[Marinir] Military officer reveals Australian responsibility for Timor massacre

[Yap Hong Gie]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/timo-m15.shtml

Military officer reveals Australian responsibility for Timor massacre
By Mike Head
15 May 2001


A serving Australian military intelligence officer has revealed that the 
Howard government suppressed intelligence reports that could have averted 
the massacre of at least 60 people at a police station in the East Timorese 
town of Maliana in early September 1999.

In media interviews broadcast last week, Captain Andrew Plunkett stated that 
throughout 1999 the government refused to release intelligence reports 
showing that Indonesian authorities were preparing for mass killings at 
Maliana and across the island if East Timor's people voted no in the August 
1999 autonomy ballot.

Plunkett commanded the intelligence section of the Australian army's leading 
contingent in East Timor, the Royal Australian Regiment 3rd Battalion. He 
arrived in Maliana shortly after the carnage, spoke to survivors and read 
the scrawlings left by the victims on the walls of the police compound. Some 
of the graffiti read: "We're about to die, why have people forsaken us?"

In the weeks leading up to the ballot, Australian and other UN police and 
military election observers urged local people to remain in the town after 
the vote and seek the protection of the Indonesian police.

Relying on their advice, several thousand people sought sanctuary in the 
Maliana police station when militia violence commenced. According to 
survivors, on September 8 1999, militia members, Indonesian police and 
soldiers surrounded the area. Militiamen hacked independence supporters to 
death with machetes in front of the assembled crowd.

Before arriving in Timor, Plunkett carried a top-secret security clearance, 
giving him access to data and reports flowing from the Australian military's 
extensive and sophisticated monitoring of Indonesian military and government 
communications.

This material, compiled in Canberra by the Defence Intelligence Organisation 
(DIO), showed that the Indonesian leadership was funding and training 
militia gangs to carry through a bloodbath. In Plunkett's word, the DIO's 
analysis was that "the TNI [Indonesian army] would basically destroy East 
Timor and they'd use militia as proxies".

That information was not passed on to the East Timorese people or local UN 
personnel. Instead, it was "pushed up the chain of command, hosed down and 
politically wordsmithed by the Asia division of the Department of Foreign 
Affairs and Trade".

Speaking of those who perished, Plunkett told the Special Broadcasting 
Services (SBS) TV program Dateline: "If they had accurate information, they 
would not have trusted TNI and POLRI [police] full stop. Least of all, they 
would not have sought refuge in a POLRI station."

Asked how he felt when the full extent of what had happened dawned on him, 
Plunkett replied: "I was pretty devastated, and to be honest, I felt guilty 
myself, being associated with the intelligence area."

Fearing Indonesian retribution, many of Maliana's people had taken to the 
mountains in the leadup to the August 30 ballot, but Australian and other 
UNAMET observers worked closely with local leaders of the secessionist CNRT 
(Timor National Resistance Council) to coax them back into the town, 
claiming that Indonesian police would protect them from any militia 
violence.

Interviewed by Dateline, Maliana survivors corroborated Plunkett's account. 
Filomena da Silva, widow of Lorenco dos Santos Gomes, who died, said: "On 
the 31st [of August 1999] I came back with UNAMET and things were hotting up 
... They told us that if anything happened at our house we must go to the 
police."

Adriano Joao, who was the CNRT vice-secretary in Maliana, said: "UNAMET also 
promised us and the people that we would not be harmed. If we were, then 
within 24 hours a peacekeeping army would come. That's why the people didn't 
run into the mountains."

Lucio Marques, who had been in the mountains with a clandestine group, said 
his group had planned to go to Maliana to vote but return immediately to 
their hideouts. On August 28, however, a UN-sponsored joint team of militia 
and CNRT leaders implored them to go home and remain in Maliana to create a 
sense of peace and calm in the town.

"On the 28th, they went from village to village, and those still in the 
mountains could come down and listen, calling people back, saying, 'Don't 
leave your houses when the vote is over. Whoever wins, nothing is going to 
happen'."

