Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 21. August 28 1978

Independence and Invasion

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.

Rogerio Lobato, Minister of National Defence in the government of the Democratic Republic of East Timor described

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."