east timor
2 Sep 2009
Ten Years Of Freedom In East Timor
Amid the celebrations, many questions remain unanswered about the role of the Indonesian military in East Timor and West Papua. newmatilda.com editor Marni Cordell reports from Dili
For the past four days, the garden bar at Dili's famous Turismo Hotel has been buzzing with conversation. People from across the globe who met during East Timor's long struggle for independence — and got to know each other in what were often extreme circumstances — are catching up over a coffee, in the shade of the Turismo's tropical surrounds.
Saskia Kouwenberg, a veteran East Timor activist from the Netherlands, tells me the mood in the capital is markedly different from any other time she has visited over the past 20 years. The fear seems to have finally gone, she says, and this is the first time she has felt relaxed enough to notice the little things "like the trees, and the flowers" — and the fact that the country is actually quite beautiful.
Saskia has come back, along with tens of other international activists to mark the 10th anniversary of the vote for independence.
One of the first things you notice when you visit East Timor is that the country is full of stories of brave acts performed by ordinary people — both local and foreign. Talk to anyone here and just below the surface you will likely uncover a humble admission that they or someone they know once did something incredible, and often life threatening, during the country's 24-year fight for freedom.
Saskia's is one such story. The former journalist was one of a small group of western activists and undercover media who were in Dili during the 1991 massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery — when at least 200 East Timorese were murdered after the Indonesian military opened fire during a wake.
Millions of people all over the world saw footage of the massacre — which was secretly filmed by British cameraman and documentary maker Max Stahl — but not many people realise that the tape would likely not have made it out of the country had it not been for the bravery of one Dutch activist. Saskia risked her life to get Stahl's tape out of an occupied East Timor — and into the global media.
Saskia tells me her story in the overgrown garden of this rundown hotel that has borne witness to so much of East Timor's violent history. After the massacre, for three terrifying days, she and her colleagues stayed on in Dili, talking to victims and "barricading ourselves in the hotel at night". "In the back of our minds was what happened to the five journalists at Balibo," she tells me. "If there was ever a group of journalists having witnessed something that the Indonesians didn't want seen, they were killed."
She then stashed the tapes in her underpants, and headed for the airport. When she tried to get on the plane, however, she was told it was full. The Indonesian forces knew who she was and attempted to stop her from leaving.
"I dropped my luggage and I walked up to the plane and hung on to the stairs," she says. "They were pulling me off. They didn't know what to do because they wanted to keep me there. Eventually I was making such a fuss that they let me on."
Incredibly, however, throughout all the commotion she did not get searched and managed to smuggle the tape out of Indonesia and get it to a Dutch TV station.
"It was scary. It was very scary. But I became very single-minded. All I could think was: I'm going to get these tapes out," she says.
Within three days of the footage appearing on Dutch TV, up to one hundred television stations across the world had also shown it. This was a watershed moment. Overnight, East Timor became a mainstream issue.
"The other day an Australian businessman came up to me and said: 'Do you realise you changed my life? When I saw that footage, everything changed,'" Saskia tells me. "And I think a lot of people felt the same. That's how [East Timor] got back on the international agenda."
Former Australian Ambassador to Portuguese Timor and author of East Timor: A Rough Passage to Independence, James Dunn, says that although there had been plenty of evidence that such indiscriminate killings were taking place — including a Red Cross report in the late 70s that suggested as many as 200,000 people had died in just four years of occupation — the footage of Santa Cruz allowed people to put faces to the numbers and caused an instant and angry reaction across Australia. In the fallout that followed, a previously supportive Australian government made the extraordinary move of gently pushing Indonesia for a serious military investigation into the incident.
"They'd never launched any protest, in my experience, in all that time," says Dunn. "Even when it was a killing field, they didn't make a statement urging Indonesia to stop the senseless killing."
