Casting light on Balibo incident<\/p>\n
New pieces of evidence about the killing of five journalists
\nin East Timor in 1975 keep filtering through. H. W. Arndt ties
\ntogether some to the threads.<\/p>\n
MELBOURNE: On Nov. 29, 1995, the then minister for foreign
\naffairs, Gareth Evans, announced that in response to new
\nallegations about the circumstances in which five Australian
\njournalists had died in East Timor in 1975, an eminent lawyer,
\nTom Sherman, former government solicitor and most recently
\nchairman of the National Crime Authority, had been invited to
\ngather and evaluate such new evidence as might be available. From
\nMarch to early May, Sherman interviewed anyone willing to give
\nevidence in Australia and Portugal. His 140-page report was made
\npublic in June.<\/p>\n
Sherman has done an admirable job, carefully analyzing and
\npresenting evidence secured from a wide range of informants.
\nWhile stressing that not all the facts are known or will ever be
\nknown, if only because no witnesses of the deaths of the
\njournalists have been found, he has judiciously sorted the grain
\nfrom the chaff and laid to rest some of the more extreme
\nallegations that had gained currency.<\/p>\n
Sherman's chief conclusions are that:<\/p>\n
* It is likely that the five journalists were killed at Balibo
\nearly in the morning of Oct. 16, 1975.<\/p>\n
* They were killed by members of an attacking force under
\nIndonesian officers consisting of Indonesian irregular troops and
\nanti-Fretilin East Timorese.<\/p>\n
* They were killed in circumstances of continuing fighting
\nbetween the Fretilin and anti-Fretilin forces.<\/p>\n
* After they were killed, some of the bodies were dressed up
\nin Fretilin military clothes and photographed.<\/p>\n
Sherman did not reach any conclusions on the extent to which
\nthe Balibo Five -- Greg Shackleton, 28, Gary Cunningham, 27, Tony
\nStewart, 21, from Channel Seven, and Malcolm Rennie, 28 and Brian
\nPeters, 24, from Channel Nine -- contributed to their own deaths.
\nThe measures they took to protect themselves were clearly
\ninadequate, but he did not propose to make any further
\nobservations on this issue.<\/p>\n
It may seem desirable to let matters rest there. But the
\nannouncement that the International Commission of Jurists, a non-
\ngovernment organization, proposes to conduct another
\ninvestigation, drawing on additional evidence, means that more
\nwill be said. The purpose of this article is to amplify the
\nSherman report by presenting additional information on three
\naspects:<\/p>\n
- The political background to Indonesia's integration of East
\nTimor in 1975-76.<\/p>\n
- The five journalists' association with Fretilin.<\/p>\n
- The journalists' failure to comply with instructions and
\nwarnings not to enter the fighting zone.<\/p>\n
* Political background: Sherman says little about the
\ncircumstances that led to the Indonesian military occupation and
\nintegration of East Timor in 1975-1976, yet some knowledge of
\nthis background is essential if the Indonesian role in the
\ntragedy is to be understood.<\/p>\n
The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, signaled the communist
\nvictory in Vietnam. Communist insurgences were active in much of
\nSoutheast Asia. There was widespread concern about more
\n\"dominoes\" liable to fall. A socialist revolution in Lisbon gave
\nway in mid-1975 to a communist dominated government, and the
\nPortuguese colonies in Africa gained independence more or less
\npeacefully as democratic people's republics. In East Timor, the
\ntiny urban elite of Dili split into three factions: a leftist
\ngroup which, inspired by the victorious Frelimo in Mozambique,
\ncalled itself the Revolutionary Front for the Independence of
\nEast Timor (Fretilin): a conservative group, the Timorese
\nDemocratic Union (UDT), which initially favored continued
\nPortuguese rule: and a handful who, under the name of Apodeti,
\nfavored incorporation in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
The Lisbon government sent to Dili two \"Red Majors\" to
\nencourage, train and equip Fretilin. The conservative governor,
\nLemos Pires, tried to counter them by acquiescing in a UDT \"show
\nof force\" in early August, which provoked a counter-coup by
\nFretilin. After some weeks of heavy fighting, during which about
\n40,000 East Timorese fled across the border into Indonesian West
\nTimor, Fretilin was completely successful because it controlled
\nthe colony's small army and arsenal. As former Australian prime
\nminister Gough Whitlam later put it: \"Fretilin cleaned up the
\nPortuguese army arsenal and then it cleaned up its opponents.\"<\/p>\n
Ever since its own independence in 1945, Indonesia had been
\ncontent to leave the neglected and impoverished corner of its
\narchipelago in Portuguese hands. Nor did Indonesia take any steps
\nto annex East Timor when India under Nehru sent its army to annex
\nthe Portuguese colony at Goa in 1962. Even in 1975, President
\nSoeharto for some months resisted advice to follow Nehru's
