Can jury of history pass a fair East Timor ruling?

Can jury of history pass a fair East Timor ruling?

The following is based on an article in The Australian on
Sept. 26 by Harry Tjan Silalahi, who is from the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta and a key
interlocutor with the Australian government over East Timor in
1975.

JAKARTA: It was heartening to read the fair and robust
response by former Australian ambassador to Indonesia Richard
Woolcott to criticism of the roles of the Indonesian and
Australian governments following the recent release of a
government report.

The report from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs
and Trade (DFAT) was entitled "Australia and the Indonesian
Incorporation of Portuguese Timor 1974-76".

Woolcott gave a tour de horizon of the geopolitics of 25 years
ago: the Cold War, collapse of South Vietnam, election of a
leftist government in Portugal, fear of a Cuba on Australia's
northern doorstep, underlined by Indonesia's head-on political
experience with a communist uprising in 1948 and having the
largest card-carrying communist party membership outside the
communist country leading up to the 1965 coup.

The vestigial regional development of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations set in place reasonably predictable
foreign policy responses from all parties -- be it super-power or
regional power or even middle power like Australia and a
developing country like Indonesia.

I strongly agree with Woolcott's analogy of "The jury of
history is still out on East Timor"; especially if it is true
that over the past two years many of the key Australian official
documents have been systematically pulled from the official
record.

How can "the jury of history" fairly pass its verdict when the
evidence presented is selective with some permanently destroyed.

Woolcott suggests that East Timor was then somewhat of a
political football in Australia just as it is today.

Successive Labor Party and Coalition governments have
cynically enjoyed scoring goals against one another since 1975
despite the fact that their East Timor policies -- as recited in
Jakarta to me, to our ministries of foreign affairs and defense,
intelligence agencies, and even to then president Soeharto --
were almost identical.

Undoubtedly, Woolcott, who was then ambassador, would
appreciate that in this internal Australian political football
match there were serious intra-party divisions. From the Jakarta
end, the continual leaks of official communications in Canberra,
were inspired by either prime minister Malcolm Fraser or foreign
minister Andrew Peacock aimed at one another, but more probably
Woolcott.

On this latter point, I distinctly recall sometime in 1977 an
article on Australian foreign policy over East Timor in the Far
East Economic Review displaying a photograph of Woolcott in
impeccable batik, moving a minor chess piece, entitled "The
cheapest pawn in the game".

This new DFAT publication smacks of a continuation of this
inter- and intra-party sniping and ultimately clouds the truth.

Do not for one moment think that as a person continually
mentioned and quoted by the Australian press over the past weeks
and in this DFAT publication, I condone what happened in East
Timor. Quite the contrary.

I am deeply saddened by the meaningless vicious violence
against human beings and their property in this period prior to
and after the referendum, and violence in the recent militia
murders and atrocities in Atambua, East Nusa Tenggara.

Certainly, with the benefit of hindsight, Indonesia would have
implemented the plan differently. But how could we have forecast
all those vast geo-political changes in those intervening years?

What happened in the past leaves us with bitter regrets today.
This selective travesty of a publication leaves me, for one, with
even more bitter regrets.

This aside, I salute Woolcott for standing up to be counted
over Australia's Timor policy despite the Australian press' snide
remarks to the contrary. I am more than pleased to stand beside
him in any judgment by the press or history.

Both our countries need to have a wider vision particularly in
relation to East Timor. Woolcott and many in the Indonesian
government would surely endorse a more pragmatic and forward
looking approach.

As Woolcott repeatedly stated over the years of his
ambassadorship and beyond, "Timor should not be the center-piece
of our bilateral relationship" -- implying there were more
important bilateral issues to be addressed. There were then and
there are even more today.