Island nation?

East Timor - a new Forum Island nation?

WHEN Jose Ramos Horta, the most senior East Timorese pro independence leader not currently in detention, arrived in Suva recently he did so with little fanfare. Ostensibly his visit was to give a lecture at the University of the South Pacific but in other meetings, during his time there, he began a process that might ulti mately result in a new Forum Island identity for his country, as well as a broader new identity for the forum itself.

Since the Indonesian invasion of East Timor 23 years ago, its people have suffered brutal suppression. Opponents of integration with Indonesia have suffered murder, torture and rape - the Dili massacre is just one of the more infamous and recent incidents in a long strip of Indonesian atrocities that have left a staggering total of around 200,000 East Timorese dead.

While Australia and the Pacific Islands turned a blind eye to east Timor’s plight, international pressure to stop the human rights abuses and deal properly with the persistent demands of pro-inde pendence forces has grown enormously.

Now, with former president Suharto gone and Indonesia’s economy crumbling, Jakarta has done what only a few years ago would have been unthinkable and agreed to a United Nations bal lot on autonomy. Indonesia’s foreign minister, Ali Alatas, has made it plain that if the East Timorese want independence that is what they will get. Developments are now moving with breakneck speed. At the time of writing, Indonesians, many of them doctors, business people or skilled workers, are fleeing the East Timorese capital, Dili, fearing reprisals or civil war, the price of rice is soar ing and people are dying from lack of health services and medi cines that have been blocked in Jakarta.

The autonomy package Indonesia offers to the people of East Timor is due to be finalised by the end of this month and the bal lot is due to take place in July or August. There are many uncer tainties, not the least the national election in Indonesia that is due to take place on June 7, but Ramos Horta is confidently working towards the vote on independence. If the result favours indepen dence, Horta (who is vice-president of the pro-independence umbrella group the Timorese National council) says the new Transitional Authority would immediately send a request to the forum to be considered for official observer status. Horta sees links with the Forum as a matter of priority. “As far as ASEAN is

concerned, it can wait (until the new country is on a solid footing ... in perhaps five years)” he said. The East Timorese decision to turn to the Forum is based on what it sees as its cultural and eth nic affinities. In fact, as Horta points out. East Timor is more Melanesian than Asian and, unlike most of the rest of Indonesia, is Christian not Muslim. In size too, it has much more in common with Forum Island countries, having a population of 800,000 and land area just a little bigger than Fiji.

“We have a lot in common in terms of development of small island states, in terms of being surrounded by larger powers that tend to bully or dominate almost every aspect of the lives of the small island states,” Horta said. In terms of geography, the inclu sion of East Timor would extend the Forum another 1500 kilome tres west of Papua New Guinea, leap-frogging the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya, which is also predominantly Melanesian.

According to Noel Levi, secretary-general of the South Pacific Forum Secretariat, it is possible that a request for observer status for East Timor could come forward as early as this year’s South Pacific Forum, which is due to be held in Palau in late September or early October. Levi told Horta at a meeting in Suva that, if and when East Timor became self-governing, he had no doubt a mem ber country would sponsor a motion for observer status.

In the past, despite the Forum’s pivotal role in supporting the pro-independence movement in New Caledonia, it has not dis cussed East Timor. “If the situation in East Timor is brought to the Forum’s attention, I have no doubt the Forum will give it the same sort of enthusiasm that they had done to the French territories,”

Levi told PIM. Levi said he hoped Australia, which has been play ing a central role in international efforts to see a peaceful resolu tion in East Timor, would provide a briefing on the situation at the next Forum. Leaders, still coming to terms with the inclusion of the former US territories into the Forum, would also need to look at the implications of further enlarging the Forum, Levi said.

In the past it has been the fear of antagonising Indonesia, par ticularly on the part of its closest neighbours, Australia and Papua New Guinea, that has been the cause of the Pacific’s blindness on East Timor.

Observer status for a soon-to-be independent East Timor would inevitably put the spotlight on Irian Jaya where Melanesians have also been struggling for independence from Indonesian rule in the face of Pacific neglect.

While Ramos Horta brands Indonesia’s policies in Irian Jaya “a disgrace verging on genocide”, he points out the position of East Timor under international law is very different to that of Irian Jaya. Unlike in Irian Jaya, the United nations never accepted Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor.

Now is the time for the Pacific to look again at what it can do to help East Timor. Horta is keen to see Pacific Island nations involved in transition to independence. He has met with Fiji’s for eign minister, Berenado Vunibobo, and has asked the UN secre tary-general, Kofi Annan, to spread his net wide in the developing world when he puts together the UN team to conduct the ballot.

“If Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga and others feel ‘yes’ they can offer assistance in the framework of the UN transitional administration then we would welcome it,” Horta told PIM.

“A police officer from Samoa or an agricultural expert from Tonga or the Solomon Islands would be much more sensitive to the needs, the feelings and cultural reality of the East Timorese than others, from Europe,” he said. ■

Jemima Garrett

Sydney