In blog Living Timorously
An Irreverent Look at Goings-On in East Timor, Asia's Newest Country - A State Failed, But Not (Yet) A Failed State
http://livingtimorously.blogspot.com/index.html
13 March 2007
No escaping the burden of bad intentions
Yet another piece of 'Jakarta Lobby' propaganda in Rupert Murdoch's rag The Australian
No escaping the burden of good intentions
By Cavan Hogue
The 'liberation' of East Timor is coming back to haunt us, warns Cavan
Hogue
ANY foreign policy is a compromise between what you want and what you can get, and any analysis must consider the alternatives. Most of the public emotion expended in Australia about East Timor has shown little concern for facts, logic or alternatives.
As opposed to the mythology of denial put out by the 'Jakarta Lobby'.
Let's start at the beginning.
Although you would never guess it from reading Australian media reports, the history of East Timor did not begin with the Indonesian invasion in 1975. For 400 years, Portugal ran it as a penal colony and did nothing for the indigenous people.
Really? In that case, why aren't the East Timorese outnumbered by the descendants of Portuguese convicts, just as Australian Aborigines are by the descendants of British and Irish ones?
We hear much about how Australia should have done something about the Indonesian invasion because of our debt to the Timorese who supported Australian soldiers during World War II. Nobody, however, showed much concern for the Timorese when they were being oppressed by the brutal dictatorship of Antonio Salazar. Why not? Is European oppression more acceptable than Asian oppression?
Ah, yes, this is the politically correct argument used by the 'self-hating white men' that make up the 'Jakarta Lobby'. No, European oppression is not more acceptable than Asian oppression, but if it does not involve rape, torture, mass murder and sterilisation, it is likely to provoke less of a reaction from the kind that does.
Conspiracy theorists argue that Australia should have done something to stop the Indonesian invasion of East Timor because we were told in advance what would happen and-or because we let them believe we would not oppose it.
There isn no need for conspiracy theories, as there are a substantial number of declassified documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra to show this. In 1974, Gough Whitlam openly stated that East Timor should become part of Indonesia. What business was its future of his, particularly when he refused to reopen the Australian consulate in Dili on the grounds that Australia didn't want to get involved.
Even if we were to accept this argument, it is not clear what it is Australia was supposed to do. Any suggested action must be put within the framework of the world as it was 30 years ago, not as it is today. Thirty years ago the Cold War was alive and well, and Australia was licking its wounds after the disaster that was Vietnam.
We could have sent troops to fight with Fretilin in repelling the Indonesians. In other words, we could have got into another war in Asia, only this time in support of the communists. In the unlikely event that the Australian public would have supported such action, the US would certainly have strongly opposed action by Australia to install a communist regime in Southeast Asia.
Not only does this assume that everyone in Fretilin was communist, but everyone advocating independence was as well. His article does not even mention the conservative UDT, with which Fretilin formed a coalition, which Indonesian military intelligence sought to destroy.
We could have been more active in the UN, but the world took the same interest in East Timor that we take in Africa.
If only! For years Australian prime ministers and foreign ministers made ending white minority rule in Southern Africa their personal moral crusade. And, lest we forget, Canberra recognised the unilateral declaration of independence in the Portuguese colony of Guinea Bissau, a place most Australians had never heard of.
Let's be clear about Fretilin: it was and remains a communist party based on Frelimo and other fraternal parties.
No, there were Marxists in Fretilin, but it was not communist in 1974-75. Gough Whitlam said as much in Parliament. Ironically, it only declared itself Marxist-Leninist after the Indonesian invasion, something that Xanana Gusmao, thankfully, disavowed.
Fretilin would have installed a communist dictatorship led by people such as Mari Alkatiri.
In August 1975, Fretilin was calling for the Portuguese to return and resume the decolonisation process, which would have led to multiparty elections, and the option of integration with Indonesia as well as independence.
Internal opponents would have been purged and there would have been massacres of those who supported APODETI or other non-communist parties. Private payback killings would have been widespread. Recent events have only confirmed the validity of this analysis.
Why does Hogue attach so much importance to APODETI, a pro-Indonesian party that had so little popular support, that even Indonesian military intelligence gave up on it and sought to enlist the far more popular UDT?
