Headed by up to 4,500 Australian troops, the force being assembled is expected to also include soldiers from the semicolonial Asian countries of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. Other imperialist governments agreeing to a role are those of New Zealand, Britain, the United States, Canada, Sweden, France, and Portugal. (See accompanying article on page 7.)
U.S. president William Clinton brushed aside protests by Indonesian army officials of the heavy Australian role in the intervention force. "The truth is the Australians are willing to carry the lion's share of the role," Clinton asserted, and "our people have great confidence in working with them." The Indonesians "should not be able to say who is in or not in the force," he proclaimed.
East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao welcomed Habibie's announcement, declaring, "It is up to the UN Security Council and the international community to act speedily—there is no time to lose." Gusmao has been staying at the British embassy in Jakarta since his release September 7 after more than six years imprisonment in Indonesia.
On his release, he said, "East Timor is facing a hopeless situation. I appeal to friendly countries to take immediate measures to help save us, to save lives, to help my people." Gusmao and other East Timorese leaders have long called for imperialist intervention under the UN banner.
Following the massive vote by the East Timorese people for independence from Indonesia in a United Nations–organized ballot August 30, the Australian government stepped up its drive to win UN sponsorship—and US backing—for military intervention in the emerging country. Prointervention rallies and actions took place across Australia as sections of the Indonesian army deepened a reign of terror in East Timor following the announcement of the ballot result September 4.
Rightist gangs organized by Indonesian army officers killed many hundreds of independence supporters and herded thousands into camps, including in West Timor, while as many as 300,000 other residents fled into the mountains. Dili, the capital, and other towns and villages, were deserted, smoking ruins within days.
Reports and pictures of the rightist terror in East Timor have dominated news reports in Australia, helping to fuel a prowar atmosphere, accompanied by editorials purporting to give a more sober argument for intervention.
In what the press touted as a "dramatic" action, Australian prime minister John Howard sent the Australian Defence Force's (ADF) Hercules transport aircraft, with 50 Special Air Service (SAS) troops securing Dili airport with Jakarta's agreement, to evacuate 430 UN personnel and foreign nationals, along with a handful of Timorese beginning September 6.
At the same time calls for Canberra to immediately send troops to East Timor escalated. Demonstrations and trade union bans against Indonesia were organized in cities across Australia, led by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and the Catholic Church. This campaign included rallies and marches of up to 25,000 in Melbourne, September 10, and 15,000 in Sydney, September 11.
Cardinal Edward Clancy, the head of the Catholic Church in Australia, wrote to Howard, September 6, "A peacekeeping force should be dispatched without a moment's unnecessary delay…Our Government has to redouble its efforts and leave no stone unturned in its bid to rescue the people of East Timor."
Michael Costa, New South Wales Labor Council secretary, declared the same day, "This is one occasion when the government can't rely on the US to be the world's policeman. We cannot stand and watch innocent people being slaughtered on our doorstep."
Rowdy protests organized by officials of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union targeted flights and offices of Garuda, the Indonesian airline, in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. On September 10 a crowd of 700 at Sydney's international terminal blocked departure gates to prevent passengers boarding flights to Indonesia. Following the three-hour protest at Sydney airport, Garuda's downtown Sydney offices were occupied for close to two hours by protesters chanting "Indonesia Out! UN In!" In Melbourne 40 building workers blocked Garuda check-in counters. Flight Centre, a national travel agency, encouraged travelers to boycott Indonesia.
The Maritime Union announced a nationwide ban on all Indonesian exports and imports. Ships left Port Botany, Newcastle, and Brisbane without Indonesia-bound cargo. In Burnie, Tasmania, 30 demonstrators protested the arrival of the ship Siskin Arrow. About 5,000 metric tons of paper pulp from Indonesia were left on the wharf.
Officials of the Australian Workers Union pledged that members working at five refineries would refuse to process crude oil from Indonesia—about 30 percent of the total processed in Australia. Officials of the Textile, Clothing, Footwear Union demanded that the Sydney Organizing Committee for the 2000 Olympic Games cancel any Indonesian contracts for garment production.
