commonwealth of australia official committee hansard · thursday, 4 november 1999 senate—...

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA

Official Committee Hansard

SENATEFOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE

REFERENCES COMMITTEE

Reference: Economic, social and political conditions in East Timor

THURSDAY, 4 NOVEMBER 1999

SYDNEY

BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE

INTERNET

The Proof and Official Hansard transcripts of Senate committee hearings,some House of Representatives committee hearings and some jointcommittee hearings are available on the Internet. Some House ofRepresentatives committees and some joint committees make available onlyOfficial Hansard transcripts.

The Internet address is:http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard

To search the parliamentary database, go to:http://search.aph.gov.au

SENATE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE REFERENCES COMMITTEE

Thursday, 4 November 1999

Members: Senator Hogg(Chair), Senator Brownhill(Deputy Chair), Senators Bourne,Lightfoot, Quirke and West

Participating members: Senators Abetz, Allison, Bartlett, Bolkus, Boswell, Brown, Calvert,Chapman, Cook, Coonan, Crane, Eggleston, Faulkner, Ferguson, Ferris, Forshaw, Gibbs,Gibson, Harradine, Hutchins, Knowles, Mason, McGauran, Murphy, Parer, Payne, Tchen,Tierney and Watson

Senators in attendance:Senators Brownhill, Hogg, Lightfoot, Payne and Quirke

Terms of reference for the inquiry:

(a) economic, social and political conditions in East Timor including respect for human rights in theterritory;

(b) Indonesia’s military presence in East Timor and reports of ongoing conflict in the territory;

(c) the prospects for a just and lasting settlement of the East Timor conflict;

(d) Australia’s humanitarian and development assistance in East Timor;

(e) the Timor Gap (Zone of Cooperation Treaty); and

(f) past and present Australian Government policy toward East Timor including the issue of EastTimorese self-determination.

WITNESSES

ASPINALL, Mr Edward Thomas (Private capacity) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 822

BIOK, Ms Elizabeth Mary, Council Member, International Commission of Jurists . 733

COWDERY, Mr Nicholas Richard, QC, Member of Council, Australian Section,International Commission of Jurists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733

DOWD, Justice John Robert, Chairman, Australian Section, InternationalCommission of Jurists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733

HOGAN, Mr Des, Refugee Coordinator/National Campaigns Team, AmnestyInternational Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 784

LEWIS, Mr Rodney, Convenor, East Timor Subcommittee, Australian Section,International Commission of Jurists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733

McDONALD, Mr Hamish (Private capacity) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 811

O’CONNOR, Mr Anthony John, Convenor, Indonesia/East Timor CoordinationGroup, Amnesty International Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 784

SAFFIN, Hon. Janelle Anne, Member, Legislative Council, Parliament of New SouthWales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733

UREN, The Hon. Mr Thomas (Private capacity) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754

VAN KLINKEN, Dr Gerry, Lecturer, Faculty of Asian and International Studies,Griffith University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799

VAN LANGENBERG, Dr Michael John (Private capacity) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 769

Thursday, 4 November 1999 SENATE—References FAD&T 733

Committee met at 9.24 a.m.

BIOK, Ms Elizabeth Mary, Council Member, International Commission of Jurists

COWDERY, Mr Nicholas Richard, QC, Member of Council, Australian Section,International Commission of Jurists

DOWD, Justice John Robert, Chairman, Australian Section, International Commissionof Jurists

LEWIS, Mr Rodney, Convenor, East Timor Subcommittee, Australian Section,International Commission of Jurists

SAFFIN, Hon. Janelle Anne, Member, Legislative Council, Parliament of New SouthWales

CHAIR —I declare open this public meeting of the Senate Foreign Affairs and TradeReferences Committee. I welcome representatives from the Australian Section of theInternational Commission of Jurists. Do you have any comments to make on the capacity inwhich you appear?

Justice Dowd—I am with the Supreme Court, Sydney.

Mr Cowdery —I am the Director of Public Prosecutions for New South Wales.

Ms Biok—I am also a solicitor with the Legal Aid Commission of New South Walesand I represent East Timorese asylum seekers.

CHAIR —The committee prefers all evidence to be given in public, but should you atany stage wish to give any part of your evidence in private you may ask to do so and thecommittee will consider your request. The committee has before it a submission from MrLewis. Are there any alterations that you would like to make to this submission at this stage?

Mr Lewis —I have a document which I wanted to hand to you which summarises somesubmissions that I want to make for things that the committee may deal with later.

CHAIR —All right. We will deal with that separately, as a separate opening statementtowards the end of the proceedings. I now invite you to make an opening statement orstatements and then we will proceed to questions.

Justice Dowd—The Hon. Janelle Saffin may be here shortly. We had hoped for each ofus to cover particular areas of interest and then respond if there were any questions.Unfortunately, I have a criminal trial. I should be there by 10.10 a.m. so I would need toleave shortly after 10 and sprint along Macquarie Street.

CHAIR —We will let you go.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE

FAD&T 734 SENATE—References Thursday, 4 November 1999

Justice Dowd—Firstly, we commend the Senate and this committee for concerning itselfwith the matters that you have. Mr Nick Cowdery is head of the Australia-wide evidencegathering project. He will talk about the processes and what we are providing to the HumanRights Commissioner, and the purpose of the gathering of evidence and our methodology.Mr Rodney Lewis will be expressing views as chairman of the East Timor committee—thatis, other than dealing with the evidence gathering project concerning Australia’s foreignpolicy attitude—in particular, our historical debt to the East Timorese. He will be expressingviews that I, personally as president, share but he will express the views of that committee.Ms Biok will be dealing with some of the immigration concerns, particularly the events ofthe last few days that have concerned us.

I wanted to deal with a specific matter, if I could. Ms Biok and I were both observers atthe referendum. She spent some time in Suai and had quite a few dealings with some of thelocal officials there and she will be able to help in that regard. My first concern is that theAustralian government attitude towards Indonesia has, over more than a generation, been oneof appeasement. You only need to go back to the attitude that was expressed in 1968concerning Irian Jaya and the 1969 consultation, so-called, to underline the fact thatAustralia has traditionally said, ‘We mustn’t offend the Indonesians.’

What we did in relation to Irian Jaya was an absolute disgrace in terms of approving aprocedure which was a farce in terms of consultation. I have spoken to at least one personwho was present at one of those. If you look back at the announcement made in 1968 byGordon Freeth as foreign minister approving the process, it underlines our attitude.

In relation to East Timor, the Australian Section has had a continuous maintenance of anattitude that the incorporation of East Timor was invalid, that the invasion was illegal andthat the events disclosed in subsequent inquiries concerning Balibo show that Australia actedwrongfully in not exposing the fact of invasion which occurred from 13 to 16 October 1975and which was consummated on 7 and 8 December in the taking of Dili by Indonesianregular armed forces. We believe that if Australia had protested at the killing of thejournalists and had protested at the invasion there may have been some prospect thatIndonesia would hold back from the invasion.

Our concern in more recent times has been with the continued repression not only in thelast few months but in the period up till then. As a representative of the InternationalCommission of Jurists, I protested in 1979 at the Fourth Committee of the United Nationsinto the attempts then to remove East Timor from the world’s agenda. We were successful inhaving the matter deferred. It would concern many that in 1979 the world was so littleinterested that the strong move to remove it from the jurisdiction of the decolonisationcommittee might have resulted in the issue being buried for a long time.

We sent a series of observers to the consultation. We also assisted in the process ofenrolment here in Australia and helped the local East Timorese to get on the roll. There wasquite a reasonable enrolment within Australia. However, in relation to the attitude of thedepartment, only recently, I attempted, independent of the evidence project—

CHAIR —Could I just stop you there. When you say ‘the department’, what do youmean?



Justice Dowd—I am sorry, I initially contacted the Department of Defence to offer,independently of the evidence project, the assistance of forensic experts in Australiaincluding the Victorian Forensic Institute, a government body and including a large numberof retired police officers who were prepared to assist in crime scene preservation, advice andevidence. After four attempts to get somebody in the legal department of the Department ofDefence to answer, I was eventually told by a senior officer of the department, whose nameI thought was Geoff Early, that there had been an interdepartmental committee establishedbetween the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Attorney-General’s Departmentand the Department of Defence and that a decision had been made by that committee beforeI had even spoken to anyone in the legal department to outline our purpose—I had onlyspoken to other officers of Defence—that they would not accept the offer of assistance andwould in fact ask us to defer everything to Mary Robinson’s inquiry in Geneva.

The advice was hopelessly inept in that Mary Robinson’s inquiry, at the request of theSecretary-General, is not about crime scene preservation. They are doing an inquiry as towhat has happened. They are seeking to set up a war crimes tribunal or some sort of tribunaland it is to that end that Nicholas Cowdery and others are gathering evidence to go to it.

We simply wanted to privately make available to the Department of Defence skills thatwere offered and would assist. Crime scene preservation is an art form where, obviously, thedefence forces in East Timor have a difficult task to do. However, they are coming uponcrime scenes and, with a bit of advice, they can do it better. We do not want to load anytasks onto them and we have studiously avoided making any comment about operationswithin East Timor, because that is a multinational force matter and we do not want to beinvolved in commenting or making their difficult job more difficult.

However, we do think, when an offer like this is made, that someone from theDepartment of Defence might have the courtesy to find out what the actual offer is. I did notwrite a letter because a significant number of the letters that we write do not get answeredfor some weeks. Therefore, I thought I would attempt this by making a series of telephonecalls. We are concerned that people are still trying to appease the Indonesians, both in thatdepartment and in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

There are two other matters on which I want to comment, and then I will ask mycolleagues to comment on their areas. We are concerned that there is a tendency for peopleto assume in the arrangements in East Timor that the United Nations, being a largeorganisation, has relevant expertise in all areas. The United Nations is not a country anddoes not have to deal with the sorts of issues that governments have to deal with. We wouldbe very concerned if decisions were made at the UN level that were not sensitive to theviews of the seven-person committee established in East Timor under Xanana Gusmao. Forinstance, it is my view that the decision of the United Nations to have Indonesian law applyin the interim to the East Timorese people is questionable. The East Timorese are notMuslims and they do not have more than one or two lawyers who understand Indonesian lawin a country where the law is still Portuguese colonial law because Indonesian law was neverrecognised by the world except for a few countries such as Australia.

Ultimately they are going to hand over to an East Timorese government when it iselected and that government in fact will not be applying Indonesian law. It would be absurd



to suggest that there would be judges and Indonesian lawyers available or actual Indonesianlaws to apply. I raise this to underline the fact that the United Nations must not make ad hocdecisions based on the opinion of a few when in fact consultation with the East Timoresepeople might show that there is a different system needed. They cannot pass laws in theinterim to cover problems which arise unless they have a sound foundation. My view is thatit is much easier to get Portuguese lawyers and retired judges or Portuguese speaking retiredjudges to come in and operate as magistrates to enable the legal system to work.

The final matter I want to cover is that there is a need—and the Hon. Janelle Saffin, whohas now joined us, will be discussing this—for some coordinating body within Australia tocoordinate the responses of governments, that is state and federal, because many of the stateswill have assistance to offer, whether it is in training in parliamentary processes, lawdrafting, training policemen, training nurses and so on. Within the states’ competence, manystates, as they do now, will provide training and assistance. That needs to be coordinated.Also there is a need for the volunteers and the various agencies that want to help—whetherit is with a pile of toys, blankets, food or whatever—to know who to deal with.

It is a matter of some urgency that Australia quickly establish a coordination office—something may have been done, but it certainly has not been publicised—so that companiesand individuals who are coming forward with assistance have a contact point so that that canthen be transferred over. There is a lot of assistance around coming to us, coming to ouroffice bearers, people just wanting to help in all sorts of ways and there is no meanswhereby they can do that. That seems to us to be a matter of urgency. I will hand over nowto Nick Cowdery, if that is convenient.

Mr Cowdery —As Justice Dowd has said, the International Commission of Juristsdelegated to the Australian Section what has become known as the East Timor evidenceproject. In September, we prepared a flyer which gives some information about that project,and I have half a dozen copies here that may be of interest.

CHAIR —For the sake of the record, could you identify that document?

Mr Cowdery —Yes, it is a document headed ‘International Commission of Jurists,Australian Section, East Timor Evidence Project’. It is a one-page document. That wasproduced in September and things have moved on a bit from there, but the document givesan outline of the project and the purposes that we are seeking to achieve by it. Very shortly,the idea is to capture from East Timorese refugees and evacuees in Australia and from otherpersons who have some direct knowledge of recent events in East Timor the evidence thatthose people would be able to give to a properly constituted tribunal, whether that be aninternational criminal tribunal, a commission of inquiry or, indeed, a court havingjurisdiction over such matters at some time in the future.

We sought to establish three matters by announcing and setting up the project when wedid. One was to indicate at that time back in September to Indonesians, to the militias and toothers that there would be a group looking into events in East Timor in the hope that thatwould provide some deterrence against the commission of further crimes against individualsand crimes against customary international law. I am pleased to say that there seems to havebeen some positive effect in that regard. Secondly, we wanted to capture the available



evidence while it was still fresh and the detail was still in people’s minds and before thatevidence became contaminated by people discussing it with others, sharing recollections ofevents, discussing hearsay reports that they receive and the value of direct evidenceotherwise being lost by what lawyers refer to as the process of contamination. Thirdly, wewanted to produce a body of evidence which we believe exists to demonstrate the scale ofthe events in East Timor in recent times with some reaching back into recent history as wellto support the establishment of an international criminal tribunal having jurisdiction toexamine those matters.

The project has been set up to take evidence from some Australians who have directknowledge of recent events and, importantly, from East Timorese who are presently inAustralia temporarily under the compassionate arrangements that have been made. Weneeded to coordinate this nationally, and I was the designated national coordinator of theproject. We have representatives in all the mainland capital cities. There are no relevantwitnesses in Tasmania that we are aware of, so we have not gone to Tasmania. In all themainland capitals, there is a representative of the project. There are committees andcoordinators in place in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The reason for that is that the bulk ofthe refugees and evacuees are in those three states. At East Hills in New South Wales, wehave between 300 and 400 people. My figures may be a little bit out of date, but it is afigure of that order. In Puckapunyal, there are about 1,400. In Leeuwin barracks in Perth,there are again about 400 potential witnesses. The numbers change from time to time aspeople are brought from Darwin to these other centres. Some people are beginning to leavethose centres and to return.

In each of those three centres—Sydney, Melbourne and Perth—we have established localcommittees. We have called for volunteers. We have over 700 volunteers. They are mainlylawyers but also people with expertise in investigating, in the forensic sciences, in theanalysis of forensic material and in other services—people who are prepared to donate theirtime to the project and to assist in the production of useable product in the course of it.

There was a need to train the evidence gatherers. While lawyers may have goodknowledge of individual domestic criminal offences, we are looking also at the commissionof crimes against customary international law. They fall into three categories: crimes againsthumanity, genocide and war crimes. The definitions and elements of those offences are nowbecoming quite well established through the work of the international tribunals at The Hagueand through the work being done for the establishment of the International Criminal Court.People needed to be trained and taught about the elements of those offences and what wasrequired to establish them and assisted to identify evidence that might be produced tosupport allegations of the commission of those offences.

We also needed to give people some training in the history of East Timor: the geography,the history, the demography and the culture of the people. As best we have been able to inthe short time available and with our limited resources, we have put together packages ofinformation of that kind. The third area of training that we needed to explore was theparticular requirements for dealing with severely traumatised witnesses. Most of the peoplewe are dealing with have suffered significant trauma, personally, through family members orthrough events that have happened to their friends, associates and members of their societies.There is a need for particular sensitivity to the vulnerability of those people in dealing with



them in this way, asking them in effect to relive the trauma in many instances and to give anaccount of it to perfect strangers. We have had the assistance of people who are expert inthose fields. In New South Wales, we have called on the assistance of STARTTS, theService for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors. Organisationsof that kind exist in all states. They sometimes have different names, but they have quitewillingly provided assistance and people to train our evidence gatherers in those aspects.

The present situation is that we are pretty well ready to go in Sydney. We have trainedvolunteers who are available and able to take evidence. There has been some evidencegathering already of people who are not at East Hills, but one of the problems that we arehaving at present is access to the people at East Hills. Justice Dowd has made some passingreference to those problems. The greatest practical difficulty is in telling the people in EastHills that we are here, describing to them what we are doing, how we are doing it and whywe are doing it and offering our assistance to those who wish to take part in that process.

In Melbourne there is a major training session happening this Saturday, in two days time.When that training session has been completed, a large body of volunteers will be ready totravel to Puckapunyal and take evidence from people there. Facilities have been arranged offsite for them to come to, a solicitor’s office, and the process of actually taking the statementswill then commence. In Perth they are well advanced, but again they are facing practicalproblems in speaking to people. Training has been completed and some evidence gatheringhas already taken place, but again there are some problems of access at the Leeuwin camp.

We, of course, have limited resources for what we are doing. We are relying very heavilyon the goodwill of volunteers, who obviously share our concern that there is a need for aprocess of this kind to be undertaken before that evidence is lost or contaminated, and weare moving as quickly as we can to take that evidence while the people are presentlyavailable.

CHAIR —I understand your need to get away. Do you mind if we ask whether there areany questions for yourself first, and then you might like to leave. Bearing in mind the shorttime that we have left, I am interested in your contact with the Department of Defence. Whydid you choose the Department of Defence as opposed to the Department of Foreign Affairsand Trade?

Justice Dowd—Because there was publicity in the press about crime scenes beinglocated and the press indicated that the defence forces were in fact preserving evidence. Ihave no confidence in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in terms of cooperation.The advice that has been my understanding has tended to be very frustrating in terms of notoffending the Indonesians. In talking to various officers I have constantly had a lack ofcooperation from Foreign Affairs. I thought that, on a project such as this where there aredefence forces in East Timor where they are probably doing the examination of crime scenesas best they can, I should offer to the defence forces expertise that was made available toour project, but which we obviously cannot directly use at this stage, to see that they do abetter job. It was a matter of methodology. The officers that I spoke to, having been referredfrom the minister’s office initially—because I spoke to the minister’s office first—referredme to AusAID.



CHAIR —When you say the ‘minister’s office’, which minister?

Justice Dowd—The Minister for Defence’s office. I was referred to somebody inAusAID which did not seem appropriate, and eventually was referred to a number of officersin the defence department who said that the legal section would ring me back. After abouttwo weeks someone eventually did, and I was then given the advice that our offer ofassistance should be given to the Human Rights Commissioner, without even finding outfrom any lawyer talking to me what in fact we had offered. It was a matter of making itavailable, because it did not seem to me to be a Foreign Affairs matter.

CHAIR —The only other question I wanted to ask was in respect of the statement youmade about a coordinating body in Australia. This is something that we raised earlier andright throughout this set of hearings. It seems to me that there is a need for coordination ofaid and a whole range of issues. Who should be the coordinating agency? Should it be agovernment department such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in whichpeople such as yourself do not appear to have a great deal of faith, or should it be somespecial coordinating body set up by government to overview issues that you have raised withus this morning, as well as all those other issues such as aid and so on, and who should fundit?

Justice Dowd—Yes. Each of the states traditionally helps countries overseas, particularlyin the legal area. For instance, the state of New South Wales has for many years trainedpeople in the Parliamentary Counsel’s Office within the Attorney-General’s Department.Even in this parliament here there is a capacity to train people in library services and all ofthat. All of the states have been involved in foreign aid for a long time.

The coordinating body needs to be external to government and representative of allgovernments, because most of the assistance will in fact come from states. States are theservice deliverers; it will be the nurses and policemen, for instance. We could even seekvolunteers from the East Timorese here that might get training in police skills, which couldhappen within the course of some few weeks in our various academies around the state.

All of those services can be done here, but we think, if it goes through any federalgovernment department, it will in fact get locked into the bureaucracy and the ministerialdecision making process. We think there ought to be a body representative of all of thosegovernments obviously chaired by the Commonwealth which is a separate entity with arelatively small secretariat to in fact coordinate, receive requests, put them to the variousstates and have decisions about coordinating various state activities.

CHAIR —And funded by?

Justice Dowd—Obviously, all the governments now out of their own budgets do foreignaffairs work. When I was Attorney-General we trained people in our parliamentary counsel’soffice to assist in Ghana and other African countries. We would send people over there andthey would send people here. It was assisted by AusAID. It basically should be an AusAIDventure, because AusAID is the one that has conducted this, and obviously AusAID wouldbe a major funder. It may well be that one budget will do. The states probably will be doing



enough by contributing the training themselves and will in fact be making a major financialexercise. I am sure Nicholas Cowdery trains people.

Mr Cowdery —We do.

Justice Dowd—We have trained people to assist out of state budgets for years. We thinkthe states can make their contribution that way and that probably AusAID or someCommonwealth body should pick up the tab for the secretariat.

Mr Cowdery —Could I expand on that briefly.

CHAIR —I have a number of colleagues who are champing at the bit to ask questions.We will come back to your comments.

Senator BROWNHILL —From reading in theSydney Morning Heraldthis morning, itwill be 15 November before the 54 members of the economic and social council makes adecision as to whether Mary Robinson’s committee will really do something. It is a longtime away. I would like to quote the article. It will take me about a minute to get through itand I would like your comments on it. It happened in Suai and the article is titled ‘Rape andmurder in sight of Our Lady’. It says:

What took place on the day and night of September 6 is not known in detail to Australian Army investigators.

That means that Army investigators are looking at things now. It goes on:

The number of victims and their identities are uncertain. What is known is that most were women and girls.

The evidence attests to that: the jumble of bras, underpants and sanitary napkins on the steps leading up to the church;the children’s leg bones; a hank of a woman’s hair; the scorched skeletal remains of two women behind the church;the thick bloodstain on a schoolroom door, covered by bougainvillea petals baking beneath the sun.

The article goes on to say:

The victims in the church compound, according to Australian investigators, were schoolgirls, nuns, other women and atleast one priest.

The articles continues:

The military investigators arrived at the compound on October 14, the day after Interfet forces came ashore on Suai’sbeach.

It goes on:

The bodies of the dead were pulled from the church, piled outside, doused with petrol and set alight. What was left ofthem was then loaded onto three army vehicles and driven away. The site of their cremation—an area five metressquare—has been ringed by stones and strewn with flowers. A skull fragment lies there, and the hank of woman’s hairand some bones and a little stack of heat-blistered belt-buckles.

What I am really asking you as jurists in your capacity appearing before our committeetoday is this: you can get all the anecdotal evidence you like, I imagine, from people who



are here as refugees in Australia at the moment, but unless you have hard evidence of fact orhard evidence of the scene of a crime how do you ever convict anyone? If you are going togo through all this trauma, are we going to lose sight of reconciliation in East Timor,notwithstanding the fact that the guerrillas probably committed a lot of atrocities as well asthe militia?

Justice Dowd—The process of reconciliation, we believe, is a matter for the EastTimorese—although there have obviously been offences committed on both sides—andlargely the concern of Mary Robinson’s inquiry which, when it is set up, will be concernedwith the last year or so—it goes back only to 1 January. During that period, it was mainlyaction by the militia, a significant percentage of which was West Timorese people, notlocals. Xanana Gusmao, as we understand it, wants the international body to undertakematters related to war crimes. We believe the East Timorese are now in the process ofreconciliation, but we cannot stand back and say, ‘Let’s not make a fuss; let them all washover,’ with international war crimes. We cannot just ignore them. We have a duty to the EastTimorese people—those who died and for those in the future in case there are borderintrusions—to see that, if there are war crimes, they are dealt with, as in other conflicts, byappropriate bodies. If we do not do something about war crimes, they will continue. Wehave a world now which is as violent and as dangerous as it has ever been, and we believe itis our duty to gain evidence. We believe a war crimes tribunal has to deal with it, providedit is not done at the behest of the East Timorese government—which it cannot be becausethe government is an interim government. That should be done by international agencies, asit is done in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Senator BROWNHILL —One head of police said, ‘I just followed rules.’ Where do youchase this back to, as far as international implications are concerned?

Justice Dowd—You do not convict people on direct evidence all the time. Juries inevery state are convicting on inferences and accumulation of evidence. Putting togethercriminal prosecutions is an art which police forces do all the time. It is not difficult to getcourts to draw inferences from such things as who was their commander at the time, whatconversations were held, what units were there and evidence from individuals about unitsbeing there. You do not have to observe a crime occurring to convict somebody and, in fact,most convictions occur without that. Crime scene preservation is an art—it is not difficult; itjust needs to be done correctly. The East Timorese themselves may ultimately try people,whether they are locals or Indonesians. It may happen in another country; it does not have tobe international. We just believe that evidence should be preserved so that the people of thefuture can make a decision as to what prosecutions will occur.

Senator PAYNE—On 19 October the Minister for Trade, Mark Vaile, convened ameeting in Canberra of Australian businesses interested in making a contribution in thereconstruction process. I understand hundreds of people attended and they found it to be areasonably valuable experience in terms of coordination. Is that the sort of thing that youenvisage happening around the issues that we have been discussing this morning?

Justice Dowd—Yes, but also the assistance that can come from various bodies outsidebusiness. Business is reasonably easy to coordinate because they have business associationsto do it. I am more interested in the individual volunteers, the people who have food,



clothing, blankets, toys, furniture or whatever—even second-hand cars. There may be peoplewith cars, which to the East Timorese would be solid gold in Dili and those areas. Ipersonally believe that, if the word went out that there was a central office in Sydney or inDarwin or whatever that could receive offers of assistance, those in the United Nations andthose assisting Xanana Gusmao can say, ‘What we need is this. Can you organise that?’There is no doubt that, from the numbers of lawyers who have come forward, there is a vastnumber of Australians who want to do something to help. It is not just business, some ofwhom might be looking for a commercial advantage—some may be doing it out of sheeraltruism, I do not mean to decry that—but there are a lot of Australians who want to help.We want to give them a focal point fairly quickly because, as you, Senator Payne, knowonly too well from your own observations, there are needs there today and tomorrow that aredesperate, and Australians can help.

Senator PAYNE—I understand that there are people in OCHA—the UN Office ofCoordination of Humanitarian Affairs—who are intended to be fulfilling exactly that role.OCHA is dealing with agencies that are external to business and external to government inan effort to identify those needs and coordinate through the rest of Australia. Perhaps theproblem is a lack of publicity or a lack of awareness.

Justice Dowd—Precisely that. OCHA is the appropriate UN agency. There may be,however, needs independent of that, but OCHA should be advertised and publicisedadequately so that it can attract the initial assistance. I think, however, that there is a needfor an Australian number for them to ring. The UN has its own views, which will obviouslyget better as they do more on the ground.

Senator PAYNE—I wanted to ask you about UN processes in all of this.

Justice Dowd—You just want to get rid of me, and then you can answer.

Senator PAYNE—It is not personal.

Justice Dowd—I understand your keenness to get rid of me—

Senator PAYNE—But that is personal.

Justice Dowd—and my colleagues probably share that view, but the difficulty with theUnited Nations is that particular officers acquire particular expertise, and there is a tendencyin the UN for a particular officer to have a view and that becomes the collective view. TheUN is not an agency like a government in Australia which covers the whole range of humanactivity. They do not have the expertise that governments have, and their view may notnecessarily be right. As we understand it, the East Timorese council will be moving toBaucau—Baucau having the better airport—and the UN will tend to be in Dili. We are goingto have two centres, so there will be communication problems. We believe that we shouldnot get locked down into a potentially bureaucratic exercise. The sooner we have anindependent agency, and Janelle Saffin will be able to tell you more about this—

Senator PAYNE—She is champing at that bit, I can see.



Justice Dowd—the East Timorese people do not have any money—they do not have anymoney to pay bills or to make phone calls. They do not have paper, office space and paperclips.

Senator PAYNE—What I saw OCHA doing in Darwin—and I visited Darwin to observethis on purpose—was coordinating, on a daily basis, meetings of every conceivable agencythat was operating in the area, both UN and non-UN. For example, the World Food Programwas working as a distributor with World Vision, Community Aid and CARE, and wasrepresented at that meeting at 5 p.m. every day in Darwin in a space donated by theNorthern Territory government. They were making a serious effort to do exactly what it isthat you are promoting and advocating. At the same time, the distribution of literally reamsof paper, boxes of paper clips, pens, pieces of fax and photocopying machines—although notmuch use without power, one would imagine—was part of the whole process. My concern isthat it is happening substantially in Darwin, from the Australian perspective, but very fewpeople know about where the umbrella sits, what is underneath it and how to access it.

Justice Dowd—That is correct, and that is the big need. I hope that can be done quicklyso that before your committee reports even something can be done in the next few days.

Senator PAYNE—UNICEF, with whom I have an association through the parliamentarygroup, have been participating actively in that process. I am hoping to encourage thatpromotion.

Justice Dowd—Yes, I wish you well in that process.

CHAIR —We are ahead of time, so we will let you go.

Justice Dowd—I am sorry I have to go; the only consolation I have in my day job isthat they probably will not start without me! Since it is one of his prosecutors that is there, Iam very confident they will not start without me. Thank you and I commend the committee.