The reason the Indonesians invaded was to prevent the establishment of an unstable, communist state that would have been a base for subversion in Indonesia.
Even allowing for Indonesian paranoia about communists, this was not an unreasonable assumption.
The new government would have turned to China and the USSR for aid, technicians and political support. Would Australia really have been happy with an unstable, Soviet-backed communist state on its borders?
This would-be 'communist state' sent telegrams to the conservative Opposition in Canberra telling them how much it welcomed foreign investment from the private sector.
There was a significant [!] body of Timorese opinion that favoured integration with Indonesia because it would have made them members of a serious country with the capacity to develop them economically.
Many of these were former supporters of independence who were either co-opted by Indonesian military, or forced to sign petitions calling for integration under duress. Indonesa a serious country? Not when compared to China or India, which have successfully and peacfully absorbed Macau and Goa.
Portuguese cultural influence did not extend much outside Dili.
So why do most East Timorese have Portuguese names, and why is the most widely used language in East Timor one that derives much of its vocabulary from Portuguese?
Portuguese was spoken only by the elite, who are now using it as a tool to dominate the masses.
But they get their message across in Tetum.
The East Timorese also had close cultural, linguistic and racial ties with the West Timorese.
Only along the border - people in the eastern region of East Timor speak completely different languages. The form of Tetum used in West Timor is more influenced by Indonesian, while in East Timor it is influenced by Portuguese. In any event, what was being proposed was not the integration of the two halves of Timor, but the integration of East Timor with Javanese-dominated Indonesia.
The border was a classic colonial creation and the notion of a nation struggling for freedom is a myth. Recent events have highlighted the kinds of divisions that existed then and still exist.
Many countries in the world, including East Timor's neighbours, owe their existence to haphazard and abritarily drawn colonial boundaries. Still, even people from Oecusse, an enclave of East Timor in West Timor, look towards Dili more than Kupang, which is why it was always treated as part of East Timor, even under Indonesian rule.
The Indonesians, to their credit, put in schools and medical facilities and did more for ordinary Timorese in a few years than Portugal did in 400 years. It is these facilities that were destroyed 20 years later.
As Kamal Bamadhaj, who later died in the Santa Cruz massacre, said "Development in East Timor is by Indonesia, for Indonesia". The infrastructure was put in place for the benefit of Indonesian military, bureaucrats, and transmigrants.
It is these facilities that were destroyed 20 years later.
By a vindictive Indonesian military, not by the "ungrateful Timorese".
Unfortunately, the Indonesian armed forces were not as competent as their civilian counterparts.
How many Indonesian civilians were involved in the running of the '27th Province', and how many of those were not taking bribes?
Instead of winning hearts and minds they picked pockets and beat bodies. The incompetence, brutality and corruption of TNI, the Indonesian military, was the reason Timor did not become a province of Indonesia and why in the referendum Timorese voted against Indonesia.
You're a fast learner, aren't you, Mr Hogue?
Those who blame Australia for what happened in East Timor clearly suffer from a neocolonialist mentality
Unlike the architects of the Indonesian invasion.
combined with an unreal understanding of the power that Australia can exercise outside its borders. We now have a poor, backward and unstable entity on our doorstep, a state manifestly unable to look after itself.
Serves you right after all those years of toadying up to the Suharto regime. But hey, you've got acess to their oil and gas, so look on the bright side.
Political and tribal factionalism are rife. Ultimately, this is the fault and the problem of the Timorese; they voted for independence and they got it.
No, the fault of the Indonesians, who gave the East Timorese the choice between two evils. Not surprisingly, they voted for the lesser of them. East Timor's referendum in 1999 was not like Australia's - if they voted against independence, they would have never had a chance to vote for it again.
We are not their paternalistic keeper and we do not have a manifest
destiny to solve all the problems of the region.
Tell that to the editor-at-large of The Australian, Paul Kelly, who last year was advocating 'A weightier role in Dili'.
We should not forget Talleyrand's advice that what matters in politics is not the truth but what people perceive to be the truth.
Which is why you're writing in Rupert Murdoch's propaganda sheet.
Welcome to the quagmire.
Enjoy your stay, cobber.
