Volume 3, No. 7, July 2002

On May 20, 2002 a new country made its appearance on the political map of the world.

East Timor has made its signature on the world scene for a second time. First it was on November 28, 1975. When Mr. Xavier do Amaral was appointed president of the Democratic Republic of East Timor in Dili after 400 years of Portuguese domination. The first republic survived for 10 days before Indonesia invaded it on December 7, 1975. And then on May19, 2002 when Jose "Xanana" Gusmao took the reins of the nation from the United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET). In between a great deal happened to the people of this tiny half-island and shook the conscience of the people worldwide.

Now it has been declared that from the 19th of May 2002 the newly independent country will be considered equal in the community of nations. How this strange thing will happen in the age of imperialism and ever enlarging and overwhelming forces of globalisation that tend to swallow up every little trace of independence of the weak and small countries of the third world is beyond comprehension. Rather, will not the whole exercise of the May 19th extravaganza of independence celebrations prove a farce and illusion given the fact that those who assembled in Dili on that date were mostly from the countries that had trampled upon the people of East Timor. The honoured guests included Sukarnoputri, the president of Indonesia, Clinton, and the prime minister of Australia among 80 odd other representatives from across the world. The perpetrators and abettors of crimes celebrated the Timorese independence while the people were advised to forget and forgive so that the sharks may again come to snatch away their future in the garb of donors and aiders.

East Timor with a population of 8, 00 000 is one of the poorest countries on the world map. Centuries of Portuguese colonial rule and 24 years of brutal, illegal Indonesian military occupation have made East Timor one of the poorest countries on the planet. East Timor has a 60% illiteracy rate, a per capita gross national product of $340, and a life expectancy of only 48 years. The infant mortality rate is 135 per 1000 live births, and the maternal mortality rate is twice that of other countries in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. The poverty of the nation can be judged from the fact that the fire works for the celebration of independence had to be borrowed from the government of China, donated them. East Timor is facing an approximately $184 million budget shortfall over the first three years of independence.

Some voices were raised during the celebrations that if this budget gap, small in international terms but a big amount by Timorese standards, is not covered by pledges at the pre-independence East Timor Donors Conference, East Timor may fall into the cycle of debt and poverty, which plagues so many poor countries. Just "in 1999, Indonesian security forces and their militia proxies violently retaliated after the East Timorese opted for independence in a UN-sponsored referendum. Troops destroyed 75% of the already poor country’s infrastructure, displaced two-thirds of the population, raped hundreds of women and girls, and killed some 2000."

Now the rebuilding of the country is being visualized through the ‘help’ of its former destroyers. The donor governments have said they are willing to plug the revenue gap. However, strings will come attached to their money, which inall liklihood will be administered by the World Bank. And when the imperialist agencies like the World Bank come it is hard to avoid the strings and conditions which must suit the benefactor and not the receiver.

A panoramic view of how the things will go can be had from the policies, approaches and utterings of the leaders of the newly independent state.

Just after the UN took over the reins of East Timor after 1999 happenings a great deal of things were said and agreed upon by the east Timorese leaders.

They agreed that pro-Indonesia militiamen be invited to join the police forces in East Timor as per the plans of International Forces in East Timor (Interfet). On October 9, 1999, Major General Peter Cosgrove, chief of the Interfet, met with the field commander of the pro-independence forces and discussed a "progressive and selective introduction" of the pro-Indonesian marauder militia into East Timor’s armed forces to involve them "in the nation-building" process in the island. He said, "our hand is fully extended to the militia...I would like this process to be attended and participated by all parties...." Cosgrove asked the Indonesian armed forces to arrange for it. The UN sponsored Australian peace-keeping forces wanted to ensure that those who had openly sided with the merciless Indonesian armies and had participated in exterminating the East Timorese freedom loving population were accorded a treatment befitting the services rendered by bloody hounds of a reactionary state. All this was considered in the name of "reconciliation between the warring parties," which, in fact, was in accordance with the "mandate" given to the "peace-keeping" force by the UN at the behest of the USA.

The Interfet, which was previously called the multinational force (MNF), was the foster child of the USA manned mainly by Australian armed forces. It asked for the disarming of both the pro-Indonesian mercenaries as well as the FLANTIL (fretilin) guerrillas, treating both the forces at par. Xanana Gusmao first having protested against it, later withdrew his protestations and accepted the lording-over role of the "peace-keeping" forces. On October 23, 1999 he offered amnesty to the mercenaries hired by Indonesia, though with certain conditions, nevertheless, after acceding to the demands of the ‘peace-keeping forces’ that the FLANTIL guerrillas will be duly disarmed.