\nexample, partly in deference to foreign (and not least
\nAustralian) pressure to abstain from the use of force. But when
\nFretilin appealed for help to Beijing, Moscow, Hanoi and Havana,
\nthe Indonesian government, rightly or wrongly, apprehensive of
\nthe establishment of a \"Cuba\" on its doorstep, decided on armed
\nintervention.<\/p>\n
In late September, Indonesia initiated a series of small
\nmilitary operations against Fretilin on the East-West Timor
\nborder. Since these incursions into Portuguese territory were
\nillegal under international law, Indonesia at first denied they
\nwere taking place and then attributed them to East Timorese
\n\"volunteers\". On Oct. 9, a Channel Seven news team was sent from
\nMelbourne to Dili to verify rumors of Indonesian involvement in
\nthe conflict. They were followed later by a reporter and
\ncameraman from Channel Nine in Sydney.<\/p>\n
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and almost universal
\nrepudiation of communism, the threat of a Cuba on the doorstep
\nmeans little nowadays. At the height of the Cold War, it implied
\na serious threat to the national security of a non-communist
\n(indeed anti-communist) country such as Indonesia.<\/p>\n
* Association with Fretilin: Seven's Melbourne director of news,
\nJohn Maher, warned his team of journalists before heir departure
\nfor East Timor \"not to take sides\" (Sherman Report, hereafter SR,
\n4.18). It was a warning they singularly failed to heed. From the
\nmoment of their arrival in East Timor, they associated with
\nFretilin, whose leaders encouraged journalists to visit the
\ncolony: as their most prominent spokesman, Jose Ramos Horta,
\nexplained, \"It was the only weapon we had... for winning sympathy
\naround the world.\" (SR, 4.10).<\/p>\n
On Oct. 11, 1975, the morning after their arrival in Dili, the
\nChannel Seven team made straight by car for the Balibo border
\narea where fighting was going on. On the way they met an ABC team
\naccompanied by the Fretilin information officer, Chris Santos,
\nhurrying away from Balibo. Santos warned Shackleton not to go to
\nthe Balibo area, which was dangerous. Shackleton ignored the
\nwarning, saying he wanted to film some action and offered to make
\na written declaration absolving Fretilin from responsibility (SR,
\n4.25-28). Much of the diary kept by Shackleton during his last
\ndays was taken up with notes of interviews with Fretilin leaders.<\/p>\n
When the Channel Nine team arrived in Dili on Sunday, Oct. 12,
\nRamos Horta met them at the airport and took them to the border
\nin a Toyota Landcruiser. According to a report by officials of
\nthe Australian embassy in Jakarta who visited East Timor in May
\n1976, the only people in Balibo on the evening of Oct. 15 (the
\nday before the tragedy) were \"Fretilin soldiers, the five
\njournalists and possibly a very few Timorese civilians assisting
\nFretilin\" (SR, 3.33).<\/p>\n
It is not surprising that the party of East Timorese
\nirregulars under Indonesian leadership who attacked Balibo on
\nOct. 16 thought the Australian journalists were supporting
\nFretilin. The Indonesian commander, General Dading, told the UDT
\nofficer, Carrascalao, on discovering the bodies of the
\njournalists, that \"they kill some Australian people who are
\nfighting with Fretilin. Only later on I found out they were not
\nfighters but they were journalists\" (SR, 4.62). A few days later,
\nleaders of the anti-Fretilin forces claimed in a statement that
\nwhen \"our forces arrived to the house it was found that 15 people
\nwere killed... among them some white people who were previously
\ncontrolling and guiding the fire of Fretilin against our troops\"
\n(SR, 3.21). According to another of Sherman's informants, the
\nIndonesians did not accept the Australians' explanations that
\nthey were journalists. \"In the Indonesian minds during the
\ninvasion all the white people were communists\" (SR, 4.103).<\/p>\n
There is little doubt that the sympathies of the Balibo Five
\nwere with Fretilin (as indeed have been the sympathies of most
\nAustralian journalists and media people ever since).<\/p>\n
This does not run counter to Sherman's conclusion that they
\nwere killed in circumstances of continuing fighting between the
\nFretilin and anti-Fretilin forces. But it would help explain,
\nthough not justify what happened, if indeed (as seems likely)
\nthey were killed by anti-Fretilin forces.
\n* Failure to comply with instructions and warnings: Both news
\nteams were strongly warned by their superiors in Melbourne and
\nSydney against going near the fighting area in East Timor. The
\nnews director of Channel Seven \"stressed to them more than once,
\nrepeatedly, that he did not want any false heroics\". He warned
\nthem \"not to go into areas where the danger was so high that it
\nwas risking their safety\" (SR, 4.17). The Channel Nine news
\ndirector, Gerald Stone, was equally explicit in his instructions
\nto Rennie: \"I said the absolute first duty of the reporter in a
\ndangerous or war zone is to get his material back\" (SR, 4.19).
