CHART calls for a critical examination of current restrictions on access to Australian government archives about East Timor and calls for Australian support for emerging archival institutions in Timor-Leste.

On May 21, the Australian parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade will commence public hearings on Australia’s relationship with Timor-Leste. The inquiry will examine government and non-government relationships and has attracted over seventy submissions – largely from Australian NGOs and individuals.

This is the third Australian parliamentary inquiry specifically on Timor in the current era, following Senate Committee inquiries in 1982-83 and 1999-2000. Historically these reports have had little obvious influence on the direction of government policy (the 1983 report was virtually ignored by the then Hawke Labor Government). However, such inquiries can provide a comprehensive insight into the thinking and actions of key players and are an important compendium of current information. The reports and the large volume of submissions and evidential transcripts also serve as a rich archival record for future generations.

CHART Submission
Our submission to the inquiry is based on an a view that the current many-faceted relationship between Australia and Timor-Leste arises directly out of the traumatic years of the Indonesian military occupation, 1975-1999. For this reason, Australians and East Timorese have a shared and abiding interest in access to historical archives about this period.

The Chart submission makes a series of recomendations in two areas: The right to the truth through access to archives, and the development of relationships between Australian and emerging East Timorese archival institutions.

Access to Australian archives on Timor
Drawing attention to the growing international interest in ‘the right to truth’, CHART makes a number of recommendations on access, including:

• Timor records in the custody of the National Archives of Australia (NAA) be subject to a special program to expedite their release for public access
• Processes for examining records for release be revised to speed up public access
• The Department of Foreign Affairs’ restrictions on access be critically examined to establish whether they are over-cautious or unnecessarily restrictive.

Timor-Australia Archival relationships
Australia, as comparatively rich neighbour, is better placed than any other to cooperate with Timor-Leste in the development of sustainable archival institutions in Timor. While arguing against unsustainable, quick-fix, high technology assistance, the CHART submission recommends:

• Exploratory relationship-building between National Archives of Australia and Timor-Leste’s Arquivo Nacional
• Australian government support for Australian institutions with Timor archival holdings and programs
• Australian archival institutions include in their Timor relationship programs, coordination with related Timor-engaged Australian non-government cultural initiatives
• Programs to copy Australian-held Timor archival materials for eventual access in Timor-Leste.

CHART believes all these practical recommendations can be achieved over time and done in ways which are of relatively low cost.

Further information:
Full text of CHART submission
Links to all Inquiry submissions

[Note: More links to be added as Inquiry proceeds]

We present here some source materials which illuminate development of Labor’s Timor policy, the new government’s approach to the policy and community reaction to early signs that the government was broadly continuing the pro-integration approach of  the Whitlam and Fraser governments.

Bob Hawke, election tally room, 5 March 1983. [Source: ABC]

Renewing Labor Party policy 1981-82
In early 1981, a few Australia East Timor Association (AETA) activists* began working with members of the Victorian branch of the ALP on an early draft policy proposal. The final product described principles and actions on a range of matters like self-determination, United Nations, refugees, military aid and the sea-bed boundary.

ALP rank-and-file member support for a pro-Timor policy was particularly strong in the state of Victoria. In June 1981, leading figures on the left such as Jean McLean were instrumental in the Victorian branch adopting a policy based on the AETA proposal. The Victorian branch then led the way in establishing  a national ALP Timor draft policy. Just prior to the ALP national conference which was to vote on the draft policy in July 1982, activists began to worry about the length of the proposal and suggested a less detailed but still principled alternative.

In the end, though, the ALP adopted a detailed conference resolution which included, word for word, seven of the eight principal policy statements originally proposed by AETA in 1981. The missing item was the sea-bed boundary issue. Many of the specific government actions originally proposed by AETA were not included, except the less controversial ones on information and family reunions.

Shoring-up the policy
In Victoria ALP member (and AETA chairperson) George Preston headed an  ’East Timor Support Group’ within the party to build  support for the new policy. Established in late 1982, the group secured the signatures of four key Labor parliamentarians on a letter sent to all branches seeking their active support for the new policy. One of the signatories was Gareth Evans, later Australian Foreign Minister (1988-96); his letter agreeing to add his signature showed solid support for the policy but with some reservations.

Other encouraging signs for Timor supporters came when almost the entire membership of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party signed a policy-supporting statement which long-time Timor activist Senator Gordon McIntosh presented to a hearing on the UN Decolonisation Committee in November 1982. Just a few days before the 1983 election, Labor foreign minister-in-waiting, Bill Hayden, gave further signs of a new Labor government’s commitment to its policy.

Labor in Government: Alarming signs
There was considerable media interest before and after the March 5 election in how the Hawke government would handle the policy (see sample coverage here). The early signs after the election were, however, alarming for the supporters of the new policy with the new prime minister failing to affirm it in other than the vaguest terms.

Only in 2012 was the Hawke Cabinet’s first Timor policy decision made public**. The 29 March 1983 Cabinet decision showed that the government had adopted a formula which broadly followed the script recommended by the Foreign Affairs Department to successive Australian governments since 1975. The essence of the formula was that while an internationally supervised act of self-determination had not taken place, any ‘support’ for the East Timorese must go through the Indonesian government (by inference: no actions supporting self-determination).

This formula was clearly reflected in Bill Hayden’s first overseas visit to Jakarta  in early April where he played down support for East Timorese self-determination and focussed on relatively minor Timor matters like aid and family reunion.

