BY BOB AIKEN AND JOANNE KUNIANSKY
SYDNEY, Australia - Over the last few weeks the Indonesian government's brutal 23-year occupation of East Timor has entered its deepest crisis. Under the growing pressure of the East Timorese fight for self-determination, momentum is building towards a vote by the East Timorese people on independence.

The proposed "direct ballot" was agreed to March 12 in United Nations-sponsored talks between the governments of Indonesia and Portugal, the former colonial power in East Timor. A UN "peacekeeping" force and an initial UN administration are being planned as imperialist powers in the United States, Australia, and Portugal seek to place their stamp on the emerging nation of 850,000.

While no date has been set yet for the UN-organized ballot, nor the form of voting agreed to, UN secretary general Kofi Annan told SBS television March 14 he expects the vote will take place in July or August this year. The overwhelming majority of East Timorese are expected to reject the Indonesian government's proposals for autonomy in favor of independence.

450-year struggle for independence
The eastern half of the island of Timor was held as a colony of Portugal for 450 years; the western region was a Dutch colony along with the rest of what became Indonesia. There were anticolonial uprisings against the brutal Portuguese rule, including throughout the 20th century. Slave labor existed at least into the 1940s, and as of early 1970s, the illiteracy rate in East Timor was 90 percent. The average income was among the lowest in Southeast Asia.

The freedom struggle in East Timor gained momentum in 1974-75, as other Portuguese colonies won independence. The leading pro-independence group Fretilin (the Portuguese acronym for the Revolutionary Front for Independence for East Timor) issued a declaration of independence in November 1975, following its victory over the Timorese Democratic Union and the Timorese Democratic People's Association, both of which called for incorporation into Indonesia.

It was immediately after this declaration that Indonesian troops seized East Timor in an invasion that was backed by the major imperialist powers. The U.S.-backed regime of General Suharto, who came to power through the massacre of some 500,000 Indonesian workers and peasants in 1965, launched a brutal repression against the civilian population of East Timor, which in its big majority wanted independence. The Jakarta regime feared that a free East Timor would spur independence struggles throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

The steps towards a ballot today come out of the refusal the East Timorese people to buckle under the Indonesian occupation, which has cost as many as 200,000 lives. Following the May 1998 resignation of Suharto in face of massive student- led protests across Indonesia against his dictatorial 30-year rule, tens of thousands of East Timorese have stepped forward to seize the opportunity to make it "East Timorese time!" Demands for the withdrawal of Indonesian troops and a referendum on self-determination have been at the center of the political ferment there.

In the largest mobilization against Indonesian rule to date, some 50,000 East Timorese took part in the February 16 funeral procession of 25-year-old Benedito de Jesus Pires, shot two days earlier by Indonesian police. Tens of thousands more lined the 2 mile route of the march.

In response to the upsurge in East Timor, the Indonesian army had increased troop numbers in East Timor to more than 20,000 by August 1998 and has been rearming anti-independence paramilitary forces since November. Faced with deepening social and political crisis across Indonesia, however, the government of President B.J. Habibie, with the urging of its imperialist backers, has moved to settle the East Timor question.

Habibie declared January 27 that if the East Timorese rejected an autonomy package his government was preparing, they could opt for independence. Then on February 10 the central East Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmao, was moved from Cipinang jail, where he was serving a 20-year sentence for leading the East Timorese armed resistance against Indonesian rule, to house arrest in Jakarta to facilitate playing a central political role in negotiations over East Timor's future.

"I feel that with talks with East Timorese from all sides, I can create an East Timorese nation," Gusmao declared as he was moved from the prison. He had already been receiving a constant stream of visitors in prison over the previous months.

Gusmao and other prominent East Timorese leaders have for some time called for the deployment of UN forces to help organize a cease-fire and disarmament, and monitor the withdrawal of the Indonesian army.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, one of the leading candidates for president of Indonesia in the June 7 elections by the parliament, has declared her opposition to granting East Timor independence. "The integration of East Timor into the state and the nation of Indonesia is politically and constitutionally legal in accordance to the will of the people of East Timor," she declared January 29. Megawati reiterated her stand that "Indonesia has always been a united country" at a mass rally of more than 100,000 supporters February 14.

