Open letter to FRETILIN
from
David Dias Quintas Corona FRETILIN ITALIA
email:
Davide.Corona@csi.it
To the President Lu Olo
To the Vice- President Mari
Alkatiri
To the Vice- President Mahuno
To the Central Committee
of FRETILIN
To the cadres
To the militants
To the external Delegations
I would like to greet you warmly and to remember the martyrs of the Maubere people fondly. My name is David Dias Quintas Corona and I have been the representative of our party in Italy since 1991; I am proud to say that my militancy helped me during these years to grow up free and bound up indissolubly with the history of our people. I would like to thank the party for the trust it gave me many times, like the Conference in Peniche for the constitution of the CNRT and the last Conference of the Cadres held in Dili in May 2001.
I would like to express my opinions , waiting for the next Congress, with this open letter , and to give my humble share for the prosecution of the activity of our party. I am sorry to be unable to be present at our Congress because of lack of time and means. This Congress will mark the exit from clandestineness and the end of the armed fight; I hope that we will have the possibility to rule our country.
In order to govern we have to present a valuable project that allows our country to leave precariousness rapidly and to cast us into the future without any troubles. On many occasions I have expressed my appreciation for the decision about the organization of the first congress after the liberation, that takes into account not only the opinions of the Central Committee, but also of all the militants who wish to participate in the decisions that will be taken.
Our tradition of party-movement requires us to study an organization and a program bound to the needs of our people. The will of the Maubere people was the starting point of our formation and the unmistakable peculiarity of our political practice . The FRETILIN rooting in the territory is not surprising. We have been the first who understood the common denominator of our anticolonial defeats from Manufahi to Uatulari and this has become the embryo of our nationalism and the ground to construct the connection with our people.
The unity of different ethnic groups was not easy, but we were able to set the country free, because we believed in ourselves and we were proud to be a community with its own history, its own culture and tradition. . We are the product of the Timorese will to redeem ourselves from centuries of humiliation : we have recorded, canalized and satisfied it, within our limits. We were an instrument in the hands of the people and we have to continue to be the same.
I don’t only want to glorify twenty five
years of FRETILIN life. We have also made mistakes of evaluation and excesses
in the running of power. We have the will to analyse our mistakes
inside our party. I ask for the prosecution of the effort to find the causes
of behaviours that have put our nature of democratic movement into
shade. We are entering in the new millennium with both undeniable mistakes
and successes. From my point of view I have observed that somebody
has interpreted the policy of national union as the shortcut to begin a
process of revisionism against an only accused person: the Timorese political
parties and peculiarly our party.
This is unacceptable and we have to refuse
without historical compromises to have been considered accused persons:
we have to interpret the history without distortions . Individual
responsibilities must be separated from collective ones. In order to value
the historical process that began in 1974 we have to take into consideration
the final results. According to a notorious political doctrine the
end justifies the means, only if you are able to reach it. The end
of the Indonesian occupation is the result, but nothing can justify
gratuitous and unwarranted violence. But nobody can accuse us of using
only and always violence in these years of struggle. The lack of
continuity of the political activity has produced, in my opinion,
the fragmentation of our political system . We have not to forget that
the start of our tragedy was the civil war and that during the invasion
ABRI tried to convince the youngest generations that we were unreliable
because we were unable to join the anti-integrationist groups together.
But we have showed a great maturity when we restored the relationship
with the former adversaries, even if somebody think that the renunciation
to the one-party system was a betrayal. We have to do the choice of pluralism
without delay.
We have to affirm the principle of laicality of policy and we have to appreciate the dialectics with interlocutors who , like us, have in mind the welfare of our community. However I think that the renewal of the Timorese policy has not to cut the bonds with our past. On the contrary I assert the importance of the rediscovery of our roots of mass-party and the revaluation of the theory and the tradition of Nicolau Lobato.
I ask the congress to mark the official party line openly and our representatives in the Constituent Assembly to set as insurmountable points : the independence, the inviolability of the East Timor boundaries, the constitution of a new state based on the universal principles of the Human Rights. The independence is a point of no return: our state extends from the boundaries to Tutuala ; Oe-cussi, Jaco and Atauro form part of East Timor and nobody has to split our country up neither nowadays nor in the future.
I ask our party to fight in order to mot out illiteracy, to guarantee the right to health, to fight the cancer of juvenile work, to guarantee equal opportunities to women, to assure welfare to the poorest people. We have to remove all the obstacles that do not allow the rights of citizenship.
