The U.S.: A party to mass murder?

The U.S.: A party to mass murder?

By Frank Richardson

This is the second of two articles examining the influence of
the United States government on Indonesia in the past 30 years.

JAKARTA (JP): The U.S., of course, welcomed the 1965 coup it
had helped to orchestrate and immediately dispatched weapons to
Jakarta while the CIA further abetted the killing spree by
providing a list of PKI members to the army.

Soeharto then placed himself at the top of a broad-based
pyramid of corruption which involved the bureaucracy and the
military compliantly suppressing the masses in order to obtain
kickbacks from many of the conglomerate owners who were becoming
fabulously rich.

However, unbeknown to the American public, Soeharto himself
was very much an American quisling who was part of an even
broader pyramid of corruption that includes many Western nations
which, with the help of the grim deeds of the CIA in particular,
has America itself at the apex.

While Articles 3 and 5 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of
Human Rights explicitly state: "Everyone has the right to life,
liberty and security of person" and "No one shall be subjected to
torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment", the American government in its paranoia obviously
felt the "communist threat" justified completely ignoring the
Declaration.

As a result CIA manipulations and machinations in Indonesia
led to the killing of between 500,000 and one million socialists
and ordinary peasants and the establishment of an oppressive
military dictatorship headed by an American quisling that the
people of Indonesia had to endure for more than three decades.

So pleased was CIA Director William Colby with the success of
the Indonesian operation, that similar tactics and exploitation
of death squad operations were later used in Vietnam, Guatemala
and other parts of Latin America.

Naturally, the United States supported the militaristic
ambitions of its quisling, Soeharto, in East Timor, too. Arms
and counterinsurgency equipment ($1 billion worth since 1975),
training and diplomatic support were all provided after the
American-approved invasion in 1975.

Australia followed suit by providing not only military aid to
Indonesia; but also recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over
East Timor in the hope of gaining benefits from East Timor's
offshore oil resources.

The covert activities of the American government in Indonesia
during the 1960s and 1970s clearly amount to crimes against peace
and humanity as defined by Article 6 of the Charter of the
International Military Tribunal of 1945, which was later
confirmed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946.

However, while action is currently being taken to bring the
war criminals of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo to justice,
nothing has been done to ensure war criminals in the American
government are brought to book despite fine sounding statements.

One such statement came from President Clinton in Macedonia on
June 2, 1999: "But never forget if we can do this here, and if we
can then say to the people of the world, whether you live in
Africa, or Central Europe, or any other place, if somebody comes
after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because
of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and
it's within our power to stop it, we will stop it."

While, therefore, America has been dubbed the "Land of the
Free" it appears to have come to think it is sufficiently free
and privileged to abuse, oppress and, where necessary, arrange
the killing of people around the world whom it deems to not
serve its avaricious interests.

It is time the illegal and heinous activities of the U.S.
government were firmly brought under control. However, because of
America's enormous economic might, few governments have the
courage to challenge American lawlessness on the international
scene. Clearly, in the case of Indonesia, the U.S. should pay
extensive reparations for the killings and total disruption and
dislocation of civilian society that occurred during and after
the 1965 coup.

Since America has acted unlawfully, the contracts between
American companies and Soeharto's family members and cronies
could be called into question and, eventually, compensation
awarded to the people of Indonesia.

Because it is essential that the U.S. be made accountable and
subject to international law, these issues need to be strenuously
pursued in the international courts and in the courts of America
itself.

However, the U.S. is, of course, not the only country
implicated in what amounts to a rape of Indonesia. Many other
Western nations attracted by a market of over 200 million people,
a relatively large budget for arms purchases, Indonesia's natural
resources and geopolitical advantages, have put their own usually
much vaunted ethics and values aside for the sake of profit.
Britain, for example, until recently, was Indonesia's largest
arms supplier among countries which include the Netherlands and
Germany.

It is time a clear message be sent to the U.S. and other
equally far from transparent military and economic powers around
the world, that a heavy penalty must be paid for perpetrating
sophisticated barbarism against what are, in the main, the
peaceable and often innocent and all-too-compliant "pawns" of the
Third World. In the case of Indonesia the reparations and
compensation awarded ought, by rights, amount to many multiples
of the amount the U.S. currently, and seemingly so very
generously, is donating to the country in aid.

The author is director of Khresna International Education
Foundation and a keen observer of how social and political events
in Indonesia are often greatly influenced by governments and
events beyond its control overseas.