Activist disquiet and action
It didn’t take long for Timor supporters to realise they had work to do if the policy was to survive. Within two days of the election, the ALP East Timor Support Group directed a letter of concern to Labor parliamentarians and continued to be active in the months following.

On March 9 a nationally-distributed letter sought participants for a March 19 strategy meeting in Melbourne. Interstate solidarity groups like the Campaign for Independent East Timor (CIET) in Sydney and Adelaide weren’t able to attend but indicated their activities and intentions.  AETA and others wrote to Bill Hayden seeking a meeting with him; AETA distributed a pamphlet which showed what it thought needed doing.

PM Hawke casts the die
Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s visit to Jakarta in early June 1983 left no-one in any doubt that the government was indeed abandoning its party policy. AETA’s subsequent pamphlet spelled out the detail.

The next element in the Hawke government’s strategy to overturn the the policy came in the form of an Australian parliamentary delegation to Indonesia in July 1983 – but that is another story.

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Notes:
* Initial working group members were George Preston, Pat Walsh, John Waddingham and Rod Harris.

** See full Cabinet decision and briefing notes through the National Archives of Australia RecordSearch. Worth an article in its own right.

Documents reproduced here come from the archives of the ACFOA Human Rights Office and Timor Information Service – both in CHART custody in Melbourne.

CHART’s John Waddingham participated, sharing his Timor archives project experience with those now seeking to build and share documentary evidence on Indonesia’s trauma in the 1960s.

Indonesian leftists being herded off to public execution. [Source: Unknown]

Any critical discussion of the Suharto government’s official narrative on the killings, and its subsequent long-term imprisonment of huge numbers of ‘leftists’, was taboo in Indonesia. The fall of Suharto in 1998 has seen the lid lifted. Indonesian non-government organisations, activists and academics are now openly exploring those events – many with the aim of seeking reparations for victims and their families and holding perpetrators accountable for crimes against humanity.

Seminar topics
Held at the Australian National University, Canberra, New perspectives on the 1965 violence in Indonesia (11-13 February 2013) was organised by Australian-based academics researching 1965. In addition to well-known western researchers in this area like Robert Cribb and Kate McGregor, a number of very active researchers and activists flew in from Indonesia to communicate their work.

Topics included the emerging public debate in Indonesia, the local and Cold War aspects of the killings, Indonesian activist actions to counter the official narrative, to remove stigmas still disadvantaging victims’ families, to collect victim and perpetrator first-hand accounts and to document claims for justice and reparations. Several presentations explored the relationship between Suharto’s military and militias and other non-state actors responsible for many killings. The evidence for external support for the military, especially from the USA and UK, was one of a number of consistent threads in seminar discussion.

Komnas HAM report launch, Jakarta, July 2012. [Jakarta Post]

The Komnas HAM investigations shows that the issue is no longer taboo, but some reactions to the report suggest resistance to truth and justice on the matter remains strong. Indonesia’s Attorney-General, responsible for implementing the recommendations, has rejected the report’s legitimacy.

Shared experience: Indonesians and East Timorese. [CHART]

Many exact matches were observed in the language to describe the 1965/66 killings and the invasion and occupation of East Timor. This shared experience provides an opportunity for Indonesians and East Timorese to better understand each other’s modern history.

The strong emergence of a raft of Indonesian activists and others now digging into their hidden past is a marvellous development. We hope that one spin-off from this blossoming will be increasing interest from Indonesians in uncovering documentary and other evidence of their military’s interventions in East Timor.

- – - – - – - – - –  

Useful introductory guides to the topic:

Inside Indonesia special edition, 2010

Online Encyclopedia of mass violence item, 2009

In Australia the new Hawke Labor Government worked steadily to overcome its own Party policy supporting East Timorese self-determination. It hoped that an Australian Parliamentary delegation visit to Timor in July would undermine continuing Party and broader community disquiet about the Indonesian occupation.

CHART hopes to cover many of these topics during 2013. We start here with an introductory look at the tumultuous events marking the end of the ceasefire in August-September 1983.

General area of Kraras massacres, September 1983. [Base map source: Google]

A brief survey of accounts now available (see list below), largely drawn from Timorese eye-witness testimony, still leaves some unanswered questions about these important historical moments.

Uprising and massacre
Media reports in 1983 of the August 8 killings left much room for doubt about the nature of the event (see pages 9-12 of this contemporary compilation). Later credible Timorese-sourced reports claimed the killings were a spontaneous response to Indonesian military violation of local women.

There now seems little doubt that that the killings were indeed part of a resistance-planned uprising in the eastern zone. This is shown in direct testimony from Xanana Gusmao (Niner) and the person who led the attack, Ular Rihik/Virgílio dos Anjos (Jolliffe, Grimshaw) and other resistance figures at that time (Chamberlain).

The massacres of civilians by Indonesian military from about September 17 1983 are documented in some detail by Jolliffe, Pilger and CAVR (Timor-Leste’s Commission for Truth). Not surprisingly, the actual numbers of dead and disappeared remain elusive. There were several separate events and the evidence comes from multiple sources, some of whom were traumatised survivors from killing sites. A total figure of around 300 dead is oft-quoted, including the single largest massacre at Tahu Bein/Wetuku River where 80-180 were killed in cold blood.

The questions
Answers to some questions which arise from reading the available texts will help future generations understand this landmark event:

1. While Xanana admitted to a planned uprising in August, was Ular’s August 8 attack at Kraras/Bibileu premature; an error in communication or judgement? And/or was it a reaction to Indonesian provocations (such as violations against local women)?