\nBut the five were young and enthusiastic, scenting adventure and
\nprofessional kudos.<\/p>\n
The Channel Seven crew left Melbourne on Oct. 9 and stayed
\novernight in Darwin. Shorty after the tragedy had become known,
\nthe former Australian ambassador in Jakarta, Mick (later Sir
\nKeith) Shann, rang me. A man he did not know had called on him
\nand told him he had been in Darwin and in a pub had encountered
\nAustralian journalists boasting exuberantly that they were going
\nto get as near the fighting as possible and were going to wear
\nFretilin uniforms. He was prepared to make a statutory
\ndeclaration in support of his account. Shann and I discussed
\nwhether to make the story public but decided not to.<\/p>\n
When, in response to demand by Shirley Shackleton to release
\nall information about the tragedy for public scrutiny, I reported
\nit in a letter to The Australian on July 4 this year, it received
\nunexpected corroboration by Dr. John Whitehall, former medical
\ndirector with the Australian Society for Inter-Country Aid, who
\nhad been in Timor in 1975.<\/p>\n
In a letter to The Australian on July 12, Whitehall explained
\nthat \"the Indonesians did not need to dress the bodies of newsmen
\nMalcolm Rennie and Brian Peters in military clothing after they
\ndied in East Timor in October 1975. They were already wearing
\nthat style of clothing when I farewelled them on the morning they
\nleft Dili with uniformed Fretilin officials. I had traveled to
\nDili with them ... Overnight they received news that fighting was
\nabout to start on the border ... Both Rennie and Peters were
\nexcited about the prospect of getting the story. Peters had
\nlamented to me that he had missed out on Vietnam. His last words
\nwere that he was going to the border and was 'not coming back'
\nuntil he had secured 'good footage'. I was worried for their
\nsafety but, strangely, also disappointed by the apparent
\naffectation of the uniforms.\"<\/p>\n
Whitehall's account does not exactly corroborate that of
\nShann's informant, since the former refers to the Channel Nine
\nteam and the latter to Channel Seven. It is also unlikely that
\nthe uniforms Whitehall saw (and the Seven team planned to wear)
\nwere those in which the bodies were dressed and photographed
\nafter their death. Ramos Horta told Sherman that \"both crews were
\nwearing civilian clothes in Balibo\" (SR, 4.33). If they did put
\non uniforms, that two accounts agree on the enthusiasm, not to
\nsay recklessness, with which the young journalists embarked on
\ntheir enterprise.<\/p>\n
One contributing factor appears to have been competition. When
\nSantos warned Peters of the Channel Nine crew not to go near the
\nfighting area at Balibo, \"his response was that they had to go
\nbecause if Channel Seven was there and they were shooting all
\nthis film with action and they were not, they would be in trouble
\nwith their bosses\" (SR, 4.31).<\/p>\n
On Oct. 14, the day after the two crews joined up at Balibo,
\nAustralia's ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, sent an
\nurgent warning to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra
\nto alert Australians to avoid the Balibo area. Recently he was
\nreported as saying that \"I've always felt that this tragedy may
\nhave been avoided if the warnings we had sent from Jakarta on the
\nbasis of the intelligence we had acquired had been communicated
\nto the journalists in Balibo\" (Cameron Stewart, The Weekend
\nAustralian, Oct. 21-22, 1995). In response, Cyril Jones, Channel
\nSeven news producer in 1975, stated that his office was \"at no
\ntime warned by any government agency of the imminent danger in
\nBalibo\" and that, in any case, they had no means of communicating
\nwith the journalists (The Australian, Oct. 25, 1995).<\/p>\n
The reason Woolcott's warning was not communicated was that
\nthe \"intelligence\" to which he referred came from Australia's
\nDefense Signals Directorate, which was continuously monitoring
\nradio communications between Indonesian army units in East Timor
\nand Jakarta. As early as Sept. 30, DSD had intercepted plans by
\nthe Indonesian army to intrude into East Timor at Balibo and on
\nOct. 16 it intercepted an Indonesian army report that the bodies
\nof four white men had been found at Balibo. Neither report was
\nmade public by the Australian government. The then prime
\nminister, Whitlam, accepted the advice of the Defense Department
\nthat the government could not divulge this information, even to
\nthe relatives of the newsmen, because \"it would compromise
\nAustralia's extensive electronic spy operations in Indonesia\"
\n(Cameron Stewart, The Weekend Australian, Oct. 21-22, 1995).<\/p>\n
Whether a warning from the Australian government would have
\nmade any difference to the Balibo Five is another question. As
\nWhitehall has said: \"The Balibo Five were long on enthusiasm and
\nshort on appreciation of risk... Life would be less colorful
\nwithout those attributes.\"<\/p>\n
Heinz Arndt is emeritus professor at the Australian National
\nUniversity and is the former head of the ANU Indonesia unit.<\/p>\n
-- The Australian<\/p>\n
Window: But when Fretilin appealed for help to Beijing, Moscow,
\nHanoi and Havana, the Indonesian government, rightly or wrongly,
\napprehensive of the establishment of a \"Cuba\" on its doorstep,
\ndecided on armed intervention.<\/p>",
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