Cavan Hogue, a former Australian ambassador with extensive diplomatic
experience in Asia, is adjunct professor in the department of
international communication at Macquarie University in Sydney.
As opposed to the Indonesian, sorry, Australian National University in Canberra.
Posted by Blog Na'in at 05:57
quinta-feira, março 15, 2007
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No blog Living Timorously
Um olhar irreverente ao que se passa em Timor-Leste, o mais novo país da Ásia - Um Estado que falhou mas não (ainda) um Estado falhado
http://livingtimorously.blogspot.com/index.html
13 Março 2007
Não escapando ao peso das más intenções
Contudo uma outra peça da propaganda do ' Lobby de Jakarta ' nos pasquim de Rupert Murdoch, The Australian
Não escapando ao peso das boas intenções
Por: Cavan Hogue
A 'libertação' de Timor-Leste está de volta a perseguir-nos, avisa Cavan Hogue
Qualquer política estrangeira é um compromisso entre o que queremos e o que conseguimos apanhar, e qualquer análise deve considerar as alternativas. A maioria das emoções públicas gastas na Austrália sobre Timor-Leste tem mostrado pouca preocupação com os factos, a lógica ou as alternativas.
Tal é o oposto da mitologia da negação do ' Lobby de Jakarta '.
Comecemos pelo princípio.
Apesar de nunca o adivinhar lendo os relatos dos media Australianos, a história de Timor-Leste não começou com a invasão pela Indonésia em 1975. Durante 400 anos, Portugal dirigiu-o como uma colónia penal e nada fez pelos indígenas.
Verdade? Nesse caso, porque é que os Timorenses não foram ultrapassados pelos descendentes dos condenados Portugueses, tal como foram os Aborígines Australianos pelos descendentes dos condenados Ingleses ou Irlandeses?
Ouvimos falar muito sobre como a Austrália devia ter feito algo quanto à invasão pelos Indonésios por causa da nossa dívida com os Timorenses que apoiaram os soldados Australianos durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Contudo, ninguém mostrou muita preocupação com os Timorenses quando eles estavam a ser oprimidos durante a ditadura brutal de António Salazar. Porque não? É a opressão Europeia mais aceitável do que a opressão Asiática?
Ah, sim, este é o argumento politicamente correcto usado pelos “homens brancos que se odeiam a si próprios” que inventou o ' Lobby de Jakarta '. Não, a opressão Europeia não é mais aceitável do que a opressão Asiática, mas se não envolver violações, torturas, assassínios em massa e esterilização, é provável que provoque uma reacção menor.
Os teóricos da conspiração argumentam que a Austrália devia ter feito qualquer coisa para parar a invasão Indonésia de Timor-Leste porque nos disseram antes o que aconteceria e ou porque os deixámos acreditar que não nos oporíamos.
Não há nenhuma necessidade de teorias de conspiração, visto que há um número substancial de documentos desclassificados do Departamento de Negócios Estrangeiros e Comércio em Canberra que provam isto. Em 1974, Gough Whitlam afirmou abertamente que Timor-Leste devia tornar-se parte da Indonésia. Que negócio teria no futuro, particularmente quando recusou re-abrir o consulado Australiano em Dili com base na Austrália não se querer envolver.
Mesmo se quiséssemos aceitar este argumento, não está claro o que é que era suposto a Austrália fazer. Qualquer acção sugerida deve ser posta no contexto do mundo tal como era há 30 anos atrás, não como é hoje. Há trinta anos, a Guerra Fria estava ainda bem viva, e a Austrália estava a lamber as suas feridas depois do desastre que tivera no Vietname.
Podíamos ter enviado tropas para lutar com a Fretilin a repelir os Indonésios. Noutras palavras, podíamos ter entrado noutra guerra na Ásia, só que desta vez a apoiar os comunistas. No evento improvável de o público Australiano ter apoiado tal acção, os USA teriam certamente rejeitado fortemente a acção da Austrália de instalar um regime comunista na Ásia do Sudeste.
Não só isso pressupõe que toda a gente da Fretilin era comunista, mas que toda a gente que defendia a independência também o era. O seu artigo nem sequer menciona a conservadora UDT, com a qual a Fretilin formou uma coligação, que os serviços de informações Indonésios procuraram destruir.
