Peters

U.S.

activists’ contribution to the effort to end Indonesia’s brutal 25-year

occupation of East Timor paid off. In August 1999 a vast majority of East

Timorese – after years of immense suffering and patient organizing —

courageously voted for independence. In September 1999, the Indonesian military

pulled out of East Timor, finally ending its reign of terror.

The

question for East Timor solidarity activists is: now what?

At

first, some wondered if the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) should simply close

up shop. Mission accomplished. For seven years, ETAN activists (currently

numbering about 10,000 members in 25 chapters nationwide), lobbied congress to

stop the sale of weapons to Indonesia, raised public consciousness about the

U.S. role in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, educated the public and

the media, and built a grassroots campaign that successfully blocked U.S.

military training aid to Indonesia, blocked numerous U.S. weapons sales to

Indonesia, and pressured President Clinton to fully cut off military aid in

September 1999.

With

Indonesia out of East Timor, ETAN faced the question, what next? A series of

ETAN meetings and conversations with East Timorese leaders and activists yielded

some guidelines about what ongoing solidarity work might look like, and why it

is still necessary. "Solidarity," it turns out, is an ongoing and complicated

process. East Timor may now be free – or at least no longer occupied – but it is

certainly not invulnerable to international pressures, global economic forces,

and internal upheaval (the Indonesians left behind a traumatized people with

very little infrastructure). Recognizing that independence is only one step

towards creating a free society, ETAN activists decided to retool their efforts

to support peace and justice and grassroots democracy in East Timor. Toward

these goals, ETAN developed the following priorities.

**

Maintain the ban on U.S. military aid to Indonesia; bring the "refugees" home.

Largely due to grassroots pressure, the U.S. suspended all military assistance

to Jakarta in September 1999. ETAN helped secure a continuation of this ban in

the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (FY 2001), which "maintains last

year’s restrictions on virtually all military ties between the U.S. and

Indonesia," according to Karen Orenstein, ETAN’s Washington, DC, coordinator.

ETAN stresses the importance of an ongoing weapons ban to encourage the

disarming of the militias (particularly those that control the refugee camps in

West Timor). At present — 18 months after the Indonesian military pulled out —

about one-eighth of the East Timorese people are still under the control of the

Indonesian military due to their forced re-location to camps in West Timor. The

weapons ban will further encourage an end to human rights violations throughout

the Indonesian archipelago, especially in West Timor, Aceh, West Papua and

Maluku; and security for East Timor, which shares a border with Indonesia.

**

Bring the perpetrators to justice.

Reconciliation and peace cannot be achieved without justice. Ajiza Magno, a

young East Timorese woman working with the Sa’he Institute for Liberation,

argued at a recent talk in Boston, "This international tribunal is not just

essential for trying the crimes of the past, but for creating a foundation, a

legal system that people will really believe in. Until now the East Timorese

people have never believed in the law, never believed that there is such a thing

as rule of law in their country. . . There’s a fear that if these crimes of the

past are not dealt with, a sort of lawlessness might continue in East Timor and

the culture of violence [created by the Indonesian occupation] we have been

brought up in for the past twenty-four years will perpetuate itself."

Further, U.S. activists have a unique responsibility to focus public attention

on U.S. participation in Indonesian war crimes. President Gerald Ford and

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave the "green light" to Suharto to invade

East Timor back in 1975. President Carter provided the Indonesian military with

the weapons used to kill more than a quarter of the East Timorese population.

President Reagan and successive presidents maintained relations and weapons

sales to Indonesia despite its abysmal human rights record, and Clinton

continued plying the Indonesian military with weapons even as violence in East

Timor escalated in the months leading up the August 1999 referendum on

independence. His belated cutoff of military aid finally resulted in Indonesian

withdrawal from East Timor, but not until the occupiers had exacted a huge price

from the East Timorese in death and material destruction.

**

Listen to East Timorese voices. The World Bank, which is administering over $150

million worth of grants for reconstruction, sees East Timor as "starting life

with a clean slate." But East Timor is obviously not a "clean slate." As the

East Timorese/international watch-dog organization, Lao Hamutuk, pointed out in

a recent report (see

www.etan.org/lh ), East Timor is a "society with a unique history, as well

as its own traditions, sets of social relations, conditions, and needs. . . [It]

needs the space to devise its own development paths."

The

United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET) has made it

difficult for most East Timorese to participate in decisions about how to

govern, claiming that many East Timorese lack the skills to fill positions in

the current administration. Ajiza Magno, quoted in the winter 2001 Estafeta,

claimed that East Timorese participation in government was still so low that

East Timorese people "find themselves once again living as observers and

marginalized citizens in their own country."

 In

this time of increasing corporate globalization, East Timor could be a model of

how to develop a democratic government and economy. As such it could be a

powerful "good example" to other countries currently under the thumb of

neoliberal economic policies, secret trade agreements, and superpower (read:

U.S.) foreign policy decisions. There is an important opportunity here for

globalization activists and ETAN to work together to make sure this "good

example" has a chance.

The

story of ETAN is the story of how activism works. Not quickly, necessarily, and

not perfectly. But the lesson is clear: when a group – even a small group – of

committed individuals dedicate themselves to a goal, it is possible for them to

achieve their aims. For ETAN, those aims have now broadened to include

supporting grassroots democracy in East Timor and pressuring governments, aid

agencies, and other international bodies (such as the UN) to support the East

Timorese on their path towards freedom. Contrary to the "clean slate" theory,

the East Timorese have been following this path for many generations. Our job as

activists is to nurture and support that journey, to learn from it, and to

demand that the relevant international institutions do the same – ensuring that

the East Timorese are no longer "observers and marginalized citizens" but rather

agents, finally, of their own destiny.

Cynthia Peters is a freelance writer and editor, and the coordinator of the

Boston chapter of ETAN. To find out more about ETAN, and to get involved, visit

www.etan.org.