BACK DOOR Newsletter on East Timor

A collection of recent reports, articles and news concerning complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity through the provision of military, economic or diplomatic support to Indonesia by Australia.

NEW = Added to BACK DOOR Website since last Monday's Emailout

Feb 15 SMH: Blue Book of horrors makes a diplomatic time bomb  Article added Feb 16
"An explosive secret report on Indonesia’s brutal occupation of East Timor is sitting in Canberra ... The material Jones saw as a desk officer in the former Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO, now called the Defence Intelligence Organisation) contained damning detail about the brutality of the East Timor occupation, in which up to a third of the population, or 200,000 people, may have died. ...
Blandly titled The Indonesian Integration of East Timor, the work became known simply as “The Blue Book” among the limited circle of senior intelligence officials given access - who say it is a masterly example of what secret intelligence can produce." Hamish McDonald & Desmond Ball

Feb 13 AFR: Megawati's stunt may haunt Howard  Comment and Analysis added Feb 13
"The surprise decision by the Indonesian Government to propose a Memorandum of Understanding with Australia for combating international terrorism is one of the cleverest diplomatic initiatives yet made in South-East Asia. ... The MOU is Jakarta’s response to pressure from the United States to clamp down harder on militant Islamists - Jemaah Islamiah, for example - who may have links with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. ... It has six significant effects: ... It accelerates the rebuilding of military ties between the Indonesian military (TNI) and the Australian Defence Forces, much to the delight of senior ADF officers." Scott Burchill, lecturer, international relations, Deakin University’s School of Australian & International Studies

Feb 12 Asia Times: Indonesia-Australia: Shaking hands with clenched fists  Analysis added Feb 13
"Signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on counterterrorism with a country so internally inconsistent and fragile, while at the same time expecting solid and sustainable outcomes, will hardly keep Australia-Indonesia relations at a “realistic” level. ... the bilateral MoU includes the provision for the training and education of Indonesian officials. Could not that training and education also be used against Acehnese and West Papuan secessionists? Australia once before crossed over this line of aiding the Indonesian internal security apparatus when it allowed its Special Air Service (SAS) to train and exercise with Indonesia’s special forces, Kopussus. Kopussus used the knowledge gained by their joint training with the SAS against many local anti-Javanese insurgents, including the East Timorese, much to the embarrassment of the Australian government and the outrage of Australian and international human-rights groups." Purnendra Jain, professor, Center for Asian Studies, Adelaide University & John Bruni, adjunct lecturer, Politics Department, Adelaide University, Australia

Feb 11 StratFor: Isolated Indonesia Eyes Australia for Support  Analysis added Feb 13
"Indonesia and Australia signed an anti-terrorism cooperation agreement Feb.  7. Though both countries have had relatively serious diplomatic problems with each other in the past, this new agreement will guarantee Indonesia a powerful regional ally as it is increasingly shunned by its Southeast Asian neighbors. ... Both sides pledged greater intelligence sharing, training and visits between officials ... Close contact with Canberra will give Jakarta much-needed military and diplomatic support in the region and will advance Australia’s efforts to gain more strategic influence in the region." Stratfor Geopolitics Analysis

Feb 10 SunHerald: Snub Kopassus  News added Feb 13
"The Indonesian Army now admits its brutal special forces unit, Kopassus, was involved in the recent murder of West Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay but Prime Minister John Howard appears to have opened the door for Australian SAS troops to again train Kopassus. ... At the time, the Nine Network’s Sunday program revealed details of a joint SAS/Kopassus training exercise in which captured East Timorese independence fighters were forced to act as targets. The Australian public did not support this sort of training." Sun Herald (Sydney)

