EAST TIMOR
Forced resignation of premier sparks protest
By
John Catalinotto
Published Jul 9, 2006 10:19 PM
Some 2,000 Australian
“peacekeeping” troops—who are looking more like occupation
troops every day—made a tacit alliance with opponents of the majority
Fretilin government in East Timor to force Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri to
resign on June 26.
Alkatiri only agreed to resign when faced with the
threatened resignation of President Xanana Gusmao, and to prevent further
violence in East Timor. He described the events in East Timor during the last
few months as “a coup.”
After Alkatiri resigned, anti-Fretilin
elements reopened violent attacks in the capital city, Dili. The right-wing
Australian media, including the Murdoch newspapers and ABC-TV, made
unsubstantiated charges that Alkitiri had armed paramilitary
groups.
Although they had to get through lines of Australians and other
troops, at least 4,000 Fretilin supporters courageously demonstrated support for
the embattled leader and their party.
As a parliament member, Alkatiri is
legally immune from prosecution. He has refused to appear to answer charges
about arming groups, which he publicly denies.
Fretilin is the leading
party in East Timor, and the only one with a mass popular base. It led the
struggles for independence—first from Portuguese colonialism and then from
Indonesia, which invaded East Timor in 1975 with the approval of President
Gerald Ford’s administration in the United States.
During
Indonesia’s brutal occupation of the small country, which lasted until
1999, approximately one-third of the population—some 200,000
people—were killed.
Fretilin won 55 of the 88 seats in Parli a ment
in the most recent election and became the leading party in the
government.
Commenting on its leader’s resignation, a June 26
Fretilin news release said, “We did not expect that the elected leader of
a party with an overwhelming mandate could be forced to stand down in this way
in a democracy.”
Of the leading Timorese political figures, Gusmao
is respected as an independence leader who was jailed during the Indonesian
occupation, but he is not with Fretilin. Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta is a
former Fretilin member who today is the Timorese political figure closest to the
United States. This Nobel Peace Prize winner even wrote an article defending the
U.S. intervention in Iraq, saying that “Iraq is experiencing real freedom
for the first time in its history.” (“Sometimes, a War Saves
People,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 13, 2004)
Alkatiri, who is a
leader of Fretilin, is often called an “economic nationalist,”
meaning he represents those struggling for both political and economic
sovereignty for the Timorese. His negotiations improved the share the Timorese
were to get from expected oil revenues, and he also negotiated arrangements with
Cuba to send 600 Timorese to that island to be trained as doctors. For these
actions he has become a target of vicious attacks in the Australian big-business
media.
Instead of rounding up the rebellious soldiers and gangs who were
burning homes in Dili and turning the Timorese into refugees in their own
country, the Australian forces held meetings with the leader of the rebellion, a
Maj. Alfredo Alves Reinado. This officer had received training in Canberra,
Australia, just a few months earlier.
The government in Washington, D.C.,
also considers Alkatiri an enemy. Lora Horta reported in the Asian Times on May
27: “The United States’ discontent with Alkatiri was clearly on
display when the U.S. ambassador openly supported the Catholic Church against
his government during street protests last year, with the senior U.S. official
even briefly attending one of the protests in person. Political insiders now
wonder about the United States’ connections to rebel leader Reinado, whose
wife works for the U.S. Embassy and helps to oversee the Peace Corps
program.”
Behind the conflict in East Timor is an attempt by the
Australian government and ruling class to get the lion’s share of an
expected tens of billions of dollars worth of oil out of the off-shore area
known as the Timor Gap. Most of the oil is in Timorese waters between the small
country and Australia. The Australian government, which is closely aligned with
U.S. imperialism and has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, has obviously
targeted the more independent elements in the Timorese government, like
Alkatiri.
After a violent outburst by elements expelled from the East
Timor army in the spring, President Gusmao invited security forces from
Australia, Portugal, Malaysia and New Zealand to enter East Timor. Australia was
there within days, and there are now approximately 2,700 foreign military and
police forces in East Timor, mostly under Australian command.
In the South
Pacific region, Australia also has occupation troops in the Solomon Islands and
in Papua New Guinea. They defend the interests of the big transnational
monopolies, including those based in the United States, that extract raw
materials. French and U.S. imperialism, both of which occupy islands in the
region and exploit their natural resources, have given diplomatic support to the
Australian intervention in East Timor.
The imperialist powers, with the
United States as their center, are united in their attempt to eliminate the
economic sovereignty of the rest of the world and to return these nations to a
colonial status. The Fretilin forces in East Timor are attempting to resist this
imperial rule.
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