East Timor: Australia's Shame

East Timor: Australia's Shame

Thursday, May 25 2006 @ 09:14 AM PDT

What can you do if your country is tiny and poor and your wealthy neighbor shamelessly exploits commonly shared area rich in natural resources depriving you of funds so much needed to feed your people?

East Timor – Australia’s ShameBy Andre Vltchek

What can you do if your country is tiny and poor and your wealthy neighbor shamelessly exploits commonly shared area rich in natural resources depriving you of funds so much needed to feed your people?

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Right from the beginning, East Timor also feels deeply humiliated by its mighty neighbor - Australia. Both countries are locked in a long, bitter dispute over enormous oil and gas reserve beneath the Timor Sea.

Potential profits from this reserve are so high that, if fairly divided, they could easily guarantee East Timor's full economic self-sufficiency and tackle most of its urgent social problems.

However, Australia had opted for bullish and intimidating approach, disregarding international law, often openly and directly laughing to the face of a relatively helpless East Timorese government. Until now, it accepts only one border agreement signed by Suharto's government and Australia during the time when East Timor was still firmly under brutal Indonesian occupation.

The Economist, British weekly newsmagazine, summarized the situation by saying:

'Some of the disputed resources lie in a zone known as the Timor Gap that Australia and Indonesia excluded when they delineated their seabed boundary in 1972. Seventeen years later the two countries signed a deal to divide government revenues from this zone evenly between them. Mr. Gusmao now describes that deal as 'illegal and illegitimate' because of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor at the time.

At independence, Australia signed an interim treaty with East Timor, giving the nation 90% of revenues from within the 'joint development area', as the gap is now called, and Australia 10%.
This agreement covers the Bayu-Undan gas field, due to start production this year. But it excludes most of Greater Sunrise, a more lucrative gas field that lies mostly outside the area, and all of the Laminaria-Corallina oil field, from which Australia has been taking all revenues since it started pumping in 1999'.

'President of East Timor, Xanana Gusmao, offered several solutions, one of them being potential arbitration by the third party. However, Australia refused to negotiate. Arbitration by the International Court of Justice is now also impossible, because Australia withdrew from its jurisdiction on maritime boundary questions right before East Timor gained independence.

East Timorese Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, claims that 'East Timor would get access to up to US $12 billion worth of oil and gas' if the resources would be divided fairly. For the present time, his government is suggesting that Australia and East Timor form an escrow account to which money from oil and gas exploration will be deposited until the issue is resolved. But, according to The Star, Australian newspaper, 'Australia refuses to accept maritime boundary in the middle of 600 miles of sea separating two countries' ' exactly what East Timor is demanding.

In the meantime, the Australian government is using insulting language towards its East Timorese counterpart. Alexander Downer recently declared on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News: 'East Timor poverty is no reason for Australia to give ground in a maritime border dispute involving energy reserves' With the greatest of respect, grow up.

We are enormously rich compared to Papua New Guinea. We would be six or seven times richer than New Zealand. That doesn't mean that solution to that problem is to cede a lot of our territory to those countries. You address that issue of economic disparity through your aid program.'And aid programs there are, including coming from Australia. However, they amount to approximately 10 percent of the profits made by Australia from exploring gas and oil in the disputed area. And exploration is only at an infantile stage.

After the fruitless April meeting between two governments (East Timor is insisting on monthly meetings, but Australia agreed on only two meetings a year, therefore the next one will not take place before September), Alexander Downer threatened: 'East Timor made a very big mistake trying to shame Australia, accusing us of being bullying and rich and so on, considering all we've done for East Timor'.

Australia likes to brag about its 'help' to East Timor, often forgetting about the not too distant past.

In February 1942 the Japanese Imperial Army landed an army of 20 thousand men in Dili (the capital of East Timor) and occupied the then Portuguese colony. The Japanese were ready to launch an attack on Australia from there. East Timorese, alongside a small Australian force, fought fiercely against Japanese invaders, inflicting tremendous losses. This resistance is often described as an act that saved Australia from a terrible war on its own territory.

After Australians were evacuated, the Japanese performed a terrible revenge. The population of East Timor declined from 472 thousand in 1930 to 403 thousand in 1946 (the two closest available censuses).

After gaining short-lived independence from Portugal, East Timor was occupied by Indonesian troops on December 7, 1975. During the occupation, the country lost more than one third of its population in one of the most brutal genocides known to the 20th century. The US and Australia gave an unmistakable green light to Suharto and his military clique. Until now, East Timor received no substantial compensation from Indonesia or from those countries which encouraged invasion.

It is true that Australia led a multi-national force that helped East Timor after the independence referendum and consequent massacres by pro-Jakarta militias. However, Australia's withdrawal from the International Court of Justice's jurisdiction on maritime boundary questions just before the full independence of East Timor may lead to many unfavorable speculations about the motives for such help. It is easier to bully a small and defenseless nation over the issue of enormous natural resources, then to confront the fourth most populous nation on earth -- Indonesia.

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But it has oil and gas that can pay for new schools and hospitals, roads, and housing. It doesn't need aid ' it needs a fair deal arbitrated by international institutions. The trouble is that it is being told, directly and squarely, by its mighty neighbor to 'forget about it', to take what it's being offered (a pittance) and shut up. And it seems that no international body is able or willing to challenge a huge economic power like Australia, no matter how wrong it may be, how arrogantly and unjustly it behaves.

'We are not shaming Australia. We are only telling the truth', said Mr. Gusmao, recently. The question is whether anyone is willing to listen and above all, to take action in defense of the penniless but proud nation that suffered tremendously due to our geo-political interests.

ANDRE VLTCHEK -- writer, journalist and filmmaker, recently living and working in Southeast Asia. He can be reached at: andre-wcn@usa.net