Consider The Past Before Digging Deeper

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday July 22, 2000

So, if one were extended, the Defence Minister, John Moore, would consider an invitation from the Indonesian Government to provide equipment and logistics as Ambon spirals out of control. Before we commit, perhaps we should look at recent history.

Indonesia stuck out its hand for a $2 billion ``loan" from Australia to save it from the Asian financial crisis, then Australians watched in horror while the Australian-trained Indonesian army raped and pillaged a whole country in East Timor. Australian protests were ignored.

We stuck our hands in our pockets again to try to rehouse Timorese left homeless in the wake of the barbaric Indonesian withdrawal, then listened in disbelief to Indonesians going on about Australia's insensitivity in daring to contribute to a UN task force trying to restore order.

Not long ago, in reply to our PM's repeated invitations extended to its President to visit Australia, Mr Wahid came up with the patronising assertion that Australian visits are way down on his agenda. Well, it's nice to know where we stand.

As a taxpayer, I don't feel disposed to handing the Indonesian army more taxpayer dollars so it can continue to terrorise the Christian section of the Ambon population, because that would surely be how the ``equipment and logistics" would be used.

John Brooke,July 18Avalon.

In his article ``Three ways to answer outraged critics" (Herald, July 18), the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, tells us of the ``slow civil war in East Timor when 200,000 people were killed between 1975 and 1998". The so-called civil war in East Timor occurred early in 1975 and lasted for 11 days before being put down by Falintil (the fighting arm of Fretilin). That ``civil war" was an attempted coup masterminded by Indonesia and a handful of traitorous Timorese mercenaries.

At most, 1,200 people died. The period Mr Downer describes when 200,000 Timorese were brutally killed was after the Indonesian invasion in December 1975.

Shirley Shackleton, July 20 South Melbourne (Vic).

In relation to ``Collusion in East Timor" by John Dowd (Herald, July 20), the question about Balibo is not so much the how-and-why of the journalists being killed.

The answer to that has been well and truly aired in the public arena.

The question is why did the Australian Government seek to keep the circumstances surrounding the Australian journalists' slaying quiet? The answer to that question will undoubtedly see unravel the whole sordid saga of Australian passive complicity with the demise of East Timor in the latter part of 1975, with the lies and the silence surrounding Balibo as its most glaring symptom.

Therein lies the crux of Balibo. A future judicial inquiry should maintain a concerted focus on this aspect of the saga.

Stephen Senise, July 21 Camden.