From: ST101019@brownvm.brown.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asean
Subject: A Rebuttal about East Timor
Date: 14 Apr 1992 16:30:42 GMT
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Date:         Fri, 10 Apr 92 12:32:10 EDT
From:         Loren Ryter <ST701831@BROWNVM>
Subject:      rebuttal

Azlan, temanku:

I know you all at Penn have a lot of studying to do, but perhaps
you've been buried in the books for too long.
I have a bit of news for you:

The Cold War is over.

If the fear of communism was ever a justification for invading East Timor,
that argument has been irrelavent for a decade.

The East Timorese resistance is now a nationalist one, and the old
Fretilin party has joined UDT in forming a national resistance to the
occupation.

And what is mighty Indonesia so afraid of?  Indonesia has been saying
for years that Fretilin is a disorganized gang of security disrupters
of less than 200 people.  Do they really envision a communist take over
of Indonesia?  Of Australia? Please.  The East Timorese don't even have
a boat, let alone a navy.

How about a little analogy for all of you anti-colonialist Indonesians:


In 1942, Indonesians welcomed the Japanese imperial army as
the great liberator from the oppressive Dutch colonial rule.
After all, the Japanese were fellow Asians who only wished to create
a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere among people with
common racial and cultural origins, right?

It did not take long before people in Indonesia realized that the
Japanese colonization was as bad, or worse, than that under
the Dutch.  Sukarno and other leaders used the Japanese to build
a sense of nationalism in Indonesia, which was to eventually
lead to Indonesian independence.  MERDEKA!  Indonesia ends its
anti-colonialist struggle, which Indonesians still talk about to this
day.

In 1975, the East Timorese (if we are to believe the Indonesian version
of events) welcomed the Indonesian army as the great liberator from three
hundred years of impoverishing Portuguese colonial rule.  After all, the
Indonesians only wished to help the East Timorese develop, since they
share a common ethnic origin (according to some).

It did not take long before people in East Timor realized that the
Indonesian colonization was much, much worse than under the Portuguese.
The Portuguese may not have built roads or schools, but at least they
didn't hunt down or starve a third of the population.  When the Indonesians
did build schools, it seemed like they used them to strip away
all vestiges of Timorese language and culture.  When the Indonesians
did build hospitals, Timorese were terrified to go to them.

East Timorese leaders used the Indonesian occupation to overcome party
ideology and to build a nationalist resistance movement.

Maybe someday soon, this will lead to the political possibility for the
East Timorese to decide for themselves the merits or dismerits
of "integration" with Indonesia.  Maybe they, too, have the possibility
of ending their four century anti-colonialist struggle.

Merdeka!

Merdeka?

--Loren