East Timor solidarity movement

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An international East Timor solidarity movement arose in response to the 1975 invasion of East Timor by Indonesia and the brutal occupation that followed. The movement attracted support from churches, human rights groups, and peace campaigners, but developed its own organizations and infrastructure in many countries. Many demonstrations and vigils backed legislative actions to cut off military supplies to Indonesia. The movement was most extensive in neighboring Australia and in Portugal, which had colonized Indonesia, but had significant force in the United States, Canada and Europe.

[edit] Actions of the solidarity movement

[edit] Organizations

Australia

• Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET)

Indonesia

• People's Democratic Party

United States

• East Timor Action Network ETAN website

[edit] History

The early years of occupation were the deadliest, but a general media blackout existed in many Western countries. No nightly network newscast covered East Timor in the United States from 1977 to 1991. Much of activists' attention was focused on drawing the attention and sympathy of their communities and politicians. Catholic organizations communicated news from within East Timor, including the first estimates suggesting that more than 100,000 people had died.

A turning point in international sympathy was the killing of many East Timorese youngsters (reportedly over 250) at a cemetery in Dili on November 12, 1991. The Dili Massacre was to prove the turning point for sympathy to the East Timorese cause in the world arena as, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union that same year, the "Marxist bogey" that Indonesia had often used against the idea of an independent East Timor had vanished. A burgeoning East Timor solidarity movement grew in the Portugal, Australia, and the United States.

The Massacre had a profound effect on public opinion in Portugal, especially after television footage showing East Timorese praying in Portuguese, and independence leader Xanana Gusmão gained widespread respect, being awarded the Portugal's highest honour in 1993, after he had been captured and imprisoned by the Indonesians.

In Australia, there was also widespread public outrage, and criticism of Canberra's close relationship with the Suharto regime and recognition of Jakarta's sovereignty over East Timor. This caused the Australian government embarrassment, but Foreign Minister Gareth Evans played down the killings, describing them as 'an aberration, not an act of state policy'.

Portugal started to apply international pressure unsuccessfully, constantly raising the issue with its fellow European Union members in their dealings with Indonesia. However, other EU countries like the UK had close economic relations with Indonesia, including arms sales, and saw no advantage in forcefully raising the issue.

In the mid-1990s, the pro-democracy People's Democratic Party (PRD) in Indonesia called for withdrawal from East Timor. The party's leadership was arrested in July 1996.[1]

In July 1997, visiting South African President Nelson Mandela visited Suharto as well as the imprisoned Xanana Gusmão. He urged the freeing of all East Timorese leaders in a note reading, "We can never normalize the situation in East Timor unless all political leaders, including Mr. Gusmão, are freed. They are the ones who must bring about a solution." Indonesia's government refused but did announce that it would take three months of Gusmão's 20-year sentence.[2]

In 1999, the Indonesian government decided, under strong international pressure, to hold a referendum about the future of East Timor. Portugal had started to gain some political allies firstly in the EU, and after that in other places of the world to pressure Indonesia. The referendum, held on August 30, gave a clear majority (78.5%) in favour of independence, rejecting the alternative offer of being an autonomous province within Indonesia, to be known as the Special Autonomous Region of East Timor (SARET).

Directly after this, Indonesian-backed paramilitaries as well as Indonesian soldiers carried out a campaign of violence and terrorism in retaliation. According to Noam Chomsky, "In one month, this massive military operation murdered some 2,000 people, raped hundreds of women and girls, displaced three-quarters of the population, and demolished 75 percent of the country's infrastructure" (Radical Priorities, 72).

Activists in Portugal, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere pressured their governments to take action, with US President Bill Clinton eventually threatening Indonesia, in dire economic straits already, with the withdrawal of IMF loans. The Indonesian government consented to withdraw its troops and allow a multinational force into Timor to stablilize the area.