U.S. media and their ignorance partly blamable for E. Timor's mysery<\/p>\n
Jeffrey A. Winters, North Western University, Chicago<\/p>\n
While most U.S. papers glossed over American complicity in the
\nhorrors of East Timor with soft-focus references to \"tacit
\nsupport\" for the invasion and subsequent occupation (the
\nBaltimore Sun even repeated Soeharto's absurd justification of a
\npossible Communist threat from the tiny half-island), a few were
\nslightly more honest with the U.S. reading public.<\/p>\n
A dispatch by the Associated Press from the festivities in
\nDili dared to name names, noting that the Indonesian invasion was
\ncarried out with the \"support of then president Gerald Ford and
\nsecretary of state Henry Kissinger -- who visited Jakarta on the
\neve of the attack. Successive U.S. administrations backed
\nIndonesian dictator Soeharto in his crackdown against the
\nrebels.\"<\/p>\n
The Boston Globe deserves credit for a level of completeness
\nand accuracy that the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA
\nTimes, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post failed miserably to
\nprovide.<\/p>\n
The Globe's editorial coverage of the birth of East Timor
\npointed out that the U.S. owed a \"particular moral debt\" to the
\nTimorese because the U.S. gave the green light to \"a nightmare of
\nbrutality that killed off more than 200,000 East Timorese,\" a
\nthird of the population.<\/p>\n
The good people of Boston could read on to discover that,
\n\"Clinton himself has a certain culpability for failing to prevent
\nor stop in time the vengeful campaign of murder, rape, and
\ndestruction that Indonesian military officers loosed upon the
\nEast Timorese after the people voted overwhelmingly on Aug., 31,
\n1999, to be free of Indonesian rule.\"<\/p>\n
The Globe describes the \"sorry record of international
\nindifference\" to Timor that parallels how the world stood by as
\ncrimes against humanity unfolded in Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica
\nin 1995. And it is not just the U.S. that bears responsibility in
\nTimor. The United Nations, accused by hopelessly biased
\nIndonesian elites of doing too much for the Timorese, in fact did
\nvery little, very late. The UN, writes the Globe, \"has its own
\nshare of guilt for not heeding pleas for protection and warnings
\nof bloodshed that were addressed to it before the 1999 Timorese
\nvote for independence.\"<\/p>\n
By far the most truthful reporting was by Michael Richardson
\nin the pages of the International Herald Tribune. Richardson
\nwrites that Kissinger and Ford did not merely tacitly support
\nSoeharto's international thuggery, but actually \"helped to
\nencourage the Indonesian takeover.\"<\/p>\n
He adds that \"although Kissinger long denied it, declassified
\nU.S. documents released in December 2001 prove that he and Ford,
\nduring a visit to Jakarta on Dec. 6, 1975, gave President
\nSoeharto of Indonesia a green light to send his military into
\nEast Timor.\"<\/p>\n
Richardson points out that this U.S. executive approval,
\nreferred to in State Department circles as the \"big wink,\"
\ncontravened a congressional ban on Indonesia's use of American
\nmilitary equipment for anything but defensive operations.<\/p>\n
Kissinger, ever the thinker, applied his considerable
\nintellect to the messy details of how to paper over this death
\ndeal with political niceties. In the transcript he said that
\nwhile Indonesia should appreciate that the use of U.S.-made arms
\ncould create legal problems, \"it depends on how we construe it;
\nwhether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation.\"<\/p>\n
The secretary of state added to Soeharto: \"It is important
\nthat whatever you do succeeds quickly. We would be able to
\ninfluence the reaction in America if whatever happens happens
\nafter we return.\"<\/p>\n
Richardson reports that \"Washington's initial response to the
\ninvasion of East Timor was to delay new arms sales to Indonesia
\npending an administrative review by the State Department,
\nostensibly to determine whether Jakarta had violated the
\nbilateral agreement stipulating that U.S.-supplied arms could
\nonly be used for defensive purposes. But military equipment
\nalready in the pipeline continued to flow, and during the six-
\nmonth review period [during which tens of thousands perished],
\nthe United States made four new offers of military equipment
\nsales to Indonesia. They included maintenance and spare parts for
\nthe Rockwell OV-10 Bronco aircraft, designed specifically for
\ncounterinsurgency operations and used by the Indonesian military
\nin East Timor.\"<\/p>\n
Kissinger, who in a more just world would be charged for
\ncrimes against humanity for his involvement in \"international
\nterrorism,\" was furious that staffers at State had documented his
\nrole in Timor.<\/p>\n
For the next 23 years, Richardson writes, \"from Ford to
\nClinton, successive U.S. administrations consistently backed
\nIndonesia's occupation of East Timor, providing Jakarta with
\ndiplomatic cover as well as billions of dollars in weapons,
\nmilitary training and economic assistance.\"<\/p>\n
None of this important historical perspective appeared in
\ndomestic U.S. press reports celebrating a long struggle against
\nimpossible odds in East Timor -- a land of less than a million
\npeople, with no external military or economic support, who
\nrefused to succumb to the combined aggression and indifference of
\nmore than half a billion people in Indonesia, the United States,
\nBritain, and Australia.<\/p>\n
The next time Americans naively ask why others around the
\nglobe rejoice in tragedies like Sept. 11, it is worth recalling
\nthe lessons of East Timor. It is not so much that \"they\" don't
\nknow and understand Americans, but that Americans have too often
\nfailed to hold a flat mirror to themselves.<\/p>",
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