Dec 15 IPRD: Indonesia, ETimor & The Western Powers: A Case Study  Research paper added Dec 18
"II.VI Diplomatic and Financial Perpetuation of the Conflict: ... Events a year after the invasion of East Timor provide ample explanation for this admiration for the Indonesian military regime and its policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Negotiations began between an Australian company and Indonesia on extracting the vast oil resources on both the island itself and in the Timor Gap, the seabed between Timor and Australia which is just of the coast of East Timor. By December 1989, the negotiations were finally settled with a joint agreement to exploit the Timor Sea, the Timor Gap Treaty, involving Australian, British and U.S. companies, among others. A month after the Dili massacre, the Australian government alone approved with Indonesia eleven oil production contracts for exploitation of a jointly controlled area of the sea. As Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans put it, the gains to be made from East Timor under the Timor Gap Treaty in terms of oil amounted to “zillions of dollars”. " Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and a Researcher at the Islamic Human Rights Commission

Oct 16 AETA: Balibo Anniversary: Families Still Await Justice  Release added Oct 17
"Today marks the 26th anniversary of the death of five Australian-based journalists in Balibo, East Timor. ... The widow of one of the slain journalists Ms Shirley Shackleton earlier today told AETA that their is now so much evidence compiled that it is only political factors that are delaying prosecution. She added that the Australia Government should hand over the remaining files in their possession to Dili so that the prosecution case can be made even more water tight." Australia-East Timor Association (AETA) / NSW

Sep 25 ASIET: US War Drive and Racism: Stop the War Against the Third World  Statement added Sep 26
"Two of the greatest acts of terrorism in the 20th century: East Timor and Indonesia: ... In East Timor 200,000 people, or one third of the population died, as a result of the war against the East Timorese people by General Suharto’s army. General Suharto attacked East Timor one day after US President Gerald Ford and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Jakarta and gave the go ahead. The Australian government followed suit, providing war equipment and training for the slaughter. Both Liberal-National and ALP governments supported Suharto’s mass slaughter in East Timor. ... In 1965 in Indonesia, the US helped organise the mass slaughter of more than ONE MILLION workers, peasants, students and women’s activists who were trying to free Indonesia from the exploitative grip of the West. ... The Australian Liberal-National government of the day, backed by the Australian media, trumpeted that the slaughter was the best thing that had happened in Asia for decades." Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET)

Aug 22 AAP: Australian Senate rejects Timor war crimes tribunal  News added Aug 23
"The Senate has rejected a proposal for an international war crimes tribunal covering the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. Instead, it backed Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri’s moves to prosecute those committing atrocities during the 1999 independence ballot. ... But Labor’s Peter Cook won government support to change the motion to back Indonesian prosecutions and to note the UN Security Council’s lack of support for an international tribunal." AAP

Aug 21 AUSGOV: Senate debate on war crimes tribunal  Transcript added Aug 29
"Through government decree, we have had some involvement in the training and facilitating of troops in Indonesia, not least the reviled Kopassus, and in facilitating the Suharto government through those years. We are seeing a failure of nerve here today and we are seeing a failure of morality of the highest order—a morality which says that when crimes like that have occurred they should be discovered and the people who perpetrated them should be dealt with. We cannot get away from it. By denying a push through the United Nations, with Australia’s pivotal role there, we effectively end up sheltering the people who murdered, raped and destroyed for 25 years in East Timor. That is how it is. ... It is a very grave matter." [Greens] Senator Brown (Tasmania, Australia)

Aug 15 GLW: Howard ignores the lessons of Timor  Article added Aug 15
"Howard [Australia's Prime Minister] and Beazley [leader of opposition party: ALP] see the [Megawati] Sukarnoputri government as providing them with the opportunity to return to “business as usual”, after the old special relationship policy was so severely discredited in East Timor. We have to make sure that they don't succeed. One of the important ways we can assist the peoples of Aceh, West Papua and those fighting for democracy in all parts of Indonesia is to force Canberra to end all military ties with Indonesia. As former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans now admits, Australian military aid to Indonesia only “helped produce more professional human rights abusers”. It must end." Pip Hinman, national secretary, Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor

