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East Timor's recalcitrant hero

By Peter Coates - posted Monday, 21 June 2010


Australia's relations with East Timor have always been tense and complex but this year things have rapidly become worse. East Timor Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao’s recent statements encapsulate the long term and short term problems, which include the standoff with Australia's Woodside Petroleum and Chinese patrol boats now based in our near north. Eleven years on from the Indonesian devastation of 1999 East Timor is still receiving massive western support. Growth is frustratingly slow and assistance from a rising China appears to have increasing appeal in Dili.

Xanana Gusmao's long career has made him more passionate than the comfortable politicians we tolerate in Australia. He has been a national hero for many years. Gusmao led the insurgent war of independence. Following the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor the most active East Timorese independence faction, Fretilin/Falintil was forced to flee Dili and take to the hills. Gusmao gradually rose to the top of Falintil - in theory the military wing of Fretilin.

Gusmao was arguably a Maoist communist from 1975 to the mid 1980s like most of the Fretilin/Falintil leadership in those years (described here (PDF 218KB) on pages 209 to 219). The communist beginnings of most of the East Timorese independence movement appear to have been largely airbrushed from English speaking history: in their place Gusmao and current President Jose Ramos-Horta have always been, at heart, true US style democrats.

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This photo is of a Falintil leadership meeting (circa 1976). At left, next to his M16 with the homemade sling, is Gusmao.

While Indonesian regular army troops pursued them for years an important function of Falintil was to remain in contact with the outside world to tell of the Indonesian atrocities. Falintil did that with a very old, heavy, radio. The rebel radio probably operated safely distant from the Falintil leadership (say 1 kilometre away) so as not to draw the radio-location sensors of the Indonesian Army (and Air Force) onto these leaders.

Broadcasts describing the Indonesian mass murders reached people who deeply cared in Australia. These "activists" transcribed the radio messages for distribution to East Timorese support groups throughout the world. If lightly organised civilian activists were taking notice, then, with a high degree of likelihood, heavily organised operators at military listening stations also transcribed the messages (sometimes with individual heartbreak), then summarised the messages, for highly classified distribution to governments. Perhaps Australia via an Australian Navy/Defence Signals Directorate listening post in the Northern Territory knew the most about the Indonesian holocaust in East Timor as it was happening - for years.

But Australia and the US decided, on balance, to stand by the Indonesian government of General Suharto, because he was "anti-communist" - a calling card considered more important than the lives of innocents - until 1999. The US had concluded that a leftwing independent East Timor would be too much like another Cuba to risk independence. In the meantime almost all of the Fretilin/Falintil leaders were killed or captured then tortured to death.

Below is an account of the use of the rebel radio. The article is from the Global Post (founded in Boston, USA):

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"East Timor, 1970s-1980s - The 100 lbs. tweet"

... East Timor’s cause was the longest of long shots. A small, poor and remote dot on the Indonesian archipelago, it was struggling for independence from Jakarta’s rule. It was surrounded on all sides by its foe, or by ocean. Cold War administrations in Washington opposed its cause and equipped Indonesia with fighter jets [actually propeller driven OV-10 Broncos] to keep the territory from turning communist.

... Their audience was a small group of Australian supporters, who set up a large antenna in the outback to receive the faint, crackly signal. (Theirs, too, was a dangerous game [perhaps a slight exaggeration?], as the Australian government regarded the group as communist supporters). The message would then be encoded and sent by mail or phone to East Timor’s expat supporters in the West [including Kirsty Sword who eventually married Gusmao] ...

The inability of China or the Soviets to give effective military assistance to the Fretilin/Falintil insurgents left these East Timorese communists high and dry. They were at the mercy of the Indonesians, who didn't show much mercy.

According to Loro Horta, a scholar and the son of East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta, China did, in fact, attempt to send a massive arms shipment to East Timor in 1975 to help East Timor's out-classed army fight the Indonesian invaders. However, Australian warships apparently assisted the Indonesian Navy in blocking the shipment - thus adding to the suffering.

