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 Britain.

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

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

Dec 15 IPRD: Indonesia, ETimor & The Western Powers: A Case Study  Research paper added Dec 18
"II.V The Arms Ban and the Escalation of Genocide: ... British historian Mark Curtis, a former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, records that these crucial arms deals were signed in correspondence to the intensification of slaughter. As the contracts for the Rapier air defence system were being signed in 1983-85, 3,500-4,500 people were massacred by army death squads in Indonesia. ... as award-winning British journalist John Pilger has reported, both Britain and the U.S. were converting Indonesia into a veritable war machine. It is worth pondering the implications of this vast inconsistency; especially considering that, as Pilger reports on the basis of credible eyewitness testimony, arms supplied by the U.S. and Britain, among others, were the primary source of Indonesian firepower, systematically employed to implement a genocide which its suppliers knew all too well was occurring." Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and a Researcher at the Islamic Human Rights Commission

Aug 30 TAPOL on British arms exports  Comment added Aug 30
"A Jakarta Post article dated 29 August ... suggested that Britain was about to resume arms exports to Indonesia. In fact, Britain has been selling military equipment to Indonesia since the European Union arms embargo was lifted in January 2000 ... the fact that Ben Bradshaw, the British Minister, is pushing for closer military ties and says he is prepared to accept TNI assurances that British equipment will not be used for internal repression, despite its past record and its current behaviour in Aceh, West Papua etc., is alarming and must be challenged." TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign

Aug 29 JP: Britain ready to resume arms exports to Indonesia  News added Aug 30
"Britain is ready to resume sales of weapons to Indonesia, saying that it has accepted the assurances from the Indonesian Military (TNI) that these arms would not be used for internal repression, including in Aceh. ... Britain, traditionally a major supplier of military hardware to Indonesia, was in the middle of delivering several of its Hawk jets when the European Union imposed an arms embargo in September 1999 in protest against Jakarta’s handling of East Timor. The embargo was lifted in January 2000, allowing Britain to complete the delivery of the remaining six Hawk fighters." The Jakarta post

Britain, Germany, Russia, Sweden and many others:
Jul 17 ETAN/US: Scheiner: "Guns Know No Borders" rally NY  Speech added July 22
"The guns used by the Indonesian military to kill 200,000 East Timorese civilians were almost all “legal.” They were fired by soldiers following orders from a recognized government. They were sold according to the laws of the countries - principally the United States, but also Britain, Germany, Russia, Sweden and many others - which profited from Indonesia’s need for ever more bullets in their effort to exterminate East Timor’s freedom. ... Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor was never recognized by the United Nations, ... During the most intense killing in the 1970s and 80s, United States businesses and government supplied 90% of Indonesia’s arms, double the amount before the 1975 invasion. These weapons violated a 1958 treaty that banned their use for “aggressive purposes.” And the human and legal rights of the people of East Timor, their rights to life and to self-determination, were violated every day of the quarter-century of occupation." Charles Scheiner, National Coordinator, East Timor Action Network