Ms Biok—I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to discuss EastTimorese matters. Today I would like to talk about the humanitarian and developmentassistance that can be provided in Australia, and the impact of Australia’s migration policieson that assistance. It is clear that Australia is going to be a key provider of skilled assistancein the new East Timor. We will be providing professional people there in the interim toassist the United Nations and also to assist East Timor to work towards its own government.

More importantly, we will be providing training for East Timorese to take up the skillsand the technical assistance they will need to build a new East Timor. We also need to trainthe East Timorese to inspire confidence and self-reliance amongst their people. This task isgoing to be enormous. I was not aware of how enormous until I spent almost a month inTimor, especially the time I spent in Suai on the south coast. It is only when you spend timeoutside Dili in the rural areas and the villages that you realise how much the people havebeen disempowered by the Indonesian occupation. That is so with respect to two crucialissues.



The level of illiteracy is very high—I estimate it is 33 to 35 per cent. By illiteracy Imean people who could not sign their registration card to vote. That has come about throughthe culture where a lot of people were frightened to send their children to school because ofwhat the Indonesians did, the way children would be stopped on the way to school. It is alsopart of the colonial legacy that came from the Portuguese, I fear. That is one major problem.

The other problem is that there is a real culture of disinformation and a fear of havinginformation and collecting information. For example, it is quite difficult when you are in atown to find out how you catch a bus or which transport you catch to go to an outlyingvillage. People are very reluctant to give you travel information. They do not have theinformation. If you do not have it, when you are stopped by the Indonesians, you cannot beinterrogated about it. Over the 23 years, I think there was a culture by which people madesure they had minimal information, and that is something that has to be changed. That willbe an enormous task. We need to train Timorese to go in there and change this culture.

It is my view that there is a golden opportunity for Australia to do that at the moment.We can do it quite easily and effectively with people who are in Australia at the moment.The people I am talking about are the 1,600 asylum seekers who have been in Australia forquite a long time. Their matter still has not been resolved, even though some of them put intheir application in 1992. The reason it has not been resolved is what I call the legal myth ofPortuguese effective nationality and the fact that that has stopped the refugee applicationsfrom being processed. As a sideline, I would like the department of immigration to explainto me how Portuguese nationality was effective in Suai when there were Portuguesegovernment representatives there but did not stop the Indonesians from doing what they didafter the ballot was announced. This has been what has blocked them in Australia.

Most of the asylum seekers are young people. Most of them would have been under 25when they arrived and most of them were young people who were active in theindependence movement and who were forced to flee because of their involvement in SantaCruz and the clandestine movement and the demonstrations in the early 1990s. Most of themcame to Australia between 1992 and 1995. Most of them want to go back to East Timor andhave always wanted to go back to build a new Timor, but the one line they all have is, ‘Wewant to go back with skills. We want to go back with something to build up.’

Recently, when speaking to one of my clients, who has been very active in themovement both in Timor and in Australia and who is personally associated with the Gusmaofamily, I asked, ‘Are you going back soon? Xanana is going back.’ He said, ‘I cannot goback; I am ashamed to go back. I have nothing to take back. I have no skills.’ This is afeeling for so many of them. Year after year, at this time of year in early November, theyring and say, ‘Can we go to uni next year. I really want to do nursing. I really want to do aparalegal course. I want to do something so that I can become a social worker.’ But againand again I have to say, ‘Sorry. You are not a permanent resident so you cannot go. There isa special entry course for refugees at UTS, but that is not for you unless you can pay yourfull overseas student fees.’ There are two in Sydney who are going to uni, and that isthrough the charity and the kindness of various NGOs, and they are paying overseas studentfees.



Rather than taking this opportunity that we had offered to us by these people who fledhere with hope that we would look after them, what we have done is made them very bitter.They have lived here for five, six, seven years in a state of anxiety. Those of them whocame with their families have often experienced a lot of family breakdown and they have allbeen actively deskilled. Most of them are working in shops or in factories. A few of themhave been lucky enough to get jobs in nursing homes, but beyond that they have not beenable to get jobs. There are virtually none who have had access to computer education. Whatthis has done is create a very negative attitude towards Australians. They feel cheated. Thevast bulk of them, when you ask about Portuguese nationality, say, ‘But I was only fouryears old when the Portuguese went, it means nothing to me.’

This issue of Portuguese nationality has been put on hold. The minister adjourned thecase that he appealed to the Full Bench of the Federal Court—I am talking about theMinister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs—and he has indicated that he is going tomake some decision in the next month to resolve the status of the asylum seekers. I wouldask the Senate to consider this issue and perhaps lobby the minister for any visa that may beconsidered for these people, for any solution to this problem that ensures that they aregranted access to tertiary education so that they can go and get the skills that will be neededin Timor.

They are the right people to do it, they are young and they are keen. A lot of them havedone their High School Certificate in schools in Australia. They have excellent English skillsand they have good links with the Australian community that has helped them. The vast bulkof them have been able to survive with virtually no financial assistance through theassistance of the church and NGOs in Australia. These are the people that in the future willbe the educators, the trainers, the people who will go out to the community and change thatculture of disinformation. They will be the people who will teach the literacy programs.They will be the public servants and the new government of Timor.

We need to change that negativity that they feel towards the Australian governmentbecause of the way they have been treated. It is something very important and somethingthat we can very easily do. It would be so silly to send them all back and then bring themback to do courses or to send people to Timor to do courses. They are here now and theyshould be trained now. The second immigration issue I want to relate to the committee—

CHAIR —Just before you proceed, I do not want to be rude but there are two more ofyour colleagues who want to speak. There are a number of colleagues here who want to askquestions and we do have another witness due at 10.45. I draw your attention to the timemainly for your own sake, otherwise you will not get questions from colleagues up here.

Ms Biok—I will try to be very brief. I am concerned with the statement that was readout to the people at both the Leeuwin camp and the East Hills camp on Tuesday. It was readout by the DIMA centre manager. The East Timorese evacuees were told that there was aplane leaving for Dili next week, that if they did not get on to that plane it was uncertainwhen there would be another plane and those who put their name forward would be givenassistance to re-establish their lives in Dili. That assistance consisted of plastic sheeting, 50kilos of rice, two water containers, oil and some dried food. I consider it outrageous that thisis all we can offer at this stage.



CHAIR —Do you have a copy of that statement?

Ms Biok—It was not given in writing, it was read out. But I have heard that from peopleat East Hills who are working in the pastoral care centre there and it has also been referredto us from Point Leeuwin.

CHAIR —Who gave that statement?

Ms Biok—Larry Tanner, the centre manager at East Hills.

Senator QUIRKE—Is he a DIMA official?

Ms Biok—Yes. It was the centre manager also in Point Leeuwin Camp. As Justice Dowdhas pointed out, the Timorese authorities are planning to move from Dili to Baucau, becausethere is no infrastructure in Dili. The people who will be going back—the people who arehere in East Hills—are people from Dili. They are the people who were in the UNAMETcompound. They will not have the links to go back to Baucau, and so they are going back toan area that not even the government will remain in.

More importantly, I am concerned about the medical and counselling facilities that willnot be available for these people if they go back. We have got to make sure that, if we aresending people back, there is on the ground medical support for them and especiallycounselling support for them. I go out to East Hills quite regularly and I am still veryconcerned at the emotional state of a lot of these people. I know that they want to go backto find their families, but we do not know what they will find. They certainly need to haveongoing counselling support. To send them back with plastic sheeting and nothing else isreally very cruel.

I do not like to draw comparisons, but some comparisons are already being drawn by theEast Timorese community. They are asking why it is that the Kosovars could stay for sixmonths and were given $3,000, when they were going back to a more stable situation, butthat the Timorese are being encouraged to go back to nothing. This again is confirming theview that Australia has a second-hand treatment for the East Timorese who fled here forprotection. Certainly it is not going to create a good positive attitude in the eyes of theyoung East Timorese when they go back to build their new country.

Senator BROWNHILL —I guess it would be difficult to give the ones who were here aheap of money, if the ones back there have not got any money, as Justice Dowd said earlier.There is no economy there at all, is there, at this stage?

Ms Biok—But certainly we could provide on the ground support so that when they goback there is something there—for example, if they go back to find that their whole familyhas been massacred, there will be counselling services they can go to. A lot of them are stillquite ill, and they will go back there to no sanitation and the rainy season, with only a bit ofplastic sheeting. Where is the medical support they are going to get? It is my view that theyshould be encouraged to stay here longer and at least go back healthy and fit to take up thechallenges.



CHAIR —Thank you. Ms Saffin has a statement.

Ms Saffin—I did not say when I introduced myself that I am also a member of theAustralian Section of the International Commission of Jurists. I want to talk about two keymatters. One is the political and institutional structure and particularly CNRT’s role, and theother is the coordinated response that we can make from Australia—to go on a little fromwhat Justice Dowd said.

To start with, I am quite pleased with Australia’s response so far, in terms of our militaryresponse and taking up the role of heading up INTERFET. I hope that, when the UN takesover that peacekeeping role, Australia is still able to maintain some position. It has beenmade clear by the CNRT, through Dr Jose Ramos Horta, about who should not head up thatmission. I am not so pleased about Australia’s position over the past 24 years vis-a-vis EastTimor. It was a legal lie, a legal untruth, as I call it. It is a bit similar to Terra Nullius. Itwas an absolute legal fiction that we gave de jure recognition to the Indonesian invasion ofEast Timor.

I have a letter here that I want to read from a friend of mine who lives in Macau. It waswritten to Mr Steve Waters, Deputy Consul-General and to Mr David Tough, Consul inHong Kong. It reads:

During the II World War, my Father was killed by Japanese, because he had provided provisions to the crew of RANFrigate Voyage which went aground in the beach of Nutur, Betano, South Coast of East Timor.

Now I accept the killing of my Father, because the Australian soldiers went to save my Country.

I am happy to accompany the role played by the Australian Government during the crisis of TIMOR LOROSAE.

I am glad to see the DIGGERS who gallantly were the first contingentof Peacekeeping force to land in East TimorSoil, precisely DILI in order to save my People from genocide, caused by Indonesian armed forces.

You are writing a brilliant chapter in Australian History, because you have fought for a noble cause, for defending theRight of Timorese People who despite all the odds and difficulties, had asserted their will to be INDEPENDENT.

THANK YOU

LONG LIVE AUSTRALIA

Macau, 22nd of September 1999

Fr. Francisco Fernandes

I will table that letter. I think that was a very generous letter, given the history that we havehad in East Timor. Father told me that he finally accepted the death of his father when theAustralian troops landed recently of East Timor soil.

The matter I wanted to talk about was the political structure. The political structure thatis developing in East Timor will actually determine the formal or institutional structure, andthat cannot really be determined by the United Nations—although they will have a large rolein it—and UNTAET. The CNRT will play a key role in the institutional structure but firstly



in the political structure. They have been asked to play a key role as well in the transition;yet they do not have any support. We could give them support from Australia.

The CNRT, in a sense, are not saying they are a government, because Xanana Gusmaosays very clearly, ‘We are not an interim government,’ but in a sense they are the people’schoice: they have the mandate from the people—and I think from the internationalcommunity—to play a key role in rebuilding and shaping the governance; yet they have beenasked to do it without any resources whatsoever. Resources are going into East Timor byway of humanitarian aid and some infrastructure aid, but there is none actually going to theCNRT. If you can imagine, it is a bit like asking the Prime Minister to decide on a changein Australia—say that we were to change our legal system, and had to determine fiscal andmonetary policy, formulate an education system and things like that—without taking advice.We just would not do it. We have a fully functioning political system and yet we barelychange a light bulb without taking advice. Governments take advice on all sorts of things.

The CNRT are in a position where they are making fundamental and monumentaldecisions and will be called upon more and more to do that. Yet they do not have a team ofadvisers or a support base around them. That is one of the ways that we can actually help.As Justice Dowd said, they do not have phones or computers or resources. If they get aphone, it is because someone has donated a phone and has underwritten to pay the bill for Xmonths—but not indefinitely. That is a satellite phone, and the satellite phones are veryexpensive, as I found out when I was in East Timor. I used it for only four days, and my billwas astronomical—and the phone was much in demand as well—because I was the only onewho had a sat phone.

So it is really important that we actually examine ways we can do that. We could do thatnow. I am not just talking about giving support through AusAID or through the Centre forDemocratic Institutions under Roland Rich’s directorship. They do good work, but I amtalking about saying, ‘Here is an allocation of money so that you can actually hire a team ofadvisers and experts around you, to help you make these decisions.’ It is something that isbadly needed.

The second issue is that I am aware of the need to have a coordinated response fromAustralia. I am aware of the meeting that Senator Payne talked about with Mark Vaile. Itwas well attended and was a good information session. I am also aware of the UnitedNations coordinating office in Darwin. I am also aware that a key Australian organisationhas said recently that it is running its own show because it finds it too cumbersome to workthrough the UN processes. I will tell you later who the people are, but not on the record.You might like to talk to them about it.

Also, there are many businesses who come to us individually because they know that weare active in East Timor and that I have daily links with the people in the CNRT. I getrequests from a diverse range of huge Australian companies wanting to do something but notbeing too sure about how to do it. I read in today’sSydney Morning Heraldsomethingabout John Howard, the Prime Minister, mentioning that AusAID might play a key role, andthat is good. But we need a national coordinated response. We are going to have a longrelationship with East Timor. That is self-evident. I do not need to provide evidence of that.



Geographically and politically, our relationship is going to continue for a long time anddevelop in a rather close way. It would be appropriate for us to set up that nationalcoordinated response. Some of the state governments are already discussing ways in whichthey can help. I know that we are doing that in New South Wales by way of training,releasing people and bringing people in as supernumeraries. We already do that with Fiji,Vanuatu and other places. We are doing it now. In fact, one of the people who is helpingCNRT and Xanana Gusmao is actually a New South Wales government employee who hasbeen released to assist with that task.

A national coordinated response and a national coordinating committee with all the statesrepresented would make good sense. It would make it a lot easier and it means that youwould not necessarily have to go to AusAID. When you go to AusAID they are geared up todeal with projects, project submissions and channelling people into areas. Some of the stuffthat happens now really needs to happen in an ad hoc way. A national coordinated bodywould be able to do that.

On the point that Liz was making about education, one of the requests we have hadalready is: can Australia help provide scholarships in tertiary education and vocationaltraining and will we look at that issue on a long-term basis, particularly over the next 10years, to make sure that people can come here to attend universities, et cetera, withscholarships?

The other area in which we could help under the national coordinated response is withthe transition to democracy, the transition to government. Many people in Australia—including myself, Justice Dowd and others—have had particular experience in working withdemocracy movements and people on transition to government, transition to democracy, inactually providing blueprints, documents and training about preparedness. It would be usefulif, under a coordinated response, we were able to offer some of that assistance.

There are some people who do it—although not a lot. One of the things that is happeningat the moment is that the World Bank is going in and it has divided up how it is looking athelping in all the sector areas. Again, we could complement some of those processes that arehappening now. We have easy access to East Timor and we can make access available tothem.

The other issue I want to speak on very briefly is in terms of our foreign affairs policies.One of the things I observed in my travels and work within the region, particularly in theAsia-Pacific area, is Australia’s lack of engagement with or knowledge of a whole range ofdemocracy movements, forces and people. For example, when we end up with a differentgovernment in Indonesia, as we have now, we have very weak links with the people whohave been active in the democracy movement. I work a lot in Thailand. I work with a lot ofnon-government organisations in the region. I also get to meet a lot of members ofgovernments as well. Our lack of contacts always surprises me when I am in the regions. Forexample, I was in Cambodia during the elections as an observer and the United States,Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, Taiwan and a whole range of other countries have set up whatI call a second arm of foreign policy.



They have formal structures separate from their foreign affairs policies which allow themto engage in, assist and operate with democratic forces and movements in those countries.Through Great Britain, it is the Westminster Foundation. After World War II, Germany setone up. They are usually based on the major parties. The major parties have a say in thoseorganisations or are built into those organisations. The National Endowment for Democracyin the United States has four committees that operate under it—the NDI, the NationalDemocratic Institute; the IRI, the International Republican Institute, which represents majorparties; the Centre for International Private Enterprise; and the trade union arm. Those fourbodies are able to engage in the region in ways that Australia does not. I observedsometimes that our links are not as strong as those of other countries.

CHAIR —We will go straight to Mr Lewis. Unfortunately, I think we will get to thestage where we will not have time for questions, and that is unfortunate. Mr Lewis, you willhave 10 minutes.

Mr Lewis —The Australian Section of the ICJ has had about 24 years of connection withthis East Timor issue, commencing in January of 1975, when I attended the Indonesianembassy in Canberra seeking permission for Justice Dowd and me to enter the territory tosee the conditions as they then existed. Our connection with that issue has been virtuallyunbroken since then. Your terms of reference refer to:

(f) past and present Australian Government policy toward East Timor . . .

To the best of my knowledge—and one of your committee will no doubt disabuse me if Iam wrong—it is the first time a committee of this kind has opened the door to a review ofthe Australian policy unlimited in time towards the territory. Upon seeing that, I accepted theinvitation with alacrity, and that is why I have submitted to you my paper, which I preparedin 1994, on the issue of what I and many others claim to be the breach of Portugueseneutrality of the Portuguese colony, as it then was, of East Timor on 17 December 1941. Imight say that the paper was written somewhat in anger at the possibility that I had reachedthe age that I had—and I will not disclose what that was—having proceeded through theeducation system of this country utterly in ignorance of what you will see in my paper Ihave called the most egregious ‘breach of neutrality’ which was perpetrated by any Alliedforce anywhere in the Second World War. Please would somebody disabuse me of thatproposition? Nobody yet has and, as an Australian, it worries me greatly.

I will not particularly address myself to the paper that I have submitted and,unfortunately, we will not have time to refer to it during questions either, apparently. Butmay I put, with the greatest of respect, to you that this committee has an historicopportunity, an opportunity to set the record straight insofar as Australia’s breach ofneutrality was concerned, bearing in mind that the outcome of that breach was the loss of,arguably, more than 40,000 lives of East Timorese people in the then colony of PortugueseEast Timor.

Your committee has the opportunity to, in the words of our Prime Minister, ‘do the rightthing’ by the people of East Timor and moreover—and, unfortunately, again I regret we donot have the opportunity to discuss this at length but I can refer to you to some of theauthorities—to acknowledge the myth that the Japanese Imperial Force would have invaded



East Timor in any event. I just leave you with the thought that Portuguese Macau was leftuntouched during the whole of the course of the Second World War.

Lastly, I would ask the committee to seriously address the invitation which has passeddown through approximately 58 years from our then High Commissioner in London, formerPrime Minister S.M. Bruce, who in addressing his Prime Minister on 28 December 1941said:

. . . the hard facts are that Portuguese reaction to the landing without previous consent of the Portuguese before actualattack by the Japanese was misjudged and the sooner this is admitted, the better.

Those words of Mr Bruce come down to us 58 years in the transmission. I submit to youthat you have this opportunity to do the bidding of Mr Bruce, because Mr Curtin did not,subsequent Australian governments have not and certainly our Department of Defence doesnot. If senators have read my paper, they will note my respectful submission that in 1994 theSenate was misled by our own Department of Defence in responding to a question whichwas addressed to the representative of the Minister for Defence. It stands at the very end ofmy paper. I will not take you to it, but I will leave it at that.

I would seek your leave, Mr Chairman, to hand to you a set of propositions, orrecommendations, which deal with the outcome of accepting this notion that we have anobligation to the people of East Timor which began on 17 December 1941. The obligationthat we have to these people did not begin—as is popularly understood and as your nextwitness perfectly well understands, better than all of us in this room—when they shed bloodfor Australian lives; no, it goes back to 17 December, when we made an egregious error inbreaching neutrality and thus bringing the Second World War to these people whereotherwise it would not have occurred.

So I have suggested at point 1 that the committee recommend that a national apology bemade but, failing that, that at least the committee acknowledge the error to which Mr Brucereferred 58 years ago; that there be such things as the construction of memorials in thiscountry to the sacrifice of the people of East Timor in supporting our forces in the SecondWorld War. There is not one brick—

Mr Uren interjecting—

Mr Lewis —I am corrected. He says there is a small one at Marrickville. I suggest thatthe committee recommend to the Minister for Foreign Affairs that he encourage the RSL toinclude the East Timorese in Anzac Day marches, and perhaps even to invite some of thesepeople who risked their lives, whose brothers, whose sons, whose daughters, whose fathers,whose uncles, lost their lives, some of them in terrible circumstances; extend the definitionof ‘veteran’ under veterans’ affairs legislation to include those East Timorese veterans of theconflict who are living here, to enable them to take advantage of health and pension benefits;waive formalities in relation to refugee applications—there are details to that suggestion and,since I have one minute, I will not detain you about those; very importantly, commence avigorous education program to rectify the ignorance which has arisen over the past 50 yearsin relation to the contribution which the people of East Timor have made to the defence ofthe Commonwealth of Australia; draw the attention of the Minister for Defence to the



misleading answer given to the Senate on 23 June 1994; and, recommend to the parliamentthat it note the continuing financial burden of our military and humanitarian aid whichshould be seen in the context of the obligation which we have yet to discharge to the peopleof East Timor.

Over the next weeks, months and perhaps even longer, some people in Australia aregoing to start carping and complaining about the cost of our commitment to the people ofEast Timor. This is why I am here this morning, to remind you—to the extent that you mayneed reminding, with the greatest of respect—that our obligation is one to which we owe noother peoples in the world. It is like no other obligation. I have referred to it on previousoccasions as an obligation, a new kind of foreign debt for Australia, a mortgage which iswritten in the blood of East Timorese who sacrificed themselves for the sake of the defencenot only of their own territory but directly of Australia, when they did not ask to be involvedin the first place.

CHAIR —We are heading out of time. Senator Payne has a brief statement, and then Iknow Mr Cowdery has a comment that he would like to make. Then we will see if there areany closing remarks.

Senator PAYNE—I also ask whether, if there are questions arising out of the evidencefrom the witnesses today which we have not had an opportunity to ask, we may send thoseto the witnesses for response within a reasonable time.

CHAIR —Yes. As part of our usual practice, that will be done.

Senator PAYNE—I certainly have several. Briefly, in response to Mr Lewis, I wouldlike to say that I do not know whether you have had an opportunity to look at any of theHansards of previous hearings of the committee, but there has been some compellingevidence on the issues you have raised which I think the committee has taken very seriously.I note in particular the evidence of Jim Dunn, the former Australian Consul-General in EastTimor. I can say at least for myself that I am very interested in your submission. I have readit. I think Robert Ray was the Minister for Defence in 1994, so he was not just acting as adelegate but acting in his own capacity. I am grateful for what the ICJ has put on the record.I should also declare an interest. I am a member of the ICJ Australian Section.

CHAIR —A belated declaration of interest. Is Senator Payne financial? We should know!

Mr Cowdery —The additional comment that I wanted to make concerns the coordinationof support efforts in Australia. There has been some reference to efforts that have been madeby governments. Certainly the government of New South Wales has established a forum tocoordinate the supply of support to East Timor. It is weighted very heavily in thecommercial area, bringing together suppliers of equipment and labour. I attended a meetingof that earlier this week and it is looking to include the supply of support, training and otherservices from the government sector as well as the commercial sector. That is the New SouthWales government initiative in that area. There were some documents tabled from theNorthern Territory government, which has established a similar project. But the need for allof this to be coordinated nationally in some way I think is very pressing too.



CHAIR —Thank you very much. I have a couple of questions which I will put on noticethrough the secretariat as well. It is not that there is no interest in your presentation; it is justthat with so many people, as you understand, it does become difficult.



[10.56 a.m.]

UREN, The Hon. Mr Thomas (Private capacity)

CHAIR —Welcome. The committee prefers all evidence to be given in public, but shouldyou at any stage wish to give any part of your evidence in private you may ask to do so andthe committee will consider your request. I now invite you to make an opening statementand then we will proceed to questions.

Mr Uren —I am here as an agitator for justice and freedom for the people of East Timor.When your committee was first set up, I intimated that I would like to make a contribution,but of course history has raced on since then. I will give you a brief precis, if you like. Firstof all, I was taken a prisoner of war at the western end of Timor. The troops that invaded aneutral, Portuguese East Timor went across in the same convoy as us and landed first inKupang and then went up and invaded the eastern end of the island. The Japanese invaded inFebruary 1942—and, by the way, the Australian invasion was, as Rodney said, on 17December 1941.

The reason that I know the topography of the area is that, when I was taken eventually asa prisoner from Kupang to Java, we travelled east along the northern coast. Dili is situatedon a plateau for about half a mile and the mountains rise right behind it. In the case ofKupang, it is about 28 to 30 miles before you get to the mountains. The Japanese landedparatroops between the mountains and us and we had to fight our way through theparatroops. We never got into the mountains.

We surrendered after four days of battle, with about 150 out of 1,000 people dead andabout 60 per cent casualties, a fairly rigid four days of battle.When we were incarcerated inthe prison camp, if we escaped, they would hand them over to the Japanese or butcher themthemselves. On the eastern end of the island, where an independent company were, theywithdrew to the mountains and lived and survived with the indigenous people.

It was the indigenous people who protected them. Some of them were my closecomrades, such as Paddy Kenneally and Gordon Hart. They would tell you how good theywere, they were the eyes and ears of our troops. As you well know, the only way that youcan survive is to have the support of the indigenous people, and they certainly supported ourpeople. I want to touch on what Rodney said. We did invade a neutral East Timor orPortuguese Timor. Did we do it for our purpose or for theirs? We did it for our purpose,with no consideration at all for the East Timorese. Because of that and because of theirsupport of us, around 50,000 people were killed, murdered or brutalised or died of starvationduring the occupation period. The question you have to ask is: would the Japanese haveinvaded East Timor, keeping in mind that it was a neo-Fascist government in Portugal at thattime and that they did not occupy Macau in China? It was odds on that they would not haveinvaded Portuguese Timor.

Having that background and been a minister in the Whitlam government, I have alwayscarried some guilt. I think all Australians carry a proportion of guilt, but certainly I carrymore than most people. During 1975, there was no discussion in cabinet at all on the Timorquestion, even on Balibo and the five news people who had been killed. We thought it was a



border skirmish; prior to that there were border skirmishes in West Irian between NewGuinea and Papua. We took it that it was a border skirmish. The invasion occurred on 7December while a caretaker government was in authority, and even during the Octoberperiod we were in crisis. I am not trying to make excuses, but I was a minister in cabinetand it was a time of pressure and chaos. It was a really tough period of politics.

But once the Indonesian invasion occurred in December 1975, from that day I have beencommitted to the East Timorese struggle. After being struck down as a government and thencoming back as an opposition parliamentarian, I was elected by the caucus as deputy leaderof the party. Whitlam was a strong leader, but I always stood up to Whitlam when I was aminister. I think, to some degree, that is why they elected me deputy leader at the time. Thepolicy on East Timor became very prominent from our point of view. I will table—I am notincluding questions and things like that. The first matter of public importance was on 4 May1976 in the first parliamentary session. I set out the attitudes of both the parties, the FederalExecutive and the Caucus Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence of the parliamentaryparty of 31 March 1976. They are all incorporated in the speech. From there on, I neverstopped agitating on the situation. There was always embarrassment and some strongresentment within the party. I love Gough—I want to make that quite clear—but on EastTimor Gough and I have always disagreed on policy.

On the issue of his position, it was intimated to me by Kim Beazley Sr that Whitlamhad, at the 1975 meeting with Suharto at Townsville in 1975, said that Indonesia should takeover East Timor—meaning militarily take it over, because that was the only way they couldtake it over. He said that Willesee had told him. I questioned it immediately, because onething I know about Gough is that he is a legalist. I went to Gough and said, ‘Gough, there isthe drip that is on you.’ I explained it. He said, ‘It is not right.’ I said, ‘You don’t have totell me that. I know you are a legalist to the extent that you are a bloody menace sometimesin the way you go with the pedantic attitudes.’

About a month later, at Sydney airport having just arrived on the early plane out ofCanberra on Friday, Whitlam comes up with the memorandum of agreement of the meetingat Townsville. He said, ‘I want you to read this.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to read it.’ He said, ‘Iwant you to read it.’ So he stood there while I read it. There were three proposals: one, thequestion of independence; two, the question of being a part of Indonesia; and, three, thequestion of a link with Portugal. Whitlam of course supported the integration but with all thelegal implications completely protecting the situation. I said, ‘Gough, I disagree with yourposition, but I think you are being unfairly smeared.’ I have defended Whitlam ever since onthat basis. Even though I disagree with his position and the way he has gone about it, I havedefended his position all the way through.

When the federal conference of 1977 met, I moved the motion of self-determination.Jimmy Roulston, the president of the Victorian Metal Workers at that time, seconded themotion, and our policy became an act of self-determination. Soon after that, on 6 October1977, at the Department of Foreign Affairs estimates hearings, I spelt it all out, and Iincluded it all inHansard. I also table the resume of my position in my book, Tom Uren,Straight Left, published by Random House.



