East Timor: A tale of betrayal and greed

East Timor: A tale of betrayal and greed

Claire Harvey, Contributor, Jakarta

Timor, A Nation Reborn;
By Bill Nicol;
Equinox Publishing, 2002;
352 pp;
US$17.99

In 1974 a naive young Australian journalist, Bill Nicol, flew
into East Timor. Until a few weeks earlier, Nicol hadn't even
known exactly where the Portuguese colony was, but he thought it
might be a good place to stop for a week en route to Europe to
write a few freelance articles and earn a bit of pocket money.

Fate had other plans.

Nicol looked East Timor up on the map and booked a flight from
Bali, but within a few days of arriving in dusty Dili, his
passport and money had been stolen and he was stuck.

He was immediately swept away by the wild-west atmosphere and
brutal politics of East Timor, and soon found himself sharing a
flat with Dili's most charismatic and powerful personality:
independence fighter Jose Ramos Horta.

Before Nicol knew it, he was deeply involved in the dramatic
events rocking East Timor as political unrest deteriorated into a
bloody civil war. Disgruntled soldiers whispered of betrayal and
intrigue, officials deliberately tried to block his inquiries,
diplomats and lieutenants lied and schemed and Nicol slowly began
to realize even "heroes" like Horta were part of the dirty
double-dealing game of East Timorese politics.

He ended up spending the next four years on a detailed
investigation into the events and personalities shaping the tiny
territory.

Nicol's book Timor: The Stillborn Nation, first published in
1978, was a blistering criticism of all the parties involved in
East Timor; Portugal, Indonesia, Australia and the multitude of
new political movements claiming to represent the Timorese
people.

Now the book has been republished, with the addition of a new
preface, prologue and epilogue, just in time for East Timor's
formal celebration of independence on May 20.

This week in Dili gladhanding politicians and the world's
media will gush over liberation and democracy and freedom -- but
this book is a timely reminder that nothing about East Timor is
pure.

The new title is a more optimistic Timor: A Nation Reborn, but
don't let that fool you. The history of East Timor, according to
Bill Nicol, is a long tale of betrayal, greed and cold-hearted
pragmatism.

"There seems no end to the collective nastiness of human
nature," Nicol writes, describing East Timor as "an incestuous
snake-pit of intrigue and dirty dealings wrapped in hope,
aspiration and ideology with a romantic dash of colonial decay
and a smelly dose of international power politics."

The first targets of Nicol's careful, beautifully paced attack
are Portugal, Australia and Indonesia. After a revolution in
1974, Portugal's new Marxist leaders decided to end centuries of
colonialism and grant independence to Portuguese territories
around the world.

In order to dump East Timor as quickly as possible, the
"cowardly, shameful" Portuguese effectively created civil war in
East Timor, providing weapons to Fretilin and its rival the Uniao
Democratica Timorense (UDT), and then used the violence as an
excuse to completely abandon the territory, Nicol writes.

"Portugal may not have done any of the actual killing ... but
it was directly responsible for what happened."

Nicol says Indonesia cannot be "let off the hook" for its
brutal "integration" of 1975, but he is much less critical than
many of the international observers who like to paint Indonesia
as the principal villain.

Australia was coldly complicit in Indonesia's takeover of East
Timor, Nicol writes. Australian politicians knew the invasion was
coming in 1975, knew the horrors being visited upon innocent
civilians throughout the next 25 years but kept "clean hands and
a dirty conscience."

Perhaps the harshest criticism is reserved for Jose Ramos
Horta himself, who Nicol describes as a brilliant manipulator, a
cynical, calculating opportunist who loved publicity.

Nicol accuses Fretilin, the party which now dominates East
Timor's fledgling parliament, of muscling into power from 1974 by
threatening and intimidating villagers, lying about the roles of
Indonesia and Australia and harboring "mad" Marxist tendencies.

Horta was the powerbroker behind every cunning Fretilin
maneuver, and displayed some disturbing antidemocratic
sentiments, Nicol writes. In April 1975, Horta told Nicol that
when East Timor became independent, the East Timorese "traitors"
in the pro-Indonesia Apodeti movement would be punished. "Then we
treat them the same way the Indonesian government treats its
separatists," Horta said menacingly.

This is a fascinating, important account of the dark side of
East Timor's "freedom" movement, but there are gaps. Nicol gives
barely any attention to Xanana Gusmao, the man elected this month
as East Timor's first president. The focus is squarely on Horta
-- but Nicol fails to examine exactly what role the charismatic
foreign minister now plays in running East Timor.

In some places, Nicol's book could have done with a bit of
judicious editing. He complains in his preface that East Timor's
history might have been less bloody if more journalists had taken
the trouble to probe deeper.

Quite right, but Nicol's book tends at times to become
ponderous, repeating quotes and events over and again to drive
his point home. Authorial long-windedness is just as bad a sin as
journalistic flippancy, particularly if it means that readers
lose interest before the end of the book.

Hopefully, amid the backslapping and self-congratulations this
week, some of those partying in Dili will remember that true
freedom is still a long way off for the people of East Timor.
This book should help jog a few memories.