The words "senseless" and "killing" seem to come together a lot in any conversation about East Timor's past. And yet, during official 10th anniversary celebrations here on Sunday, President Jose Ramos-Horta made it clear he does not support an international tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the crimes committed during the Indonesian occupation, despite ongoing calls for such a process from the international community, most recently in an Amnesty International report released last week.
"While I'm respectful of all those in the US and UK who are most insistent on an international tribunal, I beg to disagree with their simplistic assertion that absence of prosecutorial justice fosters impunity and violence," Horta said in a speech to the gathered international dignitaries on Sunday.
Ramos-Horta takes part in Sunday's official celebrations to mark the 10-year anniversary. (Photos: Marni Cordell) |
"May I respectfully ask: Was there an international tribunal on the Vietnam War and were those who carpet-bombed Vietnam and Cambodia brought to trial? Is there a culture of impunity in the US or Vietnam as a result?"
(The answer, at least in the case of the United States, can probably be found in the ashes of Iraq.)
During a controversial speech that traversed three languages and 34 years of history, Horta went further by calling for the Serious Crimes Unit to be disbanded and for the money to be put towards improving the East Timorese judiciary — and said he had faith that Indonesia would bring those responsible for the violence to justice.
After the speech, a handful of protesters calling for an "end to impunity" were arrested and a local journalist manhandled by police, ironically while most of the foreign press were at an exclusive event to honour activists who had helped the East Timorese cause between 1975 and 1999.
James Dunn, who received an Order of East Timor for his life's work in support of the country, says that while an international tribunal — which needs to be signed off by the UN Security Council — will never happen while the East Timorese leadership is against it, he is pushing for an alternative international process, whereby there is recognition by those who caused the atrocities and an expression of regret made — even if an amnesty is then offered. "Otherwise, I fear that there is nothing stopping [the perpetrators] from acting in the same way again," he says.
And Dunn's fears are well grounded given the ongoing situation in West Papua, where Indonesian forces continue to terrorise the local population.
Last month, shocking photos circulated on the internet of a West Papuan man who had been shot and bayoneted on the island of Yapen in Papua. (The images can be viewed here — but be warned that they show graphic detail and some may find them distressing.) The man is seen stumbling around in a garden with his intestines in his hands before finally succumbing to his wounds and dying. It's difficult to get information about where these photos came from and the circumstances surrounding this man's death. It is alleged, however, that he was trying to save his wife from being raped by Indonesian forces when he was murdered. Matthew Jamieson from the Institute of Papuan Advocacy and Human Rights says such incidents are not uncommon, and that Indonesian security forces regularly "destroy people's gardens, they shoot people's pigs, they kick them out of their homes, burn down houses. It happens year in year out."
"One gets the sense that Indonesia is just trying to eliminate Papuans," he says.
Because of foreign media restrictions and strict visa conditions for others, there are no western journalists or activists witnessing what is going on in West Papua. There is no Saskia Kouwenberg or Max Stahl, no Amy Goodman or Allan Nairn to raise the alarm in the international press. As a journalist operating outside the province, it's very difficult to get reliable information from within. And sadly, by showing that it will not act even when its own citizens are murdered by the Indonesian military — the murder of Australian journalist Roger East in 1975 remains to be investigated to this day — successive Australian governments have made it incredibly dangerous for Australian journalists to go there clandestinely and find out what is going on for themselves.
Because of this, West Papuans are not likely to get their watershed moment. And let's hope they don't have to.
Photos such as those that have been circulating — while it may be difficult to verify their origin — are enough prima facie evidence for foreign governments and the international media to mount a campaign to demand access to the province. Knowing what we know about the Indonesian military from East Timor should only make this task all the more urgent.
Holding Indonesia responsible for its actions in East Timor is not just about bringing justice to the victims of past crimes — although many people here are still demanding that. A process such as an international tribunal also acts as a public record of past atrocities, and serves to prevent them from happening again.