Aug 2 AUSGOV: New facilities for Defence Intelligence Training Centre, Canungra  Presentation to inquiry added Oct 24
"We have been presenting public protest and concerns about this military facility for the past 10 years, over the training of Indonesian military forces. We submit that the facility should not upgrade and increase its capacity to provide this military assistance until it reviews its past conduct in encouraging forces, such as the Indonesian armed forces, to believe that their actions have the support of the armed forces of Australia. ... in 1991 the Dili massacre presented to all Australians clear evidence of the Indonesian forces and officers being involved in frightening human rights abuses." Mr Damian le GOULLON, member, Catholic Worker

Jul 31 Zeitlin: Scholar’s book renews debate on Australian news coverage of ETimor  Review added Aug 2
“Too often, [the Australian media] were insensitive to ongoing injustices ... at other times … [they] punctuated the politically convenient silence. They tested the propaganda claims. They sometimes conveyed the sufferings of the East Timorese, and so forced the issue to assume a higher priority in government policy. ... There was no outer limit, ... no transgression that was so great that they [Australian governments] would change course. The government was locked into conniving with Indonesia’s lies and it was locked into a logic in which the suffering of the East Timorese would always count for nothing, where raison d’état had become completely separated from normal human compassion.” Rod Tiffen, author, "Diplomatic Deceits: Government, Media and East Timor"

Jul 24 IHT: Gareth Evans: Indonesia's Military Culture Has to Be Reformed  Article added July 25
“I am one of those who has to acknowledge, as Australia’s foreign minister at the time, that many of our earlier training efforts helped only to produce more professional human rights abusers. ... Australia, which was never a major arms supplier to Indonesia, is likely to limit any assistance to noncombat areas. ... In its 2000-2001 budget it allocated military aid of $2.38 million for Indonesian officer education, noncombat training and maritime and air surveillance.” Gareth Evans, Australia’s foreign minister from 1988 to 1996, President of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group

Jul 21 AGE: The lessons of East Timor  Editorial added July 24
"It appears this link [with Indonesia] was as much overvalued as the power of global public opinion - which helped make InterFET possible - was undervalued. Even this week, Mr Downer [Australia's Foreign Minister] failed to explain satisfactorily what such “diplomatic pragmatism” achieved. Australia’s work in East Timor is atoning to some extent for past errors and omissions. It can do more, by releasing intelligence records, which it was previously reluctant to acknowledge, that could help convict those guilty of crimes against humanity. Atrocities in Indonesia’s Aceh province are now attracting attention, and Mr Downer was more forthright this week than in the past: “I say to the Indonesians, and to the TNI leadership, you have to heed the lessons of East Timor.” Those lessons apply, too, to Australia’s conduct of foreign policy." The Age Newspaper Editorial

Jul 17 Brereton: East Timor: Selective and Partisan Publication of DFAT Records  Release added July 20
“It is a matter of record that Mr Downer accepted Indonesian Foreign Minister Alatas’s denials that the Indonesian military were orchestrating militias in East Timor. He did so at a time when the Australian Government knew from its own Defence Intelligence reports that this was a deliberate strategy to sub-contract out violence against pro-independence supporters. ... It is also a matter of record that the Australian Government actively argued against pressing Jakarta to accept the early deployment of peacekeepers.” Laurie Brereton MP, Shadow Minister For Foreign Affairs

Jul 17 AAP: US given 'extra E. Timor info'  News added July 18
"The book provides some insight into Australia’s position on the unfolding and escalating violence perpetrated by the Indonesian military (TNI) and its militia proxies. It also exposes some behind-the-scenes efforts to convince Indonesia to stop it. But it fails to precisely describe when Australia knew the TNI was funding, arming and organising the militias. The book said Australia knew of such evidence, but not that it had the evidence. It says that by mid-1999 it was obvious the TNI was encouraging the militias to intimidate people to stop them from voting." Karen Polglaze

Jul 16 Aust: Tony Kevin: Timor has Downer in full spin  Article added July 18
"But Australia’s role through 1999 is profoundly disturbing. To what extent did we wrong-foot Wiranto’s group into launching stupid and murderous actions that would ravage East Timor and shame Indonesia? Did we understand beforehand that the price of East Timorese independence could be widespread bloodshed or did we really believe that we could wing it, with minimal collateral death? Did we deceive ourselves or did we recognise that our real policy was that the end justified the means: that this window of opportunity had to be grasped, whatever the risks we took with East Timorese lives?" Tony Kevin, visiting fellow, school of Pacific and Asian studies, Australian National University

