'Betrayal’ by the South Pacific

By David Robie

AN East Timorese human rights campaigner who toured New Zealand last month seeking tougher gov ernment action over the Dili massacre in November believes South Pacific countries have failed to heed the plight of Melanesians in the Indonesian colony.

Francisco Pang, Melbourne-based representative of the Fretilin resistance movement, singles out the Papua New Guinea government’s attitude as particu

larly deplorable: “PNG is betraying the

East Timorese people by not coming out with a strong condemnation and demand for an independent inquiry. They regard our plight as an ‘internal problem’ for the Indonesians to deal with.”

He appealed for a more supportive stance by Pacific nations. “Our Melanesian brothers in the Papua New Guinea government should support us in our struggle,” he told Pacific Islands

Monthly. “Demo cratic countries such as PNG, Aus tralia and New Zealand should play a more con structive role in pushing for our right to self

determination not only for the East Timorese people but also the indigenous people of West Papua, South Moluccas

and Kanaky.

“Human dignity is freedom. It is the same principle that Pacific governments upheld to defend Kuwait and peace in Cambodia yet they ignore the plight of the indigenous people on their own doorstep who are seeking self determination. For us this is a double standard.”

In spite of the Timorese resistance groups gaining a “historic” (10-minute) meeting with Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and a two-hour session with Foreign Minister Senator Gareth Evans last month, Pang was snubbed by the New Zealand government. Both Foreign Affairs Don McKinnon and Defence Minister Warren Cooper refused to see him.

The snub stirred bitter criticism by human rights and pro-Timorese groups at protest rallies marking the 16th anniversary of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor on December 7, 1975. A 20-year-old New Zealand student, Ahmed Bamadhaj, was among the vic tims killed by Indonesian soldiers during the Dili massacre on November 12.

While the official Indonesian death toll

The South Pacific has failed to heed the plight of Melanesians in the Indonesian colony

for the massacre is 19, international! human rights groups and eyewitnessesi put the number closer to 100.

Pang accused New Zealand of being the only country in the Western alliance that appeared to be condoning the massacre. He called on Pacific nations to support an independent inquiry involv ing the United Nations and to pressure the Indonesians to begin a dialogue with the Timorese towards self-determination.

He said most Pacific countries with the important exceptions of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu had been too influenced by Australia and New Zea land over Indonesian colonialism in the region. Although the UN still officially

recognises Portugal as the administering

country in East Timor, Australia signed the Timor Gap Treaty with Indonesia in December 1989 to gain illegal access to oil a move being contested before the International Court of Justice by the Portuguese. Now Pang believes the massacre has severely undermined In

donesian credibility among Pacific leaders.

“Indonesia’s so

called inquiry

with a former mili tary man as the head is not cred ible. It lacks any

independent person,” says Pang. “Also, for any inquiry to be credible it must involve the UN. As it has been set up by Jakarta, the inquiry is rather like asking Pol Pot to investigate the Khmer Rouge, or Hitler to inquiry into Nazi war crimes.”

Amnesty International and other hu man rights groups estimate more than 200,000 people in East Timor a third of the population died in the fighting, or from hunger or execution after the Indonesian invasion, genocide said to be comparable on a per capita basis with that of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Last January, Western countries sup ported with enthusiasm the US-led Coalition forces which went to war because oil-rich Iraq invaded its neigh bour, Kuwait, and declared it a prov ince. Yet ironically most of the same countries said little when Indonesia, also oil-rich, did the same thing against East Timor in 1975 and many have remained pragmatic ever since.

Kamal Bamadhaj, one of scores who died in the massacre in Dili’s Santa Cruz cemetery, is the second New Zealander to die brutally at the hands of the Indon esian troops.

The full circumstances of his death are probably no more likely to be unearthed

from any inquiry than the first victim.

On October 16, 1975, during a border “probe” by Indonesian troops before the full military onslaught, 27-year-old tele vision cameraman Gary Cunningham was killed along with two Australians and two Britons, all working for Austra lian TV networks, at Balibo.

Refugees and other sources said the reporters had painted an Australian flag and the slogan “Australia” on the wall of the house where they were sheltering.

One or more of the journalists were machine-gunned and the rest were ex ecuted with their hands in the air.

During a memorial service in Auck land for Bamadhaj his father is Malaysian, his mother a former New Zealand journalist relatives said he was in Dili with a group of six foreign journalists. He had hoped their presence would prevent violence against people taking part in a mourning protest for a Timorese student, Sebastiao Rangel, shot on October 28.

Two days before the Santa Cruz massacre, Bamadhaj wrote to friends in Australia, where he was studying at a

Sydney university, claiming that the

Timorese people faced genocide if the international community did not try to protect them. Only “the will of us all” could stop another wave of aggression against the East Timorese people, he

wrote. Parts of his letter were read to the mourners.

Bamadhaj’s uncle, John Todd, said his nephew travelled in mid-October to East Timor with the Australian aid agency Community Aid Abroad. He was to be an interpreter for Timorese who wanted to speak to a joint United Nations-

Portuguese parliamentary peacekeeping

mission due to visit in November.

In his letter to friends in Australia, Bamadhaj spoke of the despair of the Timorese after Jakarta forced the cancel-

Only the will of us all could stop another wave of aggression

lation of a visit to East Timor by

Portuguese parliamentarians. The inci

dent was sparked off by Indonesia’s refusal to allow Lisbon-based Australian

journalist, Jill Joliffe, a specialist writer

and author of East Timor: Nationalism and Colonialism , to join the group.

An International Red Cross aid worker found Bamadhaj in the street about 500 metres from the massacre site, with a bullet wound in his chest. Despite

Red Cross markings on the “ambulance” he was driving, it was stopped repeatedly enroute to the hospital.

Amnesty International’s New Zealand executive director, Colin Chiles, has appealed to Foreign Minister Don McKinnon to urgently raise the issue in the United Nations General Assembly.

Chiles say only “urgent, highly public concerted international action is likely to stop these atrocities.” Australia, Britain, Canada, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the United States have also con demned the killings.

Despite attempts by Indonesian au thorities to project an “open door” image of East Timor in the past two years, reports of persecution and brutal re pression have persisted. Shortly before the Portuguese visit was called off Xanana Gusmao, leader of the Fretilin nationalist resistance, said Indonesian military authorities had been “creating an atmosphere of insecurity and panic”.

Preparations were being made in other towns, such as Laleia and Same, for “receptions” with threats to the popu lation if they failed to comply, he said.

“You must all have a flag and when I give the order you must raise them high,” the Timorese were told by authorities. “Anyone who shouts words like ‘Maubere [Timorese] people’, ‘inde pendence’, ‘Portugal’ or ‘Fretilin’ will be shot after the MPs leave,” □