[PEN-L:7528] (Fwd) Blair makes much of 'humanitarian values' but sells arms

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Date sent:              Tue, 01 Jun 1999 16:57:58 -0700
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Subject:                Blair makes much of 'humanitarian values' but sells arms to
        Indonesia which are used against East Timor - John Pilger 

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.