, however, suggests that, had Suharto not fallen and had
Habibie not offered a referendum, the coalition's East Timor policy would
have remained trapped in the template of over-accommodation with
Indonesia, a template established not by Keating but by the coalition.
The worst excesses of Indonesian rule in
East Timor took place between 1975 and 1984, during which time the
coalition was mostly in power. Malcolm Fraser was the caretaker Prime
Minister when the Indonesians invaded in December 1975, and was confirmed
in office six days later.
The Fraser years coincided with Timor's
darkest moments. There was famine, massacre, aerial bombardment, napalm.
Australia was either silent, or pretended not to know what was happening.
When evidence of the humanitarian disaster was compelling, it sought to
discredit the witnesses or play down the extent of the horrors.
Canberra was not just a passive outsider.
It took legal action to sever the radio link between the Timorese
resistance and Darwin - the only avenue for telling the world of the
calamity that was taking place. Cutting the link helped frustrate United
Nations efforts to mediate.
The coalition, with Howard playing a
ministerial role, blocked efforts by Darwin activists to get medical and
other relief aid into the territory.
Maybe it's too much to expect humility
and introspection from our political leaders, but there is no
acknowledgement from Canberra that we could have done more to prevent this
year's horrors in Timor. It is not just hindsight to point to the
obviously orchestrated campaign of intimidation in the months leading up
to the 30 August ballot.
Instead, Howard and Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer put their faith in the Jakarta generals and spoke only of
"rogue" elements in the military.
Downer has matched Howard, adding
blimpish militaristic rhetoric to the solipsism that seems to be a
characteristic of our foreign ministers. He claims that this year
Australia was tested in a manner not seen since the end of World War II.
He overlooks Korea and Vietnam, not to mention East Timor in 1975, when
the real test was applied.
It was Laurie Brereton, not Howard and
Downer, who broke the bipartisan pattern of over-accommodation with
Jakarta on East Timor. As Opposition foreign affairs spokesman, he
repudiated his own party's sorry record. Downer's response was derision,
taking delight in and endorsing Jakarta's refusal in May to grant Brereton
a visa to visit East Timor.
On the eve of the departure of Australian
troops for East Timor, Howard invoked what he said was Australia's
"great military tradition, which has never sought to impose the will
of this country on others, but only to defend what is right".
In the context of East Timor, his remarks
were particularly inappropriate, given that in 1941 Australia imposed its
troops on the then-neutral Portuguese colony, an action that guaranteed a
Japanese invasion and brought on to the Timorese years of war and famine.
Our leaders' comments confirm that
big-noting remains an enduring feature of our military tradition. Having
spurned the black armband view of Australian history, we now have the
slouch hat view.
Tom Hyland is foreign editor of The Age.
E-mail: thyland@theage.fairfax.com.au
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