Podíamos ter sido mais activos na ONU, mas o mundo dedicava a Timor-Leste o mesmo interesse que nós dedicamos à África.
Se somente! Durante anos, primeiros-ministros e ministros dos estrangeiros Australianos fizeram do terminar o governo da minoria branca na África do Sul a sua cruzada moral pessoal. E, a não ser que o tivéssemos esquecido, Canberra reconheceu a declaração unilateral de independência da colónia Portuguesa da Guiné-Bissau, um sítio de que a maioria dos Australianos nunca tinha ouvido falar.
Sejamos claros acerca da Fretilin: era e mantém-se um partido comunista com base na Frelimo e noutros partidos irmãos.
Não, houve Marxistas na Fretilin, mas(esta) não era comunista em 1974-75. Gough Whitlam disse isso mesmo no Parlamento. Ironicamente ,ela própria só se declarou Marxista-Leninista depois da invasão Indonésia, algo que Xanana Gusmão, agradecidamente, renegou.
A Fretilin teria instalado uma ditadura comunista liderada por gente como Mari Alkatiri.
Em Agosto de 1975, a Fretilin estava a apelar aos Portugueses para regressarem e para retomarem o processo da descolonização que teria levado a eleições multipartidárias, e ou á opção da integração com a Indonésia ou à independência.
Opositores internos teriam sido expulsos e teria havido massacres dos que apoiavam a APODETI ou outros partidos não-comunistas. Assassinatos por pagamentos privados teriam sido frequentes. Eventos recentes só confirmaram a validade desta análise.
Porque é que Hogue dá tanta importância à APODETI, um partido pró-Indonésio que tinha tão pouco apoio popular, que até mesmo os serviços de informações militares Indonésios desistiu dela e tentou alistar a muito mais popular UDT?
A razão porque os Indonésios invadiram foi para prevenir o estabelecimento de um Estado comunista, instável que teria sido uma base para a subversão na Indonésia.
Mesmo descontando a paranóia Indonésia acerca dos comunistas, esta presunção não era desrazoável.
O novo governo ter-se-ia virado para a China e para a USSR para ter ajuda, técnicos e apoio político. Ficaria de facto a Austrália satisfeita com um Estado instável, apoiado pelos comunistas Soviéticos na sua fronteira?
Este possível 'Estado comunista' enviou telegramas para a oposição conservadora em Canberra dizendo-lhes quanto bem-vindo era o investimento estrangeiro do sector privado.
Havia um significativo [!] corpo de opinião Timorense que favorecia a integração com a Indonésia porque isso faria deles membros de um país sério com a capacidade de os desenvolver economicamente.
Muitos desses foram antigos apoiantes da independência que foram ou co-optados pelas forças militares Indonésias ou forçados a assinar petições apelando á integração sob condições duras. A Indonésia um país sério? Não quando comparada à China ou Índia, que absorveram com sucesso e pacificamente Macau e Goa.
A influência cultural Portuguesa não se alargou muito para fora de Dili.
Então porque é que a maioria dos Timorenses têm nomes Portugueses, e porque é que a língua mais alargadamente usada em Timor-Leste é a que retira muito do seu vocabulário do Português?
O Português era falado somente pela elite, que agora o usa como um instrumento para dominar as massas.
Mas enviam as suas mensagens em Tétum.
Os Timorenses do leste tinham também laços apertados culturais, linguísticos e raciais com os Timorenses do oeste.
Somente ao longo da fronteira - as pessoas na região leste de Timor-Leste falam línguas completamente diferentes. A forma do Tétum usado no Timor Oeste é mais influenciado pelo Indonésio, enquanto que em Timor-Leste é influenciado pelo Português. de qualquer modo o que estava a ser proposto não é a integração das duas metades de Timor, mas a integração de Timor-Leste com a Indonésia dominada pelos Javaneses.
A fronteira era uma criação colonial clássica e a noção de uma nação lutando pela liberdade é um mito. Eventos recentes iluminaram os tipos de divisões que existiam então e que existem ainda.
Muitos países do mundo, incluindo os vizinhos de Timor-Leste, devem a sua existência ao acaso e ao desenho arbitrário de fronteiras coloniais. Ainda assim, mesmo pessoas de Oecusse, um enclave ode Timor-Leste no Timor Oeste, olham mais para Dili do que para Kupang, e é por isso que foi sempre tratado como parte de Timor-Leste, mesmo sob governação Indonésia.
