After 23 bloody years
Indonesia, East Timor and U.S. imperialism
By Deirdre Griswold
The Clinton administration and the U.S. Senate are claiming
the moral high ground in calling on the Indonesian government
to find a "political solution" to the status of East Timor. But
they are conveniently forgetting how this small territory
became enslaved in the first place.
The island of Timor is in the South Pacific. It fell under
colonial domination hundreds of years ago. Holland claimed the
western half as part of its vast Dutch East Indies. Portugal
took over East Timor.
Dutch rule ended after World War II when the many islands it
had exploited in the Pacific united and became the Republic of
Indonesia. However, Portuguese colonial rule continued in East
Timor until 1974 when, weakened by the loss of its African
colonies, Portugal yielded to the independence movement led by
Fretilin, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East
Timor.
East Timor's independence was short lived. Some 30,000
Indonesian troops invaded the small country on Dec. 7, 1975.
Nearly a quarter century of brutal occupation and heroic
resistance have followed. Some 200,000 Timorese people are
estimated to have died in this unequal struggle--about a third
of the total population.
The leader of the independence movement, Xanana Gusmao, has
long been imprisoned, along with many others.
Now, for the first time in all these years, top officials of
the Indonesian government-- President B.J. Habibie, Information
Minister Yunus Yosfiah and Foreign Minister Ali Alatas--have
made statements indicating that independence could be an option
if the people of East Timor reject autonomy in a
referendum.
So far, this has not been translated into any action, such
as removing troops from East Timor, disbanding paramilitary
thugs or releasing political prisoners. The East Timor Action
Network reports that the killing of Timorese civilians by the
Indonesian military continues.
However, even a mention of the possibility of independence
would have been impossible just a year ago.
What has happened is that the reign of General Suharto as
Indonesian head of state has ended. Suharto had been the
strongman running Indonesia ever since a bloody military coup
in 1965. The 1975 invasion of East Timor was carried out under
his orders.
Economic crisis sinks Suharto
Suharto was a casualty of the severe economic crisis
gripping Indonesia that last spring led to massive
demonstrations demanding his resignation. When the protests
began to move from peaceful student marches to street fighting
with the military involving masses of poor people, he finally
stepped down, leaving Habibie in charge.
The U.S. Senate recently passed a resolution, SR 237, that
called on the Indonesian government to enact political reforms
and protect human rights. It also urged the United States to
work actively to support self-determination for the East
Timorese.
But it is deceptive, to say the least, for the U.S.
government to lecture Indonesia today about East Timor, or to
deplore the human rights situation there. For it was Washington
that secretly backed Suharto's 1965 coup, which led to the
decimation of the Indonesian progressive movement. Estimates
ran as high as one million people slaughtered by the military
in fascist pogroms.
And Washington also gave Suharto its blessing for the
invasion of East Timor.
The day that Indonesia launched its troop ships--Dec. 6,
1975--U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger were in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on a state
visit. There was no uproar when they returned to Washington
amid news of the invasion. No cries of betrayal that Suharto
had lied to them. It was business as usual.
In all the years since, as news of the brutal suppression of
the Timorese struggle filtered out, the Pentagon went on with
its training of the Indonesian military. U.S. corporations like
Mobil, Atlantic Richfield, Tenneco, Union Carbide, Goodyear
Tire and Rubber, Alcoa, Freeport Sulphur and Uniroyal lined up
for contracts to exploit Indonesia's rich oilfields, minerals
and timber. A low-paid work force, mostly women, was rounded up
for sweatshops making high-priced sneakers and other clothing
for the West.
None of this has stopped now that Suharto has "retired." In
fact, the imperialists see Indonesia's deep economic depression
and the widespread opposition to Suharto as an opportunity to
take the reins of the economy more tightly into their own
hands.
Oil companies target Pertamina
Take, for example, what is happening to Indonesia's biggest
state-owned monopoly, Pertamina, which controls the nation's
petroleum industry. Pertamina was Suharto's way of making sure
that some of the great wealth being extracted from Indonesia by
foreign oil companies stayed in the hands of his family and
cronies.
Suharto did not nationalize the oil. On the contrary,
Pertamina served the interests of foreign capital very well, as
seen in the title of an article in the July 1973 issue of
Fortune magazine: "Oil and Nationalism Mix Beautifully in
Indonesia."
However, the general had to balance his own profiteering
with more popular measures, like keeping gas prices low and
providing a certain number of middle-class jobs for Indonesians
who would become a social cushion for the military regime.
But now, all this is under attack. A report in the Dec. 24,
1998, Far Eastern Economic Review says that "as the spirit of
reform spreads in Indonesia," legislation is working its way
through the parliament that would break up Pertamina's monopoly
in refining, distributing and selling oil.
The resulting competition--from foreign oil companies--will
help the government "peel away subsidies that provide
Indonesians with some of the world's cheapest petrol, diesel
fuel and kerosene."
Indonesian workers and farmers are already reeling from
currency devaluations, soaring prices and mass layoffs. This
"reform" will make their situation much worse.
The drive to break up Pertamina is coming from foreign
investors who criticize it as corrupt and inefficient. One
executive at a Western oil company said, "What we want is
Pertamina off our backs so we can regain control of our
businesses."
"Another issue ...," says the Review, "is personnel. Not
only does Pertamina prohibit them from firing, hiring or
promoting anyone without approval but also they say it often
applies pressure to replace foreigners with Pertamina-chosen
Indonesians."
This campaign by foreign, largely U.S., capital to sweep
aside any obstacles to their total control over the economy is
accompanied by sweet diplomatic talk about democracy, reform
and respect for human rights.
While born-again oil companies like Mobil and Atlantic
Richfield wax suddenly indignant over Suharto's corruption, it
is the threat of Indonesian nationalism that they find
particularly hard to take. "Pertamina's backers are taking
shelter behind a web of laws rooted in the 1945 constitution,"
says the Review, "stipulating that Indonesia's natural
resources belong to the state and that economic areas affecting
people's livelihood shouldn't be in private hands."
From U.S. imperialism's point of view, the invasion of East
Timor in 1975 was important to slap down a revolutionary
outpost that was seen as a potential Asian Cuba. Vietnam had
just become free. So had Cambodia and Laos. Washington was
fuming. An example had to be made.
But now, after so many bloody years, the war is a diversion
from the larger task at hand: stabilizing Indonesia in the
post-Suharto era so that the real rulers, the imperialist banks
and corporations, can continue to skim off superprofits from
this fourth most populous nation on earth.
Before the 1965 coup, when the independence leader Sukarno
was president, the buzzwords used by the imperialist sharks to
ingratiate themselves with newly independent nations weren't
"human rights" or "democracy" as much as "foreign aid."
After many struggles against bribery, subversion and CIA
dirty tricks, Sukarno shocked the West by declaring, "To hell
with your aid!" He was right. The military "aid" Washington
provided was really used to train the counter-revolutionaries
who overthrew the Sukarno government.
Any high-sounding statements from the U.S. government today
about reform in Indonesia should be regarded the same way: as
poison pills with sugar coating.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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