The issue that I have really attacked all the time is the role of the foreign affairsdepartment. I think they made up their mind about what they wanted and they have pushedthat line very hard, particularly Woolcott more than any other person. A lot of people wantto now rewrite history, including Gough and others, but I believe it was that element withinthe foreign affairs department that carry more guilt.

There was a cable that was sent by Woolcott on 17 August 1975 to Renouf, the thensecretary of the department, which spells out some of Woolcott’s attitudes. At this timeaccording to the cable there were rumours that there was going to be a military invasion, andGough intended to write another letter against such action. In fact, it was on the urging ofWoolcott that it was not sent, and this again supports the position of Gough that he wasnever supporting military intervention.

What disturbed me about this cable was that Woolcott was looking to the AustralianGovernment for understanding. In fact, Woolcott is urging in this cable more of a softeningup of Australian public opinion to understand the Indonesian position. At the end of thecable, he poses the question, ‘Has the minister for minerals and energy been considered?After all, they could do a better deal with the Indonesians on the Timor Gap than they wouldwith the others.’ It was a disgraceful cable.

I must say that I never knew any of these cables existed until the early eighties. Therewas a book published in 1980,Documents on Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, 1968-1975, and the Fraser government made the people who published the books pulp them,because the copyright for cables was owned by the Commonwealth. For some reason oranother, a copy fell off the back of a truck and finished up on my desk. In my book you finda compilation of what was going on during this period of time within the bureaucracy. I didnot compile that. I got a brilliant young person to condense it. It was so good that mypublishers thought it was wonderful. They thought that if I wrote to the department theymight allow those cables to be incorporated into my index. So I wrote to Costello and spoketo him personally, because I did not want to get it into the bureaucracy, and he said all right.To his credit, the bureaucracy at the lower level wanted to knock it over.

CHAIR —Which Costello?

Senator PAYNE—Michael Costello?

Mr Uren —Michael Costello, who was then the secretary of the foreign affairsdepartment. I had known him since he was a very young man. The lower level recommendedthat it should not be allowed to be published. Although I never got this from Costello, Ithink it was Evans, more or less, who said, ‘Look, it is pretty well known. We should notreally stop them from publishing.’ So they sent a letter saying that they would not authoriseme to publish it, but they would not take me to court if it were published.

There was also another point of view put forward. I did not bring the photostat, but therewas a point of view put forward by W.B. Pritchett, who was the First Assistant Secretary ofthe Defence Department at that time, and he argued from the point of view of Defence thatthe Australian Government should support an independent East Timor. When I got the letterfrom Costello, I convinced my publishers that I would not go back to get Defence’s



approval, because Robert Ray was the Minister for Defence and I knew there was not thebest blood between Robert Ray and Gareth Evans. So I did not write to Robert Ray. Iconvinced the publishers to include all the cables in my index. They are all there, if youwant to look at my bookStraight Left, published in 1994 by Random House.

Senator BROWNHILL —You would not be doing this ad unless you believed in it.

Mr Uren —Can I say this: you cannot buy a copy of my book. It has had four prints.You cannot buy a copy. The only thing I can do is encourage you to go to the library andborrow it, and then I might get some royalties from that. I should have started on this point.I have found men and women of goodwill on all sides of politics. For instance, RodneyLewis, who was a Liberal Party member for over 30 years.

Senator PAYNE—Don’t hold that against him, Mr Uren.

Mr Uren —No, not at all. There are people like Senator Missen, who has now passedaway, but he was a magnificent struggler for justice and freedom and independence. Believeit or not, so was Hodgman, the mouth from the south. Maybe it was his Catholicbackground, I don’t know.

It took a long time for the Catholic Church to come on side, but eventually when theydid they were magnificent. The Sisters of St Joseph are the real heroes of this East Timoresestruggle. As a matter of fact, I am always kissing them. I say to them, ‘I am always kissingyou, Sisters,’ but they say, ‘But, Tom, you’re our next nominee for the Pope,’ so that is howclose we are.

CHAIR —I am glad we have got that matter cleared up.

Mr Uren —I would remind them that in the first 11 years I was a member of parliamentI never got an invitation from a Catholic organisation. But, thank God, things have changed.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Do you think we should have a Pope who lives here?

Mr Uren —Can I say this, in fairness, to those from the cardinal down: Clancy went andsaw Bela and I have been with him, present in his company, on so many occasions and hehas been magnificent. As far as I am concerned, the Catholic Church’s role in this wholestruggle has been just wonderful. In fact, the RSL on the whole have been disgraceful. Theyhave been disgraceful because they thought Fretilin were Coms—the Reds under the bedmentality—and it is that bloke in Victoria who is the main one.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Bruce Ruxton.

Mr Uren —Yes, Ruxton has been one of the main enemies against the whole thing. Thepresent president of the New South Wales branch has come good but it took a long, longwhile—even though the 2nd Independent Company has just been wonderful the wholetime—it has been a tragedy in that part of the struggle.



The only thing to say, if I bring you up to date, is that I have been a part of the strugglefor the past 24 years and I have never stopped trying to get what I believe is the great debtwe owe repaid. I have worked with the comrades that were in front of you here, particularlythe lady who was the first person to contribute after John Dowd. She has been justwonderful, particularly on the people who are present in this country. I have said to everyminister—and the good thing about it is that they listen to me—that whether it be Labor orLiberal I think Ruddock is one of the great parliamentarians. I have a really deep affectionfor him. I think he is one of the great liberals of the Liberal Party.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Who was that?

Mr Uren —Philip Ruddock. I have known him since he, as a very young man, had theelectorate of Parramatta. Not only that, with the other ministers for immigration I havealways got to them on East Timor. My argument is a simple one: we owe them such a debt.While I always support government policy—whether it is Labor or Liberal—on immigration,refugees and about people jumping the queue, the East Timorese are different. We owe sucha debt to them that there is nothing that we should not do for them—that is my positionthere.

I have been watching television and I have been very disturbed all through butparticularly from about January this year, when it was decided that the plebiscite was goingto be on. I get cable television and I watch the BBC, Sky Television, CNN, the Jim Lehrerprogram and the disturbing factor was that no mention at all was being made of East Timor.Even then the militia were vicious and nobody was taking any notice of it. In all my massrallies I would try to bring this point out: we have to somehow or other get somecommunications particularly amongst the American people because a wonderful thing aboutthe American people is that they respond to compassion; they respond to people when theyare suffering. So that has been a disturbing factor with me.

At all the public rallies, particularly the later ones before the decision was made, myposition was that we had one common enemy. That common enemy was Indonesian militaryfascism and what we had to do was unite the forces against it. The tragedy was that therewere Trotskyites and other such people at the rallies and they were getting stuck into thegovernment, the Labor Party and everybody but themselves. My position was that thegovernment had come a long way and all Australians should join in that common position.While I think that there could be some criticism of the government on the question ofbuilding a relationship with the United States and informing it of certain things that werehappening at certain times, on the whole I think the government, including the opposition—the whole parliament—has come so far.

I am very proud of Laurie Brereton in particular. There is an interesting letter that Iwrote back to one in theSydney Morning Heraldthat only parliamentary members of theLabor Party would probably know about. People were being cynical about Brereton’s changeof position. It was in November of last year that we were in St Mary’s Cathedral and Lauriewas not sitting up in the front row. Every time I go into St Mary’s Cathedral now, they pickme up and put me in the front row and there’s Laurie—the official spokesman for theopposition—back several rows and so I called him over.



Some bloke cynically wrote a letter that his stomach curdled when he saw LaurieBrereton at the St Mary’s Cathedral service for the East Timorese, and then I really arguedthe role that I knew Brereton had been playing internally within the Labor Party for quite along time. Anyway, the letter is self-explanatory, but I am very proud of his position. I amalso proud of the government’s position too. I want to say, make it quite clear and put it onthe record that both the Prime Minister and Downer have come a long way.

I will conclude on this point. I was worried, seeing all this destruction in East Timor—itscities being burnt and brought to the ground—and I thought to myself, ‘How the hell can Ido anything about this?’ You feel so hopeless. I said that first of all I would write a letter tomy old friend José Ramos-Horta—I always call him ‘Ramos’; he and I have been friends forthe best part of 24 years. But one day he was in New York and in Geneva the next, Ithought to myself that was no good because it would only be another letter.

So I thought I would write a letter to Xanana and then I thought I would go to see him,because he had just arrived in Darwin. So I rang up one of the Sisters of St Joseph and sheput me on to the right connections with East Timorese. Before I knew it, I was on a plane toDarwin and I had an appointment with Xanana. Of course, accommodation was hopeless andthat was arranged too. So I made my trip there and gave him a letter just giving a briefbackground.

He did not know who I was but the East Timorese that were up there knew who I was,and they are part of the cabinet that had been set up. They had been sitting all that week,having set up their own cabinet. I briefly said that I had been a minister for urban affairs. Idid not say this but I can say to you that I have probably had more experience in urbanplanning than most. For five years I was in charge of the planning of Canberra for better orfor worse—longer than any other minister in the history of Canberra. I was involved in theAlbury-Wodonga development. I was involved in the reconstruction of Darwin. My peoplewere the people that did that.

The strange thing about it was that when I met Xanana he said, ‘Well, I am notimpressed with Portuguese planning, but I am very impressed with what has occurred here inDarwin.’ He had been there in 1974 before Cyclone Tracy and of course in coming back hadseen what has occurred. I think the Northern Territory government had done some goodthings, but the main problem with Darwin and why we could not redevelop it properly wasthat the airport was in the wrong place! That was the big problem with the redevelopment ofDarwin.

Anyway, I spent two and a half hours with him, not talking to him all the time butlistening to him talk to his own people, and I am telling you that he is a compassionate,remarkable person. I gave him my letter, had my photograph taken with him and took a lotof photographs with him. He is a bloke that really impresses me very greatly. He has got thegentleness and the steel of Mandela. There is no doubt about him. He is so gentle, soforgiving and so loving. I have seen him during question times when they would come upand ask the questions at the front. One woman had a baby, so he took the child from thewoman. He held the baby while she was asking the question and then gave his reply andthen handed it back to her. There would be 250 or 300 people and he would talk to everyonesome for a few seconds, some for a couple of minutes and embrace everyone. I said to a



friend of mine, ‘Of course he is doing a bit of political electioneering. He is a potentialpresident.’ It was so warming.

But they are in a hell of a mess, and I did put forward certain names of people. Whetherthat will ever hit the bottom or not I do not know. One of them was the formerCommissioner of the NCDC for 10 years, Tony Powell, who was quite remarkable. Anotherkey one, I think the best urbanist in Australia, who was the deputy head of my department,is Pat Troy, who is now professor of the Urban Research Unit at the ANU. They are the twokey people. They would not do it themselves but they have got great ability to coordinateand marshal the forces. Troy went round the world to formulate my department of urban andregional development. After the Liberals and conservatives abolished it, 20 out of 100-odd ofmy people have become permanent heads of either federal or state authorities. That is howpowerful they were. One became Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister andCabinet. I am proud of my people.

CHAIR —I have an opening question. A recurring thing that has come from a number ofwitnesses is the competency, if I can call it that, of DFAT, the Department of ForeignAffairs and Trade, in providing advice to ministers on circumstances overseas and the in-club mentality that has been put to us of Foreign Affairs running their own agenda notnecessarily to the advantage of the government of the day, and I am saying that in thebroadest of terms. Is that roughly your experience over a period of time, or how would youtypify the actions of the department of foreign affairs towards governments, regardless oftheir political persuasion, over a period of time? Is there something there that needs to belooked at by either this committee or some subsequent committee of the Senate?

Mr Uren —Of course, I can only speak of my time, I cannot speak of the present time,but certainly there was the Woolcott position. He was ambassador there and ultimatelybecame head of the department but was still peddling the line in his own way. They havereally got a phobia about Indonesia; there are no ifs or buts about it. They were not the onlyones, of course. If you really want to look at the editorials in theSydney Morning Heraldprior to 1965, I am quite sure that the editorial writer, or Warwick Fairfax, thought that theywere going to come down and rape Mary one day. TheSydney Morning Heraldbefore 1965was berserk. I think the foreign affairs department made up their mind and had a very strongposition that it is imperative that our relationship with Indonesia really should be firstpriority, and I think that predominated right through the department for a long while.

They have had some fairly strong allies. After all, where I have talked about men andwomen of goodwill, from the time that I became deputy leader in January 1976 through tothe time that we got elected in March 1983 the Labor Party policy was for self-determination, but as soon as we got into government the elite of the party sold that policyout. Once you get into government, a Prime Minister has got enormous power overconference delegates. The Liberals in many cases were similar in opposition. The Liberalswere fairly sympathetic. Downer had a position and then he went to water again when ingovernment. Eventually, to his great credit, they came good. Whether it was Downer’sinfluence on Howard that ultimately got him to send that letter I do not know, but I thinkthat, whether you like it or not, that changed the course of history, according to theIndonesians.



All you would have to do is read that cable from Woolcott of 17 August 1975. Yourcommittee would have even greater access to know what the influence was, that they hadpredetermined their position. One of the things I feel angry about is that there were people inthe Labor Party in 1975 who knew that those Indonesian forces were massing and ready toinvade East Timor. Those ministers would have been Willessee in Foreign Affairs, the PrimeMinister and Morrison in Defence. Morrison’s record is not good even afterwards, evenwhen he made certain visits afterwards.

Senator PAYNE—He was the ambassador to Indonesia, was he?

Mr Uren —He was, but he also led delegations there to see what the position was evenwhen he was a member of parliament during the Hawke government. They have been fairlyprotective. I listen to Gough sometimes and he talks for hours to me. Of course, I do notinterject on him much on the Timor question. I listen to his information because hisknowledge is enormous. I say, ‘I think Woolcott is the real evil genius.’ Gough is defensiveof Woolcott.

Senator PAYNE—James Dunn gave evidence to this committee in September. I wouldlike to read to you two small pieces and ask you to comment. He says:

. . . when a group of Indonesian generals became interested in seizing East Timor and incorporating it, step by stepthey moved with careful regard to the attitude of Australia. They were constantly making contact with us, feeling outhow we felt about their position, and were generally encouraged by the attitude that built up in Australia at the time. . .

That attitude was in the government and of course in the opposition. He goes on to say:

. . . it was theAustralian accommodation of these attitudes . . . that, I believe, encouraged military moves to seize theterritory . . .

He then refers to the East Timorese and says:

They were seeking our help and they got none from us.

And, finally, two points:

What is really important is that for much of 1975 we were aware in Canberra that President Suharto was reluctant toallow the military invasion that his generals were planning and that he kept on holding back. It seems to me thatperhaps our greatest failure was that we did not take up the challenge of sending a special envoy to Suharto to tell himin diplomatic language that he was absolutely right. We could have joined with him to help self-determination in sucha way that at that time it would have been possible for East Timor to become independent and have a specialrelationship with Indonesia. We did not do that; we refused to do it. The Prime Minister and the government werepersuaded by some other foreign affairs officials who said we should not be giving a lecture to President Suharto, weshould be turning our faces away and letting events take their course. I think that was a tragic failure, because wecould have headed this off.

And on Balibo, he says:

Everybody knows about Balibo. They actually managed to kill five newsmen from Australia . . .without a formalprotest ever being lodged over it . . . Thefact that, knowing that, we did not even protest was to the Indonesianmilitary a green light.



We heard a lot of evidence from James Dunn. I think members of the committee were veryimpressed by his knowledge and commitment. Going from what you have said this morning,would you concur with those views? Do you think that, if we had taken the steps that MrDunn refers to, we may have averted some of these troubles?

Mr Uren —I could not argue against that. This is post history; I could not argue againstthat point. But you have to keep in mind that, there it was, 17 August 1975, Whitlam wasabout to write a letter and he was being encouraged by the ambassador at that time not toproceed—or he was encouraging Renouf to go to Whitlam, who would have had a better,closer relationship with Whitlam. I could not disagree. In fact, I suppose that if anybody hasgiven their life for the East Timorese, Jim Dunn has. For his whole time in the foreignaffairs department he was so deeply involved and so courageous about the position that hehad to transfer into the Parliamentary Library, and he worked there for years. Of course, hewas a source of information to me and to other people who were fighting the struggle. So Icannot disagree with any of that.

Senator PAYNE—Thank you.

Senator QUIRKE—Mr Uren, you were saying before that you are proud of thegovernment’s current position because they have come such a long way. Do you think that,during the course of 1999, things could have been done better? Obviously the letter that wassent in December last year was a very significant one in retrospect, I suppose. But, thenagain, there were people like Laurie Brereton who were making the case earlier this year thatthings could have been done differently, so that the terrible events of early September of thisyear could have been avoided.

Mr Uren —I think I have already said that I thought that, between January and thatperiod, there was no real activity in the international press—not only in the American press;I am talking about the international press. Even in Europe there was nothing going on at all.I will answer your question first and then go back to another point. I think the weak spotwas that there seemed to be a lack of information about the real crisis of the East Timoresepeople between January and when the government had finally made the decision. I thinkthat, from time to time, Laurie—Laurie is an opposition politician—had his own struggleswithin his own party to take the party, for a long while there, people were trying to white-ant him, too. I think the Australian government could have kept America informed a gooddeal more.

If you have read the 17 August 1975 cable I have given you, you will see it mentionsthat Newsom, who was then the United States ambassador to Indonesia, was told byKissinger to keep his nose out of the East Timorese affair. America did not want to knowanything about what was going on. We all know that both Kissinger and Ford were inIndonesia a few days, if not a day, before the actual invasion of East Timor. So America’sposition was a pretty grim one in the early days. As time went on, because of the question ofhuman rights, there had been quite a number of both the House of Representatives and theSenate of the United States taking a very prominent position on East Timor. I think therewere not enough bridges built with those forces in the United States to try to engenderpublic opinion in that way. At the same time in Europe, Britain had a Labour governmentand I do not think they played an important role.



To take you back to my position from 1987 to 1990, when I retired from the ministry, Iwas the leader of the Australian delegation to the Interparliamentary Union. On everyoccasion I spoke I raised the question of East Timor. What Indonesians would do is thenreport me to our ambassador in Jakarta—they had no understanding of our position. Butwhat broke my heart was that the 12-plus group did not know what East Timor was allabout, and Portugal was a part of that as well. It was a tragedy really. Europe had turned itsback on the East Timor question.

After all, you have to give credit to a bloke like Peacock. Peacock had a salesman likeposition if he knew what the government’s policy was at that time. I think they were notsure what it was going to be because they were really going along with the Indonesians fromabout January through to nearly the end. They were not going for independence; they weregoing for a position prior to the ballot of autonomy. That was their position. So the tragedywas that our government of the day had not made up their own mind. I am giving credit tothe government only after they had changed their mind and Howard was so definite aboutwhat his position was going to be. In a struggle, you really have to unite against the enemyand the enemy was Indonesian military fascism. Paddy McGuinness and other such peopleget upset about me reminding them that this same government murdered half-a-millionpeople back in 1965. Everybody wants to forget about that.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Ethnic Chinese?

Mr Uren —Not only ethnic Chinese: there were ethnic Chinese, Indonesians and peoplelike me, Tom Uren, left of the Labor Party. We would have got bumped off in Indonesia atthat time. The truth is that I was on an Interparliamentary Union meeting back in 1965 and Iwas due to fly into Jakarta as a guest in October 1965 and Shann, who was then theambassador, kept sending cables all over Europe saying, ‘Tell Mr Uren not to come.’ In theend, when I got to Singapore, I said, ‘If you can get the government to say that they willdefer my invitation, I won’t go.’ That was the position. I hope I have not tried to dodge yourquestion.

Senator QUIRKE—No, you have not. In fact, you have led into the next one, the onlyother question I have, which concerns the future relationship with Indonesia. In particular, Iasked a few of the witnesses yesterday about the fact that it seems that officials in thiscountry and elected ministers as well have always tended to treat Indonesia with a grovellingattitude. We have gone down on our knees to Indonesia. We have made exceptions for them.We have put spins on terrible events that have taken place there while we told the rest of theworld how they ought to live and we have been quite blunt about that. But with Indonesiawe seem to have had a very diffident relationship. Obviously in the future our relationshipwith Indonesia is going to be important but it needs to be put on the correct standing. Whatis your view on those broader brush issues?

Mr Uren —I can see you have not read any of my speeches. Over the years I was alwaysa bit critical of Australian governments, from Menzies right through, about their attitude andthat they grovel too much to either Britain on the one hand or the US on the other.Ultimately, of course, I would agree with you that to some extent that is the position withIndonesia. They have a similar attitude but with different perspectives.



The thing I saw of some hope was the time when Rais was elected Speaker. That gaveme real hope. Even though there has been the kind of skulduggery that has gone on overkeeping Megawati out of the leadership, I still think it is not a bad outcome. In fact, thepresent Attorney-General used to be the head of human rights in Indonesia and he was alsoon the Interparliamentary Union delegations. He and I built up a fairly good rapport, eventhough he used to get a bit upset with me when I supported East Timor, but, after all, he hadto defend it. He is a person of some progress.

I do not say this for Indonesia, I say it for all military regimes: as a government we haveto support minorities or defend the position of minorities against military injustice. Thewitnesses giving evidence before me were talking about international human rights. I thinkthere is a chance. It is not going to be an easy one, but I think there is a chance thatdemocracy is starting to lift its head. Sometimes when we see issues making progressinternationally, then we find that regional groups are where the problems are created. That isgoing to be one of the issues that may in fact put a check on democracy to some extentwithin Indonesia. When there is violence, the military is needed to put down that violence.Yes, our relationship should be a healthy one with them, but we should support democraticforces wherever they may be; not only in Indonesia, but in other places.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I am sorry this is going to be short, because I had a wholeswag of questions I wanted to ask you. I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk to you,not just because you and the men of your generation gave up the very valuable years of youryoung lives in the defence of Australia, but also because of your parliamentary experienceand your unwavering view. All the years that I have watched you, you have not shaken theview that you have held regarding the course which Australia should take. It was not onethat I agreed with necessarily. I am a little bit more to the right than you are in politics, butnotwithstanding that, I express my admiration for you.

I have some questions about Western Australia because we take a different view. I do nottalk for everyone, but I do talk for a plurality of people. The view is that, with a coastlinethat is longer than the United States of America and a third of the nation, we areundefended—apart from the odd naval ship, and we thank the men and women on thoseships—from Perth to Darwin. That is a very large area facing Indonesia. We have a feelingof insecurity. As I recall it as a little boy and later on reading history it was augmented bythe Brisbane line when we were abandoned to the Japanese. We do not want that to happenagain. I do not say we are paranoid about it, but I do say it is something that we areconscious of. We treat Indonesia in a different manner. Everyone in Western Australiaknows there are over 200 million of them. We do not necessarily think it is a bad thing totreat them as a sovereign nation and as equals.

Mr Uren —I would agree with that. I think Australia should treat every country as anequal.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Yes, we do try and treat them as that, and not as something ofa quasi-colonial target. I think you said that Mr Whitlam was aware of the militaryintervention and agreed with it.

Mr Uren —No.



Senator LIGHTFOOT —No?

Mr Uren —No. I tried to make it quite clear that he really would never accept a militarysolution to the problem. He is a legalist and, therefore, you have to go through the properconstitutional processes. In fact, in that letter of 17 August 1975 there was talk about themilitary. He was going to write a letter, and the foreign affairs department tried to convincehim not to write it.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Why did we not intervene in those years, and yet in 1999 weintervened?

Mr Uren —I disagree with Whitlam’s position because he was a de Gaullist in manyways. He saw the grand design and that was always Gough’s position. It never really becamean issue. In fact, there was never a discussion in the cabinet on the question of East Timor inthe whole of my time. I said earlier that the weakness of it was that, even though there wasbroad discussion within the bureaucracy, there was no discussion at all in the cabinet. I canswitch you back to Africa on the question of Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm Fraser’s position onAfrica was never discussed in the cabinet because Malcolm may not have had the numbersin the cabinet, but his position was magnificent from our point of view. We supported him.

Prime ministers are the ones who set the agenda and Whitlam never put it on the agenda.My position has been, ever since 7 December 1975, that we should use every avenue—and Imean every avenue—to speak out for the democratic process, not only in East Timor but inother places. In the case of East Timor, I really think we should have used internationalforums a great deal more because of the sensitivity to it. All I am grateful for—and forWestern Australians as well, and I understand your sensitivities—is that it appears to me thatthe democratic forces are starting to rise up. We should have encouraged them in the past. Ido not think we made much contact with them in the past, and neither did our foreign affairsdepartment.

I might say that there are two things that I have never done in my parliamentary life,being a POW. Firstly, I have never argued for a cheap defence policy because I have alwaysunderstood that the people of Australia have to feel secure. I always thought that, with theinsecurity of the position of Indonesia particularly—and I thought the conflict would comemainly from the New Guinea, Papua or West Irian position—I have never, ever talked aboutgetting a cheap defence policy, even though I think it still has its priorities. The second thingI have never done in public life is that I have never criticised the AMA in my life because,as a POW, I never saw a bad doctor in a prisoner of war camp. Even though I think theyhave been bloody awful on many things, I have never criticised them because I saw whatthey did in the prison camps. I never saw a bad doctor.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —During your time as a minister in that period, what expressioncould be taken as manifest opposition to the annexation of East Timor, given that we werethe only country with Indonesia to recognise the annexation? Where was the manifest sign ofthe abhorrence that we should have felt of that annexation? I say this in retrospect.

Mr Uren —You have to get the chronology of the thing. The chronology of the issues isthat the first time we thought there was a real crisis was on the question of Balibo, and that



was on 16 October 1975. Even then, we thought it might have been a border skirmish. Youmight remember that we were struck down on 11 November 1975. The invasion was on 7December 1975. So that is the chronology of things. My criticism was that, even though itwas never discussed within the cabinet, there were three cabinet ministers whom I havenamed who I thought knew what was going on. I do not want to reiterate that, but the fact isthat since the invasion, all my political life—even when I became a minister in the Hawkegovernment—I never stopped fighting within the party system at conferences and otherplaces for the East Timorese people. When I became the leader of the Australian IPOdelegation, I spoke my own independent position again on that issue.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Would it be fair to say that Mr Whitlam gave at least tacitconsent to the invasion?

Mr Uren —No, in fairness, I will not agree at all to that. A lot of people criticise mewithin our own movement. They say it occurred before that at Jogjakarta in 1974 and thatWhitlam had said that he was more or less happy about integration but it had to go throughall the processes of a proper democratic process.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —So he was happy with the integration of East Timor intogreater Indonesia, but he was not happy with the invasion? Is that right?

Mr Uren —That is right. From my point of view, as far as a parliamentarian isconcerned, Whitlam was a supporter of the integration of East Timor into Indonesia if theproper processes were carried out. They were never carried out, and his position has neveraltered from that. Gough—if I can speak for him—would still argue that he supported theconcept of self-determination but he thought that, on the ballot of self-determination, itwould be in their interests to be a part of Indonesia. Not only that, a lot of other leadingpoliticians felt the same way and kept so silent right through, particularly the elites of theparties, whether it was Hawke, Fraser, Peacock, Hayden or Evans.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Was there any incentive for Mr Whitlam or any of the cabinetto take the position that they did, as you have expressed it, based on the potential for oil inthe Timor Gap? Did that play a part at all?

Mr Uren —No. As I said, it was never discussed. But I will take you back to theconference in Perth in 1977. The vote for self-determination was carried 47 to one. That ison the record too.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Yes. Very briefly, Mr Bruce Ruxton is a contemporary ofyours. He is a character like you, and he is not a bad bloke. I quite like him, as indeed lotsof Australians do.

Mr Uren —Could I just comment on Bruce Ruxton. I have got no objections to BruceRuxton working for the ex-servicemen. If he battles for them—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —He has indeed.



Mr Uren —On social issues he has, but he has got onto race issues and other matters.Might I say that there were those who suffered and saw the war—as he intimated he had,and it used to be inWho’s Whountil I made the statement on the7.30 Reportone night thathe had seen five minutes of the war—in fact, he had seen a couple of weeks in the activeservice area before the war ended and then he went into the Japan occupation forces. That isnot his fault, but from the way he talks you would think that he was one of the front-linesoldiers, one of the great heroes of the Second World War. I like to put that in perspective.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I do not know about that side.

Mr Uren —I am telling you that that is the correct history of it. He had to alter his entryin Who’s Whoafter I had made my statement.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Let me finish on this one question, unless you force me to askanother one with your answer.

Mr Uren —That is okay.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —On a scale of one to 10, where would you put the presentgovernment’s position in what it has done since 27 January this year, when Dr B.J. Habibieannounced that there would be a plebiscite?

Mr Uren —I would not give one to 10, but I will just put my position on the record.Early on, I did not think they did enough because they did not know what their real policywas, but once they had made their policy they got full marks, as far as I am concerned, andI back them all the way.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Okay, that is very good. I thank you. It has been mostinteresting talking to you.