2. Were formal Falintil resistance members directly involved in the August 8 attack or was it only villagers and Timorese defecting from Indonesian-controlled paramilitary units?

3. Was the uprising the cause of the end of the ceasfire or was it simply the first shots fired in a threatened Indonesian offensive against the resistance?

4. Why did it take the Indonesian military a full month to begin its reprisals in the Kraras/Bibileu area?

5. Is there any doubt about evidence that the Indonesian reprisal operations in the Kraras/Bibileu area were directly commanded in the field by Prabowo Subianto?

6. Do the lists of Timorese dead seen by Jolliffe and held by Pilger still exist and have steps been taken to ensure they survive and are accessible to future generations?

7. What has become of legal investigations into the massacre and has anything else been done to identify/mark the killing sites and memorialise those who died?

Indonesian sources?
The answers to some of these questions may eventually come from Indonesian sources – but the latest Timor offering from a significant Indonesian military figure suggests ‘not yet’.

Retired Lieutenant General Kiki Syahnakri has recently launched his Timor story. Syahnakri, a fluent Tetun speaker, served several times totalling some 12 years in Timor from late 1975. His last posting was as the Indonesian martial law administrator, 7-27 September 1999.

This book requires proper scrutiny for what it might add to insights on Indonesian military thinking and actions on Timor. On the Kraras/Bibileu story, however, Syahnakri is sadly lacking:

The Cararas (sic) Incident resulted in the immediate collapse of the spirit and positive thoughts about peace and dialogue. The Korem Commander, Colonel Poerwanto, was very disappointed and angered by the attack and cancelled the efforts for Peaceful Contact. According to retired TNI Brigadier-General Johanes Haribowo – who was the Korem chief-of-staff during the Peaceful Contact period, Xanana admitted that he did not know the reason for the attack and killings at Cararas. He truly was not involved in the incident. On the contrary, he suspected that a third party was behind that incident. Moreover, it cannot be excluded that foreign forces were successful in infiltrating the Fretilin group and setting in motion the Cararas Incident. And so, the opportunity and hope to end the East Timor conflict through peaceful dialogue was obliterated. Peaceful Contact was in dissaray and failed. Armed conflict, violence, and killing by both sides occurred again.

The  ’Cararas Incident’ refers to Ular’s attack on August 8.  ’Peaceful Contact’ was the preferred Indonesian label for the ceasfire period. Note no specific mention is made of the Indonesian reprisals against civilian Timorese.

A full translation of this part of  Syahnakri’s book can be found here.

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Accounts providing or referencing primary source materials

Chamberlain, E. The Struggle in Iliomar: Resistance in rural East Timor – 2008, revised. Extract only.

Chega! (Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation). Dili, 2005. Chapter 3 (pp 100-106); Chapter 7.2 (pp 168-173)

Grimshaw, Z. Interview With Comandante Ular Rihik/Virgílio dos Anjos of Timor Leste. 2009. (pp 8-9)

Jolliffe, J. Balibo.  Scribe, Melbourne. 2009 (pp. 302-323)

Niner, S. Xanana. Leader of the struggle for independent Timor-Leste. Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2009. (pp 88-104)

Pilger, J. We helped them descend into hell. 1999

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* Note on Kraras/Bibileu: Jill Jolliffe has best described the difficulties of identifying the map location of these events (see her detailed Note 19, p.377). In short, Kraras is a relatively flat area or plain, not a population centre, immediately north and west of Viqueque town. Bibileu is one of a number of small population centres holding former residents of ‘old’ Bibileu, originally located on Mount Bibileu, who were relocated by the Indonesian military in earlier years.

Credits: Many thanks to Ernie Chamberlain for his translation of the passage from Syahnakri.

Timor Archives marks this event with a mention of two archival fragments on Falintil and some discussion on securing the archival record for future generations.

Snapshot of Tempo Semanal’s Falintil Album on Facebook.

To mark Falintil Day 2012, the East Timorese media organisation Tempo Semanal published almost 900 resistance-related images on its Facebook fan page. The photographs appear to range in time from 1975 to the early post-1999 referendum period. They include many portraits of Falintil leaders and troops and life in resistance areas.

Many of these historically important images are familiar; seen in private and public collections in Timor and internationally. Many of the images can also be seen in an online collection of East Timor’s Resistance Archive and Museum (AMRT). A 1975 set of images of Indonesian military forces in the album were featured last year on this website (see: Invasion 1975 – Photographs).

Long term archival questions
Tempo Semanal’s album is an eye-catching celebration and reminder of Falintil’s history. However, in common with similar collections of historical materials posted on Facebook and elsewhere, it is unlikely to serve as a reliable repository of archival information for future generations.

The problem with such collections is that they provide little or no information about image origins such as photographer, place, date and circumstance. Facebook users are invited or urged to add such information to the images in the online album. This is a marvellous opportunity to increase knowledge of the images, but who will take responsibility for making sure this data is kept for, and will be accessible to, future generations after Facebook disappears?

Timorese institutional solution?
Such information is most likely to be preserved by an archival institution equipped and dedicated to such tasks. Currently in Timor-Leste the AMRT leads the way in preserving and documenting archival records of the resistance, but it also has significant limitations. The Archive does not yet appear to have a regular system for seeking and recording additional information or data corrections from collection users.