Plunkett also alleged that he and his troops were ordered to understate the 
death toll. As a result, the official body count registered for Maliana was 
about 12, whereas an intelligence officer saw evidence of more than 60 
bodies and Australian soldiers were aware that many more bodies were 
probably dumped at sea or in rivers.

Wayne Sievers, a former federal police officer who served with the UN in 
Timor before the ballot, backed Plunkett's account. He and others gathered 
intelligence in Maliana and elsewhere, including leaked Indonesian 
documents. "They were indicating that indeed it was the Indonesian military 
at the highest levels that were organising, arming, training and funding the 
militias at a time when they were supposed to be disarming them and 
protecting us."

Sievers said he gave an Australian diplomat "chilling" documents showing 
Indonesian plans for the killings in Maliana, which were intended as a 
blueprint for similar massacres across the country. His reports were 
ignored. "I could only conclude the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs 
knew what the Indonesians were planning and didn't want a documentary trail 
to show that they knew," he told Channel Seven.

Aid and church workers issued similar reports before the ballot, warning of 
planned massacres. Numerous leaks from within the Australian intelligence 
apparatus also indicated that the Howard government knew from early 1999 
that the Indonesian leadership planned to unleash atrocities if the Timorese 
voted for independence.


Canberra's motives

These damning revelations have shaken the Australian government. They carry 
additional weight because they have been made by a serving military 
intelligence officer who felt so strongly about Canberra's role in the 
Maliana massacre that he was prepared to breach his confidentiality 
agreement and face serious disciplinary and legal charges.

Unable to refute the detail of Plunkett's account, Foreign Affairs Minister 
Alexander Downer attempted to bluster his way through a press conference 
saying he found the allegations "offensive". Downer baldly declared that the 
government had no motive to withhold intelligence information from the UN 
and "of course we would never do such a thing".

He added: "I have never heard of such an allegation before and I don't think 
I have ever heard of any Australian government, including the present 
government, refusing to pass on information that might have otherwise helped 
save people's lives."

Both Downer and the Howard government are counting on the fact that the mass 
media, which at the time threw its full support behind the Australian 
military intervention, is unlikely to challenge the minister's assertion of 
moral rectitude. So sensitive is the issue that following the initial 
Dateline program, the media has all but dropped any mention of Plunkett's 
allegations, after downplaying their significance.

The current Australian government, like all its predecessors-both Labor and 
Liberal-had every reason to suppress information about the activities of the 
Indonesian military, police and militia in East Timor. Following the 
Indonesian invasion in 1975, Canberra's sole motive has been to pursue what 
best served Australia's considerable strategic and economic interests.

Support for the Suharto dictatorship and the whitewash of its many crimes 
was, until the junta's collapse in 1998, a cornerstone of Australian foreign 
policy in South East Asia. Ever since the Indonesian military coup of 
1965-66, Suharto was viewed as a crucial political ally, providing stability 
throughout the region as well as favourable opportunities for Australian 
investors within Indonesia.

In 1974-75 Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam held two summit meetings with 
Suharto, during which he indicated that Australia would not oppose Jakarta's 
takeover of East Timor. Following the invasion, both Labor and Liberal 
leaders backed the Indonesian annexation and subsequently covered up the 
ongoing suppression of East Timorese opposition that resulted in an 
estimated death toll of 200,000.

The withholding of intelligence information that might have saved people's 
lives began in 1975 itself when the Whitlam government refused to even warn, 
let alone protect, five Australian-based newsmen who were murdered by 
Indonesian special forces as they entered the border town of Balibo. To have 
warned the newsmen would have meant revealing the Labor government's advance 
knowledge of the invasion.

In return for becoming the only administration in the world to formally 
recognise Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor, the Hawke Labor government 
secured the 1989 Timor Gap treaty that gave Australia territorial rights 
over most of the rich oil and gas fields beneath the Timor Sea. Only two 
years later, the Hawke government did everything it could to mask the true 
extent of the Dili massacre, in which Indonesian troops shot down more than 
120 protestors.