CHAIR —There is one issue I want to raise going back to the period around 1975. Ithink it is an issue that is relevant even today—that is, the fact that, whilst we viewourselves with a major role in Asia and on the world stage, others outside looking in see usas a mere dot on the map. Really, the dominant determining factor has been US policy. Youmentioned that in 1975 the US, through Kissinger, had said to the American ambassador inJakarta, ‘Keep your nose out of East Timor.’ I wonder how significant that was in whateverdeterminations Australia was making at the time and also, if one can move more lately, tothe fact that, even once Australia had made its moves on this occasion, it really came downto the United States intervening and rapping Jakarta over the knuckles for the actions of themilitia and the TNI before anything started to happen. Now it seems that the United Stateshas again intervened through their ambassador in Jakarta on the issue of the displacedpersons in West Timor. Is that an unfair characterisation of the influence and role of theUnited States? How important will they be in this ongoing process?

Mr Uren —Like everyone, we evolve. As I said early on, the position of the UnitedStates on East Timor was an appalling one. But both their members of parliament and theirState Department must have progressed this as well—and I cannot speak for the StateDepartment, but I can speak for members of parliament. You have to keep in mind that,



following 1975, we still followed the line. In our whole policy generally, we had inheritedtheir position about the whole Vietnam question. We had been involved and supportedAmerica. We had been involved in Indonesia, even in the conflict between Malaysia andIndonesia in the 1960s. I think you have to give credit to Whitlam in some ways. He broughtsomething fresh—and not only into the Australian scene—in the way that we wereAustralians. We were looking at the world as a broader concept than just our own. If he hasan Achilles heel on foreign policy, I think East Timor has been the mark against us.

In the US there has been a change of pattern on the question of human rights,particularly under Clinton—Jimmy Carter in one case, but particularly on the question ofClinton. There has been a human rights position in what the Americans have done, and if wehad got them to work earlier after January it would have been good, but again I do notthink that our government knew what its policy was. I am not trying to hedge away from—

CHAIR —No, I understand.

Mr Uren —Are you happy with that?

CHAIR —Yes, I appreciate your comments.

Mr Uren —I know Senator Lightfoot is a conservative; what about Senator Payne?

CHAIR —Liberal, New South Wales.

Mr Uren —I know Brownie; he is an old friend.

CHAIR —Quirkie is Labor, South Australia. So now you have us all tagged. Thank you.



[12.13 p.m.]

VAN LANGENBERG, Dr Michael John (Private capacity)

CHAIR —Welcome. Do you have anything to say concerning the capacity in which youappear?

Dr van Langenberg—I am here as a private individual, but I am also here, I hope, toprovide some information as an academic who has been researching politics in Indonesia forthe last 30-odd years. I am presently employed as a senior lecturer in Indonesian and South-East Asian politics and history at the University of Sydney. I also work periodically as aconsultant on political risk analysis and cultural analysis in both Indonesia and South-EastAsia. I am currently involved in a research project dealing with governance and institutionalcapacity in Indonesia.

CHAIR —The committee prefers that all evidence be given in public, but should you atany stage wish to give any part of your evidence in private you may ask to do so and thecommittee will consider your request. I now invite you to make an opening statement, andthen we will proceed to questions. I do apologise for the fact that we are running a little late.

Dr van Langenberg—That is fine. I have not put a submission to the committee; Iassumed that the committee may have some questions that they want to ask me about myown research on Indonesia. There are three issues that I feel are important in the context ofEast Timor. One is the need to support the endeavours of the United Nations Human Rightsand Equal Opportunity Commission to proceed with an inquiry about human rights abusesand, more than that, to proceed with an inquiry which covers the condition of violence andlooting that was clearly carried out in East Timor.

The scale of that violence and looting must stand as a fairly major issue not only for thefuture of likely transitions to democracy in Indonesia but also to avoid possible revenge andrecrimination within a future independent East Timor. The East Timorese must feel that theabuses that have been carried out against them are receiving some serious attention from theinternational community. It is particularly important that, given Australia’s history in the EastTimor matter, Australia is seen to be taking a prominent role in that matter.

The second related question is the growing importance of human rights and regionalissues within future politics in Indonesia. That has been clearly targeted by the recentlyelected Indonesian President. Issues about economic and political relations between Jakartaand the regions are going to dominate, it seems to me, the nature of Indonesian politics inthe next few years, as are issues about human rights. That has been clearly recognised by theappointment of a minister for human rights in this present cabinet in Indonesia.

I think the larger issue is that of the changing nature of politics and of greater democraticdemands broadly across South-East Asia. The Mahathir regime and government are comingto an end in Malaysia. Even Mahathir is not of course immortal, and that will bringstructural changes to the Malaysian system. I think one has already seen signs of greaterdemocratic pressures emerging in places like Singapore and elsewhere in South-East Asia,



not to mention Myanmar and Vietnam. Those are the three major issues which I would wantto argue for.

CHAIR —Before we ask questions, you mentioned in your introduction a research projecton governance and institutional operations. Could you give us a brief outline of that?

Dr van Langenberg—All right. I have been working on that as a personal project forprobably the last 10 years. It started with a project looking at the nature of power structuresand legitimacy in the Suharto regime, on which I published a few papers. It also looked atthe use of political language, as it was more of an academic exercise. I have recently beenworking on research into the transition from the Suharto presidency to the currentgovernment through the Habibie period.

I am interested in a number of questions. One is the nature of the state itself inIndonesia—I will come back to that in a minute, if you like—and, in particular, therelationship between central government and regional administration in Indonesia and thenature of central government itself—in other words, how it is structured in terms ofinstitutionalisation of power and administration, particularly how the oligarchy would workin the way in which Indonesia is governed.

I am also interested in the patterns of legitimacy; the extent to which the Indonesiangovernment or Indonesian regime represents and receives consent or acceptance from varioussectors of civil society in Indonesia. At the moment, my project is also going to feed into alarger project being coordinated by the Research Institute for Asia and Pacific at theUniversity of Sydney, which is looking at institutional capacity building in Asia. That projectis in part financed from Japanese sources.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Dr van Langenberg, your knowledge of Indonesia is basedoriginally on what?

Dr van Langenberg—I started researching Indonesia as an undergraduate student inAustralia. I did an honours thesis on the 1965 coup or the 1965 events in Indonesia. I firstwent to Indonesia at the beginning of 1965 as a student. In fact, during the killings I spentJanuary to March in Indonesia, Java, Bali and Lombok. I came back and started postgraduatework, more on political history, looking at the period of the 1940s, working mainly inSumatra, which is where I finally did my doctorate.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Is this pre the Japanese invasions?

Dr van Langenberg—No, the Japanese period and the war of independence against theDutch. So I covered the period from 1942 to 1950, but I was looking particularly at northernSumatra as a case study. I was looking at the emergence of an independent Indonesian statefrom a regional point of view, and I was particularly interested in ethnic relations, ethnicpolitics, particularly the emergence of the military as a political institution in Indonesia. As Isaid, that became my PhD.

Since then, I have been researching modern Indonesian history, mostly 20th century,looking at nationalism. I published on nationalism. I looked at issues about political culture,



particularly regional cultures. I have written a bit on Islam in Indonesia. In the last 10 yearsor so—perhaps 13 years; I first published a piece on this in 1986—I have been looking atthe structure of the state in Indonesia, particularly power and the nature of legitimacy.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Let me start in the present with the religious leader and newpresident, Abdurrahman Wahid, and his deputy, Megawati Sukarnoputri. Are they likely tosurvive, notwithstanding there are six senior army officers in his ministry, for the length ofthe electoral period, which I think is four or five years?

Dr van Langenberg—It is five years. You certainly would not put it at 100 per centsurvival at the moment, for a number of very complicated reasons of which I am sure youare aware. One is Abdurrahman Wahid’s own health. Some two or three weeks before thepresidential election he did make a public statement in Indonesia confirming his seriousnessabout standing for the presidency, but also dropping the statement that he may well decide tostep down in mid-term and hand over to his vice-president.

In that particular statement, he was asked who was his ideal vice-president and he saidMegawati Sukarnoputri. Whether this was a revelation of a serious plan or whether this wasan off-the-cuff statement, as he is inclined to make regularly, we do not know. There issome indication that within about three weeks of that presidential election he was veryserious about his candidature; that he had come to the belief that he was the reconciler, ifyou like, in this period of moving away from the Suharto dictatorship to some kind ofworkable democratic system in Indonesia; and that he was the person who could best achievesome kind of national unity. And that could best be achieved in conjunction with Megawatias clearly the most popular political leader in the country.

It remains to be seen what his health is like. Quite clearly, if he becomes infirm, if hiseyesight deteriorates further or if he has another heart attack, his capacity to govern isclearly going to be severely impaired. If he does not choose to resign, the parliament thenhas to convene to remove him, and if that were to happen it would create a serious andmajor political crisis in Indonesia. If he were to resign, then logically he hands over initiallyto the vice-president, who can remain in office for the remainder of the term. But, as you areaware, Megawati Sukarnoputri has very widespread political opposition in Indonesia, as wellas political support, of course, and that opposition was the force that brought Wahid to thepresidency. Those opposition forces, presumably, may not be easily willing to accept aMegawati presidency in two or three years time.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Who are those forces? Is it the army, the military?

Dr van Langenberg—There are some sections of the military who oppose her, but thereare other sections of the military who have supported Megawati in the past and still do.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Is General Wiranto a risk in the longevity of theadministration?

Dr van Langenberg—At the moment I would think not; Wiranto’s power isconsiderably limited. In my view he has never been adequately in command of theIndonesian armed forces, anyway. He inherited armed forces that were increasingly



dependent on the patronage of the Suharto palace. Suharto was the effective coordinator ofthe armed forces. Wiranto was never in control of them. He was always struggling, it seemedto me, to balance and deal with the various conflicting factions, not the least of which wasconflict between himself and the army commander, General Subagyo. I do not think Wirantois a serious threat to political stability in Indonesia, unless of course he wants, and is able, topull together some kind of workable power structure within the armed forces. He maydevelop a working relationship with the new defence minister.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —There is a very important issue just on this point: is theIndonesian army assessed by academics with a detailed view of Indonesia as the instabilityof Indonesia or as the stability?

Dr van Langenberg—Not most, but a substantial number of, academic analysts ofIndonesia would regard the army as still potentially a destabilising institution in Indonesiabecause of its internal political divisions, for one thing, and also because of its clear lack ofability to control its troops on the ground. Indonesian units have not only gone on therampage in East Timor in recent times, they have gone on the rampage in places like Aceh,Ambon and only a few days ago in one of the main market centres in Jakarta. Troops arepoorly paid and their subsidiary sources of income, which were mainly throughinstitutionalised crime, if you like, or a bit of moonlighting and so on in the service sector,have been closed off a lot. You have ordinary soldiers in the Indonesian army who do nothave enough income to survive, but have weapons which they can use. The potential for themilitary to be a destabilising institution has increased in the last two to three years, and thepotential remains for it to be a major destabilising influence.

Identifying the major political divisions within the military is always contentious, and Ido not think academics on the whole would agree on it. It seems to me that there are anumber of important institutional centres which compete for power, resources and control ofthe military. One is the defence ministry itself, which is now going to go through somedegree of upheaval with the appointment of a civilian defence minister. The second is theTNI high command, which is now under Widodo’s control. For the first time an admiral hastaken over a high command that has traditionally been the preserve of the army. That is alsoa destabilising factor, at least temporarily.

The third centre of political power in the Indonesian military is the special forcescommands, particularly Kopassus and its links with military intelligence. The fourth factor isthe powerful regional territorial commands—three in Java, a powerful one in northernSumatra and of course the very powerful one based in Bali, which was responsible for EastTimor. When you look at those differing centres of power, there remains considerablepotential for internal tension and conflict within the military.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —What was the best possible outcome in terms of acombination? It appears to me that Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri wereprobably the best possible outcome for Australia’s interests in this hemisphere. Do you agreewith that? If you disagree, what combination of President and Vice-President of Indonesiawould you see as being the best possible outcome for Australia’s interests?



Dr van Langenberg—That is a very difficult question to answer. The best possibleoutcome is clearly dependent upon the best possible candidates being available at the time.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Yes, I mean within that small group.

Dr van Langenberg—Within that limited category it was possibly the best combination.Having said that, one has to make serious qualifications immediately. For one thing, thepresidency itself is going to change substantially regarding the extent to which it is going tobe a dominant power centre in the Indonesian state in the immediate future. Already it seemsto me that a scene has been set—and is going to be played out increasingly over the nexttwo to three years, and certainly throughout this entire presidency—of increasing tension andconflict between the legislature and the presidency. The Indonesian parliament has flexed itsmuscles and shown that it can control the extent to which the presidency is dependent on itor, if you like, seen to be and needs to be responsible to the parliament. Legislation has nowbeen passed which will make the presidency answerable to parliament if necessary everyyear. Parliament can summon the President to be accountable every year. This raises thepotential for votes of no confidence, as were carried out—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —It is a unicameral house, isn’t it?

Dr van Langenberg—It is a bicameral system which meets as the single People’sConsultative Assembly. You have a house of representatives which then merges withadditional members to constitute the NPR—the People’s Consultative Assembly. ThePresident can be summoned by the consultative assembly every year to submit a report onhis administration. The consultative assembly, as it did with Habibie not so long ago, mayrefuse to accept that report, which effectively amounts to a vote of no confidence.

The old days of the Suharto regime in which Suharto basically dominated and controlledmost of the parliament and controlled the military are gone. The current presidency does notcontrol the military other than seeking to make senior appointments and play off factions,nor does the current presidency, whether it is Megawati or Wahid or both, control theparliament. Wahid himself is one conceived from the membership of the current cabinet andis very dependent on the coalition deals and alliances that he reached with various factionswithin the parliament to get himself elected. In fact, he was originally talking about a 25member cabinet, but in the course of a few days of negotiations that number jumped to 35,simply to accommodate the various debts that he owed to different political factions withinthe parliament.

You are seeing a very different structure emerging in Indonesia, which means that wehave to be much more subtle about where we see real policy being made and where we seepolicy lying in Indonesia. It is not lying anymore in the presidency, as it did for the previous25 years or so, at least, under Suharto. It is now lying in a much more fluid arena beingplayed out in conflicts between legislature, presidency, military and various regionalinterests.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —So are we seeing then the beginning of an entrenchedtheocracy with Mr Abdurrahman Wahid?



Dr van Langenberg—No, I do not think there is any sign of that at all. Political Islamis, and will remain in the foreseeable future as far as I can tell, quite substantially divided.Even the working alliance, for example, between Wahid and Amien Rais—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Do you mean politically divided with respect to the Sunni andShiite—

Dr van Langenberg—No, divided on questions about divisions between, say, modernistor traditionalist orientations of Islam—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —But not fundamentalists as we know them?

Dr van Langenberg—Not in the Iranian sense, no, not by any stretch of the imagination.Not even in the Pakistan sense.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Not in the Iranian, Afghani, Iraqi—

Dr van Langenberg—No, there is no Iranian structure of Islam in Indonesia, becausethere is no mullah hierarchy to begin with; nor is there any tradition of martyrdom as inShiite Iran Islam; nor is there an Islamic militancy of the kind one sees in Algeria orPakistan, for example, of the Islamic Brotherhood variety. There are radical Muslims inIndonesia. There are Muslims in Indonesia who would want to see a theocratic state. But, interms of numbers and institutional capacity, they are extremely limited.

Wahid represents the largest Islamic organisation in Indonesia, which is a highly eclecticform of Islam. It mixes animism with Islamic belief, with Suffism, with a bit of HinduBuddhism in certain parts of Java and so on. It is an Islam that sees itself as primarily ruraltraditional.

Amien Rais heads the next major Islamic organisation, the Muhammadiyah. TheMuhammadiyah is essentially an urban based organisation that came out of the Al Azharmovement in Cairo of the late 19th century, early 20th century. It essentially sees itself asmodernist but also sees itself as scripturally correct. So it returns to scripture rather than, ifyou like, to local tradition.

But at the same time you do not have in Indonesia anything even approaching a kind ofclergy which can constitute a major elite. You do not even have a highly institutionalisedIslamic law structure in Indonesia, as you have in Malaysia. There is no equivalent to thatsystem of sharia court in Indonesia. You do not even have traditional leaders that seethemselves as guardians of Islam as the sultans in Malaysia do. So it is a much morediversified, much more eclectic and mixed—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —What about the Sultan of Jogjakarta, does he play a role at all?

Dr van Langenberg—Not in Islam, no.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Does he play a political role?



Dr van Langenberg—He does in central Java in the Jogjakarta region. You have fourruling houses in central Java, two major ones and two minor ones. Two are based in Solo,which is one of the traditional kingdom centres, and one in Jogjakarta. The Sultan ofJogjakarta is probably the premier of the four, but that is largely because he is the majornationalist figure and played important roles in the independent Indonesian government after1949. But his influence extends very little beyond central Java and, in fact, not all that muchbeyond the Jogjakarta region. He enjoys some support in the Solo area, which is only a fewkilometres away, but he would not be a major political player at all.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —That has obviously diminished over the years, and particularlyover the Suharto years?

Dr van Langenberg—Yes. I think it is probably going to diminish even further.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Let me get on to East Timor, if I may. What part, if any, isIndonesia going to take in the immediate future, in those years devoted to rebuilding EastTimor? What significant role is there for Indonesia in that period, if any?

Dr van Langenberg—I think there has to be a significant role for Indonesia in therebuilding of East Timor. I think it is much too early to quantify what that is at the presentstage. First, the question of the degree of stability of the Indonesian government and its owndomestic political priorities remains somewhat uncertain, as we are well aware, and I do notthink we are going to get a clear picture of this for another six or maybe even another 12months. My guess is that Indonesia will want to maintain a voice on what happens in EastTimor within both the UN and ASEAN, because Indonesia’s ASEAN partners are anxious toget a cut of the reconstruction that is about to take place.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Do you think its interest is confined to East Timor? After thedestruction by Indonesia, they are now going to paradoxically take part in the reconstructionof it. Don’t you think there are other areas such as Ambon, Aceh, Kalimantan and otherareas of the archipelago that will probably absorb the attention—

Dr van Langenberg—That is precisely what I was going to say, yes. I think the policypriorities and the implementation of economic policy in Indonesia will have to be workedout with regard to the changing relationship between Jakarta and the regions. If you followthrough the statements by the current President, Indonesia is about to embark on a majorrestructuring of that relationship between Jakarta and the regions. Indonesia is about toembark on a major program of devolution of economic and political power to moreautonomous regions. It has even just created three new provinces. It has divided West Irianinto three provinces.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Does that now make 29 provinces then?

Dr van Langenberg—It was 26; they lost one; and they got three new ones—that makes29, yes. The Maluccas is now divided into two provinces, north and south—a new one hasbeen created. West Irian now consists of three provinces. The West Irian division is notbeing received with overwhelming enthusiasm within West Irian itself.



Senator LIGHTFOOT —But the Indonesians have not been received with enthusiasmsince it was absorbed into the greater Indonesia—

Dr van Langenberg—Indeed they have not. But the division is not even received byIndonesia’s agents in East Timor, if you like. The current governor of what was the provinceof East Timor has suddenly seen his territory divided into three—

CHAIR —Irian Jaya.

Dr van Langenberg—Sorry, Irian Jaya—thank you, Chair, I knew you would come tothe rescue.

CHAIR —We knew what you meant.

Dr van Langenberg—Student demonstrations have already occurred in protest at thisand so on. On the other hand, Christians in the Maluccas are seen to be welcoming thecreation of a south Maluccas province, which they can see is a predominantly Christianregion. So the division of the South Maluccas may get some popular support in the region,but the division of West Irian into three may well turn out to be a very contentious andproblematic process.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —If we can just put West Irian to one side for the moment: doyou think that the—albeit belated—devolution of power to some of the outlying provinces isgoing to be sufficient to prevent, stop or even inhibit further signs of insurrection in thoseplaces?

CHAIR —Insurrection—I will just intervene there—in the breakup—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —In the breakup, yes, that is really what I am getting at. Do youthink that is enough? I do not necessarily think that there will be a breakup of thearchipelago into fully autonomous or independent regions, but is it enough to stop theinsurrections?

Dr van Langenberg—No, it may not be enough to stop the insurrections. Theinsurrections, it seems to me, are being driven now by a history of 50 years of increasingcentral government control. It is seen by many local elites in many of the regions asexploitation of their resources, particularly in areas such as Aceh, Irian Jaya, South Sulawesi,North Sulawesi and even Kalimantan.

You have had increasingly a kind of bureaucratic centralisation that has developed over50 years of the Indonesian independent state and at the same time you have had increasingcorruption within that administrative system. You have also had increasing human rightsabuses carried out by the security forces. That is a long period which has built up very deepand substantial resentments.

Many people in the regions now see opportunities for an escape from this system. Theyalso feel that their security may be better met in the long run by some kind of greater



autonomy or even independence. Security from what? Largely security from the agents of theold centralising state.

There is the question of why Acehnese are increasingly supporting the Free AcehMovement, which was a bizarre eccentric movement started 20 years ago by a sort of pettyAcehnese aristocrat who at one time worked for the CIA in New York and then went to livein Sweden. Twenty years ago this movement was regarded as bizarre and eccentric. Whyhave thousands and thousands of Acehnese come to support the notion of a Free AcehMovement? Largely because they have felt more and more at risk from the security agenciesof the Indonesian state. They feel that their future would be more secure by breaking awayfrom Indonesia—quite apart from the economic materialist one.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Yes, that is often the motivating factor. But would it beunkind—or inaccurate might be a better answer, if you may give me one—to suggest thatIndonesia, having emerged 52 years ago from colonialism, is itself colonising Kalimantanand West Irian at least; would that be an unkind conclusion?

Dr van Langenberg—For many Indonesians it would be an unkind conclusion, but notone that I would be inclined to resile from. I have published that argument and I think it ispertinent. It seems to me that Indonesia along with the Russian Federation today areprobably the last two great surviving imperial colonial states about to undergo major andsubstantial transformations.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Would that necessarily be bad if they were to break up? I amlooking at Australia’s domestic view of it.

Dr van Langenberg—No, I do not think so. I do not think that, from an Australianperspective, history would be any worse if the old bureaucratic, centralised, imperialIndonesian state were to loosen or even have parts of it break away and become independent.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Are there any others besides Kalimantan and West Irian—Ambon or Aceh? Would you put those in the category as well?

Dr van Langenberg—If you look at potential secessionism in Indonesia—these may notall succeed, of course—the other prospect we may well be looking at is a substantially longperiod ahead. We may be talking about 10 even 20 years of low-level insurgency andcontinued instability within what still remains an Indonesian state. There is no indication thatthe present government in Indonesia is willing to contemplate any further regions ofIndonesia becoming independent. President Wahid has refused even to endorse a referendumin Aceh, although he may be forced to at some point. He has issued warnings to people inRiau, for example, not to demonstrate for independence or autonomy.

What comes up here, of course, from an Australian point of view is: is it going to bemore to Australia’s advantage to have an Indonesia for the next 20 years which is internallyridden by regionalist upheaval and secessionist movements; or to have an Indonesia that, in asense, kind of restructures itself into a more stable set of two, three or four states? That isthe kind of strategic—



Senator LIGHTFOOT —Rather than the 29 that it has now?

Dr van Langenberg—Rather than the 29, yes. But you are not talking about all 29provinces seeking independence or even degrees of autonomy.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —No.

Dr van Langenberg—But certainly one has to say that at the moment there areemerging potential secessionist movements in a number of regions in Indonesia: Irian Jaya isone; South Maluccas is another; West and East Kalimantan would be others; North andSouth Sulawesi would be others; a tiny independence movement has announced itself inBali; in the Riau archipelago in Sumatra; and, of course, in Aceh—so you are looking at asubstantial number.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I do not know whether the chairman—

CHAIR —No, you are going very well. You are asking the questions I was going to askanyway.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Thank you. Let me ask you this then: one of the reasons thatwe have for going into East Timor in the manner that we did—and, incidentally, I think itwas a very brave decision of the Prime Minister to do that—

Dr van Langenberg—You are talking about?

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Sending an intervention force in there was based on itsproximity to Australia and the more emotive issue that the East Timorese were of greatassistance to Australians—it cost them dearly as a result of that—during the Japaneseinvasion. There is a similar occasion in West Irian—not so much so in West Irian but in thatgreat island of Papua New Guinea and West Irian generally which gave assistance, too, tothe Australian and allied forces during that World War II conflict. If there was a movementof some significance as still prevails in East Timor, and there is unquestionably anindependence movement in West Irian, given that we have already set a model that Australiahas taken, what is the chances do you think of Australia intervening for the independencemovement in West Irian, if any?

Dr van Langenberg—I wish I had the answer, Senator Lightfoot, because I am sure Iwould make a lot of money in the future if I could predict it. But I do not think it ispredictable, frankly.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Is it probable, possible or is it neither of those?

Dr van Langenberg—I do not think it is probable. I think the possibility is very slight.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Why is that?

Dr van Langenberg—I am not sure whether you are asking me to predict Indonesianpolicy priorities in two or three years time or Australian government policy priorities.



Senator LIGHTFOOT —If I may run through some of the reasons: ethnically, there isvery little relationship—

Dr van Langenberg—Between what and what?

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Between Indonesia or the main islands of the Javanese peopleand the people of West Irian. They are Melanesians significantly but not exclusively. Theyare aboriginal or they are native to that part of the island. It is very close to Australia—closer than Timor is. They have a vast amount of wealth on that half of the island. It issomething that is going to be a boil that needs some sort of attention if it is not to erupt inthe next couple of decades.

They are numerically weak but they are potentially minerally very wealthy. Significanceamounts of gas have been found on the other half of that young island—it is only about 15million years old pushed up, incidentally, by Australia’s continental drift further north. Sowe have a geological relationship with its creation, in fact. We have all those elements thatare in East Timor. There is one element missing, and that is we cannot find any sectarianreason to perhaps intervene.

Dr van Langenberg—I really do not want to speculate on Australian policy on thisbecause I am no expert on it—let me make that absolutely clear—nor have I done any usefulresearch that would allow me to speculate on it. However, I can say this in reply to yourcomment: it seems to me at the moment there is probably substantial Irianese ‘Papuan’support for the Free Papua Movement throughout the province of West Irian; that is, what isnow the three provinces. We are not sure what scale of support would be needed. But I havea number of colleagues, and I also have a PhD student at the moment, working in West Irianwho would all concede that, of all the Papuans—the indigenous Irianese that they haveworked with and met in the course of their research—they would say well over 90 per centexpress support for the idea of Papuan independence.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —That is significantly greater than in East Timor.

Dr van Langenberg—Significantly greater than East Timor, but this is impressionisticresearch. Nobody conducts surveys in Irian Jaya, nor would anyone be allowed to conductsurveys in Irian Jaya. But the indications are that support for some kind of independent stateis overwhelmingly held by most Irianese, most West Papuans. The question is whether thatis going to turn itself into something major that is militarily based. In other words, onecannot exclude Fretilin as a major factor in the East Timor equation. It was Fretilin’s 25years of armed resistance, of course, to Indonesian occupation that kept the East Timoreseindependence movement alive. That kind of movement has not emerged in West Irian. TheOPM is scattered, it is frequently divided, its leadership changes regularly, it has noworkable central command structure and so on. It is driven still by regional, ethnic andfactional divisions. So you do not see an equivalent to Falintil or Fretilin anywhere in IrianJaya.

What you do see, it seems to me, is widespread popular antagonism amongst PapuanIrianese against belonging to the Indonesian state and against Indonesian officialdom andnon-Irianese migrants in West Papua, in Irian Jaya. Were at some point an Indonesian



government, as the Habibie administration did, to decide that the people of West Irian inIndonesia’s shoe is becoming a rock and has to be removed, it seems to me that then themomentum will gather pace, which will see serious possibility of an independent Irian Jayaor independent West Papua.

Going ahead from that level of speculation, what kind of independent state is likely toemerge, say, within the next 10 years if this sort of development were to happen in WestPapua, in Irian Jaya? It seems to me it is going to be a state that is going to be no morepolitically stable than Papua New Guinea is at the moment, and probably considerably lessstable than Papua New Guinea is, because it would still be a polity that remains essentiallytribally based and one with serious political and ethnic divisions within it. So I think that isthe kind of scenario we are looking at. Whether some kind of direct Australian interventionis likely to take place in this situation I am not going to speculate.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I am only going to subject you to two more questions. The firstone is whether in your opinion a summit is now needed between the Australian governmentand the Indonesian government, given that the elections are over and they have theirpresident, their cabinet, their ministry and their vice-president. In your view, is it the soonerthe better rather than later?

Dr van Langenberg—A summit on what?

Senator LIGHTFOOT —A summit on trying to repair the damage caused. I might saythat that damage at the level of Indonesian government and business is not as great as thepress would have us believe. I know through my own contacts that that is not the case. I amnot saying that there is not a rift there and there is not some residual antipathy. There is, andI think that residual antipathy may last for some time—certainly not years but months. Butthat could easily be negated by a summit between both the governments and the antagonists,if you like.