What is needed is a system which not only displays archival collections but invites and allows knowledgeable users to submit missing information about individual items. Such a system needs institutional management and supervision and would be suited to organisations like the AMRT or the envisaged Institute of Memory or National Library.

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Alarico Fernandes on early Falintil
We also present here a unique fragment of Falintil-related history – an audio recording of Alarico Fernandes describing some of the events in Aileu in August 1975 which were part of the formation of Falintil at that time. To listen, Click ‘play’ arrow below.

Attending a Timor strategy conference with Jose Ramos-Horta in Melbourne on 22-23 November 1975, Alarico gave a short account of the civil war and post-civil war Fretilin organisation. At the time, he was Secretary for Internal Affairs and Security in the post-civil war Fretilin administration. While the audio fragment does not decisively add new data to the known historical record of Falintil’s formation, its power lies in hearing the voice of a significant person in Fretilin’s and Falintil’s 1975-78 history.

Capturing Falintil history
The Alarico Fernandes fragment is one of an unknown number of related audio items on resistance history. Some date from 1975, others are recorded interviews with veterans during the post 1999 independence years. Many of these recordings are yet to find their way into institutional repositories for long-term preservation and access.

Alarico Fernandes is still alive but reportedly fragile in body and spirit. He, in common with many of the surviving original Timorese resistance generation, will not be with us forever. It is a matter of considerable urgency that the knowledge of the resistance generation is captured as fully as possible while it remains possible.

Ultimately this is a task for enthusiastic East Timorese and their emerging professional archival institutions.

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NOTES:

* Falintil is the acronym for Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste (Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor).

Alarico Fernandes recording made by Timor Information Service, Melbourne, November 1975. Original in TIS archives.

Once the Inquiry was established, ACFOA was then concerned to ensure that the most up-to-date information from inside East Timor was put before it. With Indonesian military restrictions making a visit to Timor impossible, a number of aid agencies sent a private two-person mission to Indonesia to seek current data from East Timorese in Jakarta.

We summarise here the information found during this 1982 ‘hunting & gathering’ mission to Indonesia.

Documents and notebook of interviews collected in Jakarta, 1982.

In March 1982, John Waddingham and Chris Dureau SJ visited Jakarta for two weeks to seek information from Timorese, Indonesian and foreign sources on current conditions in East Timor.

Their arrival in Jakarta coincided with the public revelation of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s visit to Timor on March 1-4. Whitlam’s visit, organised by Jakarta’s Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), was arguably also designed and timed with the Senate Inquiry in mind.

Timorese and other sources in Jakarta
There was a substantial number of East Timorese in Jakarta in 1982. A small stream of Timorese working with the Indonesian administration travelled between Dili and the capital. There was an increasing number of Timorese students in Jakarta, along with a growing number of Timorese refugees from Dili stuck in Jakarta while trying to get out of Indonesia (2).

A few Indonesian non-government organisations such as Lembaga Bantuan Hukum (LBH – Legal Aid Institute), Christian churches with Timor links and Indonesian or foreign journalists were also potential sources of information.

Given the high degree of political sensitivity of the East Timor issue in Jakarta and a strong climate of fear amongst the Timorese in particular, most meetings with potential sources were  in-confidence and on condition that they were not publicly identified.

No shortage of information
A significant body of data was collected – both in document form and through interviews with individuals with first-hand knowledge of events and conditions in Timor over the previous twelve months.

In addition to strong confirmation of the general picture of East Timorese difficulties under Indonesia occupation, the information gathered was particularly notable in these ways:
* Evidence of the growing voice of the East Timorese Catholic Church against human rights abuses.
* More data on the 1981 Indonesian ‘fence of legs’ military operation.
* Information fragments on the emergence of Xanana Gusmao as a new leader of the armed resistance.

We provide access here to some key elements of materials gathered in March 1982

Timor Dossier
A compilation of collected material entitled East Timor Dossier March 1982 (large file; ~6Mb) was the main output of the mission. It contains rough English translations of Indonesian and Portuguese-language documents, notes of interviews with individuals, a brief guide to the content and source of the documents and a subject index to the interview material.

The Dossier was submitted to the Senate Inquiry and privately circulated to key international Timorese and non-Timorese advocates.

Interrogation materials
Other material collected included a set of transcripts of Indonesian interrogations of East Timorese accused of planning an uprising in Liquica in early 1981. To protect the source of the documents and the accused East Timorese, these items were excluded from the Dossier compilation. A small sample of the documents and rough translations is provided here.

Senate Inquiry transcript
Waddingham and Dureau gave verbal testimony on their findings to the Senate Inquiry. The evidence was given in-camera to protect Timorese sources in Jakarta. The passage of time now makes it possible to put the testimony into the public arena. Compared to the Dossier, it contains very little information of value – except perhaps to provide an insight into the efforts of some Senators to question the significance or value of the data collected.

Significance of the event
Information flowing from Jakarta-based sources prior to 1982 was intermittent, at best. The 1982 visit established that much information on developments and conditions in East Timor was available in Jakarta – albeit at some considerable personal risk to informants. Similar information-seeking visits to Jakarta in following years yielded valuable documentary insights into closed East Timor.

Thirty years later, the information in the material collected in 1982 seems fragmentary and at times contradictory. It was all those things – but such is the nature of raw data gathered in difficult circumstances. This data contributed greatly to building a picture of conditions in East Timor in 1981-82. This material also provides an insight into the limits of the data available to external advocates for East Timorese self-determination in the early 1980s.

