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From: "LUIS K. W." <>
Subject: [AZORES-L] TIMOR LORO SAE (off topic/ Long / E)
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 19:19:09 +0100

This is a remake of «East Timor-1975»!!

The difference is that NOW we all know the Timorese don't want to be
Indonesians!

First they put away all the whitnesses/foreigners (in 1975 they killed TWO
Australian TV crews): Journalists, Red Cross, U.N., etc. Then they cut all
the comunications with the out side World. And then they can start the
slaughter.
«They» are the indonesian army.

They already burned down the Int. Red Cross premises, the Home of D.
Ximenes Belo (Peace Nobel Prize), etc. The Head Quarters of UNAMET as been
attacked. Thousands of people are running away. Reports talk about
thousands that were already killed.

Australia already said that their troops only need 24 hours to be sent to
Timor.

WHAT IS THE U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL WAITING FOR? Another bloodshed (200,000
killed) like in 1975??

This Timor Affair became the great national cause. There is people that
doesn't sleep to keep listening to the News. Our President gave an
enterview today to the BBC (he speaks English better than Portuguese) and
he had tears when he finished. Every political party, every human rights
organization, trade unions etc.are organizing demonstrations to ask the UN
to send a "Peace Force" (to replace the indonesians).

We - dear List Mates - all probably have «cousins» amongst the Timorese
courageous people. We have to do something to help them.
Please send e-mails to these guys (below) telling them you will personally
punch their noses unless they move quickly to save the Timorese people from
another Holocaust.

Endereço do presidente dos Estados Unidos da América Bill Clinton.


Presidência Finlandesa da União Europeia (secretário-geral)


Presidente do Senado Australiano (Hon. Margaret Reid)



And now some info I received yesterday:

«Why Americans should care about East Timor
Noam Chowsky
There are three good reasons why Americans should care about
East Timor. First, since the Indonesian invasion of December
1975, East Timor has been the site of some of the worst
atrocities of the modern era -- atrocities which are mounting
again right now. Second, the US government has played a
decisive role in escalating these atrocities and can easily act to
mitigate or terminate them. It is not necessary to bomb Jakarta or
impose economic sanctions. Throughout, it would have sufficed
for Washington to withdraw support and to inform its Indonesian
client that the game was over. That remains true as the situation
reaches a crucial turning point -- the third reason.

President Clinton needs no instructions on how to proceed. In
May 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called upon
Indonesian President Suharto to resign and provide for "a
democratic transition." A few hours later, Suharto transferred
authority to his handpicked vice president. Though not simple
cause and effect, the events illustrate the relations that prevail.
Ending the torture in East Timor would have been no more
difficult than dismissing Indonesia's dictator in May 1998.

Not long before, the Clinton administration welcomed Suharto as
"our kind of guy," following the precedent established in 1965
when the general took power, presiding over army-led massacres
that wiped out the country's only mass-based political party (the
PKI, a popularly supported communist party) and devastated its
popular base in "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th
century." According to a CIA report, these massacres were
comparable to those of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao; hundreds of
thousands were killed, most of them landless peasants. The
achievement was greeted with unrestrained euphoria in the West.
The "staggering mass slaughter" was "a gleam of light in Asia,"
according to two commentaries in The New York Times, both
typical of the general western media reaction. Corporations
flocked to what many called Suharto's "paradise for investors,"
impeded only by the rapacity of the ruling family. For more than
20 years, Suharto was hailed in the media as a "moderate" who is
"at heart benign," even as he compiled a record of murder, terror,
and corruption that has few counterparts in postwar history.

Suharto remained a darling of the West until he committed his
first errors: losing control and hesitating to implement harsh
International Monetary Fund (IMF) prescriptions. Then came the
call from Washington for "a democratic transition" -- but not for
allowing the people of East Timor to enjoy the right of
self-determination that has been validated by the UN Security
Council and the World Court.

In 1975, Suharto invaded East Timor, then being taken over by
its own population after the collapse of the Portuguese empire.
The United States and Australia knew the invasion was coming
and effectively authorized it. Australian Ambassador Richard
Woolcott, in memos later leaked to the press, recommended the
"pragmatic" course of "Kissingerian realism," because it might be
possible to make a better deal on Timor's oil reserves with
Indonesia than with an independent East Timor. At the time,the
Indonesian army relied on the United States for 90 percent of its
arms, which were restricted by the terms of the agreement for
use only in "self-defense." Pursuing the same doctrine of
"Kissingerian realism," Washington simultaneously stepped up the
flow of arms while declaring an arms suspension, and the public
was kept in the dark.

The UN Security Council ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to
no avail. Its failure was explained by then-UN Ambassador Daniel
Patrick Moynihan. In his memoirs, he took pride in having
rendered the UN "utterly ineffective in whatever measures it
undertook" because "[t]he United States wished things to turn out
as they did" and "worked to bring this about." As for how "things
turned out," Moynihan comments that, within a few months,
60,000 Timorese had been killed, "almost the proportion of
casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second
World War."

The massacre continued, peaking in 1978 with the help of new
arms provided by the Carter administration. The toll to date is
estimated at about 200,000, the worst slaughter relative to
population since the Holocaust. By 1978, the United States was
joined by Britain, France, and others eager to gain what they
could from the slaughter. Protest in the West was minuscule.
Little was even reported. US press coverage, which had been
high in the context of concerns over the fall of the Portuguese
empire, declined to practically nothing in 1978.