CHAIR —Before you address that, can I say that one of the recommendations in ourinterim report was not looking at a summit at that level, so I would like you to embrace thisin your comments. That is an important point that Senator Lightfoot raises—a summit, Iwould imagine, at the peak level. We have recommended in our report that there needs to bethe development of, for want of a better word, a close liaison between parliamentarians; inother words, to take it away from the peak level and get it down to a base level. If youcould comment on the recommendation that the committee has already made, it would beappreciated.

Dr van Langenberg—I am not so sure that I see much advantage in the immediatefuture of a summit—short term, that is—as a matter of urgency, for a number of reasons. Iam not sure that the present Indonesian government is going to be very amenable to anykind of high profile summit meeting with Australia. It seems to me it would not fit into whatI read are the current foreign relations priorities of the Wahid administration; that is, Wahidwants to rebuild Indonesia’s influence in ASEAN. It wants to deal with its ASEAN partnersabout the future of East Timor and their possible involvement—notably the Thais, theMalaysians and the Singaporeans. Secondly, I think Wahid wants to develop his new policy



on Israel as a matter of high priority. I think that is directed in part to wanting to seeIndonesia play some kind of more important role in the Middle East peace negotiations.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Is this because of it being the largest Muslim nation?

Dr van Langenberg—It is in part because Wahid does represent predominantly anIslamic constituency, a pious Islamic constituency—he wants to maintain that constituency,obviously. I think also he is very conscious of not allowing that constituency to becomefrustrated or to feel that they are being ignored. Pious Muslims in Indonesia probably remaina minority of the population, but they are a minority who perceive themselves asrepresenting the majority of Indonesians who are at least nominally Muslim and aconstituency that has traditionally seen itself as discriminated against by a kind of nominalMuslim, Christian, Chinese, Javanese elite. So he has to meet the needs of that constituencyand I think a high profile Indonesian involvement in the Middle East is part of that.

There are some rumours around in Jakarta that one of the reasons for the new strategy onIsrael is to build bridges with the Jewish lobby in the United States. For what purpose isvery hard to pin down at the moment, except for a view that Indonesia might have greaterinfluence in Washington if it were to take a more pro-US position on Middle Eastern affairsby developing better relations with Israel.

I think the third priority that the Wahid government is pushing at the moment is buildingsome kind of broader sort of Asian context for Indonesian foreign policy, particularlylooking towards India and Pakistan, and I think it is seeking to redevelop its relations withJapan and China of course—he is talking about a visit to China.

So there is, on the one hand, a kind of Asian agenda which has been largely borrowed, Iguess, from the Malaysian priorities of recent times; it was an agenda that the Habibieregime too, to some extent, was also trying to develop. On the other hand there is thisMiddle Eastern agenda and then there is the agenda of rebuilding Indonesia’s influence.Australia is very marginal in this scenario and I do not see that any kind of Australia-Indonesia summit is going to receive much sympathetic response in Jakarta at the moment.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Is it because it does not figure in a priority of order?

Dr van Langenberg—Yes.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Not because of any overwhelming antipathy towards Australia?

Dr van Langenberg—No, and I would largely agree with your assessment of the anti-Australian sentiment in Indonesia in recent weeks. I think a lot of it was huffing and puffing,a lot of it was a bit of a chess game, and a lot of it was a kind of strategic posturing. Itserved short-term political interests.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —And obviously some domestic consumption as well.

Dr van Langenberg—Sure.



Senator LIGHTFOOT —How do you assess the initiative that the Australiangovernment has taken on East Timor? Do you think that it could have done it better or thatit was about as good as you could get?

Dr van Langenberg—I think that, as usual, we were probably a little bit late. We were alittle bit late in order to save the lives and property of many East Timorese; whether wecould have remains debatable, of course.

It seems to me that the signs of a shift in Indonesian government policy on East Timorwere beginning to become clear almost the moment that the Habibie presidency began.Habibie had been on record for some time, even before he became Vice-President, that somesort of settlement of the Timor affair had to take place. He had reiterated on a number ofoccasions this image of the pebble in the shoe and that it was becoming more and moreexpensive and more and more a drain on Indonesia’s diplomatic and economic resources.There was a group of advisers around Habibie who were well known, I would imagine, tothe Australian government and diplomatic service and who had made no secret of the factthey wanted to see some kind of settlement of the Timor question. It would be some kind ofarrangement which would give Timor autonomy, some kind of deal to be reached withFretilin in the long term.

It seems to me that none of that, for some reason or other, appeared to penetrateAustralian government policy until Habibie made the announcement himself that he wasgoing to hold a referendum, that he was going to have the UN run it and that, if thereferendum did not approve the proposal for autonomy, East Timor could becomeindependent.

That was not, as much media coverage suggests, made by Habibie off the cuff becausehe is some kind of mad aeronautic scientist. It was a view I think that had been developing,in both his own mind and the minds of a circle of advisers around him—academic advisersas well as senior people in an Islamic constituency around him, particularly from ICMI and aresearch body called CIDES—for quite some time; I would think for probably two or threeyears prior to the actual announcement by Habibie himself. Once Habibie’s announcementwas made, then the reactions from the Kopassus power centre within the military, from thelocal command in Bali, from the local military commands in East Timor itself and from thevarious police commands arrived.

Again, this question of the Indonesian military’s connections with the militia is notsomething new. The Indonesian occupation of East Timor had been carried out initiallythrough the recruitment of militia type units in 1974. Indonesia had played the key role inthe formation of Aphodeti. Indonesia had sent militia units across the border prior to theinvasion and continued to form them during its occupation of East Timor. The Indonesianmilitary has always used militia type units for the maintenance of security or for carrying outstrategic operations in various parts of Indonesia and it had done that in East Timor. So itseems to me that (a) we must have been aware, or somebody must have been aware, thatpolicy was going to change long before it did or certainly from the time that the Habibiepresidency began; and (b) the Indonesian military on the ground, either through the specialforces command or through units in the commands in Bali and Timor itself, were in aposition to resist any kind of move towards independence in East Timor.



So that is my only point of criticism, I suppose—that somehow we seemed to respondvery late. It seems to me we did not pick up or make public, if we did know, the likelyviolence, destruction and killings that were going to take place in East Timor if thatreferendum was lost by Indonesia.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —So how does that extrapolate then to the government’s job—good, bad, indifferent, excellent, one out of 10?

Dr van Langenberg—One could say that there may have been some considerable degreeof indifference. There may have also been some assumption—perhaps one that was shared inIndonesia as well—that the autonomy option may have been approved in East Timor. Itseems to me the number of questions that arise become limitless almost as you start to askthem. To what extent did policy advice in Canberra to the Australian government assume theautonomy option was going to be approved? To what extent were we aware or did we evenconsider the possibility that there may have been an overwhelming vote for independence?Why did we not pick up the obvious evidence for a long time that militias were beingformed in East Timor and that militia leaders were making public statements that, if thereferendum was not approved, violence would be carried out? Why did we not believe them?That is the way the Indonesian military had operated for 25 or 30 years.

CHAIR —I am afraid on that note we will have to finish. Unfortunately, we have otherwitnesses who are due at 1.30 and we have not at this stage had our lunchbreak. We thankyou for your evidence. It is not that I was not interested; I did have a number of questionswhich were fortunately covered by questions Senator Lightfoot raised. I did have otherquestions but, in the fullness of time, they will come out with other witnesses. Thank youvery much, Dr van Langenberg.

Proceedings suspended from 1.15 p.m. to 1.51 p.m.



HOGAN, Mr Des, Refugee Coordinator/National Campaigns Team, AmnestyInternational Australia

O’CONNOR, Mr Anthony John, Convenor, Indonesia/East Timor Coordination Group,Amnesty International Australia

CHAIR —The committee prefers all evidence to be given in public, but should you atany stage wish to give any part of your evidence in private you may ask to do so and thecommittee will consider your request. The committee has before it your submission. Arethere any alterations or additions you would like to make to your submission at this stage?

Mr O’Connor —We would like to add supplementary material and there are a number ofdocuments for the use of your secretariat: one is calledEast Timor: Demand for justice;another isRecommendations to the Secretary-General on the investigation of war crimes;Testimonies from East Timorese refugees; Refugees at risk; andThe terror continues.

CHAIR —Those documents that have been identified will be taken as having been tabledfor use by the committee. The additional submission, subject to the normal scrutiny of thecommittee before release, will be taken as an additional part to your submission and releasedas part of your public submission in due course.

For the purpose of obtaining an accurate record, would you remain behind at the end ofproceedings so that the Hansard officer can check spellings and sources of informationprovided this afternoon. We now invite you to make an opening statement and then we willproceed to questions. We do apologise for the late start, but our witnesses flowed over thismorning with their information and our time was stretched beyond our reasonable capacity.It is my anticipation that we will wrap your session up no later than about 2.40 p.m., so thatgives you some idea of the time frame.

Mr O’Connor —We appear representing Amnesty International. In some ways we arenot the best people to appear. The best people would be the actual researcher on East Timorand her associates who are presently in Dili working with NGOs carrying out sometestimony gathering and also preparing for a forensic workshop with an Argentinian forensicspecialist to assist the Timorese NGOs in their struggle to try to cope with the preservationof evidence for the UN commission of inquiry.

The information that we present has been gathered by those researchers both in Darwinand from interviews with Timorese refugees in Jakarta and Macau. There will be a muchlonger report summarising all of this information that will appear in December and we willforward it to the committee at that stage.

We should say that Amnesty International has been following the events in East Timorsince 1975, but we were for all of those years forbidden to actually enter East Timor andonly were able to go there for the first time in May. This was in a period of great tensionand killings and the build-up of militia intimidation. We gathered information at that stage,attempted to talk to senior Indonesian representatives and also attempted to meet leaders ofthe integration factions and militias. We received information from all kinds of groups and



this is what we will talk about today. Amnesty was only able to meet with one leader of thepro-integration faction.

The original submission that we made back in March drew attention to the deterioratinghuman rights situation even before the May agreements. We showed, based on the evidencethat we had collected and also from very reliable East Timorese NGOs like the CatholicChurch’s Commission on Justice and Peace and Yayasan HAK that there were already, atthat stage, close links between the military and the militias. This was borne out furtherduring the registration process and in the lead-up to the ballot.

However, we would have to say that, even after having recorded these sorts of abuses forthat length of time, we were unprepared for what happened in September. It was reallyshocking and still very hard to understand. We would also have to express at the beginningour deep disappointment with the mechanisms of the United Nations, the bureaucraticprocedures and that still the commission of inquiry into human rights abuses has not beenable to arrive in East Timor. It is amazing that they cannot even hold a meeting to bringforward their departure date.

Briefly, I would like to touch on the issues at the bottom of the first page. The first issueis crimes against humanity—in our opinion there is prima facie evidence that these haveoccurred; secondly, accountability and impunity and the UN commission; and, thirdly, waysthat Australia can assist that commission. We would particularly like to mention the sharingof intelligence that is commonly believed to be in the possession of the Australiangovernment. Going back to what we raised in the original submission—but even morestrongly at this stage—the ways that Australia can assist the rebuilding of the legal, judicialand police system in East Timor, bringing in particularly those East Timorese people and theNGOs who have accumulated a lot of experience over the years. I do not know whether youconsider it within your terms of reference, but we believe that the events in Timor cast lighton the human rights issue related to any future military relationship between Australia andIndonesia.

We would simply say—and I guess you have heard this this morning at greater length—that we believe that there is prima facie evidence of crimes against humanity, and possiblyalso war crimes based on the systematic nature of intimidation and killings, even if thenumbers turn out not to be very great, and on a large scale particularly for civiliandeportation. Under the category of war crimes there are some other things besides those thatcome in, and one of them is the extensive destruction and appropriation of property whenthere is no justification for that in any military sense. There is also in the statute of theInternational Criminal Court a provision that attacks on Red Cross premises are counted as awar crime. We would say that the abuses in East Timor were systematic and perhaps I canelaborate on that if you have questions.

CHAIR —I think we have already accepted that it was premeditated and that it wassystematic. I do not think that is beyond any doubt as far as the committee is concerned.

Mr O’Connor —Yes. We would say briefly on the question of how many people havebeen killed that we do not know. The best evidence that we can say so far is that the numberis 100-plus, but there is evidence of removal of bodies from particular sites. This is



something which is not new and which occurred, for example, in Santa Cruz, and is verywell documented in Aceh. This is something that the Indonesian army is quite capable ofdoing. It has to be borne in mind that these figures may increase.

CHAIR —You say you believe that the number of deaths confirmed is about 100. Overwhat period of time are you looking at, do you know?

Mr O’Connor —This would be basically August-September.

CHAIR —All right, thank you.

Mr O’Connor —We are not going back beyond that, I do not think. For example, in thefirst visit that Amnesty International paid to Dili, our delegates were taken by NGOs on aroad from Dili to Hera, which is about half an hour, and they were shown 15 suspectedgrave sites which had not been exhumed or anything like that. So there seem to be quite anumber of uninvestigated things.

Crimes against humanity in war crimes carry individual responsibility and in many waysthose who gave the approval and the orders for such things to occur might be considered tobe more guilty than the people who actually carried them out. We believe that it is veryimportant that accountability exist both for East Timor—for the recognition of what thepeople suffered—and for Indonesia, that an unregulated army is an even greater threat nowto the people of Indonesia than it was to the people of East Timor. These obviously arecrimes under international law that every country is supposed to assist in the investigation ofand the prosecution of if no international tribunal is established.

The Indonesian inquiry itself, we believe, cannot be adequate, although we would have tosay that their recent report on conditions of refugees in West Timor is a good report. Itappears to have shown serious evidence of wanting to get to the truth and one of themembers of that committee—Munir, who is a very well known activist in NGO circles inJakarta—has very high credibility as someone who exposed the kidnapping of politicalactivists in the last days of the Suharto government. So we would think that the peoplewould try but the system itself in Indonesia—and especially the accountability of the army—is just such that we could not possibly trust the army itself to be willing to submit to that.

We have mentioned already the UN commission of inquiry, that the delays are verydisappointing and in fact scandalous. It seems to be a combination of the very complicatedbureaucratic procedure and also the willingness of countries behind the scenes to use thoseprocesses to their advantage—for example, to refuse to hold a committee hearing simplybecause a translation was not made into Chinese. I guess that is important, but it seemsrelatively unimportant compared with the problem.

We understand that some members of that committee of inquiry, some technical experts,have already arrived in Dili to prepare the groundwork but that they are still held back. Atthis stage we would see that the Australian government has a very important role, first of allin strong diplomatic support for the smooth progress of the commission. We understand fromour representative at the UN in New York that that is happening. At a later stage, support interms of seconding technical experts would be an important thing as well. The major way



that we see Australia as being able to help is the sharing of any information that it has whichcan shed light on the chain of command, the people actually responsible and going back asfar as possible, either to the provincial level or to the regional military command level inBali, to elucidate the responsibility of those senior officers.

There is provision in things like the statute of the International Criminal Court, which wetake as a kind of guidance in this fairly uncharted territory, for intelligence information to beshared on a confidential basis and there is a precedent in the sharing of information from theUnited States and the British government to the tribunal on Yugoslavia. We do not believethat there should be any exception to this except for the most serious reasons.

It is very difficult. We obviously do not know what this intelligence information is,although if we believe theBulletin some of this information was already discussed by asenior ADF officer with the armed forces in Jakarta, so presumably this has already beenshown in some way to Indonesia to try to pressure them to behave well. If that is thecase, then there is no reason to not share it fully with the commission and with anysubsequent tribunal.

I will now go to page 6. In the original submission, we were looking at what we hopedwas going to be a relatively peaceful transition to either an autonomous province or anindependent state and we talked about the need to rebuild the legal, judicial and policesystems and also to provide assistance to victims of torture and trauma. This is even moreimportant now. As for the East Timorese NGOs that we have worked with very closely—andthis is not every NGO: these are ones that are well respected, that had good workingrelationships with the Australian embassy and other countries such as Canada, the EU andthe British government—and as for their information gathering techniques and theirverification, their cross checking to make sure that they are actually getting correctinformation is fairly well established, they have actually just lost most of their records if notall. They have lost their buildings and they have lost their ability to communicate and theirability to get around. Besides that, they worked very long hours over that whole period, sothey were exhausted even before the terror struck them.

They need to be assisted. They are important elements in re-establishing East Timor andin finding out what happened. They should be consulted. They should be brought into theUN process. Any bilateral assistance that Australia gives in these areas should bring thosepeople into consideration as well. They have much to offer. At the end of page 6 there is aquote from our researcher Lucia Withers. She would say that even something as simple aspens and paper—she took a whole supply of those from Darwin to Dili—are not readilyavailable in Dili at all.

Finally, we would just like to touch on the military relationship with Indonesia. It isinevitable, as the years go by, that some form of this relationship will be re-established, butthere are very important lessons to be learnt from the whole period of the 1990s. Forexample, when the first exchanges of Kopassus troops for joint training with the SASoccurred, we had just released a report on the events in Aceh from 1989 to 1992. Thatinformation was well known and it was not seriously disputed, but the government at thetime said, ‘No, we’re really only training these guys in anti-terrorist activities.’ That maywell have been true there, but there was a second channel there that was to create good



relationships with the senior elements of the Indonesian army. There was always anobfuscation saying, ‘They have a role in their own country in internal security. We’re notgetting involved in that.’ But the criticism of that, that honest recognition of what was reallyhappening, was very muted.

The previous joint committee into Indonesia-Australia relations recommended that humanrights training be included in such exchanges. That was rejected by the government of thattime—and I do not think it was just the government of the time, I think that was prettymuch a bipartisan view. The defence department itself is extremely secretive on who isbrought to Australia for these training things. This is not a good situation. It comparesunfavourably with, for example, the information that can be obtained in the United States.

The army in Indonesia itself is still unreformed. Until there has been a genuine reform,we do not believe that there should be any training of formed units. We do not believe thatthere should be a defence cooperation program of the type that existed before. The ministersaid last year, when he suspended the joint training with Kopassus, that he understood that aprocess of reform or of improving professional standards and accountability was under wayand that he expected that the cooperation would resume when those internal reforms werecompleted. Presumably, this has changed because you cannot imagine it happening veryquickly. But this must be examined very closely and very critically. We would also ask thegovernment to look very closely at defence exports such as they are to see what has occurredand to satisfy itself that in the past any training that was given could not have led in someway to forms of abuse.

Perhaps I took a long time on that. The rest of the submission is summaries of variousdocuments and case examples. Undoubtedly, you will have seen a lot of that, but I woulddraw your attention to one comment at the top of page 14. This was information collectedfrom people who had left Indonesia but who had been refugees or had been moving fromDili to Kupang. We have an eyewitness account of 35 people being killed on the shipDobonSolo, which was going from Dili to Kupang on 11 September.

On a ferry from Kupang to Bali on 13 September, two East Timorese were taken awayby members of the police, the Lorosae contingent. This was supposed to be a clean group ofpolice who were not going to be sucked into the kind of violent atmosphere that existedamongst the pre-existing police in East Timor. One of the East Timorese was severelybeaten. One of them never appeared again, and an Aitarak member who was with the policeboasted of murdering that man. Since he did not appear, we have to assume that he wasactually killed. There are also examples there of local staff members of the ICRC beingabducted from Atambua on 11 September and of two other people on 22 October who wereattempting to return to East Timor. We have no further information on their situation.

Mr Hogan—That is more or less the summary. Looking into the future, there are twomain priorities for Amnesty International from here. The first, as Tony alluded to, is thequest for truth, justice and accountability for what happened in East Timor so that thelessons can be learnt and we can really tackle impunity in Indonesia proper. Secondly, thereis the whole question of the security and protection of those refugees’ boats in West Timorand other parts of the Indonesian archipelago and also the internally displaced in East Timoritself. We feel that greater international efforts must be made to secure the refugee camps—



in West Timor, in particular. That is the end of our introduction. We would be happy toanswer any questions.

CHAIR —My first question is fairly general. One of the things that has concerned methroughout the time of this inquiry is the number of groups that have appeared before uswith solutions to this, that or something else or wanted something done here, there orsomewhere else. You have raised important issues. These were raised by the InternationalCommission of Jurists this morning and the likes of other similar witnesses. How close is thecoordination between you and other groups? Is it a matter of each acting independently ofthe other and getting in the other’s way? Let me say that this translates into other thingssuch as aid and very mundane things as well. Is that a problem?

Mr O’Connor —I think it could be, especially if you take the situation of a whole lot ofinternational human rights bodies arriving in Dili, trying to carry out simultaneousinvestigations and trying to draw on the experience and information of a relatively smallgroup of people. There is a great need for coordination. Amnesty International itself is quitefocused in investigating these particular abuses in terms of killings, disappearances andtorture.

CHAIR —I am not saying that you are not focused. The unfortunate problem is that thereare a number of others who are focused on the same issue. Take the InternationalCommission of Jurists, for example. How closely are you working with them? The reason Iask is that the issue of forensic evidence was raised before. It is interesting to note that intheir evidence to us this morning they said that they had approached the Department ofDefence to take action in offering assistance for forensic experts to assist the Department ofDefence, seeing that the army were on-site interactively and coming across these occurrencesnow rather than having groups—with the greatest of respect to you and others—outsidelooking in, maybe coming in later than the troops who might be disturbing the site now andknowing what steps they need to take to protect the forensic evidence there. Mine is not aquestion of your motives or your modus operandi; it is more a question of a people fallingover themselves and falling over each other and thereby creating confusion in its own right,not only in the process but also in the minds of the East Timorese.

Mr Hogan—I think there is always that risk. In Kosovo, you had a lot of internationalagencies going in and interviewing the same individuals. We have had meetings before withthe International Commission of Jurists, the East Timor Human Rights Centre, Caritas,ACFOA and many other agencies, both in Australia—in Darwin and further south—and inother fora as well. We would emphasise that non-government organisations are no substitutefor international action. The very fact that we are having to give this forensic workshop inDili points to the fact that the evidence was never secured. When they went in, INTERFETdid not have any clear mandate about how they were going to secure or investigate siteswhich could go forward to any UN investigation. We have already been calling for that tohappen. We have been asking questions: why has this not happened? It is quite clear that,especially with the rains coming, apart from anything else, and also the removal of bodies,as Tony has alluded to, there is a real risk that a lot of the evidence will be lost.

CHAIR —Have you approached the Department of Defence?



Mr O’Connor —No, it is news to me that the ICJ had made that approach. I guess itshows that we do not know what they are doing, and maybe they do not know what we aredoing.

CHAIR —Yes. As I say, it is not a criticism of you or them.

Mr O’Connor —No, it is a fair comment.

CHAIR —One of the frustrations I am feeling personally in this inquiry is that I seepeople of good intention but, for all that good intention, I wonder how much it is beingdissipated. Each group has got their own little niche, and no-one seems to be talking to eachother.

Mr O’Connor —This is not related to the forensic inquiry, but it is related to trying tocreate some coordination. Amnesty and some other European NGOs did bring the director ofthe group Yayasan HAK, Anciteo Guterres, to Geneva to talk to the UN Human RightsCommission staff there and to bring him into the planning that they were making in terms ofwhat they might do and what kind of legal structures they needed to bring in in a temporaryform. We have made efforts at facilitation of communication at that level. But, with the ICJ,no, I personally was not aware of the action.

CHAIR —The issue of forensic evidence is absolutely paramount, it would seem to me,in the long-term sustainability of proof of any crimes against humanity and so on. As yousay, the rains, the effluxion of time and the contamination of evidence—as I think theInternational Commission of Jurists described it this morning—make the job more difficultand mean that we are not necessarily able to achieve the outcomes that would otherwisehave been achievable if the proper forensic procedures were put in place in the first instance.

Mr O’Connor —It may well be that the evidence for the crimes against humanity, likesystematic killings, turns out to be substantially lost. However, we would suggest—and thatwas why I talked about forced deportation—that that also seems to be another very seriouscrime against humanity and it must have required high level planning—at least it wouldseem so—to organise so much transport, fuel and trucks going back and forth. This isanother aspect where the evidence may not be lost so quickly. The evidence itself may existalready. The actual process of discovering who died and who is alive could be a very longprocess—waiting for people to return to their villages and using the UN electoral roll. Itseems a very difficult investigation to carry forward. Sorry, maybe that went off on a tangentto what you were saying.

CHAIR —No, that is fine. The only other question that I want to ask concerns yoursubmission on the military relations with Indonesia. I have pursued this issue on a couple ofoccasions now during the estimates process and I think I also pursued it earlier on in thisinquiry with the Department of Defence. In your submission, you said:

The Department of Defence was (and is) quite secretive about the officers who received training in Australia.

What do you mean by the words ‘quite secretive’? What are you actually looking for?



Mr O’Connor —One of the examples I was thinking of was how in earlier years I thinkSenator Chamarette tried to obtain lists at an estimates committee or a committee hearingwith the Department of Defence.

CHAIR —Lists of what?

Mr O’Connor —Lists of officers.

CHAIR —Do you want their names?

Mr O’Connor —Yes. This assists in the assessment of what this is all about: why arethese people coming to Australia? Are they really coming here to learn professional skills oris it a sort of a gold star for them to move up the career path? I also know this from variousjournalists who have contacted me over the years and said, ‘We have this information fromsome source that this particular officer was trained in Australia.’ Usually it seems to befairly reliable. They say, ‘What do you know about this person? Were they in Timor andwhat happened when they were there?’

CHAIR —That could be said of a university education or any other form of educationthat we may give people as well—that they have taken back with them the information thatthey have gleaned or gained as a result of attendance at some form of educative course hereand used it in some destructive or other manner. I am on record in the estimates as havingsaid that I understand the need to protect the names of those people who participate incourses in Australia. If you were to say that you were worried about the secretive nature ofthe content of the course, then I would share a grave concern with you. But if we are goingto publish the name, rank and serial number of every person who participates in a course inAustralia, I think we are laying ourselves wide open.

If there are genuine intelligence reasons for us to participate with other nations in jointtraining deployment—and there are real intelligence reasons—then there is a bona fidereason to protect the names of the people, whether they be from our side or from any othernation that we are operating with, and so protect the participants in that operation. So youwill get an argument with me on that, but you will not get an argument with me on the issueof the secretive nature of the training. In other words, if you want to know the content of thecourse—what it was about—and the motives of the Australians who were participating in theinstruction, I am 100 per cent behind you because I think that should be in the publicprovince.

My involvement with the defence department so far has been that, where I have askedquestions on those issues, they have been forthcoming. They have neither tried to concealinformation nor, I believe, to in any way not call a spade a spade. If you have directevidence for me on where Australian training was deliberately aimed at either the EastTimorese or the people of any other nation, then I will gladly sit down with you and gothrough that, raise the appropriate questions at estimates and get the appropriate responsesfrom the officers of the department. I am only too prepared to pursue that, but you have tohave the evidence. Where I have called for support of evidence before, all I have got to dateare the sorts of recurring statements that people such as yourself make. To my knowledge,the defence forces did admit that there was some training of Kopassus forces, but that was to



do with terrorist activities and not with anything that might have been taking place inIndonesia.

You might say, ‘Where do you draw the line?’ You can only take the integrity of theAustralian trainers on face value and my experience with the defence personnel that doappear before us is that they are straightshooters; they have no need to be anythingotherwise. If you have evidence to the contrary, then bring it forward, give it to me, sit downand brief me and we will take it up at estimates. But as for going down the path of actuallyreleasing people’s names, ranks and serial numbers, I think that is asking too much. That ismy response to that.

Mr O’Connor —In terms of the test that we are seeking in the military relationship withIndonesia, there is a reason why we called for a suspension of the military relationship withIndonesia only after the September ballot and the events that followed—until then, we hadjust called for a comprehensive review to get some more information about what exactly wasgoing on over the years. The test that we are seeking is not whether there is a directconnection between training here and violations in Indonesia but whether there is aconnection. For example, bullets supplied by a Finnish company were found after the militiasfired on civilians in East Timor before September and we would say that there is a linkbetween the manufacture of the bullet, if you like—and the military supply of that bullet toIndonesia—and the way that it ends up being used in a human rights violation.

If Australia has trained Kopassus guerrilla forces in the past and if any of thoseindividuals have gone on to be involved in human rights abuses across Indonesia and EastTimor, we would argue that a question needs to be asked about the whole purpose, natureand result of that training. It is not so much the information gathered, it is more the skillslearnt and how they move on as well.

CHAIR —I hear your argument, but it is not an argument that I personally can accept. Ithink you are drawing a long bow.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I have a couple of questions along the same line as that takenby the chair. My view of my responsibility here—and I am sure I speak for the othercommittee members—is to establish what the truth is. We want to go beyond prima facieevidence. I think it was you, Mr O’Connor, who spoke about it. We would like to get someprimary evidence, some witnesses to these claims. I am happy to ask you, for instance, aboutthe 15 suspected sites that you spoke about, but ‘suspected sites’ is, in my view, not goodenough. For instance, we do not know—but there is a strong inference—whether those sitesare in fact the graves of some of the people from the militias. We have had some evidence—not strong but some evidence—that 40,000 people from the militia and the other Indonesianarmed services have been killed in East Timor. They have to have graves—unless thesepeople have gone back to their ancestral homes or their barracks or wherever they take them.

