Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | Arena Magazine

Matthew Lamb on Australia and East Timor.

Article Excerpt
Reluctant Saviour Clinton Fernandes Scribe, 2004

In August 1999, the people of East Timor held a long awaited referendum on the question of their independence from Indonesia. They overwhelmingly voted in its favour. Shortly afterwards, violence erupted, reportedly between the 'warring factions' of pro-integrationists versus pro-independence militias. Finally, under a wave of protest by the Australian people, the Howard Government assembled a multinational peacekeeping force that moved in to end the fighting, and to assist East Timor in its first steps towards self-determination. So goes the official version of events.

But what exactly was the Howard Government's role in these events? This question becomes more pertinent when it is addressed against the background of Australia's complicity in East Timor's two and a half decades of annexation to Indonesian rule, first in Suharto's invasion of the Portuguese colony in 1975, and then in every subsequent Australian government's--both Liberal and Labor--endorsement of Indonesia's sovereignty over the East Timorese, and their strategy during the referendum process to maintain it.

Clinton Fernandes, in his new book Reluctant Saviour, looks into this background and examines the question of Australia's role by arguing that 'Australian diplomacy functioned in support of the Indonesian strategy all along. It functioned as an obstacle to East Timor's independence. When the Howard government was eventually forced to send in a peacekeeping force, it did so under pressure of a tidal wave of public outrage'. In doing so, Fernandes discloses an unofficial version of events surrounding the independence of East Timor.

Behind these efforts of 'Australian diplomacy' in Indonesia is what Fernandes calls the Jakarta Lobby, a loose affiliation of Australian policymakers and government officials, academics and media commentators, who have for many years provided the requisite moral cover for the Indonesian military's operations in East Timor and the rest of Indonesia. This has been done by ignoring, or when...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!