Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church

An Address by Clinton Fernandes at the Melbourne Unitarian Church, 1 May 2005

East Timor is located approximately 700 kilometres northwest of Australia. Indonesia invaded it on 7th December 1975 with the diplomatic and material support of Western states, including Australia. Approximately one-third of the population died of unnatural causes as a result of the invasion and occupation.

East Timor had no external source of weapons and no land border with a friendly country. Its successful resistance is perhaps unique in the history of guerilla warfare. It won its freedom as a result of twenty-four years of unflinching defiance inside the territory, and the support of ordinary people outside it. East Timor's external supporters engaged in 'solidarity' actions of mutual dependence - although not under direct threat themselves, and for the most part not of Timorese origin, they struggled along with the Timorese and operated within a shared framework of understanding and collective action. In Melbourne, for example, the Australia-East Timor Association was formed on the afternoon of 7th December 1975 - as the invasion was occurring.

The transnational solidarity network, which began even before the invasion, drew on a number of historical tributaries: former military personnel, members of aid organisations, academics, communists, members of the peace movement during the Vietnam War and members of some church groups. This was, obviously, a very eclectic range of groups. There was almost no coordination of their activities in the early phase of the movement. Indeed, many had no idea that they were even part of a movement. They disagreed on almost every issue except one - that the East Timorese be allowed to determine their own future. Former military personnel, for example, were often suspicious of - if not openly hostile to - those who had spent the decade before the Indonesian invasion opposing Australia's participation in the US attack on Vietnam. As the years went on, however, members of different groups developed personal friendships as well as a greater understanding of each others' motivations. As a consequence, their activities took on greater coherence. Most history books don't say much about these activists, but it was their efforts that made the difference. They were the little wheel inside the bigger wheel of public opinion, making it turn in support of East Timorese self-determination.

Their tactics were designed to give maximum publicity to the East Timorese cause. They were pitted against successive Indonesian and Australian governments, which tried to increase East Timor's diplomatic isolation. Some very creative tactics were used. A case in point: responding to reports that Indonesia had used napalm in its aerial bombing campaign, Darwin-based activist Rob Wesley-Smith advertised his intention to burn a dog on a public oval in the city. On the appointed day, 14th July 1978, Wesley-Smith arrived at the oval with a dog hidden under his shirt. Also present were a large crowd of curious onlookers, animal rights activists, members of the media, police and fire brigade. The police had earlier warned Wesley-Smith that he would be arrested if he attempted to carry out his plan. When he pulled the dog out from under his shirt, it turned out to be a fluffy toy dog. He then declared that people were prepared to be outraged at the burning of a dog, but not at the burning of humans in East Timor by napalm. While there was relief from the animal rights activists and disappointment from some of the onlookers, who had brought their cameras along to record the occasion, the goal of the publicity stunt had been accomplished: Wesley-Smith had raised awareness of Indonesia's actions.

Another example: quite a few people have heard about the Dili Massacre, which occurred on 12th November 1991. But very few people know that the massacre would never have been filmed were it not for the transnational solidarity movement. In 1990, the renowned Australian activist Shirley Shackleton, widow of the slain journalist Greg Shackleton, was invited to Oxford University's inaugural seminar on East Timor by the Oxford academic Dr Peter Carey. While in England, she briefed Peter Gordon, a producer at Yorkshire Television, about conditions in the territory. As a result of this briefing and assistance provided by British solidarity activists, Peter Gordon visited East Timor with a Yorkshire Television crew in 1991. He left before the planned visit of the Portuguese delegation, but - at Shackleton's urging - ensured that the visit would be filmed by hiring British freelance photographer Max Stahl, who was in Dili at the time. When Stahl filmed the massacre and had to prevent the film being confiscated by customs officials, he was able to have it smuggled out by Saskia Kouwenberg, a Dutch-born solidarity activist married to an Australian journalist who worked for a Darwin radio station. Also present were Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn, two reporters from the US. Goodman was on an assignment for Pacifica Radio station and Nairn was writing for The New Yorker magazine. After witnessing the massacre, they flew out of the territory and raised the alarm by phoning a friend in Washington, D.C. The result was a massive amount of international attention as footage of the massacre at the cemetery was shown on television screens worldwide. For the first time, Indonesian brutalities were made visible and stirred an unprecedented level of anger.

It should be noted that previous massacres, especially during the 1975-79 period and in the early 1980s, had often been more murderous, but had never been captured on film for the outside world to see. For example, Monsignor Martinho da Costa Lopes's efforts to publicise the massacre of 500 civilians at the Rock of St Anthony at Lacluta in 1981 had been severely hindered by the absence of video or still photography. The contrast with the Dili massacre is all too obvious.

In 1999, when Indonesia was forced to hold a ballot on East Timorese independence, it attempted to engineer the outcome by intimidating the population. The Indonesian authorities created a proxy militia force, and claimed that the Indonesian military was merely keeping the peace between the warring factions. In fact, the Indonesian military was the
real source of insecurity, East Timorese society was united on the question of independence, and there were no warring factions. Australian diplomacy functioned in support of the Indonesian claim. However, neither the Indonesian nor the Australian government was prepared for the large influx of activists, all of whom acted as unofficial ballot monitors. They reported home regularly, undermining Indonesia's strategy of plansible denial and Australia's diplomatic support for this strategy.

Eventually, a multinational peacekeeping force was deployed to East Timor in order to guarantee its freedom. Neither the parliamentary process nor the benevolence of the Australian government were responsible for this deployment. Rather, the Howard government was compelled to act under the pressure of a tidal wave of public outrage.

It’s worth contrasting the anger and rapidity that characterised these public protests with other expressions of public sentiment. On Sunday the 28th of May 2000, approximately 200,000 people walked across
the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Having done so, they reported back to work on Monday morning, thus signalling their unwillingness to interrupt the flow of everyday economic and political life. Something similar occurred over the weekend of 15 -17 February 2003, when hundreds of thousands of people protested around Australia before the invasion of Iraq. Having made their point, they reported back to work on Monday morning, once again signalling their unwillingness to interrupt the flow of everyday economic and political life. Protests that can be contained, or whose forward trajectory is weak, are not a serious threat to the status quo. In the case of East Timor, however, people were not going back to work on Monday. They were walking out of workplaces and into the streets. I have described the dynamics of this in Reluctant Saviour (Scribe, 2004)

The point is that if Australians protest as Australians, the protest can be contained. If Australians protest as Australian workers, the protest is much harder to contain. The depth of public anger that resulted in the latter kind of protests is the result of a twenty-four year campaign of activism by the transnational solidarity movement. The activists are mostly gone from the history books, but their activism made a difference. It’s also worth noting that the transnational solidarity movement didn’t play the anti-Muslim card against the Indonesian occupation. It didn’t play on Australian fears of Indonesia. It didn’t target Indonesian overseas installations or diplomats for physical attack. It didn’t condemn the “violence on both sides". Rather, it defended the right of the Timorese to engage in military resistance against their occupiers. It made a distinction between the violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressors.

The transnational solidarity movement rejected the legitimacy of pro-Indonesian governments, despite elections and governors of Timorese ethnicity. Finally, the transnational solidarity movement showed that when it comes to activism, endurance is more important than intensity.