Can you give the committee evidence, which we would very much like you to do, or canyou call witnesses for the committee, or can you give us your personal evidence, which isperhaps better than prima facie, so that we can record that? There might be something youwould like to say about the alleged atrocities which there has undoubtedly been but not the



tens of thousands and certainly not the several hundred thousand as was originally talkedabout. If there is some evidence of that, we would certainly like to hear that too.

Mr O’Connor —You said 40,000 soldiers and militias killed. Are you referring to thewhole 25-year period?

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Probably over that period, yes.

Mr O’Connor —There are military cemeteries in Dili, Baucau and other places—although I do not know whether they have that number of graves.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —My point is that, although you say there are 15 sites suspectedof being graves, the inference is that they are the burial sites of East Timorese who met theirdeaths by TNI or by the militia. That may not be so.

Mr O’Connor —Indeed, it may not be so. I mentioned that to illustrate the fact that thereare all these sites around that have been identified by INTERFET, by the civilian police andby the Timorese themselves but that there is no way to investigate them at the moment. Thismakes the importance of a genuine commission of inquiry with well-resourced forensicevidence extremely important.

I also mentioned it to illustrate why we were taking an Argentinean expert there. It is notto carry out exhumations but simply to say to the Timorese NGOs who are active insearching for this kind of thing, ‘If you find a site, this is the proper thing to do.’ Obviouslywe do not want them to start excavating it but to follow proper procedures to try to preservethe evidence. That is the intention. We agree, we are not trying to tell you that all of thosesites are known, that we know who is buried there and the circumstances under which theydied, but we are saying that they call for investigation.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Do you have forensic experts from Australia going to EastTimor?

Mr O’Connor —No, the person who has been chosen is from Argentina. She hasparticular expertise in the period after the military junta in Argentina. She knows aboutviolent deaths, of people being buried, of the kinds of things that ought to have occurred.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Why is it not appropriate to second forensic experts fromAustralia, given some of the expertise here?

Mr O’Connor —I cannot answer that question. The person was chosen by AmnestyInternational staff in London, based on their knowledge of her. I am not saying there is notan expert in Australia but, given the choice of finding one person to take, apparently thisperson is the best one to take.

Mr Hogan—Also, the purpose of going into East Timor is not to exhume sites but to tryto provide some relevant training. The reason we felt compelled to do this is the slowness ofthe UN commission of inquiry in getting onto the ground. We have to remember that theyhave to report to Kofi Annan by the end of December. They would only be there for a



number of weeks. I do not know what they can comprehensively discover in that period oftime or what the nature of the report back to the UN can be.

The local East Timorese have already gone ahead and started exhumations and startedtrying to locate and identify sites. There are very few procedures on the ground and wewould certainly encourage this committee to press for that and to ask those hard questions ofINTERFET and of the Australian government and, indeed, the international community whythings are taking so long and why NGOs are having to do this sort of work, which ispossibly contaminating evidence—to use the ICJ’s term.

CHAIR —That was the very point that I was trying to come to. I am very supportive ofall you are doing, and your motives, but I am wondering about the problem that was raisedby the International Commission of Jurists this morning.

Mr Hogan—It is a problem.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —To use your words, who are these obstructive governments?

Mr Hogan—I think it was Asian governments and Latin governments who opposed theCHR resolution.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Through the United Nations?

Mr Hogan—Yes. The Secretary-General was in many ways authorised to dispatch thefive-member inquiry team when they were—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —But it does not require the United Nations to vote on it?

Mr Hogan—But it then went to the ECoSOC committee. We do not think that wasnecessary.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Are you saying that the fact that it went to the committee wasan obstruction?

Mr O’Connor —You could say that it was perhaps a misjudgment of the procedures tofollow. It seems that UN procedures are very elaborate.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —You are a little more positive on page 1 where you say, ‘It issimply scandalous that the United Nations bureaucracy can be exploited by obstructivegovernments to block the departure of a commission of inquiry.’ It is not ambiguous. Youare saying there that the bureaucracy was exploited by obstructive governments.

Mr Hogan—The UN relies on governments and unless governments get behind the UN,particularly its resolutions and decisions, you are going to have this sort of process.

CHAIR —Without being too disruptive on my part, isn’t part of the problem that some ofthose governments do not have the greatest human rights records around and that they do not



want to see the precedent set that may well interfere with their own internal processes? Isthat the reality?

Mr O’Connor —That seems a fair statement, yes. That seems to be part of themotivation. To answer your question, Senator Lightfoot, the governments that have beenmentioned to me by Amnesty staff in London, who are in communication withrepresentatives in Geneva and New York, are the governments of China and Indonesia. TheECoSOC committee comes above the Commission on Human Rights in the hierarchy. Thechair of the committee is an Italian diplomat. Indonesia is one of the vice-chairs, so it has arole in the administrative functioning of that committee and the Chinese governmentapparently is quite supportive of efforts to string the process out. There may be othergovernments that I am not in a position to comment on.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I am glad you have cleared that up because, by giving theambiguous generic term of governments plural, I had some feeling that it may have beendirected at the Australian government.

Mr O’Connor —No, far from it.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I am glad you have cleared that up for the committee. That isvery important. What is it that the government could have done that it has not done—I knowit could have come in a little sooner or even significantly sooner but that was a judgmentthat the government made to preserve lives and to keep some diplomatic channels open withIndonesia and so on—and how do you rate the government’s performance? Was it sufficientunder the circumstances or was it insufficient?

Mr O’Connor —That is a very difficult question. We are not supposed to comment onanything outside the issues of Amnesty International.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —This is the government that led the intervention forces in EastTimor that at least inhibited—it did not prevent them completely—the burning, the pillagingand the murders that were undoubtedly going on there. It was very much an integral part ofit. It was right up the pointy end.

Mr O’Connor —Perhaps I can comment a little more generally than the Australiangovernment to address, say, the question of UNAMET itself and other like-mindedgovernments to Australia—the United States and the EU. I would say that some governmentspokesmen seem to be more willing than others to accept the assurances of, say, Mr Alatas,General Wiranto and other Indonesian officials.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —That is past tense because they have both gone.

Mr O’Connor —Of course, yes. There was an appreciation of the seriousness of it.Obviously there was a good deal of giving people the benefit of the doubt in a public sense.This is my personal comment, but the kinds of statements I saw Stanley Roth makingseemed to be very measured—this was in the period of late August or early September—andseemed to carry a greater realism to them than some earlier statements made by theAustralian government.



I must qualify this: this is not an official Amnesty International position; this is mypersonal statement. As to the kind of pressure that was brought on Indonesia to accept theSecurity Council delegation and to agree to accept the INTERFET forces, we can onlysurmise that behind the scenes there was a lot of pressure based on economic grounds.Before this, at the meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia, I think there had beenstatements in May that East Timor would be considered to be a very important factor infurther loans and soft loan type facilities to Indonesia. If the situation had been seen veryclearly by all governments acting in a concerted way and that pressure had been brought tobear earlier, perhaps a good deal might have been avoided. But we can only say perhaps; wedo not know.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —A good deal of what, Mr O’Connor?

Mr O’Connor —A good deal of the violence, the mayhem, the forcible deportation. Wesimply don’t know that, though. There clearly was a good deal of preparation in thedeportation. This plan, even though it appears to be a very well kept secret, must have beenhatched at quite a high level. Perhaps it could have been stopped, but I do not know that.We cannot know that. Perhaps historians can find that out. There probably is a lesson in thefuture for treating these things with even greater international coordination betweengovernments, getting their positions aligned, getting their public statements to be quitemeasured and quite serious, and perhaps not giving the benefit of the doubt apparently soreadily to statements by government which even at that stage seemed not to be able to tellthe truth about what was happening. That is a personal statement.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I understand that. You qualified that.

Mr Hogan—Senator, I should say that Amnesty International, as Tony has said, sincethe start of this year has been commenting on the militias and the fact that they needed to bedisarmed. Constantly this year we telephoned adviser after adviser of each of thedepartments, including the Prime Minister’s senior advisers, reiterating this point. Weobviously work in the area of human rights. We worked in East Timor for the last 24 to 25-odd years. We have worked through Yugoslavia, through Rwanda, through Chechyna,through the bigger human rights disasters. We are there before, we are there during and weare there after.

If you look at the sheer physical cost of human rights abuses on this level, there is muchto be said, as Tony said, for the preventative approach, where you can actually predict thingsgoing in the wrong direction. There are certainly lessons that need to be learnt from this.From the Australian government’s point of view, it is very, very important whenever we talkabout the past to make sure that we do our best from here on in. The INTERFETcontribution was a great intervention by the Australian government in terms of securityintervention, and we recognise that. There needs to be similar intervention and justice,including the sharing of intelligence information, to make sure that those guilty can bebrought to justice. Otherwise, in other places in Indonesia if the TNI are not reformed and ifimpunity is not stopped, we will see similar human rights violations occurring in the future.

The question we do not want to come up against in five or 10 years time is: how shouldwe have changed our position after Timor in terms of the TNI, in terms of Indonesia? This



army needs to be reined in, and it needs to be accountable under the law. For East Timor tomove forward in terms of the bread and butter of living—the electricity and water—you alsoneed justice and truth if you are going to have any sort of reconciliation.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Mr Hogan, given that Amnesty International did not assume avery high profile, if it was trying to bring about some sort of semblance of democracythrough these things that you mentioned, given that Abdurrahman Wahid and MegawatiSukarnoputri now ostensibly at least lead the country, shouldn’t they be given someopportunity of implementing what they intend to do? General Wiranto has faded somewhatfrom the scene. Dr B.J. Habibie has gone. Former General Suharto has been discredited. TheBank Bali scandal has been exposed, and those guilty of that fraudulent behaviour will bebrought to justice. Shouldn’t we, including Amnesty International, give this newadministration some time to see what their position is with respect to these allegations?

Mr O’Connor —Megawati, in particular, had quite a clear policy on the importance of aproper judicial system in Indonesia. We really have very little idea of what the President’sparticular policy is or whether he has one. We hope for the best, but the army itself is a verypowerful institution. It has never been accountable to the civil courts. It has its ownmechanisms for dealing with things and covering things up. It will, in our opinion, resistvery strongly attempts to make it accountable. We say: hope for the best and encourage thembut do not give people credit for good intentions alone. In the past, many things underSuharto, such as liberalisation, were praised as a great step forward, but there were manythings that did not change. So the credit has to be measured, and the credit mostly should befor achievement and action.

CHAIR —I would like to come back to one issue that you raised regarding the military,because it really does concern me. You spoke about the suspension of military aid. I wouldask you to think wisely about that. Some of the military aid we give to Indonesia is not inthe form of training their forces but in the form of relief aid, including hydrographic shipwork which will assist some of the poor Indonesians in having charts made of their watersand so on. When you call for the suspension of military aid—and I dug out the submissionof the Department of Defence which does not necessarily outline aid other than straightmilitary training—I would ask you to consider that.

Our processes—and this is something I am very concerned about—I like to think areopen. I do not think they are as open as they should be. I am on the record as having saidthat before. But we do have a budget process and processes which are subject to the scrutinyof not this committee but its twin—that is, the legislation committee—where we canquestion officers of the department on various line items of expenditure that they intend forvarious programs. They do list in those the military cooperation between ourselves and othercountries. If you want to go back and source through some of those budget documents thatmight assist you in pinpointing where you think there has been a breach of trust—let me putit that way—between ourselves as the provider of training and the Indonesians as therecipients of training, then I would only be too pleased to pursue that.

But, again, on face value, I have to take the evidence that has been put to me on not justone occasion but several occasions of the integrity and the intent of the Australian forces intheir interoperation with other military forces of other countries—not just Indonesia because



it goes beyond Indonesia—their good intentions and the interests of security for this nationin the pursuit of those exercises. Where there are breaches of that trust, then I would be onlytoo pleased to take evidence and pursue it.

Mr O’Connor —You do not want a response to that.

CHAIR —Not necessarily. I think it is an important issue. It has been raised before inthis inquiry. When people have raised it with me in this inquiry I have put the challengeback, so to speak, in exactly the same way. I do not want that in any way to overshadow theimportance of what I think you are doing, because I am supportive of what you are doing. Itis just that one issue that does concern me.

Mr O’Connor —I did think for quite a long time before I put that in. While it is animportant issue, it does not reach the importance of the situation in West Timor or thesituation of the East Timorese.

CHAIR —I do not want you to construe the line of my questioning today as in any wayovershadowing the value of everything else that you did. It is just that that is an issue that iscontentious and can raise a degree of feathers out there in all parts of the community, andrightly so. It is something that is best brought out in the open. But, as I say, the one thingthat I cannot concede is the concession of the name, rank and serial number of those who arethe participants. Beyond that, I am fully behind you on the openness of the process.

Mr O’Connor —I must say that I do not understand the problem with the naming.

CHAIR —Thank you very much for your appearance.



[2.51 p.m.]

VAN KLINKEN, Dr Gerry, Lecturer, Faculty of Asian and International Studies,Griffith University

CHAIR —Welcome. The committee prefers all evidence to be given in public, but shouldyou at any stage wish to give any part of your evidence in private you may ask to do so andthe committee will consider your request. The committee has before it your submission. Arethere any alterations or additions you would like to make to the submission at this stage?

Dr van Klinken —No.

CHAIR —Is it the committee’s wish that the submission be published? There being noobjection, it is so ordered. I now invite you to make an opening statement and then we willproceed to questions.

Dr van Klinken —Thank you very much for the opportunity to make a submission andto appear before the committee. My submission focuses on the problem of internallydisplaced persons around the Indonesian archipelago and aims to put the problem of the EastTimorese who have been displaced as a result of the Indonesian militia action following the30 August ballot in the context of a problem of similar proportions that is actually takingplace right around the Indonesian archipelago. Those internally displaced persons from otherconflict arenas around the archipelago have been seriously overlooked in media reporting.

On this map I have tried to analyse the scale of the IDP problem in the context of threetypes of problems. This data is drawn from Indonesian press reporting. This has almost goneunreported in the English language press here in Australia. The first are the non-localtransmigrants who have become the victims of anger from local populations and are oftentreated as scapegoats because they are seen to represent either extraneous economic power or‘imperial’ interests of Jakarta. For example, in Aceh, in the northern part of Sumatra, it hasbeen reported that, in this year alone, about 15,000 Javanese transmigrants have been forcedto leave by the Acehnese people and have gone south.

In West Kalimantan, we have had two waves of violence: one in the beginning of 1997which led to the deaths of approximately 500 people—conservatively estimated by HumanRights Watch Asia—and then a resurgence of violence in March and April this year whichleft possibly another 200 dead. It has also left homeless 20,000 to 40,000 Indonesians ofMadurese descent from the island of Madura, which is off the coast of Java. This is the firsttime that the Indonesian government has actually cooperated in ethnic cleansing, becauselocal community leaders have refused those Madurese people to resettle in the WestKalimantan area. They are now being resettled in a specially constructed area, but theamount of land that is being made available to them is highly inadequate. In Ambon thereare actually two sets of refugees: one from the city of Ambon and its environs and anotherfrom the town of Tual—altogether adding up to about 66,000 internally displaced persons,most of whom have gone west across the Banda Sea to southern Sulawesi. These are allpeople who had originally moved into these regions to find a better living away from theovercrowded parts of Indonesia and have now become caught up in regional conflicts.



A second category covers entire local populations who have become the victims ofrepressive action by the central state. The forced eviction of a very large proportion of thisEast Timorese population indiscriminately because they took the wrong political option inthe 30 August ballot shows the extent to which the Indonesian state is now willing to exact apolitical punishment from an entire population—conservatively estimated in my paper,written at the end of September, as 150,000, now possibly a quarter of a million peopleforced into West Timor and into other parts of Indonesia, not counting more East Timoresewho are actually internally displaced within East Timor itself.

Aceh also has a problem on that level. Apart from the Javanese transmigrants—the15,000 or so who have been displaced out of the region—there are approximately 80,000 to100,000 Acehnese who have been displaced from their homes as a result of conflict of aseparatist nature. In this case, it is not exactly clear who asked these people to leave or whoforced these people to leave their homes. There are indications that it was not entirely thework of the Indonesian armed forces but also that of the Free Aceh Movement which haswanted to create a refugee problem for political purposes.

At the other end of the archipelago, I have question marks on West Papua—which, Ibelieve, is the name that will be used for Irian Jaya in the near future by the Indonesiangovernment. There has been a long history of politically motivated people movements invarious parts of the country, and they also fall into the second category.

Thirdly—and this is a problem right across the country, but it is one that has come to theattention of the Australian immigration service more than any of the others—are the Chineseentrepreneurs. They have been displaced as a result of anti-Chinese riots—the most notoriousone, of course, in Jakarta in May 1998 which forced possibly 20,000 Chinese entrepreneursto permanently leave Jakarta, some of whom have come to Australia. These people have alsofled towns, especially across Java but also in many parts of Indonesia.

The paper goes into the reasons why this is happening at this time, but I do not want totake your time to talk about that now unless the committee is interested. I bring this to thecommittee’s attention because I think this has humanitarian implications for Australia’srelationships with Indonesia, which are not limited to the East Timor problem nor to theChinese entrepreneurs problem but also to these other two categories of internally displacedpersons. Thanks very much.

Senator BROWNHILL —One of the things I have been trying to come to grips with isthe fact that they have only found 200-odd graves of people who have been displaced. Youhave obviously given a great dissertation here, if you like, of how people have beendisplaced all through Indonesia from other regions and different regions. Has there been anattempted genocide or has there been a displacement?

Dr van Klinken —Are you talking about East Timor in particular?

Senator BROWNHILL —Yes.

Dr van Klinken —I do not think the evidence is there yet on the extent of killings inEast Timor and what the intention was. Certainly, in the campaign period in the run-up to



the 30 August ballot, there were repeated threats made to exterminate the entire population ifthey should choose to vote against Indonesia. There is no doubt those threats, which were atleast partly carried out in the forced displacement of so many East Timorese and the burningof their homes, have led people now to fear that genocidal practices may have gone on. Butcertainly we do not have the bodies at this stage.

Senator BROWNHILL —Can I take the question a little further and make this point: 78per cent did vote in favour of independence and there are still about 22 per cent unaccountedfor. Are the people who are not in East Timor now the ones who did not vote forindependence?

Dr van Klinken —The spin that the Indonesian government put on the refugee problemin the immediate aftermath of the 30 August ballot was: ‘Look at the number of EastTimorese who are now in West Timor. It is far more than the 20 per cent who allegedlyvoted for Indonesia. This shows that the UN ballot was unfair and does not reflect the trueopinion of the East Timorese.’ Of course, in subsequent days, it became clear that most EastTimorese who had gone to West Timor had gone there under duress, and their presence doesnot indicate at all that they are pro-Indonesian.

Senator BROWNHILL —So my suggestion is completely wrong?

Dr van Klinken —Yes, I think so.

Senator BROWNHILL —I am very happy for that to be the case. What about peoplewho were coerced into the militia and might be scared of actually coming back to EastTimor and have decided to take the course of going and working for the Indonesian army, ifyou like?

Dr van Klinken —The 20 per cent—or, if you take away some because they voted thatway due to intimidation, let us say 10 per cent—of the East Timorese population whogenuinely voted for Indonesia are a very serious component in the East Timor problem, andthey do need to be dealt with more seriously than they have been at the present time. Theyalso do have a right in East Timor and, although their record has been besmirched by theirassociation with militia violence, they do have political rights. It is very comforting for meto see that Bishop Belo and Xanana Gusmao are reaching out a hand to their fellow EastTimorese in this way. But it is still not clear what political role they will have, how they canbe represented in the transitional administration that is now being established and how theycan be incorporated back into East Timor without being forced to remain as refugees in WestTimor.

Senator BROWNHILL —In today’s paper it was suggested that the commander of theAustralian troops said:

. . . UN officials believe the total population was between 850,000 and 890,000 before the ballot, according to 1998projections drawn from Indonesian census figures.

They are suggesting that there are up to 250,000 people still in West Timor and 40,000elsewhere in Indonesia. Do those figures add up?



Dr van Klinken —The ballpark figures, yes. Something that is left out of that assessmentof the pre-ballot population of 800,000 is that a proportion of them—possibly 150,000—arenot indigenous East Timorese. They are spontaneous transmigrants of the sort who havebecome the victims of violence in other parts of the country as well. I think most of thosewould not want to return to East Timor. They took their chance during the period when EastTimor was part of Indonesia and they would not want to resettle there. We should probablytake that number away from the number of people who have been displaced who need to bebrought back to East Timor.

Senator BROWNHILL —Basically, General Cosgrove said:

. . . of a total population of 800,000 before the crisis, Interfet believed about 720,000 could still be accounted for . . .

That is including the ones I have just mentioned. That means that only 80,000 are nowunaccounted for.

Dr van Klinken —No, he is not saying that only 80,000 people are displaced. I think heis saying that in the budget of population movements there is a shortfall of something likethat number.

Senator BROWNHILL —You would not suggest that 80,000 have been exterminated.

Dr van Klinken —No. I do not think so. I do not know.

Senator BROWNHILL —They would be people who will either come back or who donot want to come back?

Dr van Klinken —I think when he uses the figure 80,000, he is talking about a problemin accounting for them, he is not saying that there are 80,000 people outside. I think thereare far more than 80,000 people outside East Timor. It is these people here—the 250,000,230,000 approximately—but we know where they are and approximately how many thereare. I think General Cosgrove is talking about how, when you add up the numbers that aresupposed to be in East Timor and outside of East Timor, it still does not add up to thenumber that we think lived in East Timor before all this happened.

Senator BROWNHILL —What would be a good population for East Timor? Howevermany people want to live there is, I suppose, the answer to that. What is a good subsistencepopulation level for East Timor, notwithstanding the fact that it has not got a greatinfrastructure, as I understand it, and it has not got great natural wealth?

Dr van Klinken —I am sorry, but I do not have any views on how many people thecountryside could sustain.

Senator BROWNHILL —Some people say that Australia’s population will be finite at28 million and other people say 50 million. I thought you might have had—



Dr van Klinken —I believe that the interior of East Timor is the most fertile part of theentire island of Timor and it may have a considerably higher carrying capacity than it has atthe moment. However, a geographer could answer that better than a political scientist.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Dr Van Klinken, you may have already said this, but could youtell me where you got your figures from. I did not quite catch it.

Dr van Klinken —These figures are estimates that I have read in the Indonesian media.There is considerable coverage in the Indonesian media. I read them on a daily basis fromaround the country.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —What media was it?

Dr van Klinken —I read approximately half-a-dozen papers every day. This includesnational dailies such asKompas, Suara Pembaruan, Republikaand regional dailies such asSerambiin North Sumatra and alsoWaspada. There is a daily in Kupang calledPos Kupang,and there are a number of others.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Do you get these posted to you daily or do they come weekly?

Dr van Klinken —I read them on the Internet. There are a large number of them. Theseare the dailies and then there are the weeklies, of which I also read about five or six everyweek.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —For the record, could you tell us the names of half-a-dozen ofthe ones that you get that you think are the best.

Dr van Klinken —They includeGatra, Tajuk, TempoandForum Keadilan.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —That is fine, thank you. You spoke of ‘cooperation in ethniccleansing’. I was not sure to what or to whom you attributed that. You did not say‘attempted ethnic cleansing’, you said ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Dr van Klinken —The map of vulnerability that I have here on this overhead does notattribute blame and is not intended to suggest that all these internally displaced persons aredisplaced as a result of action by the state. I believe that at least a proportion of them aredisplaced as a result of horizontal conflict within society. In the case of West Kalimantan,that conflict has been essentially within society horizontally between one ethnic group andanother ethnic group. I believe that the state has not been directly implicated in this violence,although it may be indirectly implicated by the model of development that they pursued overthe last 20 or 30 years.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Do you mean the transmigration model?

Dr van Klinken —That was one of them and the other one is the indiscriminate seizureof indigenously owned land for large capital plantation and forestry ventures controlled fromJakarta. As a consequence of this horizontal conflict between indigenous Dayak and Malay



people versus relatively recently arrived immigrant groups from the island of Madura, theMadurese were displaced and they are also by far the largest number of victims of killings.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Victims of killings—is this the ethnic cleansing?

Dr van Klinken —No, the ethnic cleansing comes in in the sense that the communityleaders from the Dayak and the Malay community—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Are forced out.

Dr van Klinken —No, I will just make this clear. The Dayak and Malay communityleaders—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —So the Dayaks were the indigenous people and the Malayswere the ones who were part of the transmigration program. Is that correct?

Dr van Klinken —No, the Malays are also indigenous.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Are they? To what was formerly Borneo and is nowKalimantan?

Dr van Klinken —Yes. These are anthropological terms really. So the conflict wasbetween Dyaks with Malays, against the Madurese. The Madurese are equally poor. They arerice farmers. They mostly arrived in the 1970s.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Where are they from?

Dr van Klinken —They are from Madura. The Madurese suffered not only killing butalso burning of houses, and so they became displaced. The government then tried topersuade the Dyak and Malay community leaders to accept these people back into theirmidst to allow them to rebuild their homes and reoccupy the lands that they had bought, butthe Dyak and Malay community leaders refused to countenance this resettlement byMadurese people. In the end, the government relented and agreed to provide a separateenclave for the Madurese who had been pushed out of their homes by this community anger.That is what I called government cooperation in ethnic cleansing.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Okay. It was an unusual term given the different meaning ithas in a place like Kosovo.

Dr van Klinken —In Kosovo it is state sponsored. Is that what you are saying?

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Yes, but it is a different concept of so-called ethnic cleansing.Let me move on. You used words like ‘forced eviction because they did not vote the rightway’ with respect to the East Timorese. I have yet to grasp what the Indonesian governmenthas to gain by showing some retribution to the East Timorese by forcing them into WestTimor and then having to look after them. It seems to me that the retribution is on theIndonesian government. Would you like to explain that? Where are they and how manycamps are there? Where are those 250,000 people at the moment? That is a lot of people.



Would you like to explain that? Where are they? How many camps are there? Where arethey at the moment? There are 250,000 of them. That is a lot of people.

Dr van Klinken —That is a lot of people. The United Nations High Commissioner forRefugees is constantly bringing out reports on the number of camps. From memory, I believeit is 25 or 30-odd camps—although ‘camps’ is not exactly the right term to use for some ofthese: they are more ‘concentrations’ of people, but definitely under the control of armedmilitia, who presumably retain their links with the armed forces.

What the long-term plan, if any, was in pushing these people across the border doesremain somewhat of a mystery. For instance, the provincial government in Kupang is givingindications that they are very displeased with being saddled with all of these people. Forthem, there is certainly nothing to be gained. Various explanations have been put forward inthe discussion about this issue. One is that the militia and military leaders who planned thisforced exodus had in mind a historical parallel with 1975, when Indonesia first invaded EastTimor.

At that time, there was a civil war and, in this instance also, the Indonesian governmenthas consistently portrayed the violence in East Timor in terms of civil war. Next, the refugeecommunity in West Timor became the base for recruiting an invasion force, the so-called‘volunteer’ force, to seize East Timor for Indonesia. That is what happened in 1975, and theinvading army was never acknowledged by Indonesia to be military: it was always portrayedin terms of East Timorese pro-Indonesian partisans. I believe that this is at least one strategywhich may have been quite uppermost in their minds.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —So where did the 20 per cent plus that voted for autonomy, asopposed to independence, go? Or have you put these people in with the 250,000?

Dr van Klinken —I would say that a good proportion of that 20 per cent would beamongst the 250,000—although 250,000 is far more than 20 per cent.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Wouldn’t that contradict your statement that that was forcedeviction?

Dr van Klinken —Not really; that is because 20 per cent of 450,000 is 90,000 and not250,000. So the numbers of East Timorese who are in West Timor are far greater than justthose people who may have voted for Indonesia.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —To be accurate then, we could say that there were 250,000people in these camps, but one other figure we have heard is 150,000. Let me take that150,000. If we then use the figure of 20 per cent plus, it is more likely that 100,000 of thoseare refugees and that 50,000 have experienced forced eviction, to use your term. That puts abit of a different slant on it. Could that figure be just as accurate as you have given us thismorning?

Dr van Klinken —I think that 150,000 is today accepted as being on the low side,although it is within the credible range. Some people are suggesting that the figure of



250,000, which comes from the Indonesian government, has been inflated in order to gethumanitarian assistance.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Yes.

Dr van Klinken —On the other hand, we have to bear in mind that not all of those 21½per cent who voted for Indonesia voted because they really believed that this was the bestfuture. We have to remember the history of very severe intimidation throughout those fewweeks. Provincial government statements coming out of West Timor in the past couple ofweeks have been widely reported in the Indonesian metropolitan press, estimating that 60 to80 per cent of East Timorese presently in camps in West Timor want to go back to EastTimor.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —And that figure is 250,000 at most, or could be as low as150,000: that is what you are saying, isn’t it?

Dr van Klinken —I think so.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —So, with either figure, a significant proportion of the top figureof your 250,000 less, or a greater proportion of the lower figure, would be people who arerefugees and have not been forcibly removed?

