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How immigration is transforming our society.
The definition of “terrorist” has drifted far
from ground zero.
The return of the culture wars.
The Angolan war’s connection to suburban Arizona.
Market Magic's Empty Shell
Days of infamy and memory.
Let's review the tape.
Back Talk
The liberal media strike again.
Appall-o-Meter
Israel’s gravest danger is not the Palestinians.
Bush unilaterally junks the ABM accord.
Broken Trust
Washington gives Indians the runaround—again.
Mumia's death sentence is overturned, for now.
Coal Dust-up
Massey Energy, Inc. targeted by labor and greens.
In Person
Phil Radford: Last Call, Save the Ales.
BOOKS: Empire’s new clothes.
The Empty Theater
BOOKS: Joan Didion vs. the political class.
BOOKS: The Complete Works of Isaac Babel.
Ghost World
FILM: The Devil’s Backbone of the Spanish
Civil War.
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December 22, 2001
Days of Infamy and Memory
On December 7, 1975, Indonesia launched its bloody invasion of East Timor.
The day prior, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
had met in Jakarta with Indonesia’s dictator, Suharto. The recent release
of formerly classified documents by the Washington-based National Security Archive
now irrefutably confirms what many have long suspected: Ford and Kissinger gave
Suharto the green light for the invasion. (Among major U.S. news outlets, only
the Washington Post reported this revelation.) According to the meeting transcript, Ford assured Suharto at the meeting that
with regard to East Timor: “[We] will not press you on the issue. We understand
... the intentions you have.” Kissinger then assuaged his host’s fears
that Washington would protest the use of American weaponry during the invasion.
(The United States was supplying Indonesia’s military with 90 percent of
its arms at the time.) “It depends on how we construe it, whether it is
in self-defense or is a foreign operation,” explained Kissinger, suggesting
they should spin the pending invasion of tiny East Timor as something other
than aggression. He then opined “that it would be better if it were done
after” they returned home. About 14 hours after Ford and Kissinger’s
departure, Indonesia launched its invasion. An unnamed State Department official explained to an Australian newspaper a
few months later why Washington had condoned Jakarta’s actions: “We
regard Indonesia as a friendly, non-aligned nation—a nation we do a lot
of business with.” Washington thus provided billions of dollars in weaponry,
military training, and economic assistance—as well as diplomatic cover—to
Jakarta during its more than two decades of occupation. The result was the deaths
of well over 200,000 East Timorese—about one-third of the pre-invasion
population. Despite the efforts of the Indonesian military, however, the East Timorese
resistance endured and ultimately prevailed in a U.N.-run referendum on the
territory’s political status in 1999. The result revealed overwhelming
support for independence. But immediately thereafter, the military and its “militia”
proxies launched a systematic campaign of revenge, destroying 70 percent of
the territory’s buildings and infrastructure, forcibly deporting about
250,000 people to Indonesian West Timor (where tens of thousands remain), and
raping untold numbers of women—in addition to massacring at least 2,000.
They created what many came to call, ironically enough, “Ground Zero.” It was not until September 11, 1999—one week into the rampage—that
President Clinton finally ended all U.S. support for the Indonesian military.
Washington’s ambassador to Jakarta at the time, Stapleton Roy, explained
why it took a president who had once called U.S. policy toward East Timor “unconscionable”
so long to end Washington’s partnership in crime with resource-rich Indonesia.
“The dilemma is that Indonesia matters and East Timor doesn’t,”
he said. (Roy now heads Kissinger Associates, the former secretary of state’s
consulting firm.) While Indonesia’s brutal occupation is now over, Jakarta and its allies
are trying to bury their ugly collective past. Although a U.N. commission recommended
the establishment of an international tribunal for East Timor in January 2000,
the United States and other members of the Security Council instead deferred
to Jakarta’s demand to prosecute its own. Almost two years later, Indonesia
has not indicted anyone. But even if Indonesia were to do so, its planned tribunal
would cover just a handful of the atrocities committed in 1999 and completely
overlook crimes perpetrated from 1975 to 1998. Meanwhile, although a few voices in the House and Senate continue to raise
the issue of an international tribunal, the White House and most in Congress
remain silent on the matter, as they do on the question of Washington’s
complicity in the crimes. If forgetting is a perpetuation of the crime, remembering can be a form of
redemption. But the redemption must be one of action, not just words. Human
rights advocates must pressure Washington to actively support the establishment
of an international criminal tribunal for East Timor for all the years of the
Indonesian occupation. The United States should also allow full disclosure of
and atone for its own roles in East Timor’s suffering. Only in this manner
can the United States demonstrate that it is truly committed to what it now
preaches: that justice requires accountability from all purveyors of terror
and their backers—no matter who they are. Matthew Jardine is the author of East Timor: Genocide in Paradise and the co-author of East Timor’s Unfinished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resistance. He is writing a book on East Timor’s “Ground Zero.” |
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Like December 7, September 11
is now undoubtedly “a day that will live in infamy” in the collective
memory of the United States. What we recall about these dates, however, is perhaps
not as important as what we do not remember about them. As Adam Hochschild has
observed, “The world we live in ... is shaped far less by what we celebrate
and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget.” And what
Americans tend to forget—or not even know—is that December 7 and September
11 also mark, respectively, the beginning and the end of U.S. complicity in
one of the worst atrocities in the post-World War II era, that of East Timor.