From: dewanto@cae.wisc.edu (Gaston Dewanto)
Subject: Re: E. Timor & Indonesia
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Date: 21 Nov 92 21:03:23 CST

Mr. Basto:

If you think that I am unethics by removing the origin of the posting,
please accept my apology. I did not the realize about that ethics.
To shorten the discussion, I hope you don't mind if I delete all previous
posting.
 
Mr. Basto, it seems that you are contradicting a lot of your arguments 
and being very subjective.

You seem to imply that you have more right than Indonesia because you
found East Timor first before the Indonesia. Do you mean that you have
the right of Indonesia too because you were the first (or maybe the second,
I forget) European that came to Indonesia? Please make it clear.
 
You mentioned about the Dutch and its fights against you. You said that the
Dutch did not occupy ET because of the resistance made by the ET people, 
and you said that the ET did not mind that you colonized them.
It is strange that the Dutch who could take over the rest of Indonesia with
its more developed and more armed soldiers, I believe, but could not take
over a single tiny part of an island. I believe more to the explanation
from my history teacher in high school that the Dutch did not pay attention
to ET because they thought there was nothing there.

In the WWII case, the Japanese tried to get support from other Asian to
win the war by saying that they came to help the Asians free from the European
and they did a good job in that. Therefore the Indonesian accepted them and
their lies. It turned out that they were exploiting the Asians, and they
were much worse than the Dutch in Indonesia. I did not know about what
you did in ET against the Japanese. 

And you mentioned about our previous leaders declared that ET was not part
of Indonesia. Can you enlighten me by that? I really did not know, so please
forgive my ignorance because I am not a history major.
>
About whose version is correct. I said before that the version I posted here
was from somebody's posting here and I thought he was not an Indonesian.
I am trying to be careful for what I accept as the truth.
If you accuse that Indonesia can make a version about the truth, haven't
ever been occured to you that your government also can make their own
version? Even if you talk with someone, how can you guarantee that his/her
opinion is not biased at all?

Mr. Basto, I am sorry, I am not attacking your face. What I meant was that
you were contradicting yourself by saying that you were against any 
imperialism, but at the same time you did not say anything about the claim
by Portugal in UN about Portugal's authority in ET.
You mentioned about the independences of countries used to be your colonies
(please accept my apology again if I am wrong) because your being the
ruler there was an imperialism. By your argument, the Portugal's claim
against ET is also an imperialism, so you also have to criticize your
government. So first Portugal must claim that it has no authority to ET
anymore at all in the UN.
And again, please accept my apology for my sarcasm, I hope you are not bored
by my apologies.

I still don't understand about you let Fretilin live in your country.
They did criminal thing against your government in ET and you did not
punish them. If you accept UDT people, I can understand that.
And as far as I understand, UDT and Fretilin were common enemies.
Some of UDT people, for example Lopez da Cruz and Carascalao (ET governor
last year) I think, were/are (I am not sure) working for our government.

Mr. Basto, you missed my point badly about my examples of USSR and Yugoslavia.
They may be no freedom in USSR during the socialism era, but at least the
condition then is better than now at some cases. Now, they are begging
the west to give them food because they are starving, something did not
happend in the past I believe. I also understand that there are some ethnic
problem among the new countries like countries around the Black Sea (again
please correct me if I am wrong, I am not sure which countries) that takes
many victims.

Yugoslavia is much worse. During the Tito regime, there was peace among
the ethnics there, but now, since the collapse of socialism, people have
freedom to declare being independent, and what is happening now?

In Indonesia case, most of Indonesians, no matter from which area, feel
as an Indonesian and do not want to be independent. However, nothing is
perfect, so some people may have different idea, maybe they just want to
be in power, or maybe for other reasons. B
But Indonesia is still vulnerable especially because of the social welfare
differences, so we can not tolerate any movement against the government.
Therefore the government must take extra precaution against those act, 
and do accordingly. It was very unfortunate for me that my explanation
about this matter was connected to shooting in ET last year.
So let me apologize for that and make clear my idea.

I am against any killing and I am very sorry about what happened last year or
before that took many people lives. I believe it was not our government
intention to shoot people in the cemetery, but I do not know why the
army did that. 

My idea is that if the people can speak something to rebel against
 the government without any punishment, it will create turmoil in our 
country and it will take many lives. Therefore the government must act
quickly sometime drastically to prevent any kind of movements..
>
Mr. Basto, I am quite aware about what is going on in our country.
It is true that we have corruption everywhere unfortunately, however
things are not as bad as you imagine. I was fortunate enough that I 
could read some translation from your country newspaper or other
sources posting by your country fellows, however
 they were not giving the objective views. Have you
read from other international magazines or newspapers? 

Also, since my limited time, I won't be able to monitor the australian
newsletter. That is the reason why I suggested you to switch to indonesian
newsletter, so that I can save my time for only checking one newsletter.

dewanto
dewanto@cae.wisc.edu