May 16 SBS: See No Evil  TV documentary added May 18
"I want to make quite clear - it wasn‘t from General Cosgrove and it wasn‘t from the military mission here that decided that policy [of not making public key details of his investigation]. We had a Department of Department of Foreign Affairs rep in Dili and we were getting political advice directly from Canberra, and not necessarily from politicians, but certainly from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade." Captain Andrew Plunkett, Australian Army senior military intelligence officer in charge of gathering evidence of atrocities committed post-ballot

May 9 SBS: Australias East Timor secret  TV documentary added May 13
"In an extraordinary investigation, reporter Mark Davis returns to East Timor to disclose disturbing new revelations about Australia’s secret intelligence information prior to the country’s independence referendum. ... A senior officer has now revealed for the first time that Canberra knew the Indonesian Army had plans to destroy East Timor and murder independence supporters, and failed to alert those most at risk." SBS Dateline (Australia)

Apr 9-11 APPEA: Galbraith: Timor Sea Petroleum  keynote conference address added May 5
"East Timor declared itself independent on November 28, 1975. On December 7, the anniversary of a day that Franklin D Roosevelt said would live in infamy, the Indonesians invaded Dili. On that first day they rounded up 150 Timorese, and the Australian journalist Roger East, marched them one by one to the edge of the Dili wharf and shot them. ... Houses along the waterfront became torture centres and execution sites. ... In all up to 200,000 Timorese were murdered or otherwise died during the 24 years of Indonesian occupation. Indonesian’s occupation of East Timor was condemned by the United Nations Security Council and by the United Nations General Assembly, which affirmed East Timor’s right to self-determination. Only one country, Australia, ever recognised the incorporation of East Timor into Indonesia. That recognition was, of course, an essential precondition for the negotiation of the Timor Gap Treaty."
Ambassador Peter Galbraith, Cabinet Member for Political Affairs and Timor Sea, East Timor Transitional Government

Apr 3 AAP: Genocide legal in Australia  News added Apr 25
"Australia would remain a safehaven for suspected war criminals unless it legislated against genocide ... Senator Greig [Australian Democrats Justice spokesperson] said Australia needed to have its own laws to investigate, prosecute and expel alleged war criminals. He said Australia’s existing War Crimes Act applied only to European war between 1939 and 1945 and ignored recent cases of war crimes in East Timor, Rwanda and Cambodia." AAP

Mar 28 GLW: Indonesian troops out of Aceh!  Article
"We must force the Australian government to end all military ties with Indonesia. While the training of Indonesian special forces by the Australian military was put on hold following the rampage by the TNI and its militia groups in East Timor after the 1999 independence referendum, Canberra continues to train members of Indonesia’s regular army in Australia. It is likely that the Australian government will offer increased military cooperation as a “goodwill” gesture when Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid visits Australia in April." Pip Hinman, national secretary, Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET)

Mar 12 Age: Burchill: Not guilty on Timor? Explain this then  Article
"Why did Australia have to train Kopassus officers, widely known for their brutality and disregard for basic human rights? Closer ties between Australia's armed forces and Indonesia's (TNI), in the form of joint training exercises and the secretly negotiated 1995 Australia-Indonesia Security Agreement, clearly gave Australia no influence whatsoever over the behavior of TNI in 1999, when they and their militia proxies razed East Timor. ... Why did you [the Australian Hawke and Keating governments] oppose the right of the East Timorese to an act of self-determination? In fact you went much further and gave legitimacy to the invasion by explicitly recognising Indonesia's illegal incorporation of East Timor - unlike the United Nations and most of the international community. ... You repeatedly claim that Canberra has always supported the right of the East Timorese to self-determination, but don't mention that this was rendered meaningless by the insistence this right must be exercised within the confines of Indonesia's sovereign control of the territory." Scott Burchill, lecturer, international relations, Deakin University

