Weighing on the 'ifs' of East Timor

By Aboeprijadi Santoso

LISBON, Portugal (JP): A former Australian diplomat believes a letter the Indonesian foreign minister Adam Malik wrote in 1974, in which he promised support for East Timor's independence, was brushed aside by president Soeharto and the leading generals at that time.

Former Indonesia specialist at Canberra Foreign Affairs and writer of Timor: A People Betrayed (1983) James Dunn, 72, said, had it been followed up, Adam Malik's message "would have resulted in a radically different world for Indonesia and East Timor. The democratization would have started much earlier".

Dunn served as Australian consul in Dili (1962-1964), and returned to East Timor in 1974. In an interview with The Jakarta Post in Lisbon, where he attended a conference on East Timor earlier this month, he reflects on some crucial moments of the conflict.

In June 1974, Adam Malik, in a meeting with Jose Ramos-Horta, volunteered to write a letter, which, according to Dunn, "should have been a turning point, because, unlike even Portugal or Australia, who were not saying East Timor should be independent, but merely should make a decision, Adam Malik wrote, 'The independence of every country is the right of every nation and, for East Timor, there could be 'no exception'."

"The letter went on to say that not only would Indonesia support self-determination, but it would also endorse the independence of East Timor," Dunn said.

He recalled Ramos-Horta's delighted response. "He said, 'pak Malik has been so good; if Indonesian leaders are going to be generous like this, I can persuade Fretilin (proindependence) leaders to agree to a settlement that would give Indonesia power over foreign affairs and defense, otherwise East Timor would be free. Wonderful."

Was Adam Malik sincere? "Yes, (because) his letter was written very early in the conflict, only a couple of months after the coup in Portugal (April 1974). It was his personal response, but he was not aware that was a view that the military did not accept," Dunn said.

"The military had already began to meet and talk about taking actions that would make sure East Timor a part of Indonesia."

In the mid-1960s Dunn was assigned to Moscow when Adam was the Indonesian ambassador there. "We talked several times. Adam Malik was a leading international diplomat. Later, as foreign minister, he had a much clearer understanding of the situation (in East Timor). As a consul (in Dili), I did not meet him, but I met him again in Canberra. Really, his response (Malik's letter) was one that surely should have been followed up."

In contrast to many, Adam did not seem to be impressed by cold war rumors in East Timor in the mid-1970s. "I believed he had a better view of the situation, because, after all, there was no communist influence to speak of in East Timor," Dunn said.

"The major communist powers had no representation there, and they showed no interest in it. So, really, from that point of view, there was no threat to Indonesia."

Dunn added that "Adam Malik's view was perceptive."

"If what he had written was acted upon, the situation would have been vastly different. Thousands of people, Indonesians as well as Timorese, would not have been killed. You would today have an independent East Timor, but it would be a special relationship. Instead, we have a whole generation of 25 years of conflict, bitterness and a situation which was terribly humiliating to Indonesia."

Why did Jakarta miss the opportunity? "Our embassy in Jakarta had been advised that Malik really had no influence as far as the generals were concerned," he replied.

"The generals, I mean Ali Moertopo, Benny Moerdani and Yoga Soegama, were making the policy. This (letter) was ridiculous and unacceptable. We should disregard that letter, my colleagues said."

Dunn continued: "Jakarta failed (because) even some of the Portuguese, but certainly Indonesian leaders, like the military, had a total misunderstanding of the situation in East Timor. It wasn't that the Timorese were hostile to Indonesia. Simply, they had had a very separate experience as a colony of Portugal. Theirs was a different kind of society, and they wanted to go their own way. It was a natural instinct in the process of self- determination.

"The colonial experience, for good or bad reasons, created a separate environment. So, the natural instinct of people who are liberated, or offered liberation, is to gain independence. It was difficult for me to understand that very intelligent people like Benny Moerdani and Ali Moertopo didn't seem to understand that, especially in a country which itself had fought so courageously for its own independence."

According to Dunn, "the military leaders couldn't persuade the East Timorese by political means simply because their approach involved for months a hostile (radio) propaganda against the political parties. That created hostility. Originally that hostility was not there. But as it mounted, the Timorese said they didn't want to join the country next door."

As Adam Malik's letter failed to materialize, what, then, was the turning point which made the military takeover of East Timor possible?

"That was created largely by Indonesia, but I have to say Australia helped. When prime minister Gough Whitlam went to Wonosobo to have his meeting with president Soeharto (September 1974), he astonished the Indonesians by making it very clear that his preferred solution was that East Timor to go to Indonesia. I have a lot of information that suggests the Indonesians didn't expect Australia to be so generous. Whitlams's words encouraged the military to believe that this was the way to go.

"By mid-1975, even though the two major parties (Fretilin and the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT)) came into conflict, both were against integration. I had a letter from UDT leaders at that time who made it clear that what they wanted was independence, but they wanted first to purge Fretilin of its left wing."

The Wonosobo meeting, therefore, was the turning point.

"That was the green light to start 'Operasi Komodo' to bring about integration. President Soeharto feared that it might end up in embarrassment, so he delayed giving the order for the military intervention. I knew this from my own diplomatic sources, but what was important was, had the external community, and in particular my own country, Australia, gone to president Soeharto and reinforced his position, the invasion would not have taken place."

"One can't forgive the president. Soeharto wanted East Timor as well. The only reservation he had was about the military action, but he was finally persuaded in September 1975, two weeks before the attack on Balibo, by the generals who had obtained information that the major Western powers really wouldn't object to Indonesia's move into East Timor at that time.

"The U.S. actually knew more than a week beforehand. The Australians also knew. If they wanted to protest, they had time to do so. This is the complicity of Western powers in what was the rape of a small nation. It would have been possible for the West to persuade Jakarta not to proceed, but they didn't do it."

"The militarization as the solution to East Timor," he says, "led to a greater military influence in Indonesia, because the military had to suppress press freedom, so that the information could not get through to the people. The crisis (1997) was in part because of the corruption, which has to be related to the fact that it was able to develop, from the mid-1970s onward, a greater capacity to suppress dissents."

All these, of course, combine to form a "big if", but Dunn said, "I'm absolutely convinced that had Adam Malik's opportunity been taken up, the outcome would have been radically different. East Timor would have a population of 1.2 million instead of about 800,000. Not because Indonesian soldiers went to kill tens of thousands people, but because the military operation had an enormous impact on Timor in terms of forcing people into the interior, denying them medical assistance and food."

"So many died of starvation and disease, or were killed in the military actions. Perhaps more than 150,000. For a period, in 1976, the Indonesian Military used napalm. Imagine what napalm bombs can do to villagers in the dry season. That was terrible."

The writer is a journalist, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.