When a country invades another country, kills, rapes and tortures its people (and murders foreign journalists who try to expose the story) and comes out of it largely unscathed, it sets a precedent. As Indonesia's closest neighbour, and in the context of what is still taking place in West Papua, we need to ask ourselves: do we want the Indonesian military to know that it can get away with murder?
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"One gets the sense that Indonesia is just trying to eliminate Papuans"
What is that supposed to mean?
I would be the last person to deny that there are human rights abuses committed against Papuans, by Indonesians. However, the suggestion here is that these are part of a systematic campaign of elimination. This could not be further from the truth.
Indonesia in 2009 is not Indonesia in 1999, thankfully. Indonesia is now a whole lot better than yesterday. And things are certainly not Indonesia in 1979, when waves of violence were consuming both East Timor and West Papua. Indonesia is now one of the strongest democracies in the region, and has a robust and free press, one of the freest in Asia, which regularly reports from Papua. Papuans are now highly connected to the internet, and pictures and accounts are able to be freely spread internationally. However, because people like Mr Jamieson do not engage with this press and Indonesian civil society, and discount it as mere propaganda, that they persist in claiming that Indonesia is trying to "eliminate" Papuans.
What instead is the case is that particular members and supporters of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) are targeted, and those thought to be harbouring them are also harassed. There is doubt over the veracity of those particular pictures, but evidence of violence is real. These sporadic violations of human rights are highly unacceptable, but they do not however represent a mass wave of violence. They originate from particular elements of the military which are not under the control of either the civilian central or local governments - this is a serious issue, and one that needs to be addressed. Unfortunately however, when someone tars everyone with this brush, it makes it harder for those trying to marginalise these elements. Public international support for the OPM, particularly when they kill soldiers, police, civilians, and even Australians, empowers these elements by giving them them a strong public rationale.
Indonesia’s elites have to wear much blame for their paranoid attitudes which have seen the province largely closed to foreigners. Their fear that foreigners would come and misrepresent Papua has ironically meant that crude misrepresentations circulate in Australia and elsewhere, with little chance for clarification. When journalists have been allowed in, such as those with ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, they have found that the truth is much more nuanced.
Thanks for reminding us all what happened a decade ago Marni. I remember watching the news footage of the horrific violence that followed the independence ballot in East Timor like it was yesterday.
I haven’t been to Indonesia for over a decade, but as the poster above notes it’s a large and complex country of diverse opinions. But I will never forget one disturbing encounter I had with a young man on the island of Flores - pointing to a young man next to him, he told me his friend had just been with the army in East Timor. He made the motions of firing a gun and said with a grin, "He shot a lot of people…"
Let’s hope the military can be made more accountable for what is happening in West Papua.
UPDATE: If anyone wants to see the images from West Papua mentioned in the article, they are available here:
http://newmatilda.com/media/WayeniWestPapua.doc
Warning: they show graphic detail some may find them distressing.
The man in them is reportedly Yawan Wayeni, a tribal leader and nine-year political prisoner during the Suharto dictatorship.
What Papua needs more than anything else is the rule of law, and strong land rights, which will allow people to control what happens on their land.
A strong judiciary and the rule of law, so that when soldiers kill civilians, as these images purport to show, they are tried for their crimes. This will take a while, but moves to reform the judiciary are coming, if painfully slowly.
Land rights, so that Papuans can make economic benefit from the resources they own, instead of enriching businessmen in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.
Andrew brings up the New Order past - quite rightly. The perpetrators of these acts should be tried and sent to jail. But even if there were acts committed by commanders that were genocidal in intent, as in Australia, that period has thankfully long since passed. We are now in a situation where the military conducts very low scale operations against armed OPM members, often outside the law. We get horrible situations like the one pictured above. Again, this needs to stop - the military must act within the law, and be prosecuted for its violation.
But calling this a genocide is both false and inflammatory. False, because no such wave of death exists, and inflammatory because it gives both the OPM and military motive to attack each other, and reason to call Australia an instigator of conflict. It also suggests that different ethnic groups cannot live together and must be separated - would Andrew suggest that for Australia?
