Indonesia should send right message to E. Timor

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Radio Netherlands, Amsterdam

It is odd, to say the least, that some legislators should press the President not to attend the celebration of East Timor's proclamation of independence on May 20.

If invited, it would be even more appropriate for the House of Representatives (DPR), and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) as the holder of the people's sovereignty in this country, to attend the celebration.

After all, had not the DPR and the MPR under the New Order silently agreed with the Dec. 7 invasion 1975, subsequently allowed the territory to be forcefully "integrated" into the Republic, formalized the annexation, and remained docile as human rights abuses went on under Jakarta's responsibility?

Since the current President and the legislative institutions were elected through the post-1998 reform and the free and legitimate general elections of 1999, their presence at East Timor's independence day would be symbolically significant as a honorable stand of the new Indonesia. It is a great opportunity for the President, DPR and MPR to correct the wrongdoings Soeharto's New Order did to the people of East Timor.

Instead, the chairman of DPR Committee for Foreign, Defense and Security Affairs, Ibrahim Ambong (Golkar), has called for a boycott of East Timor's May 20 celebration. His predecessor, still a member of the committee, Aisyah Amini (PPP), told Radio Netherlands that she dislikes the word "boycott", but fully supports Ambong's view.

They argued that the presence of President Megawati Soekarnoputri would hurt thousands of East Timorese "refugees" whom they apparently assumed to have preferred autonomy under Indonesia at the UN held vote in 1999. "It will only worsen (their) yet unhealed wounds," said Ambong.

The problem is, since the violence of September 1999, the issue of the East Timorese "refugees" in Indonesia's Timor has apparently been deliberately mystified. Unlike the spontaneous refugees leaving East Timor since President Habibie's 'second option offer' in Jan. 1999, those who flee just before or after Sept. 4, 1999 were victims of (threats of) violence.

Evidence is abundant that, as the militiamen started to guard the city gates (Dili airport, haven and highways) around that date, those victims -- reportedly about 200.000 people -- were being transported by Indonesian military's Hercules flights, ships, and trucks or had to walk to Atambua, while being guarded by hundreds of armed pro-Jakarta militiamen. The purpose remains unclear, but, many, including this writer, witnessed the events.

Two years on, these "refugees" appear to have become political hostages, whose life depends on the availability of the foreign and domestic funds. This, in turn, leads to a controversy about the total figure of those who (choose or being forced to) stay; some 128,000 according to Jakarta, about 80,000, others said.

Yet the fact that the regional military commander Maj.Gen. Willem T. da Costa has recently succeeded to persuade and repatriate many of them, and is now accused of intimidation by the ex-militiamen, suggest that the latter were no longer useful as proxies. In other words, Ambong's "unhealed wounds" has little to do with "refugees".

Ambong and Aisyah's problems are the UN-held 1999 referendum and the fact that Indonesia had to lose East Timor. Legislator Aisyah maintained an outdated allegation that the vote was unfair. Why, she insisted, should our president attend the celebration if "Australia had manipulated the UNAMET (the UN body which held the vote) in such a way as to deceive us by recruiting East Timorese pro-independent elements?"

Did she seriously believe that the "East Timorese pro- independent elements" could have forced some 80 percent of the voters to choose independence at the ballots without being noticed by hundreds of international observers and journalists, including many from Indonesia?

In any case, the vote results had been internationally confirmed and should be fully respected. Aisyah said, she, too respects them, but added that, because of the allegedly manipulative vote processes, the result would be "a state that is artificially created". For her, the new independent state of East Timor is wrong even before it is born.

Ambong, meanwhile, mixed up serious issues. "So many Indonesian heroes died in East Timor while fighting for the unity of the people and the land, but the people decided to separate themselves from Indonesia anyway," he said.

One should indeed respect soldier-compatriots who died for the country (even if it was because they were instructed by the irresponsible generals to go to war), yet one need not do so by justifying the war and denying other people's rights to self- determination.

To confuse these principles is precisely what the Dutch war- veterans did as they condemned the Dutch-soldier-turn-Indonesia's-independence-hero, the late J. "Poncke" Princen; his death is "our liberation," they recently said.

This is part of the sickening trauma of a painful de- colonization. The same goes for other ex-colonial soldiers like many French Algeria-war-veterans. For bad losers, the war simply goes on as a ritual of the passing era.

Our legislators' cry, therefore, only reminds us yet again, that while East Timor has been freed from Indonesia, the opposite has not been the case: Indonesia needs, that is, to be liberated from Timor's trauma.

With due respect to the above legislators, instead of spoiling the May 20 celebration, our legislators would do better to de- mystify East Timor's tragic saga, to demand the Indonesian military to open a White Book on East Timor, and, as Ambong possibly implies, to care for the welfare, materially and spiritually, of thousands of widows and families of Timor war- veterans.

Many of the latter, as this writer recalls when visiting them at the Seroja complex, Bekasi, in 1999, had misperceptions of the war in East Timor and felt being marginalized and treated unjustly.

That is the place where the truly "unhealed wounds" should be found. To heal them is Indonesia's responsibility, not a burden for East Timor. No revenge or vindictive sentiments can be helpful for the two nations.