The West knew that East Timor would need an efficient police force to keep the East Timorese people in check after the transition of power. Amnesty offer was like that of South Africa when Nelson Mandela took over power after prolonged negotiations while he was in prison. He came out and announced the setting-up of a commission after taking over the reins of the government to "humanly" look into the conditions under which crimes were committed by the police forces of the racist white regime. Almost everyone was retained afterwards with very few exceptions and that too with fewer and mild punishments, and above all, retaining the same old structure of the repressive apartheid machine. This machine is now playing havoc with the lives of South African people whose hopes of a better life have all been belied as the old system of exploitation has not only been kept intact but also intensified where white settlers’ economic interests and the imperialist plunder continue as before. Gusmao had also announced to set-up a commission on the "South African pattern", as he is a great "admirer of Mandela and Gandhi."

This concept well serves the reactionaries who sell all their conscience and accept the worst kinds of conditionalities while dealing with the imperialists. Behind the high sounding words of "humanitarianism" these statesmen pave the road which leads the majority of the population towards hellish violence and degradation. Gusmao’s statement bade ill for the people of East Timor, especially when he was surrendering to the pressures of the "peacemakers" without any apparent resistance.

For Mr. Cosgrove disarming of the FLANTIL was "a priority task" and he had served a "warning" to the independence guerrillas when the latter showed their disinclination to hand over weapons to the Interfet.

And what happened to the perpetrators of the crimes against the East Timorese? Nothing. The charge of putting the criminal military officers was given to the Indonesian government itself. The East Timorese leaders preferred to forget and forgive. This was the best thing for the imperialists from the newly baptized democrats otherwise they would have demanded trials for war crimes not only against the Indonesians but also against their abettors.

In the year 2000, Horta, the foreign minister of ET in the UN sponsored government of the transitional period, while talking of the USA, said:

Not only that the FLANTIL forces were decommissioned and their arms surrendered the new forces to be formed were also slated to be trained by the US and its closest of allies.

Now the effects of the UN sponsored armed forces and the transition to independence mechanism has resulted in a near total control and anti-people orientation of the state armed forces of East Timor. The liquidation and dismemberment of the liberation forces has been justified by the new administration as a nationalist force that can defend with the help and close collaboration of the imperialist countries that have been its enemies. This, in a sense is an argument that says that it was only the Indonesian authorities that had acted of their own accord and not the imperialist interests that had wanted to throttle the new republic in 1975.

The U.S. government, the largest supporter of the Indonesian military, had supplied the Indonesian military with 90% of the weapons used during the 1975 invasion of East Timor and it was followed by well over a billion dollars worth of military assistance and weapons sales throughout the occupation years.

Another significant thing that was done by the UNTAET was the holding of elections in 2001 that were meant to give the Timorese a lesson in bourgeois democracy after their military power was effectively dismantled. This was essential to make a transition to an exploitative set-up that stood in opposition to a vague concept about socialism that had fired the imagination of the liberation fighters when they had fought first against the Portuguese and later against the Indonesian armed forces. The 2001 elections were held in a typical bourgeois style. Till then the Fretilin had renounced much of its 1970s-era socialist ideology in exchange for Labor-style free market economic policies.

The UN representative Mr. de Mello on 29 June 2001 reminded national council members that, until independence, he would retain ultimate executive authority under a UN Security Council Resolution. The UN had to see that the transition was smooth and orderly. The independence was delayed by full one year till all the arrangements were met under the mandate. Mr. de Mel had told the east Timorese, "You won’t be getting rid of me that easily."

When the elections were held in August Gusmao’s party was criticized for intimidation with the words ‘dasa rai’, a Tetum (Timor language) term meaning ‘sweep the ground.’ This term has a very disturbing meaning for the people of East Timor because it recalls intimidation that occurred during the Indonesian occupation. The military used the same term to describe military operations being conducted against the resistance.

Mr. do Amaral was expelled from the Fretilin central committee in 1977 after an internal rift over tactics to counter the Indonesians. It is said that he advocated negotiating with the Indonesians and emphasised the use of underground political tactics, rather than relying solely on guerrilla war. He was overthrown by a radical faction and imprisoned and tortured. He was captured by the Indonesians, who used him as a propaganda weapon against Fretilin. He was kept a virtual prisoner in Indonesia before fleeing to Portugal and returning to East Timor in the year 2000.

