East Timor's independence

East Timor's independence

If the East Timorese independence leaders based their
strategies to achieve independence on Jim Aubrey's approach to
and understanding of Indonesia (see TNI: The people's Army or the
people's tyrant in The Jakarta Post, Oct. 6) one can understand
why the East Timorese have had to pay such a terribly high price
for freedom.

Jim Aubrey, the editor of Free East Timor (Vintage 1998) and
spokesman for Australians for a Free East Timor, makes so many
generalized statements in his article one wonders whether
accuracy as opposed to simplification is of concern to him.
Perhaps he is more concerned about blowing his own trumpet,
albeit in rather a perverse way. He, after all, had a role in
bringing to an end what he boasts as being one of the "most
infamous crimes against humanity in the 20th century" and
supporting one of the "greatest struggles for freedom of all
time".

Without condoning or playing down the atrocities committed by
the Indonesian Military (TNI), to write that the TNI is "more of
a tyrant than the Dutch ever were to the people of the Dutch East
Indies" indicates a complete failure to understand the crimes
perpetrated against Indonesians during the colonial era.
Furthermore, one wonders what is the meaning and pertinence of
these rather strange sentences: "Indonesia's problems are so
profound that self-denial is the only way the contempt of the
civilized world is comprehended. However, self-denial will not
feed the people". I understand self-denial to mean forbearance of
desire or going without. Thus, to translate, Jim Aubrey is
telling us that Indonesia can only understand civilized, foreign
contempt by going without, but going without will not feed its
people. This is nothing short of drivel.

Jim Aubrey belittles "the degree of political sophistication
in Jakarta"; but his own naive and populist approach is testimony
to his own severe lack of depth and sophistication. If Jim Aubrey
is genuinely concerned about the people of East Timor and
Indonesia, he would do well to ask whether his outburst of
indignation coupled with his rather superficial approach do any
more than exacerbate the situation.

Now that East Timor has been devastated and crimes against
humanity have been committed there, taking a purely practical
retrospective view, we need to ask whether the East Timorese
quest for independence could have been handled better by the
United Nations, Australia and organizations like Jim Aubrey's.

Most of the parameters were known in advance. The goals and
methods of the TNI have changed little over the years. Why then
did this particular bid for freedom end in such a pyrrhic
victory? It needs to be acknowledged that many of the pundits,
activists, UN staff and the East Timorese leaders themselves
badly miscalculated through lack of understanding. Unfortunately,
Jim Aubrey, ignorance and the emotive simplification of issues in
such situations can and has cost lives.

FRANK RICHARDSON

Jakarta