Feb 2001 I-ETCW Big Business in the Timor Gap  Article added Apr 13
"The Australian oil and gas lobby, through its considerable political power and influence, played a critical role during the negotiations of the Timor Gap Treaty in the ’70s and ‘80s. Industry representatives regularly accompanied ministerial delegations to Jakarta and had significant input into discussions on the Timor Gap. Australia’s largest mining and exploration companies helped shape the final treaty and gave their full support to successive Liberal and Labor governments’ policy of recognising Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor." Jon Land, editorial board, 'Indonesia - East Timor Campaign Watch' magazine

Feb 28 GLW: Protests demand `Timor oil for the Timorese'  News
“These needs are highlighted by the unjust (even rapacious) terms of the Timor Gap Treaty [made between Australia and Indonesia] ... It is clear that the terms of this treaty must be revised ... The plain truth is on any proper reading of the seabed boundaries, East Timor should be entitled to 90% of the gas and oil royalties associated with exploration in the Timor Sea area. Clearly, the boundary should be set along the median line rather than the edge of the continental shelf. A proper application of international law could yield as much as $5 billion for a fledging independent East Timorese government ... As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and having been previously complicit in the Indonesian takeover of East Timor, Australia has an obligation to scrap the treaty and to increase direct aid.” Grahame McCulloch, general secretary, [Australian] National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU)

Feb 21 GLW: Scrap the Timor Gap Treaty  Article
"East Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmao passed a letter to Prime Minister Bob Hawke via an Australian parliamentary delegation visiting East Timor in February, 1991. Gusmao condemned the treaty as "a total betrayal" of the East Timorese people by Australia. A pre-condition for the establishment of the treaty (and its continuation) was the recognition by successive Australian governments of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor. The improvement in relations between Indonesia and Australia after the signing of the treaty coincided with a brutal wave of military repression throughout East Timor, intended to smash the resistance of the East Timorese masses." Jon Land

Feb 3 ASIET's Timor Oil Statement  Statement & Petition
"Had the government refused to give military, political and diplomatic support to Suharto and taken a principled stand to support the right of self-determination, it could have helped end the suffering of the East Timorese people years ago. Such a policy could have been easily explained to the Indonesian people through Radio Australia and other means. But oil money proved more important than the lives of East Timorese." Max Lane, [Australian] national chairperson, Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor

Portuguese:
Jan 12 OTL: O petróleo do Mar de Timor e as relações Timor Leste-Austrália  Report
"Quando a Indonésia deu sinais de querer invadir Timor Leste, em 1975, o embaixador australiano em Jacarta, Richard Woolcott, enviou um telegrama confidencial ao seu Governo: “fechar o actual ‘gap’ na fronteira marítima acordada pode ser mais fácil com a Indonésia ... do que com Portugal ou um Timor Leste independente” e o ministério das Minas e Energia pode estar interessado nisso, acrescentava Woolcott." Observatório Timor Leste

Jan 12 ETO: Timor Sea Oil and East Timor-Australia relations  Report
"When it became known that Indonesia intended to invade East Timor in 1975, Australia's ambassador to Jakarta, R. Woolcott, sent a confidential telegram to his government: "Closing the present gap in the agreed sea border could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia … than with Portugal or an independent Portuguese Timor"; he suggested that the Ministry of Mines and Energy might be interested in this." East Timor Observatory

French:
Jan 12 OTO: Le pétrole de la Mer de Timor et les relations Timor Oriental-Australie  Report
"Lorsque l’Indonésie donna des signes de vouloir envahir le Timor Oriental, en 1975, l’ambassadeur australien à Djakarta, Richard Woolcott, envoya un télégramme confidentiel à son gouvernement suggérant que «fermer le ‘gap’ de la frontière maritime accordée peut être plus facile avec l’Indonésie ... qu’avec le Portugal ou un Timor Oriental indépendant» et le ministère des Mines et de l’Energie peut y être intéressé, ajoutait Woolcott." Observatoire Timor-Oriental