Dr van Klinken —I would not like to say the ‘greater proportion’ of the lower figure, buta significant proportion are possibly East Timorese who may prefer to stay in Indonesia.That is something we need to—

Senator LIGHTFOOT —That is all I had to ask. Thank you, Doctor.

CHAIR —I have a couple of questions. In respect of internally displaced persons, is thereany idea how many are still internally displaced in East Timor?

Dr van Klinken —Within East Timor?

CHAIR —Yes.

Dr van Klinken —The reports I have read from the United Nations trying to estimatehow many of the entire population have been displaced from their homes—

CHAIR —Yes, I know that is one issue.

Dr van Klinken —Displaced from their homes, either outside East Timor or into themountains of East Timor itself, varies from between 50 and 90 per cent of the pre-ballotpopulation. If it is, say, 50 per cent, that would be 400,000-odd, which would beapproximately half and half outside and inside East Timor.

CHAIR —In terms of the current situation, do we have any idea of how many personswho were classed as internally displaced that we have heard of in this inquiry before andwithin the borders of East Timor now have actually found their way back and how many are



still and can be classified as internally displaced people because of the confusion thatremains within East Timor? Do you have any figures on that? If not, it does not matter.

Dr van Klinken —I do not feel that I am an authority on that. The reports are comingout and they are changing every day. The daily briefings are coming out and I do read them.I believe that initially the numbers of East Timorese displaced but still within the borders ofEast Timor were comparable to those displaced beyond the borders of East Timor. Out ofthose, how many have returned to their homes? I would say a ballpark figure would beapproximately half.

CHAIR —I have three more questions. They may be within your field of expertise.Firstly, what are the ramifications of Indonesia’s disincorporation of East Timor for the unityof the rest of the country? Will it lead to the break-up?

Dr van Klinken —I do not think it will lead to the break-up. Both the Australian and theIndonesian governments are now hastening to move to the analysis that East Timor neverbelonged to Indonesia in the first place, which is a good way to kind of isolate this problem.But I have elsewhere published the consideration that many of the forces strengtheningresistance in East Timor are similar to or the same as forces that we see elsewhere aroundthe archipelago: firstly, a history of brutality by the Indonesian armed forces; secondly,dissatisfaction at the domination of the local economy by immigrant groups; and, thirdly,domination of the civil service employment opportunities by people from outside the region.Those three factors are actually quite common in many other parts of Indonesia, and it is inthat sense that the separation of East Timor from Indonesia may not lead to but mayprefigure similar movements in other parts of the country.

CHAIR —So do you think that other parts will in turn break away at some time in thefuture?

Dr van Klinken —Whilst the international legal aspects of the East Timor issue are quitedifferent from those that hold for other parts of the country, the social dynamics arereasonably similar, and I would expect that they would express themselves in reasonablysimilar ways. It now is the major challenge for the new government to see whether they candeal with them in a different way from the disastrous way that they dealt with them in EastTimor.

CHAIR —As much as it poses a challenge for the new Indonesian government, one couldalso suspect that it poses a challenge for our government as well. From the Australianperspective, what steps do we need to take to address the changing situation? You haveidentified today some dramatic shifts of people through transmigration and other courses.How do we address the changing face of the Indonesian archipelago both from ahumanitarian point of view and from a strategic point of view? It has always beingconsidered that that area has great strategic significance for Australia.

Dr van Klinken —The numbers in blue on the overhead transparency are the numbers oftransmigrants who have been displaced from their homes. These are people who once movedinto this area and have recently been forcibly evicted because of political upheaval in theseareas. This is the map of Indonesia, a kind of volatility that we will see for the next several



years. I would think that Australia’s response should first of all be humanitarian. The kind ofwork that Australian aid agencies are doing in West Timor needs probably to be expanded tothese less well-known areas of Aceh, West Kalimantan and southern Sulawesi, where therefugees from Ambon are.

Secondly, importantly, I think this pattern of upheaval is moving Indonesia not so muchtowards apocalyptic chaos but towards a new political pattern in which political life on aregional or provincial level is going to become more and more important. I think Australia’sattitude towards this should be to welcome, to support and to understand the emergence ofvibrant, if volatile, provincial political life. I think we should not only see this in terms of asecurity issue for Australia, the kinds of Balkanisation fears that we have seen in Yugoslavia,but to also see the possibility of autonomous political life emerging in these areas that can bequite healthy. That means that in terms of humanitarian assistance we should direct thattowards strengthening local non-government organisations and humanitarian organisationsrather than setting up shop on their own.

CHAIR —Do we have the bureaucratic will to do this, given that we have had paintedthrough this inquiry that the department of foreign affairs in particular have got a fairlyentrenched view about Indonesia and East Timor over a long period of time? Whilst onemight say that is changing to some extent, do we have the capacity to make the bureaucraticchanges and thereby the government policy changes that are necessary to meet the changingcircumstances?

Dr van Klinken —I do not have any special insight into Australia’s bureaucraticcapacity. As a political scientist with an interest in people-to-people relations, I would hopethat just as Australian public opinion eventually drove the bureaucracy to do somethingagainst its initial inclinations in East Timor so public opinion might begin to show asimilarly sympathetic interest in the issues in other parts of the country. That is not to saythat we should also think of military intervention, by any means. One problem that we willface in generating the kind of sympathetic understanding for these other areas that we havehad in Australian public life for East Timor is, of course, that the victims in all of theseother areas are Muslim. This will put a greater strain on our ability to comprehendsympathetically than perhaps it did for East Timor, with whom we have closer historical andperhaps faith connections. But that does not make it any less urgent.

CHAIR —That leads nicely to my last question. There are many allegations of the TNIprovocation of religious conflict in Ambon. Do you have any evidence of this?

Dr van Klinken —My analysis of the Ambon conflict is not that it is essentially a resultof provocation by military forces but that it is a result of competition between rival networksfor opportunities within the civil service, so for employment within the civil service and forgovernment contracts. The rival networks in this case are identified by religious forms ofidentity, so there is a Christian—that is, Protestant—patronage network which operatesthrough the political parties, and there is a Muslim one. In a situation of a shrinkingeconomy and in an economy in Ambon which is very dependent on the Public Service, andin a context in which political leadership in Jakarta has become very fluid, this competitionbetween these rival networks has become very intense and it has expressed itself in conflicton the streets between thugs connected with these two rival networks.



CHAIR —So are you saying that the TNI are neutral?

Dr van Klinken —No, I am not saying that the TNI are neutral. There certainly isevidence that, for example, the police or elements of the police have sided with the Christiannetwork and elements of the army have sided with the Muslim network. And there have beencredible eyewitness accounts of actual shoot-outs between police and military units acrossthe effective green line that now separates the Christian and Muslim communities in the cityof Ambon. But I do not think that the military are the driving force in this. And it iscertainly not true that the military are on one side of this conflict.

CHAIR —There is one other issue on which we would like clarification: are the policeCatholics or Muslims?

Dr van Klinken —The police are not especially identified with any particular community.But in the case of Ambon there is some credible evidence that some police units haveidentified with the Christian community. This is Ambon here; it is that little island to thesouth of Seram.

Senator QUIRKE—What is its population?

Dr van Klinken —You have got me there. It would be in the order of a couple ofhundred thousand. This is probably a good moment to say this: there is a perception beingdeveloped here in Australia that the victims in the Ambon conflict are Christians. The realityis that the vast bulk of internally displaced persons from the conflict in Ambon are notChristians, they are Muslims. These 66,000 mentioned on the map here who have fled to thesouthern part of Sulawesi are Muslims.

Senator BROWNHILL —How hard is it going to be for that little enclave, if you like,to remain as part of East Timor?

Dr van Klinken —Are you talking about the enclave of Ambeno, sometimes calledOecussi?

Senator BROWNHILL —In your opinion, as a leading—what did you call yourself alittle while ago?

Dr van Klinken —A political scientist. That was to avoid questioning on another issue.The reason why it is there and why INTERFET have occupied it and why Indonesia has notformally protested, of course, is that Ambeno belongs to East Timor under the principle ofthe successor state. And the international community has been extremely reluctant tointerfere with this principle of the successor state. But there are precedents for unworkablesuccessor states actually to fall apart, the prime example being Bangladesh and Pakistan.That may also happen in this case. If relations remain as hostile as they are at the moment, itwill be very difficult for that enclave to actually remain part of an independent East Timor.However, the way that the population of that enclave has been treated by the militia isidentical, if not worse, to the way the East Timorese have been treated in the main part ofEast Timor. This indicates that the pro-independence feeling in this enclave has been just asstrongly in favour of independence as it has been elsewhere. So the international community



owes it to the people of this enclave to treat them in exactly the same way as they aretreating the rest of East Timor.

Senator BROWNHILL —Has it got an airstrip or not? According to the map, it reallydoesn’t have.

Dr van Klinken —If it does have, it is a very small one; I do not know.

CHAIR —Thank you very much, Dr van Klinken. We will draw to a conclusion there.We thank you for your evidence, which we will take into consideration when writing ourreport.

Proceedings suspended from 3.37 p.m. to 3.48 p.m.



McDONALD, Mr Hamish (Private capacity)

CHAIR —Welcome. Do you have any comments to make about the capacity in whichyou appear?

Mr McDonald —I am currently the foreign editor of theSydney Morning Herald, but Iappear here in a private capacity as a journalist who has covered East Timor for many years.

CHAIR —The committee prefers all evidence to be given in public but should you at anystage wish to give any part of your evidence in private you may ask to do so and thecommittee will consider your request. I now invite you to make an opening statement.

Mr McDonald —To introduce myself and provide committee members with some pointsof reference for questioning, my experience with Timor goes back to the 1970s. I did make abrief private trip out of university through then Portuguese Timor and West Timor in 1970,and then between January 1975 and June 1978 I was living in Jakarta as a freelancejournalist and at that time was a close observer of the Indonesian campaign to take over EastTimor in 1975.

At that time, I was a close observer of the Indonesian campaign to take over East Timorin 1975. I was also a very close observer of the Australian embassy and Australiangovernment policy on Timor and Indonesia at that period. I later wrote up aspects of this ina chapter in a book calledSuharto’s Indonesia, published in 1980, which focused on the wayin which the Indonesians approached the question of East Timor’s future and the way inwhich they crafted their campaign to integrate it.

I was then out of Indonesia for many years, partly because of other assignments in Asiaand partly because I was black-listed by the Indonesian authorities for most of the 1980s. Itwas not until returning to my present position in 1997 that I became more closely involvedin covering Indonesia and East Timor. This year I have made three trips to Indonesia. InAugust-September I went to East Timor via West Timor and Oecussi to cover the vote forself-determination. I remained there until approximately a week after the vote, and thencewent to Jakarta and was there until the time that President Habibie invited United Nationsintervention.

I have to say that my own views on East Timor’s position have changed a lot over theyears. I think that in the 1970s I felt that East Timor’s place was probably best insideIndonesia. I came to alter those views in the light of the Indonesian record there and thecontinuing resistance by the East Timorese, and for a number of years I have been of themind that independence was the best outcome for East Timor to work towards. Although, itwas not until the resignation of President Suharto that that became more than a remotepossibility.

I came here at the invitation of the committee secretariat, so I did not prepare asubmission. I have listened yesterday and today to some of the other witnesses and am inagreement with most of the points put by Mr Peter Bartu yesterday in terms of whathappened on the ground in East Timor in August, and I listened with great interest and



sympathy to Professor Van Klinken’s evidence earlier. I will stop here, and I hope I can beof some use to the committee in answering particular questions.

CHAIR —Thank you very much, Mr McDonald.

Senator QUIRKE—You said you were in Ambeno during the vote and afterwards; it isalmost a forgotten part of East Timor. I wonder if you could tell us what you saw there.

Mr McDonald —I passed through, and I probably spent only several hours there on myway into East Timor. I flew into Kupang from Darwin. On the Monday before the vote—thatwould have been Monday, 23 August—I drove with an Indonesian driver from Kupang intoOecussi and spent a few hours there trying to talk to people, and I then drove on to Atambuathat evening. At that point it was remarkably calm, probably the calmest part of East Timorin the whole of the run-up to the vote. There had been some minor cases of harassment ofcampaigners. There was a militia unit there, who were visible parading around in black T-shirts with Indonesian flags and using loudspeakers. But the harassment, at that point,appeared to have been simply putting up roadblocks and trying to convince people not toattend pro-independence rallies.

The overall impression I came away with was that the independence side there wasprobably a minority. The people I spoke to were worried about the position of Oecussi in theevent of East Timor becoming independent and the land border linkages across toneighbouring towns such as Kefamananu and Atambua. It was also pointed out that thepredominant language in Oecussi is Duwan rather than Tetum. Duwan is one of the largerTimorese language groups found across the central part of West Timor; whereas Tetum isthe predominant language in the central to western side of East Timor and across the borderinto the Atambua area. So there were some questions of the workability of Oecussi’s positionif East Timor became independent.

I went on to Atambua. I subsequently learnt that on the following Saturday—ironically,the day that my article appeared in theSydney Morning Heraldsaying how peaceful it wasthere—the place erupted and there was a considerable amount of violence that day. Asmembers will have heard, Oecussi has not been spared the clearance of population by themilitias since the vote. I think the question of Oecussi is one that we do not know the voteof Oecussi’s population, which was about 50,000 with, I think, 30,000 registered voters,given that UNAMET mixed up all the ballots into a single pool and that, for safety reasons,there were no regional breakdowns given in the result. So it is possible that there was indeeda large vote for autonomy. We will never know that.

In terms of its viability, I think that would largely depend on the nature of the borderthat comes into being between East Timor and Indonesia. If it is what you might call a hardborder, patrolled and with restricted crossing, then I think it would be very difficult forOecussi to be supported from East Timor, given that there were visibly a lot of peoplecoming across to peddle products and goods from the Indonesian side and vice versa. If itreturns to the porous border that it was in Portuguese times, I think it could quite easily existas an enclave. That would assume that there was fairly free movement of citizens on a locallevel across the border and free movement along the roads across West Timor territory backinto East Timor. There are two land routes: a central route, which involves going south out



of Oecussi to a town called Kefamananu and then joining the central highway in WestTimor, and there is a more recently constructed coast road, linking Oecussi with the EastTimor border near Atapupu.

If those roads were open and there was a cooperative spirit on both sides of the border,there is no reason why it should not continue to be an East Timorese territory. Politically, Ithink it would be foolish for the East Timorese leadership to even talk about offering upOecussi as a territorial concession at this stage, given that there are voices on the Indonesianside and on the pro-Indonesian side in East Timor still talking about a partition of the mainpart of East Timor and keeping the western districts as some kind of Indonesian buffer zoneor even a separate territory.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —With respect to the last part of your answer, those regions ofBobonaro and Kova Lima are ones that are alleged to have voted in the majority for a pro-Indonesian move, either for autonomy or for staying under Indonesian rule. Do you see thoseas a danger to the border? Do you see it as a threat still to the potential good governance ofEast Timor? Does some concession need to be made of those areas that are pro-Indonesian?

Mr McDonald —It is true that the militias were very strong in these areas and there werea number of local identities, such as Joao Tavares, who were very prominent supporters ofthe Indonesian autonomy offer. However, I think it is not generally accepted that the pro-autonomy vote was concentrated in those regions. The anecdotal experience of movingaround places like Maliana, Balibo and some outlying villages on voting day and talking topeople in the queues led me and other correspondents to believe that there was in fact a verystrong pro-independence vote in those areas, and that the 20 per cent autonomy vote mightbe disbursed rather more widely, and that it might not be correct to say that there was aconcentration in the west. I have no doubt it was probably heavier there, but I would not saythat either of those regencies would be predominantly pro-autonomy.

It would be opening a Pandora’s box to really start addressing this kind of question, notonly for East Timor, but for Indonesia itself. Maintaining the colonial borders has, by andlarge, been a rule that has kept the Third World out of more conflicts than that has enjoyed,and one which Indonesia I do not think would welcome itself upon reflection.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —East Timor is going to enjoy more attention from the UnitedNations than some of those other Third World or developing countries that have attainedindependence. Harold Macmillan referred to Africa inWinds of Changewhen there was theformation of the United Nations from the League of Nations, and it was not strong. Iremember when Nigeria obtained its independence it was thought that the Africans couldvirtually take over the running of the most populous state in Africa; that the whites couldstep out and the Africans could step in. It did not work that way and, in fact, Sir AbubakarTafawa Balewa, who was the first President of Nigeria, was assassinated. It did not give verymuch hope for the rest of Africa and history will tell you that that was so; it has not faredvery well.

What is your view on the administration of East Timor? Should the Portuguese be invitedback to take some part in it? If so, what part? Should the United Nations stay there for someyears? What continuing part should Australia play in it?



Mr McDonald —I think the present position of the UN taking over the administration ofTimor for the next two to three years is probably the best outcome. I do not think it could behanded back to Portugal at this stage, and I am not sure that the Portuguese would welcomethat or argue for that. Clearly, if it is going to be an independent territory, it should beprepared as quickly as possible for that. One could see a frustration emerging among theindependence leaders who have fought long and hard for their independence if they are notallowed to exercise power within a reasonable time.

There are many elements of the new state which will have to be built and Portugal iswell placed to assist with this. I would suspect that Portuguese law may be the chiefcontribution. Such legal precedents and records that Timor has are probably in Portugueseand draw on the Portuguese legal tradition.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Portuguese law is largely Spanish-Roman based, isn’t it?

Mr McDonald —I suspect so. I am not an expert in that, but I believe so. Portugal couldhelp with the redevelopment of a judicial system, a system of law, land records and so on.They are, of course, a much more wealthy country than they were in 1974 and will beassuming the European Union presidency in January, I believe, and therefore would be ableto marshal a great deal of European as well as bilateral assistance for East Timor.

Australia has a continuing interest in developing a stable and honest political system inEast Timor and, obviously, will be called upon to provide political, technical and economicassistance, and should do that as a sound investment in an area that could otherwise becomea continuing trouble spot on our northern frontier. There are risks of a small state falling intocriminal hands, for example, or under the dominance of criminal elements becoming centresof political trouble of various kinds, or being provocative perhaps. I cannot particularly seethat in the post Cold War era, but it is possible. Without pinpointing the precise areas, Ithink Australia, along with the rest of the international community, will have to play a verybig role in developing the new state there.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —What do you see as a protective economic umbrella in thefuture for East Timor? Do you see it as reforging an alliance with Indonesia and becoming apart of the trading block of Indonesia? Do you see a necessity for it to apply and joinASEAN as quickly as practicable? Or to take what may be seen as an extreme, that is toemulate its former sister colony of Mozambique and join the Commonwealth of Nations? Isay that because it does offer some potential for protection, as well as a forum forinvestment, development and trade.

Mr McDonald —In terms of its diplomatic alliances, it would need all the friends itcould get and the closer the friends are, the better to have them. I would expect that after thedust settles, there would be efforts on both sides to develop some close relationships withASEAN, with Australia in a bilateral way, with the Melanesian countries and so on.

I would think that there would be a great deal of mileage in integrating East Timor intothe Australian-Indonesian initiative of recent years to forge economic links between northernAustralia and the eastern archipelago. This may have lapsed recently, but if this could besold to the Indonesians in a way that did not suggest ideas of interference or of trying to



extend our alleged nosiness into their side of the east of Indonesia, I would think it would bea very constructive partnership to involve East Timor, East Nusa Tenggara, the Moluccas,Irian Jaya perhaps and Australia’s northern regions in some kind of economic forum topromote regional linkages and business partnerships.

CHAIR —The Northern Territory government would claim that they have been doingthat for some time.

Mr McDonald —Indeed.

CHAIR —Are you talking about something on a broader scale than that?

Mr McDonald —If I am not mistaken, there were meetings in Darwin, Ambon, Kupangand other places in the last two or three years to pursue this initiative of economicdevelopment of the eastern archipelago. As you may know, during the high growth years ofIndonesia’s industrialisation up until 1997, the eastern side of Indonesia was lagging a longway behind the rapid growth of Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan and so on. This initiative waspursued at that time. East Timor would have been included as a province of Indonesia. Ithink that idea should be kept alive and a new state of East Timor brought into some kind ofpartnership. It will be a delicate exercise as some elements of the Indonesians tend to thinkthat we are trying to set up a series of dominoes in eastern Indonesia to extend our power orinfluence. I suspect choosing a very economic basis for such initiatives involving theNorthern Territory government and possibly regional development arms of Western Australiaand Queensland, might be the way to go about it.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —Do you think that East Timor could become a major venue forAustralian tourists which could in part replace Bali, for instance, and other places whichAustralians currently use as tourist destinations? Does it have the natural attractions—I havenever been there—which Bali has or had?

Mr McDonald —I tend to think it could become a significant tourist destination. I do notthink it has the cultural and visual richness of Bali. It would not be an either/or situation.Things could return to the position of the 1970s where, for many young Australians, EastTimor was a stepping stone on the way to Indonesia through the Nusa Tenggara islands upto Bali and beyond. It is a very dry island and very mountainous. It has its own ruggedbeauty. It is lightly populated with not the most comfortable landscape. It is a little bit likethe landscape in the north of Western Australian—the Kimberley, the Pilbara—in manyparts. I would think tourism would be one of the industries that should develop. It couldbecome what many thought it would be in the early days of Northern Territory settlement—akind of resort station for Territorians. To the extent that they revive their Portuguese cultureand cuisine and so on, it would be more attractive because of that.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I have one more question which diverges somewhat from whatI have asked you. You spoke of the domino effect that, one way or another, the Indonesiangovernment saw the independence of East Timor creating through the archipelago andbeyond—Ambon, Aceh, Kalimantan and, more particularly, West Irian. I understand fromsome evidence we have had that the new administration of Aburrahman Wahid has said thatthe name will be changed to West Papua. I do not read too much into that. If you add to that



the geographical dislocation from the rest of the archipelago, the geological differences, theethnic differences, the fact that it is a vast area of land that is undeveloped and must beexpensive logistically for Indonesia to control, much the same but on a macroscale as EastTimor was very expensive for the Indonesian government to control: what is your opinion ofthe future of West Papua, if I could call it that? Do you hold out for any significant change,similar to that which has gone on with East Timor, in West Papua?

Mr McDonald —I was not aware that there was any proposal to change the name toWest Papua.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —It is just some evidence we have had. It has not beencorroborated, but it was very reliable.

Mr McDonald —The previous Habibie government did announce plans to split Irian Jayainto three new provinces. It seems that the bureaucratic mechanisms are still proceeding inthat direction. I have seen some Indonesian press reports on that. There is considerable localagitation in Irian Jaya against that effort. It seems to be an attempt to divide them anddeflect them from their widespread goal of independence. There have been a number ofclashes and demonstrations across Irian Jaya in the past couple of months.

On the question of Irian Jaya’s value to Indonesia, it is certainly remote, it is rugged andinfrastructure is difficult, but the net return to Jakarta from Irian Jaya has been stupendous. Itis one of the wealthiest provinces in Indonesia. In terms of the balance of subsidy versusrevenue gained from Irian Jaya, Jakarta is making an enormous profit from Irian Jaya. TheFreeport copper mine on the southern mountain ranges, the oilfields around Sorong in theBird’s Nest area, the timber assets and the recent gas discoveries around the Bird’s Nestarea, which are some of the biggest gas fields in the world, comparable to those in Aceh, theNatuna Sea or around Balikpapan, would make it a very valuable economic prize whichIndonesia would try to hold on to—any government would.

Politically it is a very unhappy population. They have a most millenarian attitude towardsindependence—that it will come to them if they keep the faith going. They are a verydispersed population. It is very easy to keep the towns separated. There are not manydomestic linkages, except by sea or air. Yet there has been a UN approved act of self-determination there, greatly manipulated and a completely false representation of the wishesof the people but carried out under UN supervision of UN observers, and accepted by thebody of the UN. How that can be reversed I do not know. Whether President Wahid can tryto offer the Irianese or West Papuans a more acceptable halfway house remains to be seen. Ithink if he could proceed in that direction it would be welcome, but of course the risk forhim is that it would fuel the hopes of independence and be resisted by more authoritarianelements in Jakarta itself. It is one of the most unhappy aspects of our region I am afraid.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —You do not see any peaceable resolution to it?

Mr McDonald —I think it can be ameliorated through greater autonomy for Irian Jayawithin Indonesia. I think that is an attainable goal which may remove some of the worstaspects of it and give the people more a sense of running their own environment.



Senator LIGHTFOOT —Do you think President Wahid is more amenable to that giventhat there has already been a precedent set in several parts of the archipelago with respect todevolution of power to the provinces?

Mr McDonald —Yes. I think there is a sea change occurring across Indonesia towardsthe structure of the republic. The word ‘federal’ is no longer the dirty word that it was upuntil a few years ago. Federalism had become tainted by Dutch efforts to break up, to divideand rule as they were handing over independence. There were many regional rebellions inthe fifties, as we know. From reading the Indonesian press, I see that it is now beingdiscussed in a very open way. The government is starting to address questions of regionalautonomy and the structure of government and the devolution of powers, partly to addressregional grievances in places like Aceh and partly to address more pervasive feelings that theunitary system encourages corruption, inefficiency and nepotism.

Senator LIGHTFOOT —It has been very interesting talking to you. Thank you verymuch.

Senator BROWNHILL —I have been trying to get a cross-section from everyone. Whatis your feeling about the supposed attempted genocide that we hear about and the fact thatthere have been only a few bodies found at this particular stage?

Mr McDonald —Like many people, I have been trying to work out the logic of what hashappened in East Timor. My conclusions tentatively are that there was not any attempt atgenocide. I personally do not believe the number of dead will be measured in more thanhundreds. However, I believe there was a concerted attempt to carry out a re-engineering ofthe political demographics of East Timor on a massive scale. I believe that the movement ofpopulation was so great and so organised and was carried out simultaneously across thewhole territory to such an extent that I think it was part of a highly developed plan.

My own feeling is that the plan had been based upon the assumption that the outcome ofEast Timor’s vote would be a much more evenly balanced one than we saw, that there wouldhave been a fairly narrow pro-independence win or close to a fifty-fifty situation and thatimmediately upon that result being announced there would be attempts, an effort, to producea massive population movement across to Indonesia and that this movement would beportrayed as a spontaneous flight from the prospect of independence. It was a move to try tovalidate the case that the UN vote did not truly reflect the wishes of the people and that thereliance on Indonesia was still strong. I do not think you can call it genocide.

Senator BROWNHILL —Attempted genocide.

Mr McDonald —I struggle to find a concise term for it. It was very sinister. I think itamounted to a huge crime. We do not know what the long-term objective was. I think it wasto—

Senator BROWNHILL —Scare and intimidate.

Mr McDonald —scare the world community into agreeing to come to some sort ofcompromise short of independence and then gradually to clawback the gains. Along with that



there was some deliberate targeting of pro-independence leaders. There were lists of activistswho were being used by militias and the military backers to try to eliminate the focus pointsof the independence movement.

Senator BROWNHILL —I am trying to lead through to reconciliation and the growth ofthe economy and my last question will be on the Timor Gap Treaty and how East Timor willbe sustainable. I am trying to go through each one because I think they are all dependent oneach other for the future. Reading in theSydney Morning Heraldthis morning about rapeand murder inside Our Lady in Suai—

Mr McDonald —Yes, in Suai.

Senator BROWNHILL —You have obviously read that, so I will not go through thatagain. How is anyone going to mount a case for war crimes and what will that achieve in thelong run? I am not saying it should not be pursued. Also what about the crimes of some ofthe guerillas going the other way against the Indonesian people and the claims that shiploads of people have been taken out and dumped at sea? My next question is: with thathanging over everyone’s heads, how does reconciliation come together, especially if we aretalking about East Timor actually being a part of Indonesia, independent but a part of it asfar as tourism and a launch pad and trading with Indonesia is concerned, because obviouslyit has not got much itself? It is going to rely on Indonesia; it cannot just rely on Australia.

Mr McDonald —To achieve the goal of an East Timor that is accepted by Indonesia andnot confronted by Indonesia, I think the world community, including Australia, has to veryvigorously ram home the responsibility for what happened to the malign elements of theIndonesian military that carried out this crime that I described. I think it will help reform inIndonesia and improve the atmospherics for East Timor if this evil element is identified,possibly punished but certainly singled out, and the blame sheeted home to them. I do notthink it is the whole Indonesian military but a significant section based upon the specialforces that attained a completely untoward influence in the latter years of the Suhartogovernment.

To identify and put the blame on them, I think we should supply every possible bit ofhelp we can to the UN war crimes commission that is going to be set up. There will be anumber of East Timorese involved, more or less willingly. I suspect the rank and file werelargely press-ganged into it. There can be some forgiveness for them. Within East Timoritself, some kind of South African style truth and reconciliation commission could be auseful exercise. We really need to open up, clarify and neutralise the poisons that are thereso that all of us can move on to a more happy relationship.

Senator BROWNHILL —Of course, there is Brigadier General Timbul Silaen. If youread yesterday’s paper, as the head of police, he said, ‘I just followed the rules.’ If anyone isgoing to be pursued—and I am giving a hypothetical—you have to have the evidence. Theevidence has most probably not been collected anyway, but that is going to be an ongoingsore, I would have thought, if the country is to get going pretty quickly. The investigation ofwar crimes can go on for 10, 20 or, in some cases, 50 years.