In response Habibie has stated that, although he may not be reelected for another term, his successor would not be able to drop or put off the decision on East Timor. "It will roll like a snowball and no one can stop it," the February 16 Jakarta Post quoted him as saying.

Fight against pro-Indonesia militias
In East Timor itself, the human rights group Kontras has detailed the disappearance, shooting, and torture of dozens of people by the pro-Indonesian militias. This reign of terror, backed by the military, has created thousands of refugees - 1,800 in the Manufahi district, 30 miles southwest of Dili; 1,000 in Dili itself; and 6,000 in Suai.

However, many East Timorese youth are defending their neighborhoods and standing up to the vigilante forces. Pires was killed in one of these confrontations.

Despite these rising tensions East Timor is "no longer a place of pervasive fear," Sydney Morning Herald journalists Lindsay Murdoch and John Martinkus wrote in a March 13 article. Reflecting the opening of political space that the Indonesian military has been unable to block, they wrote that "for the first time since Indonesian troops invaded East Timor in 1975 the leaders of anti-Indonesian groups, including the outlawed Fretilin, are regularly meeting openly at a two-story colonial house on the outskirts of Dili. Just up the road Indonesian soldiers lounge under trees at a military base, sharpening their knives and looking bored."

They also reported that "high in the mountains of eastern Timor a squad of 200 anti-Indonesian guerrillas - part of a force of up to 1,000 across East Timor - have become the unchallenged authority, mocking a demoralized and discredited Indonesian military apparently unwilling or incapable of attacking. The pro-independence guerrillas have created new "liberated zones," they wrote "where they are greeted with waves, laughter, and food."

In recent weeks thousands of non-Timorese migrants, including traders, teachers, doctors, and government personnel, have begun leaving the territory. In the name of easing overcrowding on the island of Java, Jakarta has organized to settle thousands of people in East Timor over the years, often on the land of native residents. Shortages of food are reported to be looming in East Timor as traders leave, or balk at supplying stocks.

Australian gov't eyes oil in Timor Gap
The Australian government meanwhile has been stepping up preparations for intervention. "Behind the scenes," the Australian reported February 22, "East Timor has been the constant preoccupation of [Australian Foreign Minister Alexander] Downer and a team of diplomats in Canberra and Jakarta for the past six months."

Canberra, one of the few governments to formally recognize Indonesia's annexation of East Timor, is preparing to play a leading role in organizing the elections and providing "aid" to East Timor. A combat-ready battalion of 3,000 troops is to be based in Darwin, Australia, 300 miles southeast of East Timor, doubling the number of combat-ready troops at its disposal - the highest number since the Vietnam war.

One of the Australian rulers' central concerns is the future exploitation of oil and gas reserves in the Timor Gap sea between Australia and Timor. These reserves were divided up between Indonesia and Australia in the 1989 Timor Gap Treaty, with Indonesia's stake reverting, under international law, to East Timor if independence is won. The first field to be developed, with the Australian corporation BHP having a major stake, went into production in 1998.

The public stance of Australian prime minister John Howard has been that "in the short term a period of autonomy with Indonesia would be better.... If we just have an arbitrary grant of independence without much preparation or ongoing assistance you can have a lot of internal collapse in East Timor, even more than now, and there would be an enormous potential burden on Australia," he stated February 12.

Downer, in a March 1 speech to the Australia-Asia Institute, foreshadowed that Australian troops, police, and civilians would be the backbone of a UN "peacekeeping" force of up to 2,000. "Events have moved with breathtaking speed in the past few months. But they have not passed us by," he declared.

Downer was reported as saying that if the people of 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 and assist in running hospitals, schools, transport, the customs system, revenue raising, and setting up a central bank and new currency.

Speaking to a meeting of 100 civic leaders in Jakarta March 6, U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright admonished that "the goal must not simply be to slice East Timor apart or cast it adrift, but rather to ensure its cohesion and viability - whether through autonomy or independence." Washington supports "confidence-building measures, such as a reduction in the number of troops, and an international presence to reduce the prospects for future violence," Albright stated. A United Nations "contact group" on East Timor comprised of the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and possibly Canada is being formed.  
 
 
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