When the Suharto regime began to disintegrate under US and IMF pressure 
following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, it provoked a serious crisis for 
the Australian political and military establishment. The Howard government 
was concerned by mounting agitation in East Timor for a ballot on 
independence and pressure from Portugal, which Australia regarded as a 
rival, to resolve the international status of its former colony. In December 
1998, Prime Minister Howard wrote to Suharto's successor, Habibie, 
suggesting that his administration propose a form of autonomy, leading in 
the long term to a ballot, as the most effective means of retaining 
sovereignty over the half island.

Jakarta reacted abruptly to the shift from Australia's previous 
unconditional support for the incorporation of East Timor into Indonesia. 
Habibie unexpectedly declared in early 1999 that his government would hold a 
ballot on an autonomy proposal within months, not years, warning that 
Indonesia would "walk away" from the territory if its plan were rejected. 
This was a clear threat of a scorched earth policy.

Nevertheless, the Australian government insisted that Habibie and his 
military chief, General Wiranto, knew nothing of the mounting pro-Indonesian 
militia violence in East Timor, blaming "rogue elements" in the Indonesian 
military instead. Canberra sought to head off full-scale UN intervention, 
opposing the use of UN peacekeepers and insisting that the TNI remain in 
full control of the ballot. Its preferred option, as set out in Howard's 
December 1998 letter, was for Indonesia to retain power in East Timor.

Simultaneously, however, based on the intelligence reports it was receiving, 
the Howard government launched military preparations for intervention in 
East Timor should the Indonesian autonomy proposal be defeated. As early as 
April 1999, it sent intelligence and special forces units, including the 
SAS, to operate in East Timor clandestinely. Australian ruling circles were 
concerned that rival Portugal, through the auspices of the UN, could regain 
a foothold unless Australian troops were on the ground first.

Despite a systematic campaign of harassment and violence by the Indonesian 
army, police and loyalist militia units aimed at intimidating the East 
Timorese, the ballot went overwhelmingly against the Indonesian regime. 
Faced with the new situation, the Howard government rapidly moved to ensure 
that Australia would play the leading role in shaping events in an 
"independent" East Timor. It mounted an intensive diplomatic campaign, 
particularly in Washington, for an Australian-led intervention, in the name 
of protecting the Timorese people.

The Australian government's calculated failure to warn the East Timorese of 
what was in store from them in places like Maliana served two political 
purposes. Firstly, it prevented the East Timorese from taking any action 
either to escape or to defend themselves. Australia, with the complicity of 
the CNRT leaders, insisted that Falantil pro-independence fighters remain 
corralled in holding areas while the militia ran amok. The last thing that 
Canberra wanted was to confront a population in revolt against the 
Indonesian armed forces and their militia allies.

Secondly, once the long-predicted murders began, Howard and Downer, 
with the support of the Australian media and Labor opposition, cynically 
used the killings to drum up domestic public support for the first large-scale
use of Australian troops overseas since the Vietnam War. Just as in Kosovo
some months earlier, reports of massacres were used to claim a humanitarian 
motive for military intervention.

The full story of the Howard government's suppression of information on the 
Indonesian leadership's involvement in the East Timor bloodshed is still to 
be told. According to media reports, further leaked military intelligence 
documents are about to be released.

What is already clear, however, is that everything that the Howard 
government did in 1999 took place with the full knowledge that the top 
levels of the Indonesian regime and military were preparing to unleash the 
militia against independence supporters in East Timor. Throughout all the 
twists and turns in a rapidly changing situation, Downer and Howard showed 
not the least compunction in sacrificing the lives of hundreds of East 
Timorese in order to advance the interests of Australian capitalism.


See Also:
Timor Gap dispute highlights motives behind Australian intervention
[25 October 2000]
What the UN knew about militia violence in East Timor
[6 October 1999]
Kosovo and East Timor: a reply to a WSWS reader
[1 Ocotber 1999]
The Western powers and East Timor--A history of manoeuvre and intrigue
[1 October 1999]



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