For the love of Indonesia

For the love of Indonesia

Several weeks before the Aug. 30 ballot in East Timor took
place, the pro-Indonesia militias made it quite clear that they
would rather die than be separated from their "beloved"
Indonesia. The militias also promised that "fire and blood" would
shower East Timor if the outcome of the ballot was not in their
favor. And indeed, they kept their promise. Only two days after
the UN announced the outcome of the vote for independence the
pro-Indonesia militias gave the whole world a demonstration of
their "overwhelming love" for Indonesia by turning East Timor
into an inferno of horror.

In contradiction to their expressed love for Indonesia they
did not even care that they were going to turn the red and white
flag of their beloved country into a symbol of violence and
terror. Since the Indonesian armed forces were -- for what ever
reasons -- not able to control the militias, the government had
no other choice than to invite a UN peacekeeping force to do the
job.

Who are those militias? One can assume that most of them never
had the privilege of enjoying an adequate education; most of them
are unemployed and some of them are illiterate. One of their
commanders, Mariano Goncalves, recently told the Straits Times of
Singapore that "... many (of the militias) are bandits with
little discipline". There are also reports that some of them have
been seen drunk in the middle of the day. One can imagine how
easily such people could be manipulated to fight a cruel and
bloody war for a cause which most of them do not even understand.

Whoever those manipulators are, it is them who have to take
the blame if Indonesia has been discredited in the eyes of the
world. It is them who have to bear the responsibility that, for
the first time since independence, foreign troops have landed on
Indonesian soil and that Indonesia has to face an international
inquiry for violations of human rights, both of which have been
regarded as shameful by many Indonesians.

It is highly unfair if some politicians and parts of the
general public are now blaming all this on Habibie, who has done
nothing more than taking a brave and unavoidable decision which
would have had to be taken anyway at a later stage. In my
opinion, he is a man ahead of his time who unfortunately lacked
the necessary political and public support for his rational
policy on East Timor, which was guided by democratic principles.

MRS. HILDE MAY

Jakarta