The Guardian (London and Manchester) Tuesday June 1, 1999
A WORSE SLAUGHTER
Blair makes much of 'humanitarian values' but sells arms to Indonesia which
are used against East Timor
By John Pilger
The indictment of Milosevic is good news. The crimes he and his gang have
committed make him a first class war criminal. However, try as he may, he
has yet to approach the record set by the Indonesian dictator Suharto.
According to a study commissioned by the Australian Parliament, "at least"
200,000 East Timorese have died as a direct result of the Indonesian
invasion and occupation. That is a third of the population or,
proportionally, more people than were killed by Pol Pot in Cambodia.
When I travelled through the Matabean mountains of East Timor, beneath
endless silhouettes of black crosses etched against the sky, I failed to
meet a single family that grieved for fewer than five immediate members.
Now the slaughter that began with the invasion 23 years ago has returned.
In the tumultuous aftermath of Suharto's forced resignation last year, the
new regime headed by his stooge, BJ Habibie, offered the East Timorese a
vote on autonomy within Indonesia or independence. What Habibie failed to
spell out was that real power remained with the army that Suharto built as
a force for colonial expansion and domestic oppression and which has
devoted itself to destroying the prospect of a free vote set by the UN for
August 8.
While the army chief, General Wiranto, gives bogus public support to the
"peace process", there is abundant evidence that his officers train, arm
and pay death squads to murder and intimidate anyone associated with the
independence movement. "Just as it seemed the next generation might not be
born in tears," wrote a friend from the capital, Dili, "hope is being
snatched away from us." And the Blair government, those noted fighters for
"humanitarian values" and against "repressive governments" are up to their
necks in it.
Britain is the biggest supplier of weapons to the Indonesian military.
Everything from surface to air missiles, to anti-riot vehicles and cluster
bombs, comes from Britain. In 1997, the joint East Timorese Nobel peace
prize winner, Bishop Carlos Belo, came to London to appeal to Tony Blair
and Robin Cook. "Please do not sustain any longer a conflict which without
these [arms] sales could never have been pursued in the first place, nor
for so long," he begged.
Their response was to secretly approve 64 new arms shipments to the
Indonesian army, using "commercial confidentiality" to justify ministers'
refusal to answer MPs' questions. In March, just as the media's attention
was concentrated on Kosovo, the government released, without warning, its
long delayed annual report for 1998 on arms sales. Although hiding more
than it reveals, the report confirms that Labour approved 92 arms contracts
to Indonesia up to last December. These include the weapons prized by the
Kopassus special forces, which led the invasion of East Timor and are
behind the campaign of terror aimed at destroying the referendum.
On April 29 Robin Cook routinely denounced the iniquities of "the Milosevic
war machine", as 16 Hawk fighter-bombers were secretly delivered to the
Indonesian military by British Aerospace. Others will soon be on their way.
These were originally approved by the Tories. Last January, the late Derek
Fatchett, then foreign office minister, told me: "The legal advice that we
had was that we had no power to revoke the [Hawks'] licences..." Two months
later, the annual report acknowledged the government's power to revoke
licences on page 20.
Armed with the same missiles and cluster bombs currently being used to
great effect against civilians in Serbia and Kosovo, Hawk aircraft are
ideally suited for the mountain passes of East Timor. The foreign office
refrain is that the Indonesians would never dare betray their solemn
"assurances" and use "our equipment" in their illegal colony. The British
taxpayer might object; the Hawks, after all, are virtually gifts under an
export credit system designed for tyrants without the readies. Alas, an
outspoken member of Labour's opposition front bench gave the game away on
May 11 1994, when he told parliament, "Hawk aircraft have been observed on
bombing runs in East Timor in most years since 1984." His name is also
Robin Cook.
Mark Higson, the former foreign office official commended by the Scott
inquiry into the arms-for-Iraq scandal, described "a culture of lying"
pervading Britain's foreign policy establishment. "Like so much of the
lethal equipment we sold the Indonesians," he told me, "the Hawks were
destined for East Timor. Everybody [at the foreign office] knew that."
The Blair government is frightened of public opinion on this issue. The
tens of thousands of people who have phoned television companies and
written to their MPs over the years should now insist that the government
stop, forthwith, the shipment of every bomber and gun and bullet to its
monstrous clients, and that the prime minister and his foreign secretary
demand that the East Timorese people and their leader, Xanana Gusmao, are
set free, and that Suharto joins Milosevic in the dock. If Blair and Cook
continue as accessories, history will indict them, too.
**************************************************************
David Spratt
Telephone 613-9482-5436 / fax 613-9482 4268
email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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