Mark Aarons – When Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Jose Ramos Horta receive the Truth and Friendship Commission's (CTF) report today, the Indonesian President will be hoping that it is the final chapter in this long-running and tragic saga.
Established in 2005 as a joint Indonesian-East Timorese inquiry, the commission has investigated the campaign of violence that marred Timor's 1999 independence vote. Leaked copies of its report confirm the findings of Timor's Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CAVR) that the campaign of terror, murder and forced deportations was directed, funded and carried out under the command of the Indonesian government and military, a fact widely known at the time.
The report's release coincides with the start of the lengthy campaign that will culminate in next April's Indonesian election. The President's party is behind in the polls and there is speculation that former Indonesian armed forces commander Wiranto could emerge as a serious contender for president. This would be ironic, as the 1999 campaign of destruction was carried out on Wiranto's orders, which he denied under Koranic oath when he voluntarily appeared before the CTF in May 2007.
Wiranto's denial is symptomatic of the attitude adopted by the Javanese military elite, which still dominates Indonesian life.
Behind the 1999 events stands a series of crimes carried out by the armed forces that have run the country since 1965. The CAVR report detailed the horrors inflicted on Timor between 1975 and 1999, in which almost 200,000 people were killed or starved to death and the survivors rounded up and forcibly resettled in what were, in effect, concentration camps, where many were tortured.
In 1969, the army rigged the Act of Free Choice to ensure West Papua was incorporated into Indonesia.
In the preceding seven years the indigenous population was subjected to a regime of terror and murder to prepare for the vote, which was recognised by the international community despite widespread knowledge of the methods that had been used to secure the rorted result. The massacre of 500,000 to one million alleged communists in 1965-66 set the tone for military rule, followed by the establishment of a brutal police state replete with gulags full of political prisoners.
Reminiscent of Turkey's continuing denial of responsibility for the Armenian genocide during and after World War I, Indonesia refuses to confront this decades-long history of criminal behaviour by its army leaders. Indeed, the families of those slaughtered in the mid-1960s still cannot disinter their bodies for dignified reburial. Such denial infects Indonesian society and, while it persists, gravely restricts the country's ability to develop its institutions in a democratic and tolerant way.
It also infects Australian attitudes to Indonesia and skews our policies towards our most important neighbour. Successive Australian governments embraced the New Order ushered in by general (later president) Suharto's massacres as a welcome development. There are also indications of Australian assistance in these bloody events.
This condoning of mass murder was recently brought into sharp relief by former prime minister Paul Keating, who launched a blistering attack on his robust critic, Paddy McGuinness, at the time of his death, but travelled to Jakarta to praise the mass murderer Suharto at his funeral.
Keating's warmth for Suharto echoes another prime minister, Harold Holt, who in 1966 cheerfully welcomed the ostensible reorientation of Indonesian politics that had been brought about by "knocking off" up to one million people.
In between, there has been an unedifying array of prime ministers who have explicitly or inferentially condoned the criminal policies of the Indonesian military. John Gorton and William McMahon continued Holt's approach, while Gough Whitlam initiated "batik diplomacy", welcoming Suharto to Australia and encouraging Timor's incorporation into Indonesia.
Malcolm Fraser remained silent about the deaths of 180,000 Timorese between 1975 and 1982, although Australian intelligence knew the terrible details. Bob Hawke changed ALP policy to reaffirm Australia's formal recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over Timor, then approved the notorious Timor Gap Treaty. Keating made a secret deal with Suharto that included upgrading military ties. In 1998, John Howard initiated the process leading to East Timor's independence vote, but failed to act against Indonesian-controlled violence until forced to do so by the worst atrocities that followed the August 1999 vote.
During the past 40 years, such policies have been supported by influential Australians. James McAuley and Heinz Arndt greeted the Suharto regime with enthusiasm in journals such as Quadrant and Australian Outlook; reporting for the Australian Financial Review, McGuinness took an Indonesian helicopter trip around Timor at the height of the military-induced famine and declared it did not exist; Paul Kelly has written in support of international recognition of Jakarta's control of West Papua in this newspaper; in his weekly newspaper column, Gerard Henderson has minimised the role of the Indonesian military in organising, financing and directing the 1999 crimes in Timor, despite evidence to the contrary.
Just as Indonesia cannot move forward without coming to terms with the dark side of its recent history, so too Australia cannot build a secure and lasting relationship with its most important neighbour without being honest about our quiescence towards – and sometimes active support for – the crimes of the Indonesian military.
Just as sections of the Left need to re-evaluate their support for murderous communist regimes, it is time to reconsider the equally immoral support given to Suharto and his cohort. The CTF report is a good starting point. Continuing criminal behaviour in West Papua makes this even more relevant.
There were alternatives to Australia's obsequious policies in the past. By taking a stronger stand on human rights abuses in West Papua and revisiting the rorted 1969 plebiscite, we would avoid once again dragging our national honour through the mud.
[Mark Aarons is the co-author of East Timor: A Western Made Tragedy.]