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Notes
(1) Senate Standing Committee for Foreign Affairs and Defence Inquiry into ‘The Human Rights and Conditions of the People of East Timor’.
(2)Many of the refugees were East Timorese on an Australian-Indonesia-agreed list for family reunion in Australia but who were unable to pay unofficial bureaucratic bribes to obtain exit visas.

Sources
The original documents and translations presented here are held in the archival collections of Timor Information Service and the ACFOA Human Rights Office. Both collections are in CHART’s custody.

Remexio, September 1978. East Timorese internal ‘refugees’ under Indonesian control.

The Fretilin-led armed resistance through Radio Maubere broadcasts in 1977-78 often reported the poor condition of East Timorese being held in Indonesian-run ‘concentration camps’. Rare letters from East Timorese church sources and individuals in Dili also indicated rising death rates inside and outside Indonesian-controlled areas of the territory. (2)

Most of these reports were dismissed by mainstream media and governments alike as ‘unconfirmed’. By September 1978 it was no longer possible to dismiss claims of an emerging humanitarian calamity in East Timor.

Ambassadors & journalists see for themselves
In what was a very rare visit by outsiders to Indonesia-occupied East Timor, Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia, Tom Critchley travelled to the territory on 6-7 September 1978. He was with a party of 10 other-country representatives and a number of foreign journalists. The entourage was accompanied by the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja.

The group visited Dili, Baucau, Maliana and Remexio. In Remexio, in the mountains behind Dili, the journalists and ambassadors were confronted with a sample of the condition of so-called ‘refugees from conflict’ who were now under Indonesian control.

What they saw
Journalists’ reports of what they saw in Remexio, and what they were told – including the reactions of the ambassadors themselves – left no doubt about the humanitarian situation. These reports included the following:
-  visitors were ‘shocked’ by the condition of the people they saw in Remexio
-  the children in Remexio reminded an (un-named) ambassadorof famine in Africa
-  125,000 ‘refugees’ have come into Indonesian control
-  humanitarian aid was needed fast to prevent hundreds more dying
-  outside Dili – thousands are starving and barely anyone smiles
-  in Remexio – many are naked and most have the piercing gaze, emaciated limbs and distended bellies of advanced malnutrition
-  conditions in other ‘transit camps’ such as Suai reportedly ‘much worse’
-  East Timor described as being ‘in a state of deep, collective trauma’.

Click links immediately below to read a sample of media reportage from the ambassadors’ visit.
The Herald (Melbourne) 11 September 1978
The Herald (Melbourne) 12 September 1978
Far Eastern Economic Review 29 September 1978

Australian commentary
Formal editorial comment by Australian media on these reports was unambiguous.

The national daily, The Australian (12 September 1978), said “Australia has a clear and urgent task to perform: to give immediate aid..quickly, with no strings attached..”. It responded to an Australian government statement of being ‘sympathetic’ to Indonesian requests for aid with a clear challenge: “Do we have to wait to be asked?”

Similar editorial comments were published in The Herald (Melb.), 11 September & 12 September 1978

Conservative foreign affairs and defence journalist, Douglas Wilkie, was very direct in concluding what was happening to the East Timorese and offered a scathing assessment of immediate Australian government responses to humanitarian need. “Tens of thousands of Timorese have been starved into submission by the Indonesians….The [Indonesian] generals must not be seen as begging for international aid to get them out of a horror situation of their own deliberate making. And Canberra, it seems, feels obliged to play along.” See The Sun (Melbourne) 13 September 1978.

A further reflection of Australian society’s knowledge and concern about the situation came in the form of a cross-party petition from 76 members of the national parliament. Addressed to the UN Secretary-General, Kurt Waldheim, the petition called on “all member nations to act to facilitate the admission of International Red Cross into East Timor.”  Canberra Times 3 October 1978.

This sample of material shows very clearly that the government, the parliamentarians and the mainstream media knew what conditions were prevailing in East Timor and that major humanitarian relief aid was required to alleviate the conditions and prevent an even worse catastrophe.

It is a matter of historical record that another full twelve months passed before the Indonesian Government allowed International Red Cross and Catholic Relief Services (USA) to begin emergency humanitarian aid programs in East Timor.

Access to official records
Responsibility for the exclusion of International Red Cross  from East Timor from December 1975 to September 1979 rests finally with particular Suharto Government military and civilian officials. It will be a matter for concerned Indonesian citizens to seek access to official records in order to more fully understand its government’s actions on this matter.

The public record of the September 1978 visit alone reveals undeniable Australian and other-government knowledge of an already desperate humanitarian situation in East Timor. What remains hidden, however, is an answer to the question: what diplomatic efforts did Australia (and other countries with this knowledge)  make to persuade Indonesia to lift its ban on international humanitarian assistance to the East Timorese?

The circumstantial evidence suggests the diplomacy was so quiet it was barely heard. In Australia’s case, public release of the relevant archival records will  help settle this important question.

NOTES

(1) Thanks again to researcher and historian Clinton Fernandes for his work to obtain access to official Australian archival material being kept secret. See this media item on his most recent work. See also Pat Walsh’s commentary on the issue and a more recent (May 14) backgrounder by Clinton Fernandes. Earlier Fernandes work to obtain release of Australian materials can be found in this 2011 Timor Archives item.

(2) See, for example, Radio Maubere and other material from East Timor published in 1977-78 issues of the advocacy newsletters Timor Information Service and East Timor News.

