Richard Bingley – Soon after Labour came to power in 1997, its approach to arms sales to Indonesia became the litmus test for the new ethical dimension to foreign policy expounded by a former anti-arms campaigner himself, the incoming foreign secretary Robin Cook.
Late in the 1970s, as an aspirant MP, Mr Cook had disgorged his contempt in the New Statesman magazine at Jim Callaghan's Labour government. They had continued to sell fighter jets and military equipment to President Suharto's barbaric, expansionist Indonesian regime, which was three years into its illegal, UN-condemned occupation of the former Portugese colonial beachhead East Timor which led to deaths of a third of its tiny population.
The indications were that Labour would be more sympathetic to those in the firing line of UK arms exports. During his first Mansion House speech as Prime Minister in 1997 Tony Blair said: "Human Rights may sometimes seem an abstraction in the comfort of the west, but when they are ignored, human misery and political instability follow. The same is true if we ignore the ethical dimension of the trade in arms."
But on entering power his new government was faced with an immediate Hobson's Choice. The departing Conservative government had just approved a hefty arms deal with their old South East Asian cold war ally in Jakarta for 16 Hawk Jets (worth 160 million Pounds) and 50 Scorpion armoured vehicles (worth 100 million Pounds) manufactured by Telford based engineering company Alvis. New Labour ministers faced a choice.
Should they revoke licenses for the deal agreed under the last-rites days John Major's administration? New Labour had the stark choice of either appearing principled in sticking to their ethical foreign policy pretensions, or "anti-business" by refusing hundreds of millions of pounds of investment. For fear of being seen as "anti-business" or "inexperienced" the new cabinet chose to back the deal, and allow the Hawk jets and Scorpion tanks to be shipped. Ministers explained the decision in practical business terms; namely that Britain wanted to sustain its global perception as a reliable military equipment provider and that officials didn't have the power to revoke existing licenses.
In response, public advocacy groups Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), Tapol – the Indonesian Human Rights Campaign and the World Development Movement (WDM) joined forces and called for a judicial review on the decision. The request was flatly turned down. The campaigners had pointed to a 1994 DTI trade order which said: "A license granted by the Secretary of State ... may be varied or revoked by the Secretary of State at any time."
When they made the controversial decision, New Labour ministers were already aware of the notoriety attached to Scorpion vehicles in that part of the world. Scorpion Personnel carriers, kitted out with 90mm howitzers and two mounted machine guns apiece, snarled through a campus at the Islamic University of Indonesia at Ujung Padang, South Sulawesi in April 1996. Three students were killed and many more injured. Scorpion vehicles were later filmed in May 1998 at Trisakti University in Jakarta and then again later that year in Jakarta. Protesters were killed at both demonstrations, which turned into microcosms of China's Tianamen Square bloodbath.
Since the university crackdowns, UK government figures reveal that British arms supplies continue to pour into Indonesia's troubled archipelago. Some 97 individual export licenses worth 19.5 million Pounds and 38 open export licenses (with an incalculable value) for military equipment were approved by the UK DTI for transhipment to Indonesia between January 1999 and December 2001. Arms sales included armoured vehicles, military communications, missile technology and parts for the already-sold multi-role jets and a plethora of electronics and components to keep Indonesia's armed forces battle-ready – even if it is against predominantly innocent civilians who didn't realise they were involved in a fight against anyone in the first place. Few people debate any state's right to defend itself in the face of aggression.
Even though Indonesia has disengaged from East Timor, the huge archipelago faces conflict and turmoil from a myriad of separatist groups. A few are quite simply nefarious, amorphous terrorist organisations such as those responsible for the car bombing of a Bali nightclub killing around 200 people in October 2002. But many so-called "separatist groups" represent those that have had their cultures and communities trashed in conflict with official TNI forces and intractable, vicious pro-government paramilitaries.
The unstinting sale of arms not just lends a blessing to Jakarta's Iron Rule, but undermines any need to negotiate or contemplate a sustainable political solution; the type we rightly hear so much about from government ministers with regards to Northern Ireland or the Israel/Palestinian conflict.
In November 2001, I questioned the UK Foreign Office about Information Centre for a Referendum in Aceh reports chronicling thirty male palm oil plantation workers being summarily executed by the West Java Siliwangi division of the TNI (Indonesia's armed forces). Days later, in Idi Tunong, another East Aceh district, nine males were executed by soldiers, including five boys aged between 13 and 16. The FCO official could not confirm the perpetrators, but verbally concluded to the best of his organisation's knowledge that the killings had taken place. He estimated that around 1,500 people – the vast majority innocent civilians – had already been "murdered" in Indonesia's range of conflicts in that year alone. Yet his department still tend to look leniently upon the sale of arms to many of these massacres' arch suspects – government-backed Indonesian security forces.
As 6,000 Indonesian soldiers now head for Aceh from the Naval base of Ujung in East Java, supported by sophisticated British-made Scorpion personnel carriers, the reality of selling arms is beginning to bite for Labour ministers. These latest disclosures from Jakarta have blown a hole through the arms sellers' myth and the politicians' anodyne. Namely, that our country can ship arms to the world's most lethal armed forces and for some profoundly mystical reason they don't ever get used. Now this theory is finally debunked, surely the arms deals should follow suit.