Os Indonésios, têm a seu crédito, terem aberto mais escolas e instalações médicas e terem feito mais pelos Timorenses comuns em poucos anos do que Portugal fez em 400 anos. Foram essas instalações que foram destruídas 20 anos mais tarde.
Como disse Kamal Bamadhaj, que morreu mais tarde no massacre de Santa Cruz, "O Desenvolvimento em Timor-Leste é pela Indonésia, para a Indonésia". As infra-estruturas foram feitas para benefício das forças militares Indonésias, burocratas e transmigrantes.
Foram essas instalações que foram destruídas 20 anos mais tarde.
Por forças militares Indonésias vingativas, não por " Timorenses ingratos".
Infelizmente, as forças armadas Indonésias não foram tão competentes quanto os seus parceiros civis.
Quantos civis Indonésios estiveram envolvidos na governação da '27ª Província', e quantos desses não recebiam gorgetas?
Em vez de ganharem corações e mentes roubavam algibeiras e batiam nos corpos. A incompetência, brutalidade e corrupção do TNI, as forças militares Indonésias, foi a razão porque Timor não se tornou uma província da Indonésia e a causa de os Timorenses votarem no referendo contra a Indonésia.
Aprende depressa, não aprende Sr Hogue?
Os que culpam a Austrália pelo que aconteceu em Timor-Leste sofrem claramente de uma mentalidade neocolonialista
Ao contrário dos arquitectos da invasão Indonésia.
combinada com um entendimento irreal do poder que a Austrália pode exercer fora das suas fronteiras. temos agora uma entidade pobre, atrasada e instável à soleira da nossa porta, um Estado manifestamente incapaz de olhar por si próprio.
Serviu-lhes bem todos esses anos a adularem o regime de Suharto. Mas reparem, arranjaram o acesso ao petróleo e gás deles, vejam por isso o lado brilhante.
Abundam as facções políticas e tribais. No fim de contas este é um defeito e o problema dos Timorenses; votaram pela independência e obtiveram-na.
Não, o defeito (é) dos Indonésios, que deram aos Timorenses a escolha entre dois males. Sem surpresa, eles escolheram o menor. O referendo de Timor-Leste em 1999 não foi como o da Austrália - se tivessem votado contra a independência, nunca teriam tido uma oportunidade de tornar a votar ela outra vez.
Não somos os seus guardiões paternais e não temos um manifesto do destino para resolver todos os problemas da região.
Diga isso ao editor do The Australian, Paul Kelly, que no ano passado defendia 'Um papel mais pesado em Dili'.
Não devíamos esquecer o conselho de Talleyrand que o que importa na política não é a verdade mas o que as pessoas percebem como sendo verdade.
É por isso que está a escrever na folha de propaganda de Rupert Murdoch.
Bem vindo ao pântano.
Divirta-se na sua estadia, desgraçado.
Cavan Hogue, um antigo embaixador Australiano com extensa experiência diplomática na Ásia, é professor-adjunto no departamento de comunicação internacional na Macquarie University em Sydney.
Como oposto á Indonésia, desculpem, Australian National University em Canberra.
Postado por Blog Na'in em 05:57
You have incorrectly formatted some of the text, thereby confusing Hogue's writing with mine.
13 March 2007
No escaping the burden of bad intentions
Yet another piece of 'Jakarta Lobby' propaganda in Rupert Murdoch's rag The Australian
No escaping the burden of good intentions
By Cavan Hogue
The 'liberation' of East Timor is coming back to haunt us, warns Cavan
Hogue
ANY foreign policy is a compromise between what you want and what you can get, and any analysis must consider the alternatives. Most of the public emotion expended in Australia about East Timor has shown little concern for facts, logic or alternatives.
As opposed to the mythology of denial put out by the 'Jakarta Lobby'.
Let's start at the beginning.
Although you would never guess it from reading Australian media reports, the history of East Timor did not begin with the Indonesian invasion in 1975. For 400 years, Portugal ran it as a penal colony and did nothing for the indigenous people.