"But even if there were acts committed by commanders that were genocidal in intent, as in Australia, that period has thankfully long since passed."
Hi North -
Just wondering if you have any proof of this fundamental change in culture within the Indonesian military which you seem to be suggesting - any sources for this claim other than the Indonesian Gov/military?
Also, if the military is still acting outside of the law - as you readily admit - then how does one prove whether they are doing this with "genocidal intent" or not?
many thanks, Marni
All this garbage about indonesia being a ‘democracy’ makes me want to vomit. The President, even being an ex-General of Army with a lot of blood on his hands himself, has absolutely NO CONTROL over most of the Army/Military apparatus. Kopassus has proved this time and time again.
The indonesian Military is totally a Law unto themselves, with total impunity to do as they wish, with absolutely NO controls on their actions. They raise their own funds, and are totally corrupt in such operations.
No court of Law, (and Indonesian Law is a sick joke, nothing else) will ever touch these criminals. That has been proved time and time again, with NO ONE ever convicted (or still convicted) of any crime in relation to atrocities in East Timor or anywhere else.
No government will ever, so far as I can see, have the guts to do anything about them. They are just far too powerful. They kill their own media and journalists with impunity, if it/they ‘gets out of line’.
This President has tried a few times to slap a few low-in-the-totem-pole wrists, but even those efforts have been thwarted by the Military and their friends.
I still ask, but no longer with any expectation of ever getting an answer, why it is that our Governments in Australia treat Indonesia with such kid gloves, and our Media has so little to say about their depredations.
Are we all really afraid of a MASS INVASION from the North? The screaming hordes! Maybe these people are correct, in which case why are we training the Indonesian Military in ways and means to exterminate us, and other peoples? Gawd, I would love some answers!
Dazza’s comments are hysterical, and typical of much of the Australian West Papua movement. The fact that he can make claims of a desire for a "MASS INVASION" shows more about him than anything else, and how completely ignorant he is of Indonesians, who have absolutely no desire to invade Australia. They’ll come in large numbers, but for study and shopping!
He is correct in saying that the Indonesian President and the military are in conflict, and that the civilian apparatus has not been able to send anyone to jail yet, but wrong in the rest of his analysis. They are not able to act with impunity - they act within limits to avoid forcing the hands of those who are working to limit their power. Papua is the last place in Indonesia where they’ve been able to maintain personal fiefdoms (which have much more to do with economics than war), and having a scapegoat OPM to justify their presence suits them just fine. This is why uncritical support of violent factions of the OPM, which undermines and is destroying the Land of Peace initiative, is harmful to all Papuans. Most OPM have put down their guns, but certain factions are still active, thinking they have much greater international support than is the case.
I might also note that the problem of military immunity from prosecution is hardly unique to Indonesia; to take one of the most obvious examples, which United States and Australian generals and military brass have ever been put on trial for , their mass killings in Indochina during the 1960s and 1970s?
And yes, Indonesia is a democracy. It had two elections this year, both of which were ruled free and fair by all international observers. Yes, certain questions are off the political agenda (such as independence for Papua), because no political forces of any strength are willing to support them, but again this is hardly unique to Indonesia. Plenty of things are off the agenda in any democracy you can care to think of. Even with prohibitions on supporting independence, supporting the idea is possible within limits. It’s unfortunate, but hardly invalidates the rest.
Marni, I have to admit that I’m not an expert on the psychology of Indonesian generals. All I can do in that respect is look at the evidence. I have in front of me a pile of the TAPOL Bulletin from the last ten years. Since the Biak Massacre of 1998, there have been only sporadic (awful) killings of individuals and small groups claimed to be associated with the OPM. There was violence in 2006 when a protest turned ugly, but this isn’t an entirely black and white situation either. Here 4 policemen and one soldier were killed and 18 students tortured. I would say around 90 Papuans and 50 Indonesians have been killed in political violence since the end of 1998. A tragedy, but certainly not a genocide, not by any stretch of the imagination.