The most detailed account of the conditions of East Timorese at this time, and the reasons, can be found in Chega!, the 2005 report of Timor-Leste’s Commission for Reception, Truth & Reconciliation. See Chapter 7.3, Forced displacement and famine. Warning: Harrowing reading.

Newspaper clippings presented here are drawn from the archives of Timor Information Service, Melbourne, 1975-1984.

In the first of a series of articles about authenticity, CHART explores here one significant document whose provenance is unclear. In addition to inviting comment on the particular document, we also seek feedback and discussion on the general authenticity issue.

CAVR Library. Item TX294

The library of Timor-Leste’s Post-CAVR* Secretariat at Comarca/Balide in Dili holds a series of background documents from a wide variety of sources. Displayed in labelled magazine boxes, these documents are freely available for library users to browse and read.

A magazine box labelled ‘Fretilin’ contains a series of published and unpublished documents, including a photocopy of an untitled 53-page typescript item.

1981 Resistance re-organisation
This Portuguese-language document records the proceedings of a national conference held by the Fretilin-led East Timorese resistance in March 1981. The document reviews critically the conduct of the resistance since Indonesia’s 1975 invasion, describes the current situation and outlines future resistance structure and strategies. The document includes election results for formal positions within the organised resistance, including the election of Xanana Gusmao as Political Commissar and Commander of the armed resistance, Falantil. The document also records a formal Fretilin structural and name-change to Partido Marxista-Leninista Fretilin (PMLF).

This item is clearly a key source document on the restructuring of the formal East Timorese resistance in the wake of its decimation in 1978-79. Because the Post-CAVR Secretariat which holds this public copy has no record of the document’s origins, we need to examine it closely to attempt to establish its authenticity.

Click to view 1981 document

Authenticity – physical evidence
A viewing of the document raises some questions about its origins. Unlike many documents from Timorese sources in the 1980s, this document bears no stamps or signatures (but is attributed to Mau Hodu Ran Kadalak, Conference Secretary). The contents list (Indice) on the first page of the document includes reference to a 3-page ‘note on presentation’ but these pages are missing from the document. The otherwise untitled first page suggests the whole document may have originally included a formal cover.

It is not possible to determine from the document whether the first page and the missing introductory pages were part of the original typed record of the 1981 meeting or whether they were added by another party distributing the records. If the latter is the case, it would seem that the actual textual records of the meeting are retyped from the original versions (which introduces the possibility of errors or omissions). The document also appears to have two pages numbered ’37′.

Authenticity – content
Comparison of the document’s content with other accounts of the March 1981 meeting is one way to assess its authenticity. Both Sara Niner’s biography on Xanana Gusmao (1) and CAVR’s monumental report, Chega! (2), describe the meeting but do not cite this particular document. The principal source for these published accounts are largely writings and oral testimony by Xanana Gusmao, but other eye-witness meeting participants are cited.

There is significant agreement between the published accounts and the document. For example, the names of nine people elected to the Fretilin Central Committee (p.35) and the adoption of Marxism-Leninism (p.33-34) are also recorded in the published accounts. These and other concordances  lend significant weight to the document’s authenticity.

However, there are some puzzling questions remaining in the comparison of the content of the document with these other sources.

Chega!  (Chap.5, p.27) reports that this meeting reaffirmed the roles and positions of the Fretilin external delegation headed by Abilio Araujo in Lisbon and who was named as ‘Secretary General’ (of Fretilin). The meeting document, however, has scant mention of the external delegation and appears to name only one of its number, Mari Alkatiri, as the secretary of the Department of External Relations (p.38).

Page 46 Extract. Translation of first two sentences: The actual structure of power is the one which better responds in this period to the current situation in the country. Thus, at the national level, the Revolutionary Council of National Resistance is the highest level body which corresponds to the Party's Central Committee whose head manager is the Commander-in-chief of FALINTIL.

Chega! (Chap. 5, p.27-29) and Niner (p.73-75) report the establishment at this conference of the Revolutionary Council of National Resistance (CRRN). According to Chega!, “The CRRN was intended to be the organisational vehicle for everyone who wanted to join the struggle to end the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste. The CRRN was in effect the PMLF’s invitation to all East Timorese regardless of party or other affiliation to join the resistance to the Indonesian occupation” (p.28). This is seen by both published sources as a landmark change in the direction of the organised resistance. Surprising, then, that the document does not appear to record any formal resolution on the creation of the CRRN. The new body is mentioned in the latter part of the text (page 46 – see text and translation above – & page 49), but with little explanatory detail.

While there are many possible explanations for these and other differences, the most obvious one is that the current document is not a complete set of all the original documents created to record the historic meeting of 1-8 March 1981.

Some questions
The evidence suggests that the document is at least a partial record of that special meeting in East Timor in March 1981. However, it is reasonable to ask the following questions.
1. Does there exist a complete copy of the document under discussion here?
2. If, as seems likely, this document is a packaged version of the original meeting records, who created it and when?
3. Do originals or photocopies of the original typed- or hand-written records of the March 1981 meeting exist.
4. Given that oral evidence on the meeting records more than can be found in the documents available here, is it possible that other documentary records of the meeting exist (or at least were created at the time)?

Answers to some or all of those questions will help future generations of East Timorese feel confident about the authenticity of this key document in the history of the formal resistance to the Indonesian occupation, 1975-1999.

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* Commission for Reception, Truth & Reconciliation

1. Sara Niner. Xanana: Leader of the struggle for independent Timor-Leste. Australian Scholarly Publishing. Melbourne. 2009.