I am fully aware of the difficulty to combine ideals with the reality of politics. In politics the end often justifies the means, but we have to do our best in order to avoid to forget our ideals. We have to guarantee our people the respect of the ideals they fought for, in front of an ocean of barbarism and indifference.
We have not won alone: a large crowd fought together with us. We built a wonderful chain of solidarity that crossed the continents and united different political opinions.. We were a symbol of hope for all people who do not accept injustice. In Indonesia we also found women and men , who share our hunger of freedom and whose struggle set them free from President “Pak” Suharto. The Maubere people defeated the Portuguese colonialism making an alliance with the Portuguese people and entering into a brotherly friendship with the countries that fought against the Portuguese empire. A people formed by illiterate beggars fought during 24 years, building international relationships and sharing many deep values: if we had lost the referendum of 30tth August 1999, we would have offended these values. We have to feel the responsibility not to betray the hopes of that part of humanity that fought with us.
Dear comrades, a terrible work is waiting for us. Everything our people conquered cannot be dissipated. During the struggle of liberation a surprising energy has been emanated from our people and this energy has to continue to produce the propelling force that is necessary for the development of the country. Economic backwardness must not frighten us. Only few nations in our continent were able to reduce speedily the technological gap that separates our countries from the western countries. Also in Indonesia the savage application of external models of development produced many tearing grieves. The well-proportioned development of the Timorese society will be realized only within an economical policy that will dispense in a fair way the wealth our country will produce. We have to avoid that a without-laws capitalism lashes our people and our country.
First of all we have to do an agricultural reform, that distributes the land between the little growers, that supports cooperative production , that builds a credit system rooted in the territory.
We haven’t to forget that our social structure is mostly based on family units who live working in little plots of land. We have to turn our attention to them. We can reach the aim of food self-sufficiency in a short time, if we give our people the cultural and technical means to exploit their own traditional competence.
I ask that every economic choice respects our environmental heritage. Suharto’s Indonesia trampled every principle of ecological respect. The deforestation of Borneo is an example of the wretched decision to immolate everything for the God of Profit. I ask a strategy that units tradition and modernity. I want to exploit and respect the tradition of spirituality , that our people use to solve every daily problem.
Mankind has to find solutions to the terrible environmental problems. Animism is the best example of integration between man and environment. The Sonda arcipelagus we belong to is one of the earth lungs and the human being survival pushes us towards an ecologically sustainable technology. Our culture is able to produce a territory respectful development based on the recycling of resources. I think that we have to refuse both western industrialization and an agriculture based on large land estate or monoculture. Suharto’s Indonesia is a bad example: during thirty years the “General” and his technocrats applied the theory of economic free trade leading the country to the political and economical disaster. Although Indonesian GDP has been cited as an example of good administration in the years before 1998, the country attracted foreign investments because of low level of wages and lack of trade-union guarantee .The corruption and the military dictatorship drove the system of ‘Orde Baru’ towards collapse. The Indonesian crisis is able to produce terrible consequences not only for the Far-Eastern countries . I hope President Wahid is able to take his country out of the crisis and I promise that I will fight to avoid similar problems in my country.
A year has gone by since I visited our country. I remember devastation, pillage, violence of the Indonesian army against our people and our land. Like most of us I feel pain for the relatives I lost in these years and especially in the days before and after the referendum. Nowadays I can’t still forgive. All the same I know that we have to begin reconciliation because we do not have to stop the country fomenting hatred and revenge. In order to continue to live we have to feel confident about the future. The liberation war has finished . I respect people who thought that the integration with Indonesia was the best solution for us, I understand determination in the defence of their principles and I recognize their loyalty and consistency. I wish that Timorese people who have decided to remain Indonesian citizens will continue to be themselves . I ask the people who decided to be members of this nation to devote themselves to work for the reconstruction as well as I devote myself. I ask the future state to force everyone guilty to make amends for their iniquities; the party has to watch over this.
Even if from afar I feel the solemnity of the time that our party is going to face in the next congress. I am very sorry to be unable to be present; I would like to contribute to build a project for our country and I am at FRETILIN disposal as cadre and militant.
I would like to finish with a homage and regards to Timorese women. They have been of great merit to be mothers, sisters, companions and protagonists in the struggle. They carried out a very important task in the jails, on the mountains, in the diaspora and in the clandestineness . Although they were offended, they have been an example of our strong will to stop the invasion.
I thank Buibere very much and I wish a good work to the party. Struggle and our lives are continuing !
David Dias Quintas Corona.
email: Davide.Corona@csi.it
See also:
BD: FRETILIN - Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor / Frente Revolucionaria do Timor Leste Independente - A collection of recent speeches, documents, statements, news and reports