As
Indonesian troops fired on a compound of refugees in Dili, John Howard directed
the AFP to withdraw. Had they followed orders, they would have left 3000 people
to certain death.
It was,
as I reported at the time, John Howard and Alexander Downer’s Srebrenica
moment. On the night of September 8, 1999, I was standing next to the head of
the Australian Federal Police delegation sent to provide “security” and oversee
the United Nations ballot on East Timorese independence. He was on one of the
few satellite phones left in the UN compound. He was talking to the then
Australian prime minister. Howard was saying the AFP must evacuate and leave
the 3000 or so refugees taking shelter in the compound to their fate.
To
those there, it was obvious what such an evacuation would mean. There was heavy
gunfire coming over the compound on all sides. The former school compound was
the last bastion in a town being destroyed and depopulated by the Indonesian
military, police and their militia proxies – part of a long-planned campaign of
revenge against the East Timorese for voting for independence from Indonesia. Had
the AFP followed Howard’s directive and pulled out, there would have been a
massacre.
The
Indonesian troops and police wanted the foreigners gone. They were banging away
with automatic weapons outside the gates to terrify and intimidate the
remaining UN staff, AFP and journalists into leaving on the regular and
conveniently arranged evacuation flights. They did not want witnesses.
On
that night, Wednesday, September 8, 1999, the leader of the UN mission tasked
with carrying out the ballot for or against independence from Indonesia, Ian
Martin, held a press conference. The 20 or so journalists who had not evacuated
turned up. Dirty, dishevelled, unwashed. We had been sleeping on the ground in
the pressroom since we had been forced from our hotels by Indonesian troops who
knocked open the doors of our rooms and demanded we leave. They gave us two
options: the airport for evacuation or the compound. Now. Move. It was an
order, not a request, carried out with the pointing of a barrel of a still-warm
M16.
Some
of us took the latter option, and went to the little UN compound. There a whole
new drama was about to unfold. There were scenes of awful desperation, as
refugees from the fighting were throwing children over razor wire fences. Their
suffering and fear was real. Out there beyond the wire, chaos reigned. There
were killings, looting and burnings going on day after day, carried out by the
Indonesian military, the police and their proxies in the militia.
As
this chaos unfolded, the UN declared at that late evening press conference that
it would leave. Outside in the compound, word of the impending evacuation
spread like wildfire. Timorese who had risked their lives working for the UN or
campaigning for independence realised they were going to be abandoned by the
international community with which they had sought shelter. It was a low moment
for the UN, the AFP and the other unarmed national police and military that
were supposed to be providing security for the besieged mission.
It
was Alan Mills who was standing next to me as all this happened, the head of
the Australian Federal Police mission. He was on one of the few satellite
phones left in the compound. Mobile phones no longer worked. It was very hard to
contact the outside world. Mills was talking to Howard. “Yes sir, yes sir,” I
heard him say, a volley of gunfire overhead muffling the sound. “Yes sir. We
will leave in the morning.”
According
to Australian Federal Police officer Wayne Sievers, a meeting of all the AFP
had been called at 6pm. Commissioner Mills addressed them. “He told us to pack
our things, we were going to evacuate the next day,” Sievers told me. “He was
challenged by one or two of our people.”
According
to Sievers’ account, Kendall Clarke, an Australian policewoman from Melbourne,
said: “How dare you! You know what will happen to all these people if you leave
them here.” To which Mills replied: “Don’t be a drama queen. We’ve got to look
after ourselves first.”
Sievers
found himself thinking that, among the AFP contingent, confidence in Mills’
leadership was at an all-time low. “The Aussie police were so fucking angry at
the thought of leaving all these people here.”
A
petition was organised, to inform the leadership they were not going to leave. “Some
of us were of the view that if we did stay and there was not a resolution,
there was a better than even money chance Indonesian army intelligence would
send the militia over the wall for us.”
Commissioner
Mills was in regular phone contact with Howard throughout this. It was clear to
those there that the Australian government was pushing the decision to leave
the East Timorese to their fate.
Both
Howard and then foreign minister Alexander Downer have claimed the subsequent
Australian-led peacekeeping force into East Timor as one of the greatest
achievements of their time in office. In Howard’s 2010 memoir, he wrote: “When
asked to list the achievements of my prime ministership of which I am most
proud, I always include the liberation of East Timor.” He told SBS: “It’s got
problems, it’s got governance issues, but it’s free... I’m very proud of the
role Australia played in bringing that about. It’s one of the more noble things
Australia has done on the international front for many years.”