It is an irony of history that ultimately the Fretilin leadership decided to stop armed struggle for achieving liberation and made use of the UN as a forum for capitulating to the imperialist masters (especially the US). What do Amaral was accused of was to be adopted by the entire leadership of the Fretilin (including Gusmao who was then in the Indonesian jail since 1992 and was in close contact with the UN, US and British emissaries negotiating the withdrawal of guerrilla warfare and striking a deal with the oppressors like Nelson Mandela) in 1996. The US that had vetoed the rightful place of the first republic in the UN in 1975 was to take up the ‘cause of liberation’ of the east Timorese and bring a new country into existence after completely liquidating the militant politics of the liberation fighters.

People like Horta and Gusmao only thanked the US and other imperialist butchers for ‘giving’ them liberation through their pious efforts forgetting not only their past crimes but also refusing to see the conspiracies that are associated with imperialist sponsored deals that comes directly or through the auspices of the UN.

Indeed, for the forces of reaction the "political maturity" of the Fretilin that had graduated from guerrilla warfare to vote politics and had discarded the objective of national freedom from imperialist exploitation and intervention.

Just before the elections of 2001, on 6 July 2001, East Timor and Australia signed a framework agreement on shared oil and gas revenue from the Timor Sea,in the conference room at the UN headquarters. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and East Timor’s cabinet member for economic affairs, Mari Alkatiri, exchanged signed documents covering the "Timor Sea Arrangement". Jose Ramos Horta and independence leader Jose "Xanana" Gusmao were also present there. ," Mr Downer said, "This agreement will give East Timor an opportunity to build itself into a truly successful nation." He further said, "I am pleased that we have been able to reach an agreement on a whole range of technical and legal issues to enable development of the oil and gas resources of the Timor Sea."

It was this oil that Australia was eyeing and for which it had supported the Indonesian invasion of the half-island in 1975. Three months prior to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, Australia considered, in the words of Richard Woolcott, the Australian ambassador to Indonesia, that "It would seem to me that this department [of Minerals and Energy] might well have an interest in closing the present gap in the agreed sea border and this could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia than with Portugal; or independent Portuguese Timor." Woolcott added, "I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand but that is what national interest and foreign policy is all about." [August 1975, in a cable to Canberra urging acquiescence with Indonesia’s plans to annex East Timor.]

Australia remained largely quiet about the invasion and the brutalities of the Indonesian government of Suharto. Later, Australia became one of the few countries that quickly recognized Indonesia’s claim to East Timor. In 1989, then Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans and the Indonesian foreign minister in the Suharto government, Ali Alatas, signed the treaty dividing the Timor Gap between the two countries.

In 2001 Australia again signed the Treaty with the UN led Timorese authority.

Under the terms of the ‘landmark’ deal, East Timor will receive 90per cent of oil and gas revenue from a joint development area, amounting to some $A7 billion over 20 years. Australia will also pay East Timor $8 million a year in unrestricted assistance in lieu of taxes for a natural gas pipeline. According to US-based Philips Petroleum, the biggest private Timor Sea stakeholder, oil reserves of 30 million barrels and natural gas reserves of about 175 million barrels in the area are worth over $21 billion. The Northern Territory will benefit from a $1.5 billion gas pipeline from Bayu-Andan field to Darwin (Australia).

And again a day after independence both the countries re-signed the treaty, that became the first act of the Timorese Government. The Australian prime minister Howard had specially attended the independence celebrations and was eager to sign and get back home.

Another important task that the UN has done during these two years is the change of the official language from Portuguese to English despite the opposition of the Timorese leaders.

On Saturday 25 August 2001, Jose Ramos Horta, has blasted the United Nations mission in Dili for obstructing implementation of Portuguese as the country’s official language. English classes are fast becoming as popular as Portuguese for many students who see fluency in English as essential for a well-paid job with a foreign company, an aid agency or as local staff working for the UN mission.

"If you are going to teach one language then teach a language that is going to open up the world and the region for East Timorese and that language is not Portuguese but English," said one senior East Timorese official.

Though Mr de Mello said UNTAET would not get involved in the language debate, saying it was a matter for the new East Timorese government. However, senior UN officials are of the opinion that vital UN-sponsored training programs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were potentially at risk over insistence that they be taught in Portuguese. With a hefty budget allocated to judicial training, the US mission has recently expressed concern at the insistence by the cabinet member for judicial affairs, Gita Welch, that the language of the courts be Portuguese. With the change in imperialist masters from the Portuguese to the English speaking ones the language too demands a change and the US imperialists are eager to force it to bring quick results. It is the imperialists who are trying to change the face of East Timor and not the east Timorese who have become "independent."