Really? In that case, why aren't the East Timorese outnumbered by the descendants of Portuguese convicts, just as Australian Aborigines are by the descendants of British and Irish ones?
We hear much about how Australia should have done something about the Indonesian invasion because of our debt to the Timorese who supported Australian soldiers during World War II. Nobody, however, showed much concern for the Timorese when they were being oppressed by the brutal dictatorship of Antonio Salazar. Why not? Is European oppression more acceptable than Asian oppression?
Ah, yes, this is the politically correct argument used by the 'self-hating white men' that make up the 'Jakarta Lobby'. No, European oppression is not more acceptable than Asian oppression, but if it does not involve rape, torture, mass murder and sterilisation, it is likely to provoke less of a reaction than the kind that does.
Conspiracy theorists argue that Australia should have done something to stop the Indonesian invasion of East Timor because we were told in advance what would happen and-or because we let them believe we would not oppose it.
There is no need for conspiracy theories, as there are a substantial number of declassified documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra to show this. In 1974, Gough Whitlam openly stated that East Timor should become part of Indonesia. What business was its future of his, particularly when he refused to reopen the Australian consulate in Dili on the grounds that Australia didn't want to get involved.
Even if we were to accept this argument, it is not clear what it is Australia was supposed to do. Any suggested action must be put within the framework of the world as it was 30 years ago, not as it is today. Thirty years ago the Cold War was alive and well, and Australia was licking its wounds after the disaster that was Vietnam.
We could have sent troops to fight with Fretilin in repelling the Indonesians. In other words, we could have got into another war in Asia, only this time in support of the communists. In the unlikely event that the Australian public would have supported such action, the US would certainly have strongly opposed action by Australia to install a communist regime in Southeast Asia.
Not only does this assume that everyone in Fretilin was communist, but everyone advocating independence was as well. His article does not even mention the conservative UDT, with which Fretilin formed a coalition, which Indonesian military intelligence sought to destroy.
We could have been more active in the UN, but the world took the same interest in East Timor that we take in Africa.
If only! For years Australian prime ministers and foreign ministers made ending white minority rule in Southern Africa their personal moral crusade. And, lest we forget, Canberra recognised the unilateral declaration of independence in the Portuguese colony of Guinea Bissau, a place most Australians had never heard of.
Let's be clear about Fretilin: it was and remains a communist party based on Frelimo and other fraternal parties.
No, there were Marxists in Fretilin, but it was not communist in 1974-75. Gough Whitlam said as much in Parliament. Ironically, it only declared itself Marxist-Leninist after the Indonesian invasion, something that Xanana Gusmao, thankfully, disavowed.
Fretilin would have installed a communist dictatorship led by people such as Mari Alkatiri.
In August 1975, Fretilin was calling for the Portuguese to return and resume the decolonisation process, which would have led to multiparty elections, and the option of integration with Indonesia as well as independence.
Internal opponents would have been purged and there would have been massacres of those who supported APODETI or other non-communist parties. Private payback killings would have been widespread. Recent events have only confirmed the validity of this analysis.
Why does Hogue attach so much importance to APODETI, a pro-Indonesian party that had so little popular support, that even Indonesian military intelligence gave up on it and sought to enlist the far more popular UDT?
The reason the Indonesians invaded was to prevent the establishment of an unstable, communist state that would have been a base for subversion in Indonesia.
Even allowing for Indonesian paranoia about communists, this was not an unreasonable assumption.
The new government would have turned to China and the USSR for aid, technicians and political support. Would Australia really have been happy with an unstable, Soviet-backed communist state on its borders?
This would-be 'communist state' sent telegrams to the conservative Opposition in Canberra telling them how much it welcomed foreign investment from the private sector.
There was a significant [!] body of Timorese opinion that favoured integration with Indonesia because it would have made them members of a serious country with the capacity to develop them economically.
Many of these were former supporters of independence who were either co-opted by Indonesian military, or forced to sign petitions calling for integration under duress. Indonesa a serious country? Not when compared to China or India, which have successfully and peacfully absorbed Macau and Goa.
Portuguese cultural influence did not extend much outside Dili.
So why do most East Timorese have Portuguese names, and why is the most widely used language in East Timor one that derives much of its vocabulary from Portuguese?