Mr McDonald —The sooner we get down to it the better. The position of officers likeGeneral Silaen should be pinned down.

Senator BROWNHILL —My next question is about the economy. We were told thismorning that there are no banks, no money and no currency, basically. I do not knowwhether there have been many countries around the world in that position when moving intoindependence. They have all had reasonable wealth, which East Timor does not have in anatural state, except maybe some coffee. That leads on to the Timor Gap Treaty.

Mr McDonald —I can only think of Afghanistan as the only other place I have been towhere the banking system was non-existent or destroyed.

Senator BROWNHILL —How do you start it off? How does the new system start?

Mr McDonald —For the time being, East Timor should continue to use the Indonesiancurrency. It is familiar. There is plenty of it around. They will not need to set up their owncentral bank or banking system. It is a weak currency, which means that they will be morecompetitive than if they used the Portuguese escudo—which is linked to the euro now and isa very strong currency—or Australian dollars or whatever. I think they have to realise thatthey will be in the setting of Indonesia and competitive with Indonesia for tourists andselling commodities, similarly. They should keep using the rupiah. They can possibly eveninvite one or two of the Indonesian banks to reopen.

Senator BROWNHILL —I know the chairman wants to ask more about the Timor GapTreaty, so I will not go to that. But what about the fact that 30-odd per cent of the land inEast Timor is owned by the Suharto family? Will it still be owned by them, or will that beannexed? Will it be given back because of other things that are going on in Indonesia?

Mr McDonald —I have tried to get my correspondents to pin that question down, and Iam afraid we have not come up with more than a rumour about the extent of the ownershipof land. I do not know what land records remain in the government offices there. I suspectthat the Timorese have a very good idea of the traditional patterns of who owns what. Isuspect that unfairly acquired land would be appropriated back and that there would be still astrong memory of who owned it.

Senator BROWNHILL —The last question is about the Timor Gap Treaty. There is nota lot of money spent on it at this particular stage. That has to be negotiated back as well. Ifyou have these other things hanging over the head, maybe there will be some trading.

Mr McDonald —I think it would be reviewed, and I imagine that the East Timoresewould like to get some expert assessment of it. I do not think they would have anyoneequipped to do that. My impression is that, given that the lines on either side of the TimorGap are much closer to Indonesia than the actual lines in the gap, the Suharto governmentgot a fairly good deal out of Australia. Transferring the other party from Jakarta to Dilimight be an acceptable way of resolving the question and leaving the delineated zones asthey are. But I think the East Timorese or the UN might be well advised to set up some sortof panel to review that as quickly as possible.



Senator BROWNHILL —That is most probably why it is good if the UN controls EastTimor for the next—

Mr McDonald —No, I think it would have to be something that a sovereign governmentof East Timor should decide and accept themselves. As it is, I understand that the currentgas development being proposed would possibly yield about $A40 million a year to eachgovernment. The budgetary needs of East Timor, based upon the Indonesian experience,were about $US100 million. It is a bit hard to say whether East Timor would need the kindof government structure the Indonesians put in. There were many redundant features of it,but I suspect that it would not supply more than perhaps half of what they need to maintaintheir government.

Senator BROWNHILL —The chairman is most probably looking up those figures thatyou have given. I think they are higher than we have been told.

CHAIR —No, lower.

Senator BROWNHILL —Lower, is it?

CHAIR —Anyway, whether the figures are right or wrong, the reason I wanted to raise itis that, following on from what Senator Brownhill said, we realise the state of theeconomy—and given all the other problems that East Timor is confronted with. We did haverepresentations made to us by Phillips Oil and Woodside. They were not seeking to take apolitical position but looking for some economic stability in terms of their investments there.They made the point to us that if the economic stability is not there then there are somemajor phases of development where huge injections of their capital for development arenecessary. They cannot afford to see the ground rules changed just because there is asuccession from the Indonesians to the East Timorese. In their submissions to us, it is not amatter of the treaty being renegotiated; it is a matter of there being some predictability in thefuture.

The figure that I thought had been given to the committee was of the order of the$US100 million in the longer term—as you know, you have to view these things in thelonger term—to the East Timorese economy, which will not solve all their problems but willcontribute in a nonetheless significant way to the economy of that nation. It was obviouslyfor their own self-commercial interests that they were looking for some stability, regardlessof political outcome—if I can call it that. I do not know whether due attention has beengiven to that issue or whether the significance of the submission that was put to us to thefuture economy of East Timor has been understood.

Given that there will be no sovereign elected government in the immediate foreseeablefuture, though the development of these organisations has been under way for somesubstantial period of time, what in your view can be done to bring some commercial realityback for these people? For example, I understand the Indonesians said that they would passover their role and responsibility in the treaty to an independent East Timor. I believe theyhave wavered about that now. Where can these companies turn to get some sort ofpredictability?



Mr McDonald —My feeling is that there will not be that predicability for the extent ofthe transition period, which I realise is difficult for someone proposing a $2 billioninvestment. The opportunity costing is based on particular oil prices and costs at a certainperiod, and it may not be possible to keep something on hold for that period. It is not aquestion that I am an expert on.

CHAIR —The difficulty is that the losers may well in the end be the East Timorese. Thatis my concern.

Mr McDonald —Exactly. I have not heard East Timorese say that the treaty terms areunjust to the non-Australian party. I think they have always argued that the money from theexploitation should come to East Timor, not Indonesia. It may be possible to get together theCNRT or the leadership of the resistance movement to say, ‘Yes, we are happy for it to betransferred to our future state.’ On the other hand, they are not yet a government, theycannot yet speak for East Timor, and there will be elections at the end of the UNinterregnum to form a new government in a new state. So there is that political risk to theinvestment. I am not sure how you get around that. Possibly, the Timorese might seek tohave some of the infrastructure brought ashore on their side of the gap. At the moment, Ithink it is all being developed to Darwin.

CHAIR —It cannot be brought across to the East Timorese side because of the TimorTrench there—it is just so deep. The only logical place we have had put to us is for thefindings that come out of that area to go to a place like Darwin. So that is not even aquestion. The technology does not exist.

Mr McDonald —Right, so that is one point that can be clarified. Senator, I cannot—

CHAIR —I understand, but I know you are in such an effective position to be able topursue this issue. Forget the oil companies—they will live, at the end of the day, whether itis in the Timor Gap or in some other area of exploration. But I see this issue as an absolutegolden opportunity for the East Timorese people to at least have an asset producing somewealth to underpin their economy, not in the next three to five years maybe—it might takefive to 10—but if one takes the longer view then it is important and it is the sort of issuethat needs prompt action now, and action at a level of delicacy that I believe is finelybalanced. If it is not handled properly, one could see the whole project collapse and thereforethe future for the East Timorese people collapse. That is just a personal concern of mine. Onthat note, we will have to finish.

Mr McDonald —Thank you very much, senators.

CHAIR —Thank you very much, Mr McDonald. We appreciate your evidence and wewill take it into consideration, as we always do when you appear before this committee. Wedo welcome your appearances.



[4.46 p.m.]

ASPINALL, Mr Edward Thomas (Private capacity)

CHAIR —Welcome. Do you have any comment to make about the capacity in which youappear?

Mr Aspinall —I am appearing in my private capacity, although I am a lecturer inIndonesian studies at the University of New South Wales.

CHAIR —The committee prefers all evidence to be given in public, but should you atany stage wish to give any part of your evidence in private you may ask to do so and thecommittee will consider your request. I invite you to make an opening statement and thenwe can proceed to questions.

Mr Aspinall —Thank you. It is a commonly held view that the ferocity of the reaction ofthe Indonesian army after the 30 August poll in East Timor was in part meant as a warningto other restive parts of the archipelago. While it is my view that there were other factorswhich contributed to the violence, there is certainly a large element of truth to this view.

There is a deep-seated anxiety in the Indonesian governing elite and, indeed, in thebroader political public or in large sections of it that Indonesia is confronting the spectre offull-scale national disintegration. The Indonesian news media is filled with stories whichopenly canvass the Yugoslavia scenario. Significant proportions of the population in differentparts of the country are demanding greater government attention to regional grievances, aswell as greater devolution of political and financial power. This is most prominent in Acehand Irian Jaya, but is also evident in other parts of the state. For example, there have beensignificant demands for greater regional autonomy, even so far as independence, in theprovince of Riau in Sumatra. In recent weeks we have seen the previously unimaginablesight of students demonstrating in South Sulawesi, calling for the declaration of anindependent state of East Indonesia.

The factors driving such regional resentments are well known. They include resentmentat unfair or perceived to be unfair allocation of resources between the centre and the regions,perceptions that the government is dominated by interests based in Java and, in some cases,anger about long histories of so far unpunished human rights abuses, as well as, in particularinstances, intercommunal conflicts.

Most regional unrest is of quite a different order to that which occurred for so manyyears in East Timor, which was always distinguished by its distinct colonial history andinternational status. Most parts of the archipelago lack a distinct sense of history and identitywhich could be a realistic foundation for independent statehood. The most obviousexceptions are Irian Jaya and Aceh—two areas which most concern Indonesia’s centralauthorities.

I do not consider my main research interest to be East Timor and I do not considermyself to be an expert on East Timorese affairs. However, in recent months I have beencarefully observing developments in Aceh, including as a visitor to that area during the



national elections in June. It is my view there is an element of truth in the demonstrationeffect, a theory held by elements of the Indonesian military and the governing elite. Sincethe successful vote in favour of independence in East Timor, the already powerful movementin favour of independence in Aceh has grown considerably in strength. A strike hasparalysed local government operations in a large part of the region for some weeks now. Inrecent weeks there have been very large protests, involving many tens of thousands ofpeople, calling for a referendum similar to that held in East Timor.

Although the newly appointed president, Abdurrahman Wahid has signalled a change ofapproach on Aceh, it is my view that the problems there might prove in the long term wellnigh intractable within the framework of the Indonesian national state. Perceptions of unfairexploitation of national resources and especially the legacy of human rights abuses over thelast 10 years have led to what appears to be irreversible alienation from the centralgovernment amongst a very large proportion of the population.

The example of East Timor has confirmed for a large proportion of that population inAceh both the possibility of independence and the importance in particular of attaininginternational support for an act of self-determination.

As a conclusion to these very brief opening remarks, from an Australian perspective weoften believe that East Timor has the same degree of prominence for Indonesian policymakers, military leaders and the general public that it enjoys here when we look to our ownimmediate north. Although it is true of course that East Timor has played an important rolein Indonesia’s internal politics this year, it has not played the kind of decisive role that we,at one point, thought it might. For the Indonesian government and for a large part of thepublic, East Timor has simply been one of a series of regional problems which confront thecountry. This of course, on the one hand, implies that we can perhaps hope that the newIndonesian government will soon attempt to put the East Timor problem behind it preciselybecause it will need to, in a very short order indeed, begin to address the problems in otherparts of the country and the country’s periphery in particular. Thank you.

CHAIR —Thank you very much.

Senator BROWNHILL —You most probably heard the questions I asked Mr McDonaldearlier about going through some of the horrific things we have read about in the paper. Arethey as bad as people think? Are they not as bad, having only found a few bodies at thisparticular stage? If there is going to be a reconciliation, is East Timor going to be a vibrantor active part of the region? That leads to other questions about reconciliation and theeconomy. Would you like to give a comment on those matters or are your comments thesame as Mr McDonald’s?

Mr Aspinall —My comments would be very similar. As I indicated before, I do notconsider myself to be an expert on the internal politics of East Timor. My particular interestin coming to the inquiry today is to comment on the impact of developments in East Timoron other parts of Indonesia, in particular on Aceh. My general assessment, although nothaving visited East Timor this year, is very similar to the comments made by a previousspeaker. For example on the question of genocide, it would appear that there was not anattempt to bring about a wholesale process of genocide in East Timor but rather a more



targeted exercise, perhaps targeting hundreds rather than thousands of people. I would makesimilar comments too about the process of reconciliation.

Senator BROWNHILL —What about Dr van Klinken’s comments about the fact thatthere has been a mass dislocation of people around the whole of the archipelago? Is thatmore likely than an attempt at genocide?

Mr Aspinall —That is a more reasonable assessment. Again, I missed Dr van Klinken’scomments. However, from what I have heard of his remarks on previous occasions, itcertainly does seem that the attempt to disperse the population in order to create animpression of widespread rejection of the UN process was really what the dislocation of thepopulation in the days immediately following the poll was aiming to achieve.

Senator BROWNHILL —Do you think there can be a sustainable economy started upagain in East Timor or do you think there is going to be a sink that is going to require lotsof aid from foreign countries for a long time?

Mr Aspinall —Again, I could only support the comments of the previous speaker, notbeing an expert on East Timorese affairs. My understanding is that, although the potentialprofits from the Timor Gap will obviously provide a reasonable starting point for anindependent economy, they do not have the capacity to fund the government of anindependent state even to the extent to which the Indonesian government provided fundingfor the local administration in East Timor.

Senator BROWNHILL —Do you think the Indonesians are going to be happy tonegotiate that part of the Timor Gap Treaty away?

Mr Aspinall —I am afraid that is outside my area of expertise and I am not really able tocomment.

Senator QUIRKE—What is your knowledge of the Ambeno region? It has come upover the last couple of days here and various senators, including myself, have asked aboutthe viability of the Ambeno region as part of this whole thing. You have spoken about thefuture of East Timor in the sense that it is going to need a great deal of assistance and a lotof help, and indeed the Timor Gap Treaty is probably a good way to start that assistance. Itis not going to be the be-all and end-all but Ambeno is going to be extremely difficult, is itnot? East Timor itself, minus Ambeno, is going to have enough problems as it is. Havinganother province some hundreds of kilometres away, or a hundred kilometres away, whateverthe distance is—I have never been there—will surely be a lot of lead in the saddlebags?

Mr Aspinall —Again, unfortunately, this is really outside the area of my expertise. As Imentioned before, I do not consider myself to be an expert in East Timorese affairs. All Ican do is agree with the comments of the previous speaker. My submission really concernsmore the effects that the recent developments in East Timor are having on nationalIndonesian politics, in particular regarding regional problems in other parts of thearchipelago and how this is feeding into the policy considerations at the centre.



Senator QUIRKE—The recent Indonesian elections indicated that roughly 55 per centof the population was in Java, but in fact the elections themselves were remarkablydemocratic, as I understand it. They spread throughout the whole of the archipelago and infact a good part of the number of seats that represent various parts of Indonesia in theJakarta parliament come from outside of Java. Is that a big change in the course of thiselection? Does it give us some sort of light at the end of the tunnel that Java is spreading thepolitical power into some of the other regions and that it is giving them a sort of de factoautonomy or greater autonomy, or is it just an illusion, a veneer?

Mr Aspinall —My feeling is that there is genuine political will in Jakarta—and there hasbeen, indeed, since the period of the Habibie presidency—to begin addressing some of theseregional problems. The most obvious sign of that in particular was the autonomy law whichwas passed into law earlier this year. There is a recognition on the part of many seniorcentral government commentators, I believe, that problems of unfair allocation of resourcesbetween centre and periphery are in large part a cause of much of the discontent which isworrying to them in terms of the possibilities of national disintegration and so on.

However, it must be said as well that the experience of the national elections in June wasrather more mixed than the impression we are sometimes given. It is true, for example, thatthe distribution of seats reflected a non-Java bias, but it is also true that, in more remoteparts of the archipelago, the elections tended to be less fair and less open than they were inthe more heavily and more urban areas of Java. The possibilities for old style intervention inthe electoral process by low-level government bureaucrats, village heads and so on was muchgreater in the areas outside of Java, and in Aceh, in particular, security problems, separatistsentiment and so forth meant that the elections were very far from being a success. In fact,in Aceh something like well under 50 per cent of registered voters actually participated inthose elections—that is, registered voters, let alone members of the population who had theright to vote.

Senator QUIRKE—Would it be fair to say that the role of the military and theirpolitical power within Indonesia seems to be somewhat diluted by the election process ofthis year and by the choice of Wahid as president and Megawati as the deputy? Would it befair to say that civilian authority in Indonesia has been greatly enhanced through thisparticular process?

Mr Aspinall —I think there is no question that there has been a great improvement in theposition of civilian authority, given the election of the new president and vice-president andgiven that neither of these individuals were from the core of the old military bureaucraticalliance which underpinned Golkar. However, we still need to be cautious, and I think it isstill a little too early to make any grand conclusions about a serious diminution in themilitary’s role.

The number of former military officers in the new cabinet is still fairly high. There arestill six ministers with military backgrounds which, as a proportion, I think is somewhathigher even than in the last Habibie cabinet. Until there is significant reform in the territorialstructure of the military—that is, the virtual shadow administration held by the militarywhich mirrors the civilian bureaucracy at all levels from the province to the regency,subregency and right down to the village level—a serious attempt to address those structural



issues of military influence and the capacity for continuing and low level, and indeed highlevel, military intervention, the political process will remain.

CHAIR —I want to come back to this issue that has been pursued by a couple ofcolleagues, seeing it is your area of expertise. We have had evidence before this committeetrying to look at the actions of the military and why they did what they did, and it was saidthat the reason they acted the way they did in East Timor—and I am not justifying theiractions—whether it be directly or through the militias, was to sound a clear warning to thoseotherwise rebellious outposts—Aceh, Ambon, Kalimantan and so on—not to go down thesame path or ‘this is what you will receive in the future’. That is one explanation.

The other explanation we have heard is that the Indonesian military had invested soheavily in terms of personnel and in terms of career paths through their involvement in EastTimor over a long period of time, that it was a matter of their showing that they had not inany way lost their capacity to be a viable and respected force by having to timidly pull out.The other aspect that has been put to us was that their actions were to be seen as their stillbeing a force to be reckoned with within the political framework within Indonesia itself.Going on from there, it has been said that they may well now be in the position of havingtaken one step back but being ready to take two steps forward should the circumstances ofthe democratisation process not suit their long-term goals and their aims. What is yourresponse to those comments that have been made to this committee? Can you give us just abrief analysis of whether those perceptions were correct or incorrect?

Mr Aspinall —My immediate response would be to suggest that both explanations for themilitary’s behaviour in East Timor seem to be quite reasonable. During my trip to Aceh lastJune, I met a number of military officers in that province. They were extremely concernedabout developments in East Timor and the implications that this would have for Aceh andwhat they saw as their struggle and their duty to maintain Aceh as a part of the unitary state.

However, my immediate feeling, insofar as the military reaction to the pro-independencevote last August was aimed at warning other parts of the archipelago, is that it has in largepart failed. The message which was received in Aceh in particular and, as I understand it, inIrian from the East Timorese experience was not so much the consequences of what mighthappen if they chose to leave Indonesia but rather that independence was indeed possible andcould be achieved. Elements of the independence movement in Aceh, in particular, also drewvarious strategic and tactical lessons from what occurred in East Timor, particularlyregarding the importance of involving the international community in the resolution of theirown problems as early as possible.

On the other, more broader question, about whether the East Timorese experience in asense represented a kind of warning to the political leadership in Indonesia that the militaryhad the capacity to intervene, indeed to cause chaos, if its interests were not being paid dueattention, although our analysis of this kind of suggestion must in large part remain based onspeculation, it is certainly an analysis which seems to make a high degree of sense to me. Itis often suggested that Indonesian military operations in the field are played out on twolevels. There is a level of open political and military action and at the same time there is anelement of underground activity. This is also certainly borne out by my research experiences



in Aceh during this year where it seems that military strategy has, in many respects,resembled that which occurred in East Timor in the lead-up to the poll.

On the one hand you have the military territorial forces waging what is essentially a waragainst the separatist movement, known as the Free Aceh Movement. On the other handthere are many allegations that there are large numbers of informal units, perhaps consistingof members of Kopassus, the special forces, and Kostrad, the army strategic reserve, who areacting outside the formal chain of command and engaging in acts of terror against thecivilian population, including attacking public facilities like buses, schools and so forth.

It is certainly believed by many of my informants in Aceh that this dual strategy is beingplayed out in that province precisely as a means of reminding national political leaders thatthe armed forces still have the capacity to cause all manner of problems for the centralgovernment if their interests are not respected. In particular, it is viewed as a bargaining ployin response to the very considerable pressure there is in Aceh for investigation of the humanrights abuses which occurred during the period of the military operation zone from 1989 to1998.

CHAIR —You have acknowledged there has been a split within the defence forcesthemselves within Indonesia as to what is the right path for the Indonesian defence forces togo down. Is that correct?

Mr Aspinall —Certainly, at different points—

CHAIR —I am talking now about the most senior levels within the defence forces.

Mr Aspinall —Certainly, at different points in Indonesia’s recent period, it has been veryeasy to read signs of very deep divisions at the senior levels of the defence forces. That wasmost obvious immediately preceding the fall of Suharto in 1998. During the months of theHabibie presidency, although there were indications, and rumours in particular, ofdisgruntlement on the part of particular officers, it was never very clear that there was adevelopment of any deep system of factions based on differing political programs. In theshort period of time since the election of President Abdurrahman Wahid, it is rather too earlyto draw any firm conclusions about the development of factional differentiation within thearmed forces, although it would appear that there have been some recent attempts to publiclydeclare the existence of a more reform-minded group of officers. However, their influence, itwould seem, still appears to be very limited within the defence forces at the national level.

CHAIR —You said just before that Kopassus has been acting outside the line ofcommand, if I am not misquoting you. Are current Kopassus officers responsible for thosesubversive activities or are there other senior people outside Kopassus pulling the strings?

Mr Aspinall —In the case of Aceh, it is very difficult to get a clear picture. Certainly,my informants in Aceh were convinced that this dual strategy of the armed forces wassomething which could only be traced to the most senior leadership of the armed forces—atthat time, General Wiranto. There is one interesting parallel with East Timor here in thatMajor General Sjafrie Sjamsuddin—I am sure he would have been discussed before yourinquiry—has been alleged to be involved with some of this informal underground military



activity in East Timor. He was also present in Aceh for a period of some months during themiddle of this year when the activities of ‘unknown men’, as they are known in Aceh, beganto become most apparent. By ‘unknown men’ I mean these unidentified individuals who areattacking public facilities, carrying out single assassinations and so on.

CHAIR —Just turning to Ambon for a moment, what has been the role of the TNI andthe police in the conflict in Ambon?

Mr Aspinall —Again, it is rather difficult to get a clear picture. When the conflictinitially broke out earlier this year, it seemed to have essentially civilian roots in that most ofthose killed during the first weeks of fighting, for instance, were killed with home-madeweapons: molotov cocktails were burnt when different parts of the community attacked oneanother and burnt houses and so on.

After some weeks, the number of those injured or killed by gunfire increasedsubstantially. Since that time there have been persistent allegations that elements of thepolice force who are recruited locally, and who primarily consist of Christians, have beensiding with the Christian community during the communal violence in Ambon. There havebeen a number of allegations of shootings taking place at or near mosques, shootings inprimarily Muslim villages and so forth, while there have been similar allegations made aboutmembers of military units who have primarily been recruited from outside Maluku fromMoslem areas and whose members are primarily Muslim. There have been allegationsregarding their participation in attacks on churches, shooting at Christian demonstrators andprotesters without provocation. Indeed, recently there have been suggestions of conflictbetween military and police units.

This seems to me to be a very different kind of conflict from that which we saw in EastTimor or, indeed, from what has been occurring in Aceh. In the latter two cases there hasbeen a much more unified military response to regional dissent, whereas in the case ofMaluku it seems to be far more a case of military units becoming entangled in a conflictwhich has genuine communal roots.

CHAIR —Given the discussion we have just had about the Indonesian military and theirrole in a number of areas within the Indonesian archipelago and within the new Indonesiangovernment, what are the realistic chances of the Indonesian government establishing not justgood relations but in the first instance a relationship with the emerging government in EastTimor? It seems to me that, for a realistic chance of survival, East Timor will have to have aworking relationship with the Indonesian government. It is, in effect, surrounded byIndonesia. Is that attainable given the animosity—if I can use that word—that has been builtup within certain elements of the Indonesian government, given that they have militarybackgrounds, over a period of time? If not, how does one address this issue?

Mr Aspinall —My feeling is that in the medium to longer term it will be possible forIndonesia to develop good relations with East Timor. The fact that the military influence,although it remains a factor in Indonesian politics, has declined substantially can only begood news in terms of beginning good relations between an independent East Timor andIndonesia.



I think another cause for some optimism and hope in this case comes from the PresidentAbdurrahman Wahid zone—the previous position on East Timor, perhaps not so much in theweeks leading up to the poll but certainly in the preceding months and years, during whichtime he developed, from what I understand it, good personal relations with figures likeBishop Belo and also Xanana Gusmao.

My feeling is also that, although the Indonesian military or particular military officerswho have had long periods of exposure in East Timor are obviously still in large partmotivated by a great deal of resentment and, in some cases, perhaps even vengeance forwhat they see as their loss of face and the blow to their image they received over the EastTimor affair, the military leadership as a whole will increasingly become preoccupied withother challenges, whether those challenges relate to disturbances and, indeed, movements forindependence in other parts of the country or to questions of structural reform of the armedforces itself.

CHAIR —My last question relates to the relationship between Indonesia and us. It wassaid earlier today by one of the witnesses, in response to a question by Senator Lightfootabout establishing a summit between the Indonesian and Australian governments, that thatreally is not a priority for the Indonesian government at this stage—there are a number ofother priorities. What are the long-term prospects of reasonable relationships beingestablished between us and Indonesia, given that Indonesia is such a near neighbour, giventhat we will have an ongoing close relationship with East Timor, and given the emergingproblems within the archipelago and maybe the preoccupation of the Indonesians with thoseproblems, which are not just on one front but on a number of fronts? In your view, is theresufficient goodwill on the part of the Indonesian government, as well as on the part of theAustralian government because it has to be there for both parties, to establish and fosterthose relationships, given the difficulties that may confront us in international relationspolicies with Indonesia as events emerge in the near future?

Mr Aspinall —There is no question it is going to be a very challenging time, not onlybecause of the regional challenges, by which I mean the internal regional challenges whichIndonesia faces, but also due to the complexity of Indonesia’s new political system, inparticular the spectrum of political forces represented in the government. However, myunderlying feeling remains that, once the initial transition in East Timor is achieved, there isenough long-term ballast in the relationship, but, even more so, there are underlying interestsor motivations for the two countries to restore relations to their previously good level.Matters of geography, economic cooperation and so on will remain and will obviouslyinfluence both governments, no matter what particular challenges arise in terms ofIndonesia’s particular political make-up.

CHAIR —I want to pick up a word you said there. You said the previous ‘good’relations. Some people would interpret our previous relations as just kowtowing to theIndonesians and that we were not forthright enough to gain their respect. Is that a fact or isthat overplayed?

Mr Aspinall —My view certainly is that in the past Australia had a too uncriticalrelationship with Indonesia, that there was insufficient attempt to differentiate between theIndonesian population and the short-term interests of the particular government which was in



power at that time—the Suharto government—and that there was not enough thinking aboutthe longer-term prospects of that particular government and the long-term prospects forpolitical change.

I remember when I spent some time in Indonesia in the mid-1990s that for many of thepolitical activists from political parties, student organisations and so on, who later went on toplay an important role in the events leading up to the resignation of President Suharto andsome of whom are now integrally involved in the new government, there was very oftenconfusion about Australia’s attitude. This was around the time the security agreement wassigned, but also at the time when Prime Minister Paul Keating, as I recall it, called on theAmerican government to tone down its criticisms of the Indonesian government and so on.

In the long term, for relations between Australia and Indonesia to be healthy, there is aneed to differentiate between the sometimes very pressing short-term considerations offostering good relations at the governmental level and keeping one eye on the long-termdevelopments perhaps at the grassroots of Indonesian society and their possible implicationsfor future political change. I think that was in many respects the great failure of Australianforeign policy in the past.

CHAIR —In other words, we have not had our eyes on the grassroots?

Mr Aspinall —Yes, that is right, and on what that will mean in terms of future politicalchange. That was obviously a problem in the case of East Timor. It was obviously a problemin terms of a certain fascination on the part of previous governments with the successes ofthe Suharto government, despite considerable evidence concerning the growing unpopularityof that government from at least the early 1990s.

One might make similar points concerning developments in particular parts of theIndonesian archipelago at present. To bring up once again the example of Aceh, there hasbeen complete foreign policy silence on the question of Aceh, although for non-AcehneseIndonesians this has been a human rights issue which far overshadows that of East Timor,and also for the Acehnese, who perhaps one day—it is impossible to rule it out at thisstage—will be moving towards independent statehood of their own, and who will obviouslyremember which countries spoke out in their defence.

CHAIR —Thank you, Mr Aspinall. In the interests of my colleagues, some of whomhave to get transport fairly soon, I will have to bring this to a conclusion. I thank you foryour appearance this afternoon and I thank you for the evidence you have given to thecommittee which will be taken into consideration when we draft our report.

Committee adjourned at 5.29 p.m.
