Informed citizenship in the digital age: no excuses!

He is a Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the ANU and has had a long and distinguished career. He is one of the most respected academics in the field of strategic and intelligence studies in the country with an international reputation. Again, Ball would seem to be the type of source any journalist would be keen to consult in order to provide intellectual depth required for any article on East Timor.

What does his article “Silent Witness” say?

In what has to be one of the most comprehensive condemnations of the politicised relationship between Howard and Downer and the Australian Intelligence Community (AIC), Ball quotes from Australian intelligence estimates from late 1998 that pinpointed that the Indonesian security forces were arming militias in preparation for a potential bloodbath (pp.43-44 of the article PDF).

Here is a quote from Professor Ball’s article:

This [intelligence] was unwelcome intelligence for the government. It contradicted several of its key policy themes: that the violence was unorganized; that any ABRI involvement was limited to “rogue elements”; that neither General Wiranto nor any other senior ABRI commander was involved; and that Canberra’s special relationship with Jakarta, manifested in the myriad of defence and intelligence cooperation arrangements, would ensure that the Indonesian authorities remained both frank and responsive in their dealings with Canberra over East Timor. The government response was to deny the contradictory intelligence or to point to ambiguities and vagueness in the reporting. The Foreign Minister chose to ignore the intelligence.

The actions of Howard and Downer also downplayed at almost every turn, the widespread human rights abuses of the TNI (and their sponsored militias) and ignored the vast amounts of Australian intelligence that implicated the Indonesian military directly in the carnage. (See also Richard Tanter, Gerry van Klinken, and Desmond Ball ed., Masters of terror: Indonesia's military and violence in East Timor.)

And further from Professor Ball (p. 59 of PDF "Silent witness"):

Australia has an enormous amount of intelligence about the carnage - about the planning, sequence of orders, and the TNI and militia units and individuals involved in particular atrocities. The human intelligence (HUMINT) collected by ASIS concerns both the role of various ABRI/TNI commanders in Jakarta and the officers involved in directing the militia groups in East Timor. There is photographic intelligence showing details of massacre sites and people involved. DSD has a wealth of information, documenting the violence from the sporadic killings such as at Manutasi on 3 January 1999 and Liquica on 5 April through to the mass killings and disposal of bodies after 4 September. For example, on and around 7 September, DSD intercepted signals pointing to many East Timorese being either killed on boats or on land and their bodies then dumped at sea. Some intercepts specically indicated that “a large number of East Timorese students were killed at sea” on 7 September (see Daley 1999c; The Age 1999; Chulov 1999).

Howard and Downer publically dismissed and undermined the possibility of peacekeepers being utilised prior and during the ballot to provide security. Yet Australian intelligence was only too well aware of the violence and intimidation that was to be deployed against the East Timorese before, during and after the campaign; particularly the potential consequences of a successful vote for independence.

Let us now return to Kelly’s article: seemingly no one but John Howard, Alexander Downer (and presumably Ashton Calvert of DFAT), were privy to the so called secret independence policy. That is; not the Deptartment of Defence or the Department of Foreign Affairs or Trade (which robustly continued throughout the sorry episode to support the premise that East Timor was an integral part of Indonesia), nor was the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

Can anyone really take seriously that the Australian rejection of peacekeepers was just part of a secret covert plan to secure East Timorese independence? With tens of thousands of lives displaced at the point of a gun and/or killed during the 1999 carnage, what type of insane covert plan is this?

A basic Google term search using the most straight forward digital internet technology demonstrates that Kelly’s editorial is problematic.

With our free and unfettered access to information technology (print, media and digital), there are no more excuses for not being an informed citizen who seeks out evidence that tests the validity of conclusions handed to us by our politicians, academics or journalists.

In the case of the factually flawed propaganda of the Commissar and crude state propagandists, such behaviour can at least be understood by the fact they faced imprisonment, torture and/or death. Under those circumstances it must be tempting to take the path of least resistance.

On the other hand, in 21st century Australia, one can only wonder what Paul Kelly’s excuse is?