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.