Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 21. August 28 1978
Independence and Invasion
Independence and Invasion
Towards Independence
To fully understand the significance of the guerilla war now being waged in East Timor, one must understand some of the development there in the last three years. For some 400 years East Timor (then known as Portugese Timor) was a sleepy outpost of the Portugese empire. It was rudely awakened in April 1974, when the Armed Forces Movement took control in Portugal. The coup in Lison brought some democratic reforms to the Timorese people for the first time, and with them came the hope that the colony might seek independence and govern itself like all other countries in the region. However, independence was not the only option open to the 650,000 people of East Timor, and in the months following the Lisbon coup, various political parties emerged each with a different political orientation.
The UDT party (Uniao Democratica Timorense) was essentially a union to protect the status quo, and its founders included Timorese who had benefitted from Portugese rule. The UDT initially envisaged Timor as part of a federation of Portugese-speaking states with strong cultural and trading links with Portugal.
The Fretilin party (Revolutionary Front for Independent East Timor) aimed to be a broad front representing all pro-independence forces in East Timor, and did not identify itself with any particular philosophy such as social democracy.
Apodeti (Associacao Popular Democratica Timorense), a party formed about a month after the Lisbon Coup, sought for East Timor "independence within Indonesia rather than on its own,"
Of these three main political parties which emerged, Fretilin soon commanded the most popular support, as it operated widely throughout East Timor at grassroots level. After one year of operation Fretilin had 200,000 registered members and many more supporters, largely as a result of its literacy and agricultural projects.
1975 proved an eventful year for politics in East Timor On January 21, UDT and Fretilin formed a coalition. Following events in Portugal and the Whitlam-Suharto talks of September 1974 (when Whitlam stated: "an independent Timor would be an uneviable state and a potential threat to the area,") UDT found itself moving towards a more clear-cut position on independence, while Fretilin recognised the importance of keeping the Portuegese in East Timor for some time to help carry out the process of decolonisation.
In June, a summit was held in Macau, ostensibly to work out a procedure for decolonisation, and elections were planned for October 1976. But it seems that almost none of the participants at the summit believed that elections would ever take place as various other things were being planned behind the scenes. In the early hours of August 11, UDT staged a "bloodless" coup in Dili, the capital of East Timor (a town about the size of Taihape.) However, because of popular support for Fretilin, the coup backfired, and by September 8, UDT had been forced into retreat and their main stronghold was Liquica, 25 km west of Dili.
Independence and Invasion
During September 1975 the Portugese Governor and his administration left for the island of Atauro in Dili harbour, and Fretilin filled the administrative vacuum left behind. Later in the month UDT and Apodeti joined forces, together with minority parties, to form MRAC, the Anti-Communist Revolutionary Movement. In the following months, fierce fighting between Fretilin and MRAC forces, supported by Indonesia, broke out along the East-Timor-Indonesian Timor border.
A NZ TV1 team managed to shoot film of Fretilin operations around the border town of [ unclear: Ratugade]. However, five Australian TV newsmen were shot dead in the neighbouring town of Balibo on October 16 when it came under attack from combined UDT- Apodeti forces led by Indonesian troops.
On November 28, 1975, Fretilin gave up waiting for the Portugese to negotiate a programme of decolonisation and unilaterally declared independence. They knew an Indonesian invasion was imminent President Francisco Xavier do Amaral told the people: "If we must fight and die for our freedom we will now do so as free men and women." Even as he spoke Indonesian soldiers were capturing the town at Atabae, after five days of shelling by warships off the coast and an amphibious landing of five tanks.
Indonesian response to East Timor's independence was not long in coming. On December 5, Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Adam Malik, summoned the ambassadors of ASEAN countries, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, the USA and the Soviet Union and warned them "not to be surprised" by any developments which might take place in East Timor. Then in the early hours of Sunday December 7, Indonesia began a full-scale invasion, when at least six Indonesian warships, several dozen planes and hundreds of paratroops and marines launched a massive attack on Dili.
Indonesian military success in East Timor has been so abysmal because Fretilin is well organised in guerilla warfare. The mountainous interior of the country is well suited for guerilla warfare, as demonstrated in the Second World War, when fewer than 400 Australian troops succeeded in holding down 20,000 Japanese troops, killing 1500 of them and losing only 40 of their own men. About 40,000 Timorese were killed by the Japanese because they had helped the Australians.
Fretilin's
military strategy in an issue of the Australian Left Review:" Our strategy is that we want to destroy as many of the enemy forces as possible and conserve our own forces. We therefore disperse our forces, but concentrate them to destroy the enemy and disperse them immediately after having carried out the attack. .. Our tactics are not only to kill as many enemy troops as possible, but also to destroy them economically. So we must cut all the roads, destroy all the bridges and force the enemy to move by expensive means—helicopters, planes, warships."
Indonesian Atrocities
The Indonesians were obviously hoping to get the 'Timor problem' out of the way by the end of the year, but Fretilin resistance was strong and had so much support from the Timorese people that a second much larger invasion was carried out on Christmas Day involving from 15,000 to 20,000 top Javanese troops. Yet today Indonesia still only controls very few towns and villages.
Radio Maubere reported on February 25 that 2094 Indonesian soldiers were killed and more wounded in fighting south-west and west of Dili between November 23 and February 23. (Radio Maubere is the national radio of the Democratic Republic of East Timor. Reception at Darwin is possible, despite the low powered transmitter used in East Timor).
Since the invasion of East Timor, Indonesia has kept a tight blockade on the territory, yet reports of Indonesian atrocities continually filter out. A pro-Indonesian Timorese, Lopes da Cruz, during a press conference in Jakarta in February 1975, admitted that 60,000 Timorese had been killed because of "Indonesian excesses."
World attention was focused on Indonesian atrocities in East Timor with the release of the Dunn Report in Australia. Mr Dunn, former Australian Consal to Dili and director of the Foreign Affairs Group of the Legislative Research Service of the Australian Parliament, interviewed East Timorese refugees in Lisbon, and his report details many Indonesian atrocities. Mr Dunn has given evidence before the US Congress Committee on International Relations on these atrocities.
Mart Reyners