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Jose Belo (left) and
Commander David Alex (right) Photo: John Martinkus
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John
Martinkus*
The
East Timorese may be poor, but they are not stupid. And we need to stop
exploiting them, writes freelance journalist John Martinkus.
In
1995, as I squatted for days in a hole in the jungle of East Timor with 12 men
hiding from Indonesian troops patrolling nearby, the whispered conversations
between the Falintil Guerrillas and myself turned to oil. We had plenty of time
to talk, admittedly very quietly to not alert the Indonesians of our presence — they
sometimes came so close we could hear their boots in the undergrowth. The issue
of the Timor Gap treaty came up. They were having a bit of a go at the
foreigner in their midst, whom they were then protecting with their lives so I
could get a story. A story at the time I wasn’t even sure I could sell.
Australia
had signed the Timor Gap treaty with the Indonesians way back in December 1989,
dividing up the resources that lay between East Timor and its nearest
international neighbor, Australia, and those resources were mostly a giant oil
reserve. Australia got a great deal, with the line dividing what oil would
belong to Indonesia and what oil would belong to Australia significantly
favouring Australia.
Indonesia
went along with it mainly to guarantee Australia’s ongoing support for its
occupation of East Timor, which it had maintained internationally since the
1975 invasion. Australia was the only country in the world to recognise
Indonesian sovereignty, and the Timor Gap treaty that gave us the majority of
the oil was our pay-off for ignoring the atrocities carried out on our doorstep
by the Indonesian military against the East Timorese. The 12 guys sitting in
that hole in the jungle, armed with a few captured M16s and old Portuguese
weapons left over from the colonial army and a tarpaulin and some bushes the only
protection against the hundreds of Indonesian troops searching for us, knew
that. They knew Australia, on both sides of politics, had screwed East Timor.
We
all know the story from there. The UN got involved after Suharto was ousted in
1998. The independence ballot was held, and the Timorese voted overwhelmingly
in favour. The Indonesians burnt, looted, killed and displaced at least a third
of the population. Outrage in Australia, but more importantly, pressure from
then-US president Bill Clinton to clean up the mess he had helped create forced
the hapless John Howard to send in a peacekeeping force led by Peter Cosgrove,
now Australian Governor-General. We, Australians, were greeted as liberators
and cheered in the streets still littered with the corpses of the victims of
the Indonesian rampage in a city still burning with fires lit in revenge by the
retreating occupiers. I was there, and suddenly, after years of working in that
country, I felt proud to be an Australian.
Fast
forward to 2016. Last month, 10,000 East Timorese protested against the unfair
maritime boundary, which gives Australia the lion’s share of the oil in the
Timor Sea, outside the Australian Embassy. Dili is a small town. Protesters
blocked the road to the airport and all the regions to the west of the country
for hours. They were peaceful. They know how to demonstrate; they have a lot of
experience. They were protesting about the oil deal and Australia’s refusal to
revisit what we know has always been an unfair agreement.
This
week, Labor foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek finally addressed years
of Australian hypocrisy. Australia has always lectured other countries on human
rights issues, on following international law, on being responsible global
citizens. But, on Timor, we never practised what we preached. In a refreshing
gust of common sense and decency the ALP finally changed its policy on Timor,
the oil and the agreement.
As
Plibersek put it in her statement:
“Timor-Leste
suffered decades of war and starvation before gaining independence. Australia
played a key role in securing that independence — a proud
moment for our nation. But the maritime boundary dispute has strained relations
with our newest neighbour. Australia’s unwillingness to commit to maritime
border negotiations with Timor-Leste has raised valid questions about our
commitment to a rules-based international system and to being a good global
citizen. This must change. Labor in government will immediately commence
discussions on a voluntary, binding international resolution for a permanent
maritime boundary between Australia and Timor-Leste. It is in the national
interest of both countries that we do so. And importantly, by committing to
freely participating in it, Labor’s proposal is in the interests of the international
system itself. We are seeking to end more than 40 years of uncertainty over a
maritime border, and committing to international norms that we expect others to
follow”.
Finally,
a mainstream Australian politician has come out and said what has been
painfully obvious for so long. Australia has bullied, lied, spied on and used
our own military as leverage to secure an inequitable deal over the resources
that lie between Australia and East Timor. First we did it by coalescing and
turning a blind eye to the Indonesian invasion and subsequent atrocities, right
up until 1999, and some would argue, after. Both Labor and Liberal governments
did that for 24 years.
Then
when East Timor got independence we basically wrestled them into a deal that
massively favoured Australian companies and the Australian government in terms
of revenues. We stole the oil. It is well documented, the spying on
negotiations, the pressure applied to Timorese politicians to sign a deal they
knew was unjust. The relentless pursuit of journalists and whistleblowers
involved in the negotiations by federal authorities. We bullied one of the
poorest countries in the world into accepting an unfair deal. They took it
because, at that time, they were broke, and we knew that and used that against
them. It is no wonder 10,000 of them turned up to the Australian Embassy in
Dili to protest against this. They may be poor, but they are not stupid.
That
is the lesson I learnt all those years ago back in the jungle. They may have
had no shoes and had not eaten for a week and lived hiding in ditches from
Indonesian troops (US and Australian supplied and trained at the time) trying
to hunt them, but they could quote the agreements made internationally to deny
them of their natural birthright with more accuracy than diplomats, journalists
and academics.
The
right to the resources of their country is in their blood, and at last
Plibersek has acknowledged that.
* Dr Vacy Vlazna in
Comments: Every word of Martinkus is loaded with fact and truth. He was often the only journalist in East
Timor and literally risked his life to inform the Australian public about how
our government put trade pragmatism over the lives of the people of East Timor
( it goes a long way to explain the blithe cruelty of government asylum seeker
policies). Today, that greed persists as our government, the representatives
that we vote for, our political servants, unconscionably rip off our poorest
neighbour. Just as we pressured Howard to send Interfet to Timor, we have the
power to demand that the government does the right thing by international law and
by our next door neighbours, the impoverished Timorese.
