-Caveat Lector-
FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
ACTION ALERT: U.S. ROLE MISSING FROM EAST TIMOR COVERAGE
September 1, 1999
The ongoing story of East Timor's referendum on independence has received a
moderate amount of coverage in the mainstream media. But news outlets have
frequently failed to put the Timor story in a full and accurate context.
For example, in reports from East Timor's capital, the Associated Press and
some other news outlets continue to use the dateline "Dili, Indonesia,"
implying that Indonesia has a legitimate claim over East Timor. This
formulation is comparable to a dateline of "Kuwait City, Iraq" in the months
following Iraq's illegal annexation of Kuwait. The Washington Post (8/31/99)
reported that Timorese were voting on "whether to remain a part of
Indonesia."
More importantly, many stories fail to note two crucial facts about East
Timor's nearly 25-year struggle against Indonesian occupation. First, the
Indonesian occupation has been extraordinarily bloody, resulting in the
deaths of more than 200,000 Timorese, out of a pre-invasion population of
approximately 600,000. A recent AP story noted that an "estimated 2,000
Indonesian troops have died fighting separatist guerrillas since Indonesia
invaded East Timor in 1975," but failed to note the massive numbers of
Timorese who have perished.
Others seemed to confuse the deaths caused by the occupation with those
caused by the resistance movement. ABC News' Charles Gibson said that "It's
been an extraordinary violent independence movement there with hundreds of
thousands of people killed" (Good Morning America, 8/31/99).
Secondly, news consumers are not informed that the U.S. backed Indonesia's
invasion of East Timor. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger visited the Indonesian capital of Jakarta in December 1975, just
before the invasion was launched, where they were told of Suharto's plans to
attack the island (Washington Post, 11/9/79).
The following month, a State Department official told a major Australian
newspaper (The Australian, 1/22/76) that "in terms of the bilateral
relations between the U.S. and Indonesia, we are more or less condoning the
incursion into East Timor... The United States wants to keep its relations
with Indonesia close and friendly. We regard Indonesia as a friendly,
non-aligned nation--a nation we do a lot of business with."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations wrote in his memoirs (A Dangerous Place) that "the Department of
State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever
measures it undertook" to reverse the invasion. "This task was given to me
and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success," Moynihan reported.
Finally, according to the State Department, 90 percent of the weapons used
in the invasion came from the United States. Two years later, as the
atrocities in East Timor were reaching a peak, President Jimmy Carter
authorized an addition $112 million in weapons sales to Indonesia.
ACTION: Please call on local and national news outlets to stop treating East
Timor as a legitimate part of Indonesia. And ask them to include the facts
about the consequences of the Indonesian invasion, as well as the role the
U.S. has played in supporting the illegal occupation.
To contact the Associated Press, write to:
Associated Press
Thomas Kent-- International Editor
(212) 621-1655
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Also, read FAIR's previous coverage of East Timor and Indonesia at:
http://www.fair.org/international/east-timor.html
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