Tuesday, March 4, 1997
ASSISTANCE:
America played key role in brutal occupation of half-islandBy
Matthew Jardine
The 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos Horta’s visit to
UCLA tomorrow is a momentous event. Ramos Horta is the head of the
diplomatic wing of the East Timorese resistance. Along with
co-Nobel Prize laureate Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo of East Timor,
Ramos Horta has worked tirelessly to bring peace to his embattled
homeland over the past two decades. More importantly, for the UCLA
community, his visit helps bring to light the shameful behavior of
the U.S. government in one of this century’s worst genocides.
East Timor is a half-island 400 miles north of Australia, at the
eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago. It was a quiet backwater
of the Portuguese colonial empire until the overthrow of the
military dictatorship in Lisbon in April 1974. Immediately after,
Indonesia began covert interference in East Timor’s
decolonization.
Indonesia’s machinations soon instigated a brief civil war
between East Timor’s two largest political parties. When the
one-month civil war ended in September 1975, Indonesia immediately
began to launch attacks on border towns in East Timor from
neighboring (Indonesian) West Timor.
As Indonesia stepped up its aggression, East Timor declared its
independence. Less than two weeks later, on Dec. 7, 1975, Indonesia
launched a full-scale invasion of Dili, East Timor’s capital.
In the more than 21 years since Indonesia annexed the country,
over 200,000 people  about one-third of the pre-invasion
population  have lost their lives as a result of the war, the
ensuing famine, and the ongoing occupation, according to Amnesty
International.
Washington has provided Indonesia with billions of dollars in
economic and military assistance since the invasion. The United
States was supplying about 90 percent of the Indonesian military’s
weaponry at the time. A 1958 agreement with the U.S. prohibited
Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, from using the weapons for wars
of aggression. But President Gerald Ford’s administration did
nothing despite its full knowledge of Indonesia’s attacks.
During the two days prior to the invasion, President Gerald Ford
and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were in Jakarta, visiting
the country’s dictator, Suharto. Diplomats present at the meetings
reported that the U.S. gave Indonesia the green light to launch its
invasion.
As Kissinger told reporters in Jakarta, "the U.S. understands
Indonesia’s position on the question" of East Timor.
Despite U.N. resolutions deploring the invasion, calling upon
Indonesia to withdraw immediately, and upholding East Timor’s right
to self-determination, the U.S. continued to ship arms to Jakarta
following the invasion. U.S. military aid to Indonesia more than
doubled during Ford’s final year in office. Aid also increased
during the Carter administration.
Until mid-1977, the majority of the East Timor population lived
in territory protected by the country’s resistance army. But the
war turned to Indonesia’s favor with the procurement of
counterinsurgency aircraft from the Carter administration.
As a result, the Indonesian military was able to bomb and napalm
the population into submission. One of those killed by the U.S.
aircraft was Jose Ramos Horta’s sister. An Australian government
report described the situation in East Timor at the time as one of
"indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War
II history."
The reasons for U.S. cooperation with Indonesia’s colonial
project in East Timor are largely economic. As an unnamed state
department official explained in 1976 while "more or less
condoning" resource-rich Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, "The
United States wants to keep its relations with Indonesia close and
friendly. We regard Indonesia as a friendly, non-aligned nation
 a nation we do a lot of business with."
Washington’s partnership in crime with Jakarta continued
unabated through the Reagan and Bush administrations. But the end
of the Cold War and the arrival of the Clinton administration led
many to hope that U.S. complicity with Indonesia’s brutal
occupation would end. Indeed, while campaigning for the presidency
in 1992, Bill Clinton called U.S policy toward East Timor
"unconscionable."
But President Clinton has proven to be just as beholden as his
predecessors to the unprincipled, economic interests driving U.S.
policy toward Indonesia. While public congressional and grassroots
pressure has forced the administration to bar the sale of small
arms, helicopter-mounted weaponry and armored personnel carriers,
it has sold or licensed the sale of $270 million worth of weaponry
and provided almost $400 million in economic aid to Jakarta.
Indonesia, which Richard Nixon once called "by far the greatest
prize in the Southeast Asian area," is today one of the Clinton
administration’s "big emerging markets." And the administration has
helped to close deals for U.S. businesses with Indonesia totaling
tens of billions of dollars. A senior Clinton administration
official effused about Suharto during the Indonesian ruler’s visit
to the White House in October 1995: "He’s our kind of guy."
In its announcement of the award to Bishop Belo and Ramos Horta,
the Norwegian Nobel Committee expressed its hope that the prize
would "spur efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict
in East Timor based on the peoples’ right to
self-determination."
The Clinton administration and the Congress should follow the
Nobel Committee’s lead and end its support for Indonesia’s
brutality in East Timor. A cut-off of U.S. military assistance to
Jakarta as well as strong diplomatic efforts to implement the U.N.
resolutions on East Timor would be a step in the right
direction.
UCLA students, staff, faculty and administration can help the
long-suffering people of East Timor by pressuring Clinton and our
elected officials to end the U.S.-Indonesia alliance against East
Timor. We can all begin by attending tomorrow’s talk and showing
our support for Jose Ramos Horta.
Jose Ramos Horta will speak on campus on Wednesday, March 5,
1997 at 3 p.m. The event will take place in the Math Sciences
Building, Room 4000A.
…Clinton called U.S. policy toward East Timor
"unconscionable."
… 200,000 people… have lost their lives as a result of the
war…