In 1989, Australia signed a treaty with Indonesia to exploit the oil
of "the Indonesian Province of East Timor" -- a region sober
realists tell us is not economically viable, and therefore cannot be
granted the right of self-determination. The Timor Gap treaty
was put into effect immediately after the army murdered several
hundred more Timorese at a graveyard commemoration of a
recent army assassination. Western oil companies joined in the
robbery, eliciting no comment.

After 25 terrible years, steps are finally being taken that might
bring the horrors to an end. Indonesia agreed to permit a
referendum in August 1999 in which the Timorese were to be
permitted to choose "autonomy" within Indonesia or
independence from it. It is taken for granted that if the vote is
minimally free, pro-independence forces will win. The occupying
Indonesian army (TNI) moved at once to prevent this outcome.
The method was simple: Paramilitary forces were organized to
terrorize the population while TNI adopted a stance of "plausible
deniability," which quickly collapsed in the presence of foreign
observers who could see firsthand that TNI was arming and
guiding the killers.

The militias are credibly reported to be under the direction of
Kopassus, the dreaded Indonesian special forces modeled on the
US Green Berets and "legendary for their cruelty," as the
prominent Indonesia scholar Benedict Anderson observes. He
adds that in East Timor, "Kopassus became the pioneer and
exemplar for every kind of atrocity," including systematic rapes,
tortures, and executions, and organization of hooded gangsters.
Concurring, Australia's veteran Asia correspondent David Jenkins
notes that this "crack special forces unit [had] been training
regularly with US and Australian forces until their behavior
became too much of an embarrassment for their foreign friends."
Congress did bar US training of the killers and torturers under
IMET, but the Clinton Administration found ways to evade the
laws, leading to much irritation in Congress but little broader
notice. Now, congressional constraints may be more effective,
but without the kind of inquiry that is rarely undertaken in the
case of US-backed terror, one cannot be confident.

Jenkins's conclusion that Kopassus remains "as active as ever in
East Timor" is verified by close observers. "Many of these army
officers attended courses in the United States under the
now-suspended International Military Education and Training
(IMET) program," he writes. Their tactics resemble the US
Phoenix program in South Vietnam, which killed tens of
thousands of peasants and much of the indigenous South
Vietnamese leadership, as well as "the tactics employed by the
Contras" in Nicaragua, following lessons taught by their CIA
mentors that it should be unnecessary to review. The state
terrorists "are not simply going after the most radical
pro-independence people but going after the moderates, the
people who have influence in their community."

'It's Phoenix' ... notes a well-placed source in Jakarta," Jenkins
writes. That source adds that the aim is "'to terrorize everyone' --
the NGOs, the [Red Cross], the UN, the journalists."

The goal is being pursued with no little success. Since April, the
Indonesian-run militias have been conducting a wave of atrocities
and murder, killing hundreds of people -- many in churches to
which they fled for shelter -- burning down towns, driving tens
of thousands into concentration camps or the mountains, where,
it is reported, thousands have been virtually enslaved to harvest
coffee crops. "They call them 'internally displaced persons,'" an
Australian nun and aid worker said, "but they are hostages to the
militias. They have been told that if they vote for independence,
they will be killed." The number of the displaced is estimated at
50,000 or more.

Health conditions are abysmal. One of the few doctors in the
territory, American volunteer Dan Murphy, reported that 50 to
100 Timorese are dying daily from curable diseases whileIndonesia "has a
deliberate policy not to allow medical supplies
into East Timor." In the Australian media, he has detailed
atrocious crimes from his personal experience, and Australian
journalists and aid workers have compiled a shocking record.

The referendum has been delayed twice by the UN because of
the terror, which has even targeted UN offices and UN convoys
carrying sick people for treatment. Citing diplomatic, church, and
militia sources, the Australian press reports "that hundreds of modern
assault rifles, grenades, and mortars are being stockpiled,
ready for use if the autonomy option is rejected at the ballot box,"
and warns that the TNI-run militias may be planning a violent
takeover of much of the territory if, despite the terror, the
popular will is expressed.

Murphy and others report that TNI has been emboldened by the
lack of interest in the West. "A senior US diplomat summarized
the issue neatly: 'East Timor is Australia's Haiti'" -- in other
words, it's not a problem for the United States, which helped
create and sustain the humanitarian disaster in East Timor and
could readily end it. (Those who know the truth about the United
States in Haiti will fully appreciate the cynicism.)

Reporting on the terror from the scene, Nobel Laureate Bishop
Carlos Ximenes Belo called for "an international military force" to
protect the population from Indonesian terror and permit the
referendum to proceed. Nothing doing. The "international
community" -- meaning Western powers -- prefers that the
Indonesian army provide "security." A small number of unarmed
UN monitors have been authorized -- but subsequently delayed --
by the Clinton administration.

The picture in the past few months is particularly ugly against the
background of the self-righteous posturing in the "enlightened
states." But it simply illustrates, once again, what should be
obvious: Nothing substantial has changed, either in the actions of
the powerful or the performance of their flatterers. The Timorese
are "unworthy victims." No power interest is served by attending
to their suffering or taking even simple steps to end it. Without a
significant popular reaction, the long-familiar story will continue,
in East Timor and throughout the world.»

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• [AZORES-L] TIMOR LORO SAE (off topic/ Long / E) by "LUIS K. W." <>