The
Australian and United States governments knew Indonesia was prepared to use
napalm against the people of Timor Leste but made no protest, according to
secret documents unearthed by an Australian researcher.
Associate
Professor Clinton Fernandes from the Australian Defence Force Academy has found
previously classified Australian diplomatic papers that call into
question repeated Indonesian denials that incendiary weapons were used in
Timor Leste during Jakarta's 24-year occupation of the former Portuguese
colony.
The
discovery is a breakthrough in Dr Fernandes' long running research to establish
the extent of the Australian Government's knowledge of Indonesian war crimes in
East Timor.
One
of the documents found by Dr Fernandes at the National Archives of
Australia is a September 1983 letter from the Australian consul in Bali,
Malcolm Mann, to Dennis Richardson, then counsellor in the Australian Embassy
in Jakarta, to report a conversation with the United States consul in Surabaya,
Jay McNaughton.
The
American had told Mr Mann that he had "seen intelligence reports that the
Indonesians were fitting napalm tanks to their F5 aircraft for use in
Indonesia".
The
Indonesian Air Force had acquired from the United States a dozen Northrop F-5
ground attack aircraft three years earlier. Mr McNaughton explained that
"American experts had been asked to help with the fitting of the napalm
tanks as the Indonesians were having difficulty in trimming the
aircraft".
Mr
Richardson asked the US Embassy in Jakarta to confirm the Indonesians had
approached the United States for assistance in fitting napalm tanks and was
told that US contractors had been engaged "because the napalm tanks were
made in Italy and modifications were needed in order to fit them to F5s".
In
early November 1983 Richardson forwarded a report to the Department of Foreign
Affairs in Canberra in which he added that "the United States assumed
that, given the recent military build-up in East Timor, the approach had been
made in connection with East Timor".
Following
international outcries generated by the use of napalm in the Vietnam War, use
of the incendiary weapon against civilians was effectively banned by a 1980
United Nations convention that prohibits conventional weapons which are
"excessively injurious" or have "indiscriminate effects".
However
Indonesia did not and has not signed the convention.
The
Department of Foreign Affairs files examined by Dr Fernandes show the Australian
Embassy in Jakarta took no action to protest against Indonesia's use of napalm
and there was no reaction in Canberra, where then prime minister Bob Hawke's
Labor Government was eager to improve relations with Indonesia and open
negotiations with Jakarta on the oil and gas resources of the Timor Sea.
In
2006, following the publication of allegations of Indonesian napalm use against
Timorese civilians in the report of Timor's United Nations-sponsored Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, then Indonesian defence minister Juwono Sudarsono
declared that such attacks "never happened".
"How
could we have used napalm against the East Timorese? Back then we didn't even
have the capacity to import, let alone make napalm," Mr Sudarsono.
One
witness quoted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Lucas da Costa
Xavier, recalled: "The trees and grass would burn when the bombs hit
them … Many civilians died from drinking the water contaminated with shrapnel
from bombs dropped from the planes, and many died of burns – it was the dry
season, so the grass burned easily."
Dr
Fernandes said the Foreign Affairs department documents were significant
"because they are the first hard evidence of napalm from the official
records, and not just the testimony of survivors."
"The
documents show that the East Timorese and the small group of international
activists who supported them were telling the truth," Dr Fernandes said.
"The
Labor government that came to office in 1983 knew that the Indonesian military
were committing crimes against humanity, including burning people alive with
napalm, but they said and did nothing."
Dr
Fernandes has been engaged in a protracted legal battle in the Administrative
Appeals Tribunal and the Federal Court to secure the declassification of
Australian intelligence and diplomatic records relating to Indonesia's
occupation of East Timor.
The
Australian government claims declassification of the papers would reveal still
sensitive intelligence and damage Australia's relations with Indonesia. Much
of the government's evidence has been suppressed following the issue of a
"public interest certificate" by Attorney-General George
Brandis.
"The
current government should declassify all relevant records so that the full
truth can come out," Dr Fernandes said.
The
Age
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