U.S. media and E. Timor

Jeffrey A. Winters, North Western University, Chicago

The birth of East Timor as a new nation was described in glowing, even triumphant, tones in the U.S. print media. Timor offers the sort of classic uplift story Americans love to consume -- of fighting against the odds, of epic human struggles. President Clinton referred almost Biblically to "blood and sacrifice" in the pursuit of freedom.

Indonesia's military, the TNI, was an easy target for the role of "bad guy." The 1975 invasion and subsequent occupation was described across the U.S. media as "brutal."

But the American reading public would have to search wide and dig deep to find much accurate reporting of the appalling U.S. government's role in either the long suffering or the eventual triumph of the Timorese.

Every article contained the obligatory one-paragraph history of the Indonesian invasion. But not one bothered to mention how thoroughly complicit the U.S. was in allowing the tragic events to occur in the first place.

A May 20 editorial in the New York Times gave the impression that the U.S. was a distant observer of the events of 1975, merely making the "mistake" of approving of the invasion. The uncomfortable fact is that President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger met with President Soeharto in Jakarta hours before the attack and made it clear the U.S. was supportive of the plan to invade. Soeharto had held his generals back until he could get this crucial U.S. assurance from the very top.

The fuller piece of the same day in the Times by Jane Perlez does not even bother to mention the destructive U.S. role. If anything, the U.S. appears valiant and noble for sending an international peace-keeping force to Timor after the Indonesian military oversaw the destruction of everything in sight.

The disquieting fact is that Bill Clinton, President Bush's delegate to the independence ceremony, hesitated until the last possible moment to safeguard Timor's referendum -- sending U.S. troops only for noncombat missions after the Australians led the call to stop the carnage at the hands of the Indonesians and their proxy militia.

It was obvious on the eve of the referendum that leaving security in the hands of the Indonesian armed forces, whose proven track record of brutality in Timor was not in dispute, was a formula for disaster. Western intelligence agencies knew the Indonesians were training militia for intimidation before the vote and for destruction afterward if it went against the Indonesians.

And still the Clinton administration refused to play hardball with the generals in Jakarta by insisting that a U.N. force handle security. Nearly three thousand innocent Timorese perished in 1999 as a result of this cowardice, adding to the "blood and sacrifice" Clinton referred to as the price the Timorese paid for their freedom.

Buried in the final paragraph of a May 20th piece in the Washington Post by Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a quote by Clinton at the ceremony opening the new U.S. embassy in the Timorese capital of Dili. "I am very honored to be here because we were so involved in the struggle of the people of East Timor and so supportive of this day," Clinton remarked.

This is a distortion of shocking proportions even for Bill Clinton. The U.S. was certainly involved in the struggle, but on the side of the occupying Indonesians for nearly the whole 24 years from the invasion until the violent withdrawal of TNI forces.

Had the U.S. been "supportive" of self-determination when the Timorese really needed it -- before not after the rampages of 1999 -- East Timor would not be in the unenviable position of trying to rebuild their country from the Afghanistan-like rubble left behind by the departing Indonesians.

Clinton's statement was apparently too much even for the servile western media. In response to a question, he allowed that U.S. support for the TNI "made us not as sensitive to the suffering of the people of East Timor as we should have been. I don't think we can defend everything we did."

At a time when Americans are deeply confused about why many people around the world laugh outloud when U.S. officials claim America stands for justice, it would have been useful to have such admissions toward the front of the article rather than buried in the last paragraph on the inside page.

The U.S. rhetoric of supportiveness rings even more hollow when one considers that the Bush administration and the UN are applying no serious pressure on Jakarta to bring the TNI top brass responsible for the mayhem in Timor to justice for crimes against humanity.

Mind you, we're only talking about putting on trial those who killed the last 3,000 Timorese in 1999, not those responsible for the deaths of the 200,000 from 1975 forward. No one even mentions the architects of the murderous invasion -- names like Gen. Benny Murdani or President Soeharto, much less key enablers like Henry Kissinger or President Ford.

Ad hoc tribunals underway in Jakarta are poised to deliver weak sentences, if not outright acquittals, to lower ranking soldiers and officers for the atrocities of 1999 in Timor. And when they do, the UN will not follow through on empty threats of international tribunals to go after and hold accountable the real perpetrators.

On the contrary, hawks in the Bush administration like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz are already touting the kangaroo trials in Jakarta as solid evidence of TNI reforms. What the administration wants to do is pour lots of weapons and training into the laps of Jakarta's generals to entice them to help "fight terrorism."

The problem with this plan is that the lion's share of terror in Indonesia occurs at the hands of the military. As for fighting supposed Al Qaeda cells and violent religious extremists, sympathetic elements of the military, both active and retired (often a hairsplitting distinction in Indonesia), play cynically with these "terrorists" in the pursuit of various domestic political agendas.