AUT: (fwd) (en) Australians Take To The Streets Over East Timor

[pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Steve Wright)]

I should have sent this earlier . . .

>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 00:51:12 -0400
>From: DAMN <damn@xxxxxx>
>Newsgroups: anet.mail.ainfos-en
>Subject: (en) Australians Take To The Streets Over East Timor
>
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>      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
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>
>Australians took to the streets Friday as thousands of people joined
>rallies in major capital cities calling for action to end the violence
>in East Timor.
>
>In the biggest rally, 25,000 people in Melbourne, including politicians,
>union leaders, office workers and students waving Fretelin flags in
>support of East Timor independence.
>
>Banners saying "Stop The Slaughter'' and "Wiranto - Murder.'' Chants of
>"`Free East Timor'' and "`Viva Timor Leste'' (long live East Timor) came
>from the crowd after it heard from East Timorese resistance leader Mr.
>Jose "Xanana''  Gusmao during a live telephone hook-up from Jakarta.
>
>"We need you, brothers and sisters of Australia, we need your voice,''
>Xanana Gusmao in Jakarta said by telephone, ``I think it is important to
>send a message to the Indonesian Government that the Australian
>community and Australian workers will do everything they can to stop the
>killings.
>
>Viva East Timor,'' he said. ``Viva,'' the crowd yelled back.
>
>Unions, church groups and students were joined by lunch time crowds to
>hear members of the East Timorese community describe the horrors
>occurring in their home land.
>
>Rally organiser and Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary, Mr Leigh
>Hubbard, who had spoken to Mr. Gusmao on Thursday night, told the crowd
>the leader was struggling to stay positive after learning his father had
>been murdered hours before in Dili.
>
>Attending the rally, Nito Gusmao, son of East Timor resistance leader
>Xanana Gusmao said his grandfather may have been killed for refusing to
>leave his home.
>
>Other speakers included Jennie George, ACTU president and Shirley
>Shackelton, widow of a Australian journalist killed in East Timor in
>1975. The rally, the third in Melbourne this week, has brought city
>traffic to a halt.
>
>In Canberra, a small band of protesters protesters were arrested after
>spray painting "Shame Australia!!  Shame!'' onto the marble facade of
>Parliament House in bright, fluorescent pink. "This is the greatest
>betrayal of the 20th century,'' one of the protesters yelled from the
>roof. Another shouted: "What are we doing (to help East Timor)? We're
>sitting down and watching them being slaughtered.''
>
>They have likened the slaughter in East Timor to the equivalent of one
>Port Arthur massacre every day since East Timor's invasion in 1975, and
>say Australia should cut all ties with Indonesia.
>
>In Sydney more than a 1,000 high school students and others rallied
>outside Sydney Town Hall today to demand Australia end military
>cooperation with Indonesia.
>
>A number of speakers addressed the crowd and demonstrators brandished
>banners with slogans such as "oily hands, bloody hands", "we have a
>debt, lest we forget" and "it's been 25 years, let's stop the bloodshed
>now".
>
>One of the high school students, Becky Fairell-Lee, says young people
>are deeply concerned about the suffering of the East Timorese.
>
>"There's this view held that young people are apathetic, we don't have a
>clue about what's going on and even if we do, we don't care," she said.
>"This protest today completely shows that we aren't. We know what's
>going on, we know, we can understand the news reports and we care for
>these people.
>
>"We see what's going on and we care about it, you know and we want to do
>something. "We don't just acknowledge it and we don't just care about
>it, but we want to do something, we want to change it."
>
>The rally moved along George Street to the offices of Indonesian airline
>Garuda in Hunter Street. The protesters chanted "end all military ties,
>stop the killings stop the lies" as they marched through central Sydney.
>Unions said up to 1,000 people converged on Sydney Airport to again
>disrupt flights by the Indonesian state airline Garuda
>as it tried to load passengers on their way to Bali.
>
>"We have just been stopping passengers booked on Garuda flights, the
>impact has been quite big, the purpose is to draw the attention to East
>Timor,'' said East Timorese Harold Maucho.
>
>Eight people have been charged during a rally in Brisbane outside the
>Brisbane offices of Indonesian airline Garuda.
>
>Jason McLeod, a spokesman for the group Friends of East Timor, said the
>aim of the blockade was to peacefully disrupt the business of Garuda,
>which he said was controlled by the Indonesian military.
>
>"The only way we can have an impact on the situation in East Timor is by
>hitting the hip pocket nerve of the generals in the Indonesian
>military," Mr McLeod told reporters. "Our government won't do it by
>cutting off aid and freezing the assets of the Indonesian generals, so
>we have to do it ourselves." He said the Queensland Nurses Union had
>urged its members to jam Garuda Indonesia's Brisbane switchboard with
>calls of support for East Timor.
>
>Several hundred students joined a demonstration outside the offices of
>Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer in Adelaide, as part of a
>national walkout.
>
>In Perth, an East Timorese man spoke of being ashamed to be an
>Australian citizen during a rally of about 1,000 people.
>
>Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine called on the Government to reconsider
>its ties with the United States during a rally of about 200 people in
>Hobart.
>
>Key unions escalated their economic protest against Jakarta, stopping
>multi-million dollar wheat exports and disrupting services to Indonesian
>diplomatic missions.
>
>The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) said unions had banned
>processing Indonesian crude oil, providing postal and telephone services
>to the Indonesian Embassy and consulates and Garuda, air freight between
>Australia and Indonesia, and stopped garbage collection from Indonesian
>missions.
>
>"We have told people to put as much pressure as they can as quickly as
>possible on Indonesian interests in Australia,'' said ACTU assistant
>secretary Bill Mansfield. "What we're having to do at the moment is
>actually hold people back in some cases.''
>
>Meanwhile the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), said the London-based
>International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) had passed a resolution
>to implement international bans. "There are already indications from the
>west coast of America and other areas that those bans have been put in
>place,'' said Paddy Crumlin, MUA deputy national secretary.
>
>Wharfies said wheat shipments would not proceed, affecting the planned
>Saturday loading of the Bogasari Lima vessel in Brisbane port. The MUA
>earlier this week placed bans on unloading Indonesian ships in
>Australian ports but had allowed outgoing shipments of wheat to continue
>because it was regarded as an essential item.
>
>Indonesia was Australia's biggest export wheat market in 1997/98, taking
>2.4 million tons. Unions have already begun a campaign against
>Indonesian products and are refusing to load cargo going to and coming
>from the country.
>
>The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) in Victoria has also
>imposed bans on all exports of car engine parts to Indonesia from
>Holden's Port Melbourne plant. The union says printing workshops which
>use Indonesian paper will be among the next places to be affected by a
>statewide AMWU ban on handling any Indonesian products.
>
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