2. Chega! The report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste (CAVR). 2005.

Credit: Thanks to Marisa Ramos Goncalves for translation of CRRN fragments of document.

His robust submissions* and appearances before an Australian Senate Inquiry in May 1982 and the United Nations Decolonisation Committee in November that same year were somewhat influential in the Australian debate on Timor at the time.

Whitlam’s public interventions were based largely on a visit he made to East Timor in March 1982. We present here an annotated selection of primary source materials on that decidedly controversial visit.

Media Conference, Centre for Strategic & International Studies, Jakarta. From left: Peter Hastings, Gough Whitlam and Jusuf Wanandi. Source: Sinar Harapan, 5 March 1982

Gough Whitlam and influential veteran defence and foreign affairs journalist Peter Hastings travelled to East Timor on 1 March 1982. They were in Timor for two nights, returning to Jakarta late evening on March 4. In Timor, they were able to travel by International Red Cross (ICRC) helicopter, in the company of ICRC delegate Cedric Neukomm. Based in Dili, they visited Ermera, Suai, Maliana, Atauro, Natarbora, Dilor, Lospalos and Luro. Both men held a joint media conference in Jakarta on March 5.

Context/Origins
The main focus of Whitlam’s attention was to show that Australian media reports in January 1982 of ‘famine’ in Timor were false. It is reasonable to assume that these reports, ultimately attributed to the head of Timor’s Catholic Church, Monsignor Lopes, were a primary trigger for the trip. The forthcoming Australian Senate Inquiry may also have been a factor behind the visit.

The available public record does not show who exactly initiated plans for the Timor visit.  Peter Hastings was invited to visit Timor by the Indonesian Embassy (Editorial, Canberra Times, 13 March 1982) though the participants and organisers remained rather coy about the underlying decision-making. At the Indonesian end the visit was organised and facilitated by the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) which, since 1974, had been directly connected to Indonesian special operations to achieve East Timorese incorporation into Indonesia.
Article, Herald (Melb.), 3 March 1982
Article, The Age, 4 March 1982
Article, The Australian, 4 March 1982

The ‘famine’ claim
Australian media reports in January 1982 of ‘famine’ in Timor were based on a media release from Australian Catholic Relief (ACR). The ACR media release was in turn based on a November 1981 exchange of correspondence between Monsignor Lopes and Bishop John Gerry who was then ACR Chairman. The documents show that Mgr Lopes’ passing reference to ‘expected famine’ is a repeat of a term (the origins of which are unclear) used originally by Bp Gerry rather than an outright claim by Lopes of  ‘famine’. The ACR media release and subsequent media headlines appear to carry more responsibility for the ‘famine’ claim than anything directly attributable to Mgr Lopes.
Bishop JJ Gerry letter to Mgr Lopes, 11 November 1981
Mgr Lopes reply to Bishop Gerry, 19 November 1981
ACR Press Release, 6 January 1982
Article, The Age, 11 January 1982
Article, Northern Territory News, 11 January 1982
Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), 12 January 1982

Whitlam and Hastings reports
Whitlam and Hastings both published or broadcast their findings and opinions. Whitlam’s attentions were focussed on Mgr Lopes, notably calling him in an ABC interview (see below) “a liar..(and)..a mendacious and malicious correspondent”. Hastings’ accounts contained much more detail on actual conditions in the occupied territory.
Transcript of Whitlam/Hastings press conference, Jakarta, 5 March 1982
Peter Hastings article, SMH, 6 March 1982
Peter Hastings article, SMH, 8 March 1982
Peter Hastings article, SMH, 8 March 1982
Peter Hastings article, SMH, 8 March 1982
Peter Hastings article, The Age, 8 March 1982
Peter Hastings article, SMH, 9 March 1982
Gough Whitlam interview on ABC Radio, 26 March 1982
Gough Whitlam article, The Bulletin, 30 March 1982
Peter Hastings interview, ABC Radio, 20 April 1982

Media reportage of visit
The visit itself attracted brief media coverage in Australia and Indonesia, including some editorials on the significance of the trip and its reported findings. While Indonesian media reports were uncritical of the Whitlam findings, some other mainstream media were less certain of them.

Article, The Age, 6 March 1982
Editorial, Sinar Harapan, 6 March 1982
Article, The Indonesia Times, 8 March 1982
Editorial, The Indonesia Times, 8 March 1982
Article, The Age, 12 March 1982
Editorial, Canberra Times, 13 March 1982
Article, Far Eastern Economic Review

Commentary
In Australia, Mr Whitlam’s assertions in particular attracted the most analysis and commentary from advocates for East Timor. A feature of the more detailed commentary was to use Peter Hastings’ Timor visit accounts to demonstrate shortcomings in those of Mr Whitlam. Whitlam’s case found some public support, including from Bob Santamaria who – since 1975 – had actively campaigned publicly (through his Newsweekly periodical) and privately in Catholic circles against advocates for East Timorese self-determination.
Bob Richards (unpublished?) letter to the editor, 7 March 1982
ACFOA (unpublished?) Letter to Editor, 12 March 1982
Newsweekly Editorial, 10 March 1982
Newsweekly Editorial, 17 March 1982
Jim Dunn article, The Age, 17 March 1982
David Scott (unpublished?) letter to Editor, 25 March 1982
Pat Walsh notes for ACFOA Chairperson, 30 March 1982
Former WWII Commando, Cliff Morris letter to Whitlam, 30 March 1982
Peter McCawley letter to Editor, Canberra Times 31 March 1982
Letters to Editor, The Bulletin, 20 April 1982
Jose Ramos-Horta Letter to Editor, SMH 22 April 1982
Pat Walsh article, Arena, No.60, 1982
Timor Information Service article, March/April 1982