But
a small group of journalists, AFP officers and some UN workers, many now dead,
know the lie to claim. When the situation was at its most critical, the
Australian government baulked and only after massive domestic and international
pressure was forced to act and send in the peacekeepers many had been calling
for as the previous year of massacres and killings unfolded before the eyes of
the foreign media in East Timor.
So
what happened to those Australian Federal Police tasked with an impossible
mission, then told to abandon it? Wayne Sievers gives us a glimpse of how the
mission that ended in the UN compound affected him personally. Sick with
malaria and dengue fever, he signed the petition to stay to save the refugees. He
was evacuated with me and most of the journalists on September 10, 1999.
He
later wrote, in a submission for compensation for post-traumatic stress: “These
feelings of hyper-vigilance have had a profound impact on my work on another
level … People such as me often found ourselves operating alone and unsupported
doing the best we could with what we had on hand.
“I
have never again trusted public sector cultures and their claimed values to
deliver people to leadership positions based on genuine merit. It is all about
faking it and cultivating relationships, and I see it all the time in my
current employment. Nothing has changed from my service in East Timor. I also
developed an intense mistrust of politicians, given we were sent unarmed into
East Timor to do something that was impossible. I believed then as now that
Australia’s political leaders completely misjudged the situation on the ground,
and then lied about the extent of their knowledge to avoid political
embarrassment.”
Another
unnamed AFP source said: “My mission to East Timor was incredibly badly led by
a number of key individuals. The senior Australian officers were appointed on
the basis of political loyalty or nepotism, and not on their ability to lead
staff in life-threatening situations. When we most needed leadership in the
most dire of situations, these officers were conspicuous by their absence.”
Faced
with a near rebellion by UN staffers, UN police and journalists, Ian Martin
announced a temporary postponement of the evacuation in the early hours of
September 9. I remember being woken by the UN spokesman, Brian Kelly, to attend
the announcement in his office at 2am. “We can’t,” he said, “make the
announcement without the wire services, can we?”
Martin
announced the evacuation would be delayed 24 hours. Outside, almost as soon as
I filed my report to the Associated Press, the shooting stopped. The order to
back off had come through. Meanwhile, many of the refugees losing faith in the
UN had decided to risk death by escaping the compound, through gunfire, up the
hills to the precarious safety away from the Indonesian military and their
militia proxies.
Wayne
Sievers was among those who helped those who chose to flee, but it still haunts
him. “In desperation, I and a number of other Australian police began to
facilitate the escape of those refugees who wished to leave the compound. We
did this by opening a gap in the hillside back fence, affording access to a
track which led up to Dare in the mountains. At Dare they could shelter with
the Catholic Church or with Falintil resistance movement. We did not know that
the Indonesian military had placed soldiers with automatic weapons in several
positions overlooking the track. They opened fire on anyone attempting to pass.
I still carry with me the near certainty that some of those I helped to escape
were murdered in cold blood. The guilt is crushing, even to this day, for me.”
In
the end it was negotiated that the remaining 1450 East Timorese would be
evacuated to Darwin, along with all but 12 of the UN staff who would then move
to the Australian consulate. Journalists were told if they stayed they had to
leave the compound. I left two days after the Howard phone call, but a few
journalists stayed. Max Stahl and Robert Carroll followed the refugees up the
hills. Three Dutch female journalists and Marie Colvin, later killed in Syria,
tried to stay but left a few days later after the UN threatened to evict them. One
American journalist, Allan Nairn, was arrested by the Indonesians, alone in the
deserted compound. The Indonesian job was done, with capitulation from
Australia: they could kill, loot and destroy without any witnesses from the
outside world.
The
Indonesians had 10 days to clean up the bodies. At Darwin airport on
September 20, as I prepared to board a military flight with the first wave
of Australian Army back to Dili, Howard talked to journalists on the tarmac,
basking in the reflected glory of a deployment he had long denied was
necessary. We arrived back in a city destroyed and deserted. Bodies were there
one minute, then gone the next, collected by the remaining Indonesian troops.
For
the Australian Federal Police who had been sent unarmed to prevent these
unpreventable massacres, the effects of the experience cannot be shaken. “I remain
consumed by guilt that I could have saved more people by acting smarter, or
with more courage,” Sievers says, “or by simply making better operational
choices when making life and death decisions in the heat of the moment.”
JOHN
MARTINKUS – The Saturday Paper, DEC 19, 2015
