K. Govindan reviews East Timor: The Silence and the Betrayal, edited by John Pilger, in New Internationalist Magazine No 253, £1.90 ANYONE who missed the Central Television documentary on East Timor, Death of a Nation, or who was too engrossed in it to take down all the facts and figures, will appreciate this handy publication.
Guest-edited by our favourite Australian, and in the glossy and readable format that the New Internationalist has pioneered, are facts like 200,000 East Timorese were killed between 1975 and 1979 alone; that 160 babies out of every 1,000 will die there before the age of two; that there are 14 distinct languages spoken in East Timor; and that along with coffee, marble quarrying provides a major export.
Entanglement
There's a useful focus on Britain's trade in arms with Indonesia, and the disclosure that in June 1993 British Aerospace obtained a £500 million contract for 24 Hawk aircraft - just two months after Douglas Hurd on a visit to Jakarta gave the Suharto regime a £70 million loan. Could these two deals have become 'entangled', like the Pergau dam affair?
A short article traces the ascent to power of General Suharto in the 1965 coup. Having drowned a million communists, worker militants and Chinese in blood, the regime continues the heavy-handed use of military force to suppress protests against the government.
There is however an important omission from the pamphlet: no mention is made of current attitudes among Indonesian activists, particularly the Javanese, towards the struggle in East Timor.
In Timor, the resistance led by FRETILIN continues its campaign in the rural areas and there has been an upsurge in urban non-violent protests by a new generation of youth. But these brave people cannot hope to match the mighty armoury of the Indonesian regime with its oil revenues and staunch support from Australia, Britain and the USA:
Indonesian opposition It is vital that those workers agitating for independent unions in Java, students clamouring for political freedom on their campuses, and intellectuals keeping alive the memory of mass- based socialist politics be convinced that Timorese self- determination should be taken up as part of their struggle, too.
In other words, the nascent movement in Indonesia for the overthrow of the military-backed regime must be convinced that they can never be a truly free people as long as they oppress another nation.