AUT: RE: Karl Eugen on E. Timor

[Montyneill@xxxxxxx]

I forwarded for comment K. Eugen's piece on E. Timor to John Roosa, a
Midnight Notes member who has been active around Indonesia for some time. He
sent the following reply, which he has given me permission to send to
aut-op-sy.
Monty Neill

This May 31, 1999 Wildcat Zirkular, # 50 is, to be polite, ill-informed. The
author has haphazardly thrown together some mundane facts cribbed from
secondary sources and completely misinterpreted the essential points about
the struggle in East Timor. The nationalist struggle in East Timor has been
a struggle against militarism, against a life of captivity under an army of
occupation, against the presence of 30,000 soldiers and policemen in a
country of only 800,000. What unites the East Timorese is a common suffering
of having relatives, neighbors, and friends killed by the Indonesian
military. Independence means for them the departure of Indonesian troops. To
talk about East Timorese nationalism as a "killer" is, to be blunt, idiotic
and cynical.

I have no interest in responding directly to this worthless, forgetable
piece. The Indonesian military, as I write, is slaughtering thousands of
East Timorese and targeting the advocates of independence. I would be glad
to know of some other force in the world besides some sort of UN or
Australian-led military that would be capable of stopping Indonesia's
genocidal plans. I know of none. The East Timorese by themselves can not
successfully resist the Indonesian military. The Indonesian working class is
doing nothing to stop it and will do nothing.

Indonesia is prepared to kill off tens of thousands, if not more, East
Timorese within a matter of weeks. It wants to see an independent East Timor
full of corpses, refugees, and starving bodies. The only question at this
point is not whether an international intervention force should be sent but
when. The US, and many other major powers, contrary to Wildcat's wild
imagination, are not hell-bent on sending troops. Quite the opposite. They
have been coddling Indonesia and unwilling to support the East Timorese.
They have to be prodded into action. (The idea that the capitalist powers
somehow want to intervene in East Timor to throttle Indonesia as an emerging
economic tiger -- if that is indeed Wildcat's argument in this muddled,
poorly written piece -- is silly.)

The East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence with the assumption
that the UN which arranged the ballot would stay and protect them from the
Indonesian military which they knew would wish to seek revenge and thwart a
peaceful transition to independence. Prior to the vote, Indonesia openly
threatened the East Timorese with a bloodbath if they opted for
independence. The plan was no secret. But the UN and the major powers did
nothing to prepare for the defense of the East Timorese and continued, even
up to a few days ago, to express confidence in the Indonesian military to
"maintain security."

If you would like to argue against an international military intervention,
you should at least know what you are talking about. The East Timor case is
nothing like Kosovo and those demanding international troops are not
demanding 'humanitarian war'; they are demanding the ending of Indonesia's
war on a nation -- one that has already voted for independence. Such troops
will not be fighting the Indonesian military, but ensuring their withdrawal
and the disarming of their paramilitary goon squads. Whatever future
problems emerge with such international troops, they will be minor compared
to the genocide Indonesia is presently committing. Nothing is worse that
what is going on now.

John Roosa


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