While the Chinese attempted, at least once, to assist in material ways their Maoist ideology almost destroyed the East Timorese resistance movement as described here (PDF 218KB) (pages 209-219). In the hills (post 1975) some Fretilin/Falintil leaders had the bright idea that occasional Maoist purges, following Mao's destructive example, would be ideologically beneficial. The purging process involved East Timorese leaders killing each other - which ultimately benefitted the Indonesians. Gusmao, fortunately, was more down to earth and dubious about Maoism's total lack of applicability to East Timor's pre-industrial village culture (no industrial "workers" and little "capitalism" outside of plantation agriculture). By 1987 Gusmao had had enough of the communist model and its inability to effectively further East Timor's independence. He broke away from Fretilin and led his decentralised Falintil insurgent network toward a centrist stance.

Gusmao was finally captured by the Indonesian Army in 1992 and presumably made, or was given, a light sentence deal (he was not executed like most). His move to the centre perhaps saved his life as the Indonesians may have seen him as a moderating influence on the insurgency. The US may have also seen him as a useful moderate - far more acceptable to them than far left Fretilin. US political pressure may have then prevailed upon the Indonesians to spare Gusmao.

During the same period East Timor's representative at the UN in New York, future President Jose Ramos-Horta, also moved towards democratic centrism - perhaps partly to make the idea of independent East Timor palatable to the West (including the US and Australia).

In 1999 Australia lead the UN INTERFET intervention that effectively drove the Indonesians from East Timor - thus stopping a new round of Indonesian mass murders of East Timorese.

Now in 2010 there is a disturbing standoff between East Timor (especially Gusmao) and Australia over the Australian company Woodside Petroleum's commercial decision not to site a huge LPG plant in East Timor. Here is quite a moving East Timorese video about East Timor's poverty and lack of infrastructure - in 6 mins 40 seconds the LPG plant standoff is explained.

Woodside's current preferred solution is to place the plant on a huge floating platform - suppling liquefied gas directly to tankers. This is envisaged to occur in the middle of the Timor Sea right over the gas field - with no pipeline connections to East Timor or to Australia now necessary. Gusmao is pulling out all stops to make Australia feel guilty over Australia's relationship with East Timor since 1941.

In the middle of this major Australian-East Timorese disagreement the two long heralded Chinese patrol boats have now entered Dili Harbour, this month. These boats will, for the foreseeable future, be totally crewed and maintained by the Chinese Navy. Perhaps in a couple of years half the crew will be East Timorese but there will still be a significant Chinese Naval presence where the boats are now based - in Dili harbour.

These two patrol boats are small, but to the East Timorese they are important as they constitute the beginnings of a navy kindly provided by China. It remains to be seen whether these boats are the beginning of a gradual Chinese naval build-up to Australia's near north.

In April 2008 Australia's then Defence Minister Fitzgibbon expressed a view that minimised the importance of the patrol boat issue, but then that, perhaps, was before his connections came to Prime Ministerial notice. Loro Horta here (PDF 46KB) indicates how influential China has become.


This photo taken a few years ago symbolises how far history has come.

Xanana Gusmao has moved from anti-western communist to becoming President then Prime Minister of East Timor and fathered, with Kirsty, three children. The long period of physical danger Gusmao experienced has made him recalcitrant. He doesn't fight by comfortable western diplomatic rules. His country may be small but it could present a long term, big headache, if Australia does not handle the differences with greater effectiveness and sensitivity.

East Timor, to our very near north, has a growing association with a China that is arguably Maoist, certainly communist, and most importantly, a rising power with strategic aspirations in our region.

This is a worry that our Labor Government, sensitive to Chinese goals, needs to counter or at least address.

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About the Author

Peter Coates has been writing articles on military, security and international relations issues since 2006. In 2014 he completed a Master’s Degree in International Relations, with a high distinction average. His website is Submarine Matters.

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