TNI: The people's Army or the people's tyrant?

By Jim Aubrey

MELBOURNE (JP): As nations from all corners of the earth join the UN peace enforcement mission in East Timor, many prominent Indonesians are divided between disgust at the actions of their armed forces and at jingoistic nationalist self-denial. On one hand the "people's army" can do no wrong, on the other hand, its members are pictured as sadistic baby-killers.

Even President B.J. Habibie has joined in the demonization of Australia for having the audacity of coming to the aid of a butchered civilian population.

After 24 years of complicity in Jakarta's crimes against humanity in East Timor, Canberra finally came to the reality that it could no longer support the lie of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor.

To discerning people, brutality speaks for itself. Incredibly, some Indonesian leaders and opinionmakers have adopted a mantra of innocence and with the vision of a $2 lawyer they insist upon the culpability of the UN, of Australia, and in some cases, of rouge elements of the Indonesian Military (TNI). For once, the generals cannot blame the communists!

The pursuit of Australia and the UN is fanciful and is a sorry testimony to the degree of political sophistication in Jakarta. Even more ridiculous is the breast-beating wounded pride of the many thousands who are prepared to wage a holy war. It is as if the persecution and slaughter of innocent men, women and children is a side issue and the pride of the kingdom unconditional. I am curious to know what religion condones this evil, or is it a reflection of spiritual bankruptcy?

The only remarkable aspect in the current breakdown in bilateral relations is that the so-called "special relationship" survived as long as it did. A relationship cultivated upon the murder of a civilian population can hardly be anything other than a marriage of base and immoral convenience.

As for the East Timorese, the parting gift from the courageous TNI has been several thousand more innocent victims. The "people's army"? As we Australians say -- what a joke! A people's tyrant is to be more precise and more of a tyrant than the Dutch ever were to the people of the Dutch East Indies!

Some critics argue that an independent East Timor will be the beginning of the end for the Indonesian republic; that the people struggling for freedom in Aceh and Irian Jaya will be spurred on to demand their own independence ballot. TNI's brutal reaction to the result of the ballot in East Timor is their warning to any province with aspirations of independence.

However, TNI cannot stop the unstoppable. That the republic of Indonesia was founded upon a commercial empire of the Netherlands serves in no way to authenticate the legitimacy of its emergence in 1949 into nationhood. That Indonesia's political culture is characterized by habitual deceit and its Army by brute force is a further endorsement of the profound failure of the status quo to claim any mantle of genuine representation of the people they keep so manifestly oppressed.

Democratization is the overall answer to the problems facing this nemesis. Democracy will be the foundation for the future of either a federated republic or of several new nations born from the collapse of the Javanese empire. 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.

The history of the genocide in East Timor will rate alongside the most infamous crimes against humanity in the 20th century. Future historians will state what many of us already know -- that the struggle for freedom by the heroic East Timorese people against oppression and barbarity is one of the greatest struggles for freedom of all time. It must be added that the crimes of the Indonesian armed forces in East Timor have also been committed upon the Indonesian people themselves and that their struggle for freedom is equally heroic.

A nation's greatness is measured by the decency of its people, the plurality of the political arena and the dynamism of the social culture. As long as TNI exists with impunity for its crimes and continues to operate under a self-glorified mandate of absolute power, Indonesia will remain a nation of victims of rape, torture, murder, disappearance and oppression. Regardless of diplomatic niceties, it will be a nation without the future support of Australian governments whenever crimes against humanity are committed.

The writer is editor of Free East Timor (Vintage 1998) and is the spokesman for Australians for a Free East Timor.