Untitled Document
U.S.-SUPPLIED aircraft played a crucial role in enabling the Indonesian
military to crush East Timorese resistance to its invasion and occupation of
the territory in the late 1970s, a report by an East Timor commission has claimed.
The offensives "resulted in the severe suffering and hardship
to tens of thousands of civilians sheltering in the interior at the time,"
the report said.
Indonesia, fearing a leftist takeover in East Timor following the end of Portuguese
colonial rule in 1975, invaded the territory in late 1976 and annexed it.
The report said the U.S. felt compelled to support Indonesia's military government.
That support included that of the Jimmy Carter Administration in the U.S., from
1977 to 1981, which had made protection of human rights a centrepiece of its
foreign policy, the report noted.
Efforts to reach Richard Holbrooke, a former UN ambassador, who served as the
Carter Administration's top official for East Asia, were unsuccessful.
Successive U.S. Administrations consistently stressed "the overriding
importance of the relationship with Indonesia and the supposed irreversibility
of the Indonesian takeover", the report said.
The report was prepared by East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and
Reconciliation. Copies were distributed by the Washington-based National Security
Archive, a research institute on international affairs. In preparing the report,
East Timorese officials received assistance from foreign governments, including
the U.S, and non-governmental organisations.
The study said U.S. officials generally declined to acknowledge the culpability
of the Indonesian military for the large number of fatalities in East Timor.
"Instead," the report said, "they maintained that the deaths
were due to drought, an argument that the commission finds to have been without
merit". East Timor was granted independence from Indonesia in May, 2002.
The report noted U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1999 persuaded Indonesia to
accept the deployment of an Australian-led international force on East Timor
to help end "massive" rights violations in the territory committed
by Indonesian forces and pro-Jakarta groups.
In so doing, he demonstrated the "considerable leverage" that the
U.S. could have exerted earlier had the will been there, the study said. The
Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation also claimed Indonesian soldiers
intentionally killed five foreign journalists, including two Australians, reporting
on the 1975 invasion of the East Timor town of Balibo.