Portuguese was spoken only by the elite, who are now using it as a tool to dominate the masses.
But they get their message across in Tetum.
The East Timorese also had close cultural, linguistic and racial ties with the West Timorese.
Only along the border - people in the eastern region of East Timor speak completely different languages. The form of Tetum used in West Timor is more influenced by Indonesian, while in East Timor it is influenced by Portuguese. In any event, what was being proposed was not the integration of the two halves of Timor, but the integration of East Timor with Javanese-dominated Indonesia.
The border was a classic colonial creation and the notion of a nation struggling for freedom is a myth. Recent events have highlighted the kinds of divisions that existed then and still exist.
Many countries in the world, including East Timor's neighbours, owe their existence to haphazard and abritarily drawn colonial boundaries. Still, even people from Oecusse, an enclave of East Timor in West Timor, look towards Dili more than Kupang, which is why it was always treated as part of East Timor, even under Indonesian rule.
The Indonesians, to their credit, put in schools and medical facilities and did more for ordinary Timorese in a few years than Portugal did in 400 years.
As Kamal Bamadhaj, who later died in the Santa Cruz massacre, said "Development in East Timor is by Indonesia, for Indonesia". The infrastructure was put in place for the benefit of Indonesian military, bureaucrats, and transmigrants.
It is these facilities that were destroyed 20 years later.
By a vindictive Indonesian military, not by the "ungrateful Timorese".
Unfortunately, the Indonesian armed forces were not as competent as their civilian counterparts.
How many Indonesian civilians were involved in the running of the '27th Province', and how many of those were not taking bribes?
Instead of winning hearts and minds they picked pockets and beat bodies. The incompetence, brutality and corruption of TNI, the Indonesian military, was the reason Timor did not become a province of Indonesia and why in the referendum Timorese voted against Indonesia.
You're a fast learner, aren't you, Mr Hogue?
Those who blame Australia for what happened in East Timor clearly suffer from a neocolonialist mentality
Unlike the architects of the Indonesian invasion.
combined with an unreal understanding of the power that Australia can exercise outside its borders. We now have a poor, backward and unstable entity on our doorstep, a state manifestly unable to look after itself.
Serves you right after all those years of toadying up to the Suharto regime. But hey, you've got acess to their oil and gas, so look on the bright side.
Political and tribal factionalism are rife. Ultimately, this is the fault and the problem of the Timorese; they voted for independence and they got it.
No, the fault of the Indonesians, who gave the East Timorese the choice between two evils. Not surprisingly, they voted for the lesser of them. East Timor's referendum in 1999 was not like Australia's - if they voted against independence, they would have never had a chance to vote for it again.
We are not their paternalistic keeper and we do not have a manifest
destiny to solve all the problems of the region.
Tell that to the editor-at-large of The Australian, Paul Kelly, who last year was advocating 'A weightier role in Dili'.
We should not forget Talleyrand's advice that what matters in politics is not the truth but what people perceive to be the truth.
Which is why you're writing in Rupert Murdoch's propaganda sheet.
Welcome to the quagmire.
Enjoy your stay, cobber.
Cavan Hogue, a former Australian ambassador with extensive diplomatic
experience in Asia, is adjunct professor in the department of
international communication at Macquarie University in Sydney.
As opposed to the Indonesian, sorry, Australian National University in Canberra.
"There was a significant [!] body of Timorese opinion that favoured integration with Indonesia because it would have made them members of a serious country with the capacity to develop them economically"
On this....fine. I have no problem with the fact asserted. Now, lets have a full disclosure in the upcoming elections in Timor-Leste, of who precisely believed in this and acted in this belief, as opposed to who struiggled and suffered and died for independence. Lets have it out there so the People can judge them at the ballot boxes. Lets find out where Joao Mariano Saldanha, whose thesis was a justification of this view say so, lets have Mario Carrascalao say so, lets have Lenadro Isaac say so and many many others...Manuel Tilman who asked for an Indonesian passport once. Lets have it out for truth...as that the poeple can deliver the justice these people deserve. Where is the courage of their convictions? Do they still believe the same today? What made them change their minds? Relevant enough questions I would have thought.
These comments are simply brilliant!
I praise your courage to comment on Mr. Hogue's stinking rubbish.
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