International Red Cross
A surprising element of the Whitlam/Hastings trip to Timor was the involvement of International Red Cross (ICRC). The visitors travelled to parts of Timor in the ICRC helicopter accompanied by an ICRC delegate. Much was made of this fact in Mr Whitlam’s claims about conditions in the territory; he was able to effectively draw on ICRC authority to support his assertions. The Australian Council for Overseas Aid certainly wondered about ICRC’s involvement in a visit which became an overtly political exercise.
ACFOA Draft letter to ICRC (undated)

Concluding comment
Gough Whitlam’s direct attack on Mgr Lopes probably aided calls in Indonesia for the monsignor’s removal from Timor by the Vatican in 1983. He also had some transient impact on the public debate in Australia and inside the Labor Party, but other events in 1983 – a formal ceasefire and subsequent major Indonesian military offensive – rendered his 1982 claims outdated.

The documentary record of the Whitlam/Hastings Timor visit remains valuable. It offers a good insight into the approach of Mr Whitlam who, at the time, was one of the very few public figures to campaign publicly in Australia against East Timorese self-determination. Combined with the sample of reactions to Whitlam’s assertions, the record also provides an insight into the nature of the debate in Australia about East Timor at that time.

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* Records of these submissions can be found among a series of Timor documents available online through the Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney. Enter timor as search term and click on ‘Go’ on this screen.

Sources: The selected documents presented here come from the archives of Timor Information Service and the ACFOA Human Rights Office. Both collections are in CHART custody in Melbourne and will be subject to an extensive digitisation program during 2012.

Note on Copyright:  If any original creators of the materials presented wish to assert their copyright ownership and object to our usage here, please contact us immediately and we will remove the item.

Pat Walsh – as depicted by Tim Lindsey

In recognition of decades of human rights advocacy, Pat Walsh has been awarded the Order of Australia (AM). The formal citation for the award reads: “For service to the international community in the Asia-Pacific region as an advocate for human rights, particularly in Timor-Leste”.

Pat Walsh co-founded CHART with John Waddingham in Melbourne in 2000. Members of CHART, along with the hundreds of Timorese, Australians and others who know of Pat’s remarkable work, congratulate him on this long-deserved official national recognition in Australia.

Decades of Timor work
Pat began his involvement with East Timor in the mid-1970s as chaplain of the Young Christian Students (YCS) and a member of Melbourne’s Australia-East Timor Association.

He began voluntarily working full-time on Timor in 1978 with the Christian Churches-funded Action for World Development. In the early 1980s, he was employed by the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA) as a consultant to ACFOA’s East Timor Sub-committee where he quickly established a reputation, both in Australia and internationally, for innovative, careful, determined research, writing and action.

Walsh petitioning the UN Decolonisation Committee, New York, 1986

Highlights of his work in this period include driving the establishment of the 1982 Senate Inquiry on Timor,  founding the Timorese refugees support group, RAFT (Re-unite in Australia Families from Timor) and co-founding Christians in Solidarity with East Timor (CISET) and Inside Indonesia magazine.

Pat became the inaugural director of ACFOA’s Human Rights Program in 1985 where he continued to work on Timor and other regional human rights matters for the next 15 years. Work in this period included visits to Indonesia (working on Australian and international links with Indonesian non-government organisations) and Timor (after 1989).  He drove the formation of the East Timor Talks Campaign,  assisted in the formation of the East Timorese-run East Timor Human Rights Centre in Melbourne and was a member of the official Australian observer mission for the 1999 independence ballot.

From 2000, Pat lived for a decade in the newly-independent Timor-Leste. His principal work was first as a consultant in the human rights office of  United Nations Transitional Administration (UNTAET) where he was instrumental in the establishment and conduct of Timor-Leste’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR). Since 2005, he has been senior advisor to the the Post-CAVR Technical Secretariat which is charged with promoting CAVR’s monumental report, Chega!, and preserving the archives of CAVR’s work.

Some insights into Pat’s work and experience in Timor-Leste can be found in his recently published book, At the scene of the crime: Essays, reflections and poetry on East Timor, 1999-2010*.

In 2009, the State of Timor-Leste awarded Pat Walsh the Insignia of the Order of Timor-Leste, for his “exemplary service to humanity”.

Pat Walsh Archives

Pat Walsh Timor archival collection

The archival record of Pat Walsh’s Timor advocacy work in Melbourne, 1975-2000 is largely intact.

This voluminous collection contains the day-to-day record of his work – ranging from hand-written notes of decades of phone conversations through countless items of correspondence to a marvellous collection of documents from inside Indonesian-occupied East Timor.

This archival collection is one of the premiere Australian non-government, privately-held collections of Timor materials. It is a treasure trove of primary source research materials on what happened inside occupied East Timor and what actions were taken in Australia and internationally on the issue.

The collection is in the custody of CHART and will be the focus of a major project in 2012 to fully document its contents and to digitise extensive selections of material for eventual access in Timor-Leste. CHART has prepared a draft preliminary guide to the collection contents.

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* Published by Mosaic Press, Melbourne, 2011. Click here for order form