From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: CANADA AIDS INDONESIAN ARMY
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 08:23:06 GMT

The ACTivist July/August 92

The ACTivist is published monthly (one issue during July and August)
by the ACT for Disarmament Coalition, 736 Bathurst St., Toronto, 
Ontario, Canada, M5S 2R4, phone 416-531-6154, fax 416-531-5850,
e-mail web:act.

Reprint freely, but please credit us (and send us a copy!)

/** gen.newsletter: 121.1 **/
** Written 11:13 pm  Aug 11, 1992 by web:act in cdp:gen.newsletter **
CANADA AIDS INDONESIAN ARMY

By Maggie Helwig
The ACTivist

According to reports from a British freelance journalist, Canada 
may be directly involved in assisting the Indonesian war against the  
East Timorese people, by providing information on guerrilla 
encampments to the Indonesian government.

Max Stahl, the Yorkshire TV cameraman who filmed the Santa Cruz 
massacre last November 12, had spent several months in East Timor 
during the fall. In late September, he told The ACTivist, he met 
employees of an unidentified Canadian company in the eastern part 
of the island. They were engaged in taking extremely high-resolution
 photographs of the territory from fixed-wing airplanes, as part of 
a mapping project funded by the Canadian International Development
 Agency (CIDA). They were mapping this particular area 
under the direction of the Indonesian government.

At that time, the FALINTIL guerrillas, the armed wing of the 
Timorese independence movement, were operating mostly in 
the mountains in this eastern area. Stahl believes that the 
Indonesian government had requested the Canadians to take their 
'mapping project' specifically to this area so that they could obtain
 information about guerrilla positions with technology otherwise 
unavailable to them (the Canadians described their ultra-high 
resolution camera as one of only two or three of that quality in 
the world). He believes that the Canadian government has either 
refused to examine the implications of their project, or is aware of 
the use to which it is being put but prefers to maintain a friendly
 relationship with Indonesia.

CIDA has claimed, when approached in the past, that they do not 
fund any projects in East Timor.

Though FALINTIL is a small and poorly armed band of guerrillas, 
the Indonesian army continues to wage a bloody 
counter-insurgency campaign aimed at wiping them out 
completely -- as well as using the guerrilla movement as an 
excuse to brutally repress the unarmed independence activists 
based in the larger cities and towns of East Timor.

This is not the only case in which Canadian aid is being used to 
further the ambitions of the Indonesian government and military. 
Another CIDA-funded project involves building a road to Aceh, in 
the western part of Indonesia, where a Muslim separatist movement 
is being savagely attacked. The road would facilitate the transport 
of troops and weapons to this remote area. And CIDA is helping to 
fund a birth control program being inflicted on the women of East 
Timor against their will (see The ACTivist, April 92).

Canadian activists are continuing to investigate Stahl's report, 
hoping to identify the company involved and obtain further 
information on the 'mapping project' and other CIDA projects 
in Indonesia.

** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive