A Narrative of Denial

Australia and the Indonesian Violation of East Timor

Peter Job

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780522877618
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975 led to a prolonged conflict, severe human rights abuses and a large loss of life. From 1975 to 1983 the Indonesian military's campaign of 'encirclement and annihilation' destroyed rural food resources, creating the famine that took most of the lives lost during the occupation. The Australian governments of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser presented themselves as advocates for human rights and the international rule of law, while viewing relations with Indonesia as key to their foreign policy objectives. These positions came into conflict due to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Based upon an extensive study of Australian foreign affairs archives, as well as interviews, A Narrative of Denial demonstrates how the Australian government responded to the conflict by propagating a version of events that denied the reality of the catastrophe occurring in East Timor. It worked to protect the Suharto regime internationally, thereby allowing it to continue its repression relatively unhindered. This remarkable story will unsettle existing perceptions of how Australia operates in world affairs.

1

The Whitlam Intervention

Suharto’s New Order and the perceived Australian interest

The decisions taken by political leaders and government officials during the years 1975 to 1983 regarding East Timor were consciously made and not inevitable. That said, they were informed by their surrounding historical and political circumstances. The longstanding national fear of outside hostile forces threatening Australian security manifested itself in the decades after World War II as a fear of insurgent communism, particularly in the South-East Asian region. In the 1950s and 1960s it was pivotal in Australian commitments to the ANZUS alliance and to Australian participation in conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.

The fear was particularly intense in relation to Indonesia, the largest country in South-East Asia and Australia’s close neighbour. Under the presidency of Sukarno (1949–67), Australia and its Western allies were alarmed by the Indonesian president’s Cold War neutralism and toleration of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), at the time one of the largest communist parties in the world. There were fears that the party would come to power, particularly after Sukarno’s passing.¹ It was in this context that after the unsuccessful army coup by leftist officers in September 1965, Australian officials proactively encouraged the suppression of the PKI that followed. On 7 October the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) acting secretary, Laurence McIntyre, told the Indonesian ambassador he hoped the army would ‘put the PKI in its place’. The Australian ambassador to Indonesia, Sir Keith Shann, expressed hopes to Canberra that the army would ‘smash the PKI as an effective force’.²

Evidence of the subsequent slaughter was known to the Holt Government and did not impact upon its support for the eradication of the PKI.³ On the contrary, Prime Minister Harold Holt gloated that ‘with 500,000 to one million communist sympathisers knocked off, I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place’.⁴ Radio Australia broadcasted reports to discredit the PKI and to support actions by the Indonesian military. Australian officials joined Britain in assuring the Indonesian military that they would not escalate the confrontation with Indonesia over Malaysia in order to give it a free hand in its actions against the communists.⁵

Despite a death toll of upwards of 500,000,⁶ a supportive attitude towards the emerging Suharto regime was shared by elements of both sides of politics. It is significant that an article by Gough Whitlam on the Australian Labor Party agenda published in The Australian just ten days after his elevation to Opposition leader in February 1967 devoted considerable space to Suharto’s new regime.⁷ Stating that the new Indonesian government was ‘well disposed towards this country’, he wrote that:

It is our obligation and in our interest to see that we render all the political, diplomatic and economic support we can. If the coup of 18 months ago had succeeded, as it nearly did, we would have had a country of 100 million dominated by communists on our border … We can only imagine the additional and crippling sums we would now be spending on defence.⁸

In the following years, the department established strong relations with Suharto’s New Order.⁹ The Australian ambassador to Indonesia, Robert Furlonger (he held that post from March 1972 to March 1975), described it in 1973 as ‘a benign and stable government … pursuing policies of good relations with its neighbours’.¹⁰ From 1971 the Australian Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO) developed an information-sharing relationship with the Indonesian intelligence organisation BAKIN.¹¹

Portuguese Timor under Menzies

Australian Government attitudes towards East Timor in the 1960s were also strongly influenced by the issue of West Papua, then known as Dutch New Guinea. Under Prime Minister Robert Menzies (1939–41 and 1949–66), Australia initially supported a continuation of Dutch rule. However, when Garfield Barwick became foreign minister in 1961 he succeeded in reorientating policy towards acceptance of Indonesian sovereignty. Stating that he saw ‘no evidence whatsoever’ of any threat to Australia over the issue, he declared Australia was not ‘a party principal’ to the dispute and called on both parties to negotiate a settlement.¹² The United States negotiated an agreement in August 1962 that led to an Indonesian takeover. International-relations scholar James Cotton argues convincingly that Australian acceptance of this and of the clearly flawed ‘act of free choice’ that followed in 1969 established a precedent in Indonesian thinking regarding policy towards East Timor.¹³

James Dunn, Australian consul to Portuguese Timor from 1962 to 1963, later recounted that when he took up his position in January 1962, ‘It was widely believed that, once Indonesia had acquired West Irian [West Papua], East Timor’s days would be numbered.’ He was given strict instructions not to encourage a Portuguese belief that Australia would assist it in the event of a confrontation with Jakarta.^14,15

It was in this context that on 5 February 1963 the Menzies Cabinet accepted the view that there was no practical alternative for Portuguese Timor other than integration with Indonesia, and that ‘quiet pressure’ should be brought upon Portugal to cede peacefully.¹⁶ On 8 February Menzies wrote to the Portuguese prime minister, António Salazar, urging him to support ‘the principle of self-determination for all peoples’,¹⁷ under the apparent assumption that any Timorese anticolonial movement would be pro-Indonesian. On 15 October that year he wrote to Salazar again, referring to reports of an independence movement and stating that should such a movement arise, ‘Indonesia would … [have] an obligation to support it’.¹⁸ Salazar rebuffed Menzies’ entreaties on both occasions.

There were concerns nevertheless regarding the danger of military action by Indonesia, and DFA established a working group on Portuguese Timor in February 1963. Expressing fears of ‘an uprising and bloody suppression leading to Indonesian intervention’, the group’s report considered ways in which to find ‘peaceful and legitimate processes to end Portuguese rule’. In contrast to DFA’s later position, it recommended ‘maximum use’ of United Nations decolonisation machinery to encourage Indonesia to use UN processes rather than force or sponsorship of an independence movement. Predicated on the acceptance of incorporation, the report described Portuguese Timor as ‘an economic liability’ that ‘can have no independent future’ and ‘lives in the shadow of a huge neighbour of like race and culture’. While accepting the need for some kind of self-determination process, it expressed the hope that this difficulty ‘might be overcome by a West New Guinea type arrangement’.¹⁹ The Menzies Government did not take up the recommendations concerning action at the United Nations.

Initial reactions

Like most of the world, DFA officials were taken by surprise when on 25 April 1974 the Carnation Revolution in Portugal overthrew the Estado Novo dictatorship, signalling Portugal’s imminent withdrawal from its colonial possessions. A 3 May DFA policy planning paper revealed policy assumptions that were to predominate in the period leading to the Indonesian invasion. East Timor was described as economically unviable, without a political elite and lacking the capacity for self-government, so that ‘The logical long-term development is that it should become part of Indonesia’. The Timor Sea boundary issue featured prominently, with the paper noting that the Indonesians would probably accept a similar boundary to that already agreed between the two countries, which would be ‘more acceptable to us than the present Portuguese position’.²⁰

An expectation of the inevitability of incorporation was not, however, universal. Indeed, the assumption that Australian policy would be based upon international norms regarding a Timorese right to selfdetermination appears to have been the initial default position for many within both the department and the Whitlam Government. The DFA secretary, Alan Renouf, later wrote that he directed that ‘Australia’s policy be self-determination’, a position approved by Minister of Foreign Affairs Don Willesee.²¹ Renouf was initially sceptical about the need to accommodate Indonesian desires excessively, stating in a handwritten note on 7 May that ‘There is no [Indonesian] claim to Timor … “Give it to [Indonesia]” is the easy way out but it is not necessarily the right one.’²² The head of the South-East Asia Division, Graham Feakes, wrote on 6 June that ‘we may have to face up to the possibility that the Timorese may choose independence’, and that while the position might come as a ‘shock to the Indonesians’, Australia may have a role in encouraging them to think how they might ‘live with an independent Portuguese Timor’.²³

DFA sent two officers to East Timor from 17 to 27 June 1974 to report on the situation: the head of the Indonesian Section, Alister McLennan, and the former consul to Portuguese Timor, James Dunn. A department summary of the visit noted the development of three political parties but stated that due to ‘the backwardness and inexperience of the Timorese’, self-determination would require careful preparation. Of the three political parties, it described the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT), which favoured continued association with Portugal, to be the largest, followed by the Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT), which favoured independence after a transition period, and APODETI, the weakest party, which favoured integration with Indonesia. Politically educated Timorese, the report stated, looked to Australia as a future protector and hoped for the reopening of the Australian consulate in Dili. It concluded that ‘For Australia, an opportunity is emerging to develop stronger bilateral relations with Timor if it chooses to do so.’²⁴