Dec 2 2000 Econ: Timor's troubled waters
"Much of the Timor Sea's mineral wealth lies in the so-called 'Timor Gap', a coffin-shaped expanse of water facing East Timor that Indonesia and Australia left unassigned when they defined the seabed boundary between them in 1972. At that time East Timor was still a Portuguese colony. Three years later Indonesia invaded it. Ignoring Portugal's protests, Australia and Indonesia carved up the Timor Sea's wealth evenly between them in a treaty they signed in 1989. The treaty was deeply controversial in Australia and beyond, since it represented Australia's acknowledgment of Indonesia's illegal occupation of East Timor, never accepted by anyone else." The Economist

Tetum:
Nov 17 2000 BLH: Saude, Oekusi, Deskulpas, no Mina: Koneksaun Timor Lorosa’e ho Australia  Editorial from ETimor
"Timor Lorosa’e terus tebes tanba relasaun kbiit nebe la hanesan. Nasaun riku no kbiit-wain barak maka la moe hodi fo apoiu ba Indonesia hodi invade no ocupa Timor Lorosa’e tan deit sira hakarak atu mantem sira nia relasaun diak ho Indonesia ne’e be riku ho rekursus barak. Nasaun sira ne’e ida maka Australia. ... Durante Indonesia nia okupasaun ilegal ne’e, Canberra fo treinu militar no kilat, troka ba mai informasaun inteligensia nian, no mos halo manuver militar hamutuk ho Jakarta. Karik la iha nasaun ocidente ida maka liu Australia hodi servisu maka’as tebes hodi subar diplomatikamente kona ba Indonesia nia atrocidades iha Timor Lorosa’e. Australia halo liu ne’e, bainhira nia rekonhese de jure Indonesia nia aneksasaun brutal kona ba Timor Lorosa’e, hanesan passu (hakat) ida necessariu atu tama ba negosiasaun kona ba Timor Gap." La’o Hamutuk, Instituto Timor Lorosa’e ba Analiza no Monitoring Reconstrucao

Nov 17 2000 LHB: Health, Wealth, Apologies and Oil: The East Timor-Australia Connection  Editorial from ETimor
"East Timor suffered tremendously as a result of such unequal power relations. Numerous wealthy and powerful countries shamelessly supported Indonesia’s invasion and occupation of East Timor simply because of the desire to maintain good relations with resource-rich Indonesia. One such country was Australia. ... Throughout Indonesia’s illegal occupation, Canberra provided significant military training and weaponry, regularly exchanged intelligence information, and engaged in joint military manoeuvres with Jakarta. And perhaps no Western country worked as hard as Australia did to provide diplomatic cover for Indonesia’s atrocities in East Timor. Australia even went so far as to extend de jure recognition of Indonesia’s brutal annexation of East Timor—a necessary step to enter into negotiations over the Timor Gap."La’o Hamutuk Bulletin Editorial

July 1999 Arena: Viva Timor L'este: Beyond Silence, Betrayal, Cowardice & Murder  Analysis
"Australian governments all sought to influence the destiny of East Timor. This destiny became one of the longest ongoing acts of genocide since the European Holocaust of the Second World War. I am reminded of the French Vichy Government of that war which supplied and organised the freight train convoys that carried persecuted Jews to the Nazi ovens. Canberra's warts-and-all allegiance with Jakarta; the almost $2 billion in bilateral aid; the million of dollars in military gifts, defence training and defence co-operation; and the political lobbying in the international arena for Jakarta's position, all helped to create a similar cattlewagon, transporting the East Timorese to their diabolical fate." Jim Aubrey, editor, 'Free East Timor: Australia's culpability in East Timor's genocide'

July 1999 Goodman: East Timor: Australia's accountability  Analysis
"For twenty years the Australian Government has consistently failed to support the people of Indonesia and East Timor, choosing instead to support the military and political elites. ... The UN tribunal which will investigate crimes against humanity in East Timor, should also consider the accomplices to those crimes, including governments that assisted the Indonesian military in full knowledge of how that aid would be used in East Timor." James Goodman, academic, activist, member Committee of Management of AID/WATCH