>Well done Communist Workers Group New Zealand, your analysis is spot-on.
>Phil Hoeberigs
Spot on?
from the Statement of the Communist Workers Group New Zealand on East Timor:-
> The same with East Timor. While preferring a UN solution, most of the
> left are calling for immediate action by the US to defend the 'human
> rights' of the people of East Timor. This is like calling on the
> tiger to guard the calf. The US was the main backer, along with
> Australia and NZ, of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in the first
> place. It is total hypocrisy or naivety at least to suppose that the
> biggest enemy of the declaration of Independence in 1975, can now
> turn around and be the defender of 'human rights'.
How does this group then account for the fact that Clinton appears to have
acceded to the calls of Noam Chomsky and others of the left demanding the
threat of severe economic sanctions in order to enforce the entry of
peacekeepers?
> Armed struggle.
> For revolutionaries there was always only one course
> of action against Indonesian occupation- that of armed struggle. As
> the students in Jakarta have shown over the last two years mass,
> direct action comes up against the state forces. The insurgents in
> Aceh have learned the same lesson. But this bloody lesson has been
> part of the education of the East Timorese for nearly 25 years! It
> has cost the lives of more than 200,000 innocent people Now 1000's
> of more lives are to be sacrificed to the altar of peaceful
> negotiation. There can be no better demonstration of the necessity
> of armed struggle than the fight of the East Timorese for their
> independence.
Very revolutionary. Like Dave B's support for unconditional military
solidarity with the Kosovans, only to be withdrawn when war broke out. Now
this rhetoric pledges more Timorese lives at a time when the independence
armed forces have deliberately decided not to fight. Very revolutionary!
> For workers around the world there are a number of
> actions that can be taken to build international solidarity with the
> independence struggle.
This list carefully excludes the call on the US government for massive
economic sanctions, which is what has worked.
> Fourth, we must call on Indonesian workers, students and poor
> peasants to immediately recognise and demand the right to
> self-determination of East Timor and all other independence
> movements that have popular backing. Only by doing so will those
> seccessionist movements be able to choose freely to secede or stay as
> 'autonomous' regions of Indonesia. For a Federation of Socialist
> Repubics of Indonesia!
Typical Trotskyist rhetoric, calling on the generalised revolutionary
masses of another country to wage revolution. Indonesian organisations like
the PRD have bravely tried to demonstrate against their army's action in
East Timor, and got firebombed.
The folly of this sort of declaration is its attempt at revolutionary
purity in isolation from a concrete struggle which has to involve
compromises.
It is notable how it puts the term 'human rights' in inverted commas. It is
opposed to a general democratic campaign in a a broad united front of
forces for bourgeois democratic rights for all peoples of the Indonesian
archipelago. This actually restricts the opportunities to minimise the
violence and maximise the opportunities for democratic advance.
Chris Burford
London
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