The only way this claim could be sustained is to allege that HIV/AIDS is used in this way. There are claims that HIV/AIDS was introduced by the Indonesian military. The truth is much more mundane. The Arafura sea was host to thousands of Thai fishermen in the 1980s and 1990s, who frequented brothels along the coast. It happens that a lot of the brothels are owned by military business, and the rumor started from here. However, there is no evidence that privately owned brothels were any less AIDS infected. The unwillingness of brothel owners to compromise their profits spread the disease. A general lack of awareness and slow response from health authorities has meant that the epidemic is now generalised. Since the middle of the decade there has been a large scale response from Indonesian health authorities, funded heavily by AusAID and UN agencies. There are problems with this response, but they relate to advertising and its overly moralistic tone. It is impossible to trace the start of any such epidemic, so proving a source is impossible, and in the absence of any hard proof either way the rumour will continue to circulate. Poor healthcare is a serious issue, and one that needs more attention. Those who care for the welfare of Papuans will continue to advocate for rapid improvement in this area.
"North 06/09/09 2:32PM
Dazza’s comments are hysterical, and typical of much of the Australian West Papua movement. The fact that he can make claims of a desire for a "MASS INVASION" shows more about him than anything else, and how completely ignorant he is of Indonesians, who have absolutely no desire to invade Australia. They’ll come in large numbers, but for study and shopping!"
Methinks ‘North’ is one of those apologists for Indonesia that I was talking about. As such, very little of what he says can be believed. He has to be utterly biased in favour of indonesia.
I would say that their actions in so many places over the years has shown that they are a people totally without moral and ethical values, and no respect whatsoever for life, whether human or animal. And extremely cruel an vicious to boot!
Also, I DID NOT infer that I was thinking of any MASS INVASION. If you were to actually read my blog, North, you could see that. I was asking what it was that caused such grovelling in our Hall of Power towards Indonesia.
However, as Indonesia has shown inclination to invade and take over quite a few places over the years, violently and illegally, with some other-world backing in some areas, I do not see how North can say that they, the Indonesians, have never desired to invade Australia. They know and we know that they are one Hell of a lot of people, running out of arable land, even land to live on, fast, and breeding like rabbits. I would say that logistics would prevent such a thing to date, but what of the future? There is now an arms race in progress in Asia, and who knows what Military capacity Indonesia will have in 20 years down the track.
Meanwhile, we will have sold off everything worth owning in resources to the Chinese and indians, and will probably be in dire straits, racked by Global Warming effects which OUR Government will NOT act to lessen.
We may well be ripe for the pickin’.
As for ‘most OPM have put down their guns’ this has to be a ridiculous statement. Certainly some have been co-opted by the Kopassus, and used to kill and maim others, including probably Australians and Americans. But others try to maintain some semblance of existence whilst avoiding murder and assassination by Indonesian Military.
As for ‘support from the West’. Yes. You have to wonder just why they have so little support. This goes to the Fifth Column in our Foreign Affairs Dept., long in place, and North may well be one of these. No one in the West wants to upset a cosy little arrangement whereby they rape and pillage the West Papuan resources, under Indonesian Military ‘protection’.
Sadly, there is no room for nuance in Dazza’s world. You’re either on the rooftops shouting Merdeka! or you’re overlooking Lake Burley Griffin, conspiring with Indonesia to violently suppress Papuans.
I’m not biased in favour of Indonesia. I’m biased in favour of human rights. And if you knew anything about Papua, you would know that a.) Papua is not going to become independent any time soon (for a number of reasons that relate to Papua, Indonesia, and the international community) and that b.) because of this, a human rights environment needs to be created, while Papua remains part of the Indonesian state.
Too complicated? Probably. Sorry to have bothered you, I’ll let you go back to waving flags and making pronouncements that worsen the situation on the ground.