Both officers also wrote their own reports. McLennan’s added little.²⁵ Dunn, however, broke with DFA orthodoxy to argue that independence was viable. He disparaged ‘pander[ing] to those influential elements within Indonesia, who may wish to incorporate Portuguese Timor’, arguing instead for ‘a more positive course … for Australia to seek Indonesia’s cooperation in helping to bring about the birth of the new state’ if it became clear that was what the Timorese wanted. He advocated the reopening of the Australian consulate to monitor developments and recommended a proactive approach, including a joint Australian-Indonesian mission to make recommendations regarding the territory’s economic and social development. Not only would this assist the Portuguese in orderly decolonisation, he argued, but it would weaken those Indonesians who might seek to incorporate the territory by force.²⁶

Whitlam

Gough Whitlam entered parliament in 1952, and the issue of Indonesian independence—obtained three years earlier—and Labor’s role in it would have loomed large. The Menzies Government’s initial support for the Dutch on West Papua was reinforced by Labor leaders Herbert ‘Doc’ Evatt and Arthur Calwell. Whitlam dissented, describing Indonesia in 1953 as ‘the successor state to all of Netherlands East Indies’, including West Papua.²⁷ The issue was so heated within the ALP that Whitlam described how a parliamentary colleague, Eddie Ward, ‘took a swing’ at him after a Caucus discussion on the issue in 1960.²⁸ During confrontations between the Indonesians and Dutch over West Papua in early 1962, Calwell distanced himself from the policy reorientation of Barwick, accusing Sukarno of ‘sabre rattling reminiscent of Hitler’ and stating that any threat of Indonesian force ‘must be faced’. Calwell’s position was met with some consternation within the ALP, and Menzies made political capital by calling him a ‘warmonger’.²⁹ In Whitlam’s view this ‘attracted attention to [Calwell’s] own incapacity for foreign affairs’.³⁰ Whitlam’s views on East Timor were similarly pro-Indonesian: he described Portuguese rule in 1963 as ‘an anachronism to every country in the world except Portugal’.³¹

Whitlam dissented from Calwell on many things—on Australia’s relationship with Asia, on the White Australia policy, on the very identity of Australia as a nation. What he considered his enlightened and anti-colonialist position on Dutch New Guinea was in his mind consistent with the progressive reorientation of Australian policy, both foreign and domestic, that he undertook when he became party leader in 1967. Whitlam took government in 1972 committed to a more independent and outward-looking foreign policy that put aside the legacy of the White Australia policy and established closer relationships with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)³² countries. He saw Suharto’s Indonesia, as the closest and largest ASEAN nation, as the key to this agenda³³ and made Indonesia the destination of his second overseas trip, in February 1973, praising ASEAN as ‘a model of regional cooperation’³⁴ and unsuccessfully advocating to Suharto the establishment of a regional association incorporating Asian and Pacific nations and Australia.³⁵

It was in this context that Whitlam viewed East Timor. Ironically, it was his self-professed anti-colonialism and the context in which it had developed that led him to support integration with Indonesia and to institute policies that worked actively against orderly decolonisation, self-determination and the option of independence.

Before the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 30 September 1974, Whitlam talked of the ‘most satisfying symmetry’ in which Australia, the newest colonial power, was working with the oldest, Portugal, to end the ‘false, demeaning, unworthy power over others’ that constituted colonial rule.³⁶ Yet his position was such that he regarded union with Indonesia as the inevitable outcome of the end of such rule. Writing to ALP senator Arthur Gietzelt in April 1975, he described the division of Timor as ‘an accident of Western colonial history’ and stated that:

four hundred years of Portuguese domination may have distorted the picture which the people of Portuguese Timor have of themselves, and perhaps obscured for them their ethnic kinship with the people of Indonesia. Time will be required for them to sort themselves out.

He was dismissive of Timorese political parties and their leaders, contending that ‘most appear to represent a small elite class’ not representative of the Timorese people.³⁷ To Whitlam, then, the parties favouring independence and their leaders ...