Asia Times: COMMENT: A chance to right a wrong



	September 30, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

COMMENT: A chance to right a wrong
By Michael Bhatia*

DILI, East Timor - Let us be completely clear about what has just happened here: a peace process, governed by international law, designed to determine how this non-self governing territory shall be ruled, was temporarily abrogated for the second time since 1975. At worst, the recently deployed armed peacekeeping mission may soon uncover evidence indicating a policy of ethnic cleansing or genocide. This is all too credible a prospect given that one-third of the Timorese population perished as an immediate result of the famine and violence following the 1975 invasion by Indonesian forces.

Despite observations by some journalists and diplomats, the post-election situation was not one of anarchy, chaos or disorder. Nor was it one of armed conflict between pro-autonomy and pro-independence forces in the territory. Instead, as can be immediately inferred from the evidence on the ground, the violence was an orchestrated collaboration between the Indonesian military, the police and the various local militias to annul the population's overwhelming vote for independence.

What remains to be determined is whether the violence was the active policy of the Jakarta government or the result of internal policy dysfunction, either between Indonesian President Habibie and General Wiranto or between Wiranto and the cadre of long-time officers in Timor, all of whom have substantial monetary investments in the territory.

All along, the referendum process clearly relied on the goodwill of the Jakarta government and the courage of the East Timorese population to withstand the threats of the pre-election period in expectation of a better future. None of the preconditions set by the United Nation's secretary general - including the prosecution of militia members for acts of violence, a ban on rallies by armed groups, and the disarmament of the militias - were met in the period prior to the election. This failure, coupled with the presence of Indonesians as the security agents, set the foundation for the future violence.

In the days immediately following the vote, international observers like myself saw our freedom of movement restricted through a choreographed process of psychological terror. In Dili itself, the violence escalated from the typical militia roadblocks and other forms of armed intimidation to the torching of houses and executions. Ironically, the violence was used to justify the deployment of additional Indonesian forces when, in fact, their presence had the opposite effect. Without the backing of the army and the police, the militias would have found themselves without the authority, security, arms and other resources they needed to operate.

Thus, the deployment of two battalions of Marines in the midst of the crisis solidified the militias' hold on the territory. As Professor Jarat Chopra, head of delegation of observers from Brown University, stated following the attack on the Hotel Makhota by several members of the Aitarak militia, ''It is a losing situation. The population is out of the city, the army is guarding the media, and the militia have control of the streets.''

Once the international witnesses finally evacuated, conditions only deteriorated. No place of refuge, whether church, school or the compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross, was safe from attack, with those Timorese who did seek sanctuary either executed, forced to flee to the hills, or forcibly removed to West Timor. As a result, the UN's mission evolved from supervising the transfer of East Timor from Indonesian control to the chronicling of human rights abuses and the assisting of displaced and at-risk populations.

Thus far, the Australian-led Interfet mission has yet to encounter any serious armed resistance, a prospect which will be determined by the degree of support and arms the withdrawing military provides to the remaining militia factions. Beyond the establishment of law and order and the disarming of the remaining militias, the UN will face an even more difficult task: the physical reconstruction of East Timor and the creation of an independent state with a functioning system of self-government.

No doubt, the high cost of maintaining such a UN presence in East Timor will spark much criticism. However, one need only compare this expense to the financial, military and diplomatic assistance the US provided to the Suharto regime that allowed it to maintain its occupation of the territory. Indeed, the US now has a chance to reverse the injustices previously caused by the crass geostrategic calculations of its foreign policy establishment.

(Global Beat)

*Michael Bhatia recently returned to the United States after serving as an international election observer. He is currently a researcher with the Peace-Maintenance Operations Project at the Thomas J Watson Jr Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

© 1999 New York University. All Rights Reserved. The Global Beat Syndicate is a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media. For more information, check out http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/.

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