Major dailies and radio stations promoted the protests. At the September 11 Sydney march, placards and banners demanded "Force Not Talk," "Australian Troops to East Timor Now!," "Indonesia Out! UN In!," "Howard's a Coward," and "Stop the Indonesian Butchers."
In addition to trade union contingents, ALP politicians, East Timorese independence and solidarity groups, and representatives of the Catholic Church, the marches and rallies included the Australian Democrats, the Greens, student groups, the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), and the Communist Party of Australia. Max Lane, national coordinator of Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) and a well-known leader of the DSP, was featured on at least three television channels leading the crowd in Sydney from the platform in a "Send troops! Send troops! Send troops!" chant.
The big-business press noted that the same forces that had taken to the streets three decades ago to protest Australian troops in Vietnam, and more recently against wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq, were now calling for troops to be sent to East Timor.
On the same page with extensive coverage of the Sydney protest, the Sun-Herald also reported that the Ausi Freedom Scouts, an ultrarightist paramilitary group, was advertising for "patriotic Australians" to join them in East Timor "to stop the mutilation and massacre of unarmed East Timorese."
In the atmosphere of war hysteria that was whipped up in the days before the APEC summit in Auckland, New Zealand, September 10–13, numerous opinion pieces appeared about Canberra's alliance with Washington being "on the line," linked to calls for beefing up the Australian military.
In a September 8 column in the Australian titled, "US should repay debt," foreign affairs writer Robert Garran complained, "Since the end of the Vietnam War, Australia has invested billions of dollars in equipment to fight in a high-intensity war alongside the US, but spent less on the equipment and troops needed" for contingencies like Timor that required ground troops. Howard has already signaled increased military spending "in the years ahead."
The imperialist-led intervention is also aimed at keeping the East Timorese independence movement in check. In a September 6 column, "High human cost if the world waits," the Australian's Jakarta correspondent, Don Greenlees, wrote, "Whether the pro-independence Falantil guerrillas continue their restraint in the face of provocation will depend on how quickly and decisively the United Nations and foreign governments react. It is important that they are given every incentive to resist the bait of armed confrontation" with the Indonesian army-organized right-wing gangs. Disarming Falantil is a stated goal of the agreement negotiated by UN officials in May that led to the referendum.
Australia's rulers backed the Indonesian regime's invasion of East Timor in 1975, as did Washington and other imperialist powers, and formally recognized its annexation. An estimated 200,000 East Timorese died in the wave of military terror and consequent disease and starvation, unleashed as the Indonesian army asserted its brutal occupation in the late 1970s.
Earlier, in 1965–66, the imperialist rulers also backed the rise of the Suharto regime in Indonesia through a rightist coup in which gangs like the ones unleashed in East Timor over the past months were organized to help carry out the slaughter of up to one million workers and farmers.
For months ALP foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton has called for Australian troops to be sent to stop "East Timor's descent into a maelstrom of murder and mayhem." But successive ALP governments, as well as the current Liberal-National coalition government, backed Jakarta's brutal occupation until late 1998.
The imperialist-led intervention in East Timor today is driven by fear of heightened instability in Indonesia. With Suharto's rule ending in May 1998 amidst a deep and ongoing economic crisis, a new generation of workers and farmers across Indonesia is beginning to deepen struggles for their rights.
Others struggling for national rights elsewhere in Indonesia are likely to step up their efforts. The East Timorese, too, have seized the new political space to press their fight for self-determination forcing imperialism, and now Jakarta, to concede there is overwhelming support for independence.
The Australian rulers' aim is to place their neocolonial stamp on the emerging nation. In March, before Jakarta's agreement to a ballot had been secured, the minister of foreign affairs, Alexander Downer, said that if East Timor chose independence, Australia would provide police, under UN command, to work alongside East Timorese police and civilian administrators to help establish a transitional government. Canberra would assist in running hospitals, schools, transport, the customs system, revenue raising and setting up a central bank and new currency.
The imperialist-led intervention force being assembled today is to establish a UN protectorate over East Timor.
Bob Aiken is a member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union.
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