East Timor and Australia have signed a framework agreement on shared oil and gas revenue from the Timor Sea,in the conference room at UN headquarters, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and East Timor’s cabinet member for economic affairs, Mari Alkatiri, exchanged signed documents of the memorandum of understanding covering the "Timor Sea Arrangement". The floor quickly assumed a party atmosphere as UN official Sergio Vieira de Mello, East Timor cabinet member for foreign affairs Jose Ramos Horta and independence leader Jose "Xanana" Gusmao joined in the celebrations. "This agreement will give East Timor an opportunity to build itself into a truly successful nation," Mr Downer said. "I am pleased that we have been able to reach an agreement on a whole range of technical and legal issues to enable development of the oil and gas resources of the Timor Sea." Mr. de Mello, the head of the United Nations transitional administration, described the deal as "another very, very important milestone on the path to independence of this territory".

Under the terms of the landmark deal, East Timor will receive 90 per cent of oil and gas revenue from a joint development area, amounting to some $A7 billion over 20 years. But with this oil Australia itself will get profits to the tune of 20 billion Dollars during the same period. The 90/10 ratios give the impression that the main beneficiary will be the Timorese which is far from the reality. Timor will only sell its oil cheap while Australia will extract, refine and market it. A great loot of the Timorese resources indeed!

According to US-based Philips Petroleum, the biggest private Timor Sea stakeholder, oil reserves of 30 million barrels and natural gas reserves of about 175 million barrels in the area are worth over $21 billion.

Gusmao’s silence about the ‘International community’s’ role in East Timor was in tune with the international media’s coverage of the events in the island. Barring a few revealing items here and there in the world bourgeois press the main thrust of the media was to discredit the role of some commanders of the Indonesian army and not the Indonesian State itself. The media had been agog with the stories of the atrocities and the newly arisen concern of ‘the international community,’ but blurring over the fact of ‘community’s past role. The ‘community’ had cautiously changed its role in a span of three years after making sure that there are no communists now in the FLANTIL, the umbrella organisation, and that the transition to independence will not jeopardise the interests of imperialists, especially of the US, UK and Australia. In an attempt to pass themselves as friends of the East Timorese, these three countries’ spokespersons went hoarse in condemning the Indonesian army’s actions, even delivering some "strong" statements threatening Indonesia with no-normal relations and even ‘suspending’ aid to it "unless Indonesian army stops colluding" with the militias in ET, while never uttering a word about their own overt and covert collusion with the same army.

During Clinton’s tenure the US administration fished out one after the other handouts to project its new image and making the world think that they are really concerned with the fate of the people in ET. Clinton warned the Indonesian authorities and Ms. Albright told the Indonesian government what to do and when. She said, "What we do want to see is that the Government in Jakarta get its act together in order to get the Indonesian military to control the militias and stop the militias from marauding." As if, she did not know that the army there was not only deliberately encouraging the carnage but was also participating in it.

The real question there was never of reining in the militia. Everything was being carried out under the policies and orders of regime’s top brass headed by Habibie and Wiranto, both were the chosen men of Suharto and already had the blood of the East Timorese on their hands. However, the purpose was to project the ‘concerns’ of USA and to legitimise intervention in the name of UN to secure direct hold over the emerging nation of ET. The world media picked up the stories of carnage and highlighted ‘international community’s concerns without going into the role this community had played in the past and now intended to play. The ‘international community’ stepped in as ‘saviours’ and the whole affair passed into its hands.

The downward trend which had set in the policies and thinking of the leadership of the struggle after the 1991carnage in Dili took its toll and the FLANTIL and other leaders started running towards the UN. This downslide was impossible to be stemmed unless the historicity of the conflict and the forces associated with it were subjected to a correct analysis with all the required mercilessness. The leadership failed on this account and ultimately was reduced to mere spectators appealing to the international bandit powers and the UN, thus losing all the courage to resist the actions and dictates of this community.

It is not without reason that Xanana Gusmao asks the people of ET not to look "so far away and so long away." For him, the cause of the turn of tragic events in East Timor is not the Government in Jakarta (least to say of the imperialist backers of the regime), but only the "rouge" elements of the Indonesian Military. Which way the "sovereignty" of the future independent state of East Timor will go can be guessed by anybody.

It is another mockery of history that the chief backers of the criminal Suharto regime, the USA, has in a unanimous resolution from its House of Representatives welcomed the independence of East Timor but has not said a word about its own complicity in the crimes against the east Timorese. Now with the political set-up dictated by the UN, there is virtual imperialist control over the economic lifelines and no provision for punishing those who had committed crimes against the people of East Timor. The new nation is facing great tasks, primarily of maintaining its independence which seems very unlikely.

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