Wee Sleekit Timorese Beasties (Or, The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men)
David B. Hicks' lecture, "East Timor: Inside and Out"by Stephen C. Preston
(originally published in the Stony Brook Press, 10/27/99)
On October 20, Stony Brook professor David Hicks spoke to an audience of about thirty about his work in East Timor, most notably as an observer for the Carter Center during the recent independence referendum. The title of the talk referred to exchanges of perspectives: both his, as an outsider visiting East Timor; and also those of East Timorese leaders, who left during the Indonesian occupation and are only now returning.
East Timor, as regular Press readers surely know, has been occupied by Indonesia for twenty-four years. It had been a colony of Portugal for several hundred years, until Portugal’s revolution in 1975, when the Communist government abandoned the former colonies. Shortly after, a civil war erupted between the FRETILIN leftists and the UDT rightists. Indonesia took over the island (it had already controlled the western half of the island of Timor) soon after Portugal left, ostensibly to provide “stability”.
Upon Indonesia’s invasion, the slaughter commenced. Over the next several years, Indonesia murdered an enormous number of people — the general estimate is 200,000. Throughout this period, Indonesia under military dictator Suharto was a client state of the United States, and nearly all of the weapons used against the Timorese were provided by the U.S. Leftists, especially Noam Chomsky, contend that our government could have stopped the massacres at any time.
After Suharto’s abdication last year, successor B.J. Habibie announced that he would grant East Timor independence if the people wanted it. The United Nations decided to a referendum, to which Habibie agreed.
The Indonesian military (known by its acronym, the TNI) seemed to oppose the plan. While General Wiranto, head of the armed forces, had publicly claimed to support the rights of the East Timorese to self-determination, the Indonesian military was training militias in East Timor. The militias, described by Hicks as “gangs of ruthless, shiftless, marginal young men,” roamed East Timor intimidating and threatening people who they thought would support independence.
When they concluded this was not effective, they began burning villages, forcing inhabitants to flee. According to Hicks, the purpose of this was to prevent the East Timorese from registering to vote. Much of the population was eventually moved to camps in West Timor and other parts of Indonesian territory, where they were to be protected by the TNI. However, militias continued terrorizing the population and even the United Nations workers in the camps, with the TNI seemingly unwilling to prevent it.
This leads to the big question: who was responsible for these atrocities against the Timorese? Wiranto, the head of the TNI, following Indonesian tradition by asserting military control? Habibie, the President, publicly supporting peaceful elections but secretly wanting to sabotage them? The Clinton Administration, which had been supporting Indonesia’s military illegally (in opposition to the will of Congress) even up to this year? Hicks supports the popular belief that it was “rogue elements” in the Indonesian military who were encouraging the atrocities, and that the central government in Jakarta had no control, though he was hesitant to absolve Wiranto of all blame.
On August 30 of this year, the independence referendum was held in East Timor. Hicks traveled to East Timor to observe the election at the invitation of the Carter Center (ironically, it was Jimmy Carter’s administration that had provided the most crucial support for Suharto’s repression against the Timorese in 1978). He concluded, as most people have, that the election itself was largely free of fraud. By the time of the actual election, the militia-sponsored violence in East Timor had quite suddenly ceased, and the vote was carried out peacefully. Almost everyone in East Timor voted, and the count was 78.50% for independence.
Hicks called the election a “showpiece for the UN”, and congratulated the UN on its instruction of the “politically ignorant” population. It was, he said, “a unique event in the history of East Timor, because never in the lives had they voted for anything.”
Unfortunately, soon after the election, the militia-sponsored violence resumed. Why this happened, or why the violence had stopped at all, remains a mystery, to which Hicks could not provide any clues.
Whatever hte reason, everything has now been destroyed. Since all of East Timor’s institutions will need to be rebuilt from nothing, the United Nations will probably undertake the same sort of “nation-building” that it did in Bosnia. East Timor will remain an international protectorate, Hicks estimates, for five years. East Timor’s leaders will be those who left the territory during the occupation, and Hicks predicts there will be a lot of conflict between the returning exiles and those who suffered through the occupation, especially since many exiles were landowners who will try to reclaim the land they abandoned from the people who now live on it.
The exiled leaders seem to support a return to Portuguese cultural institutions, wishing to impose the Portuguese language and currency. This raises the disturbing prospect of East Timor being one of the few countries to achieve independence not through a guerrilla war but through a campaign for recolonization: for example, the guerrilla independence movement, FALENTIL, ceased its operations while the militias rampaged, in order to ensure that the international community saw the conflict as completely one-sided and would intervene out of sympathy. Hicks, however, believes Portugal’s interest is only humanitarian, and that East Timor’s independence will be more than nominal.
In the end, I could not help but see Hicks as a modern-day missionary, preaching democracy instead of Christianity, and carrying the "White Man's Burden" to the uncivilized masses. He seemed to feel genuine compassion for the Timorese, but he also seemed a little patronizing toward them. Like the old-fashioned missionaries, whose good intentions often paved the way for the evils of Western empire, one might reasonably fear that today’s democratic missionaries are shielding with high rhetoric the economic colonization of small and poor territories like East Timor. East Timor, of course, sits next to significant oil reserves, and it will be foreign companies who exploit those resources.
As in Kosovo, the population is willing to unite if it believes that “democracy” will save them from their poverty. But one wonders if, as in Kosovo, once the people realize their economic situation will not improve with “free market democracy”, East Timor too will descend into chaos. Will East Timor’s leaders exact revenge on West Timorese living in East Timor, or on East Timorese “collaborators”, as the Kosovo Albanians have?
The United Nations knew that it could not guarantee the security of East Timor before the vote. Relying for security on the very Indonesians who most feared an independence vote, the United Nations irresponsibly risked the lives and livelihood of many East Timorese just to have a “showpiece” of democracy. Now, the best the East Timorese can hope for is that oil revenues will sustain the economy and enable the country to rebuild, but this will leave the tiny country as dependent on outsiders as it was last year. Unfortunately, East Timor may pay a high price for its pact with the international community.