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This website is providing ongoing coverage of the situation in East
Timor:

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/3925/latedev.htm


readnthink@southernanomaly.net wrote:
> 
>                       Why Americans should care about East Timor
>                         by Noam Chomsky
> 
>                       There are three good reasons why Americans should
> care about East Timor. First, since the Indonesian
> invasion of December 1975, East Timor has been the site of some
> of the worst atrocities of the modern era -- atrocities
> which are mounting again right now. Second, the US government
> has played a decisive role in escalating these
> atrocities and can easily act to mitigate or terminate them. It is not
> necessary to bomb Jakarta or impose economic sanctions.
> Throughout, it would have sufficed for Washington to withdraw
> support and to inform its Indonesian client that the game was
> over. That remains true as the situation reaches a crucial
> turning point -- the third reason.
> 
>                       President Clinton needs no instructions on how to
> proceed. In May 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
> called upon Indonesian President Suharto to resign and
> provide for "a democratic transition." A few hours later,
> Suharto transferred authority to his handpicked vice
> president. Though not simple cause and effect, the events illustrate
> the relations that prevail. Ending the torture in East Timor would
> have been no more difficult than dismissing Indonesia's
> dictator in May 1998.
> 
>                        Not long before, the Clinton administration
> welcomed Suharto as "our kind of guy," following the
> precedent established in 1965 when the general took power,
> presiding over army-led massacres that wiped out the country's
> only mass-based political party (the PKI, a popularly
> supported communist party) and devastated its popular base in
> "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century."
> According to a CIA report, these massacres were comparable to those
> of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao; hundreds of thousands were
> killed, most of them landless peasants. The achievement
> was greeted with unrestrained euphoria in the West. The
> "staggering mass slaughter" was "a gleam of light in Asia," according
> to two commentaries in The New York Times, both typical of
> the general western media reaction. Corporations flocked
> to what many called Suharto's "paradise for investors,"
> impeded only by the rapacity of the ruling family. For more than
> 20 years, Vietnamese leadership, as well as "the tactics employed
> by the Contras" in Nicaragua, following lessons taught
> by their CIA mentors that it should be unnecessary to review.
> The state terrorists "are not simply going after the
> most radical pro-independence people but going after the
> moderates, the people who have influence in their community."
> 
>                       'It's Phoenix' ... notes a well-placed source in
> Jakarta," Jenkins writes. That source adds that the aim is
> "'to terrorize everyone' -- the NGOs, the [Red Cross], the UN, the
> journalists."
> 
>                       The goal is being pursued with no little success.
> Since April, the Indonesian-run militias have been conducting a
> wave of atrocities and murder, killing hundreds of people --
> many in churches to which they fled for shelter -- burning
> down towns, driving tens of thousands into concentration
> camps or the mountains, where, it is reported, thousands have
> been virtually enslaved to harvest coffee crops. "They
> call them 'internally displaced persons,'" an Australian nun
> and aid worker said, "but they are hostages to the militias.
> They have been told that if they vote for independence, they
> will be killed." The number of the displaced is estimated at
> 50,000 or more.
> 
>                       Health conditions are abysmal. One of the few
> doctors in the territory, American volunteer Dan Murphy, reported
> that 50 to 100 Timorese are dying daily from curable
> diseases while Indonesia "has a deliberate policy not to allow
> medical supplies into East Timor." In the Australian media,
> he has detailed atrocious crimes from his personal
> experience, and Australian journalists and aid workers have compiled
> a shocking record.
>                The referendum has been delayed twice by the UN
> because of the terror, which has even targeted UN offices
> and UN convoys carrying sick people for treatment. Citing
> diplomatic, church, and militia sources, the Australian press
> reports "that hundreds of modern assault rifles, grenades, and
> mortars are being stockpiled, ready for use if the autonomy
> option is rejected at the ballot box," and warns that the
> TNI-run militias may be planning a violent takeover of much of the
> territory if, despite the terror, the popular will is expressed.
> 
>                       Murphy and others report that TNI has been
> emboldened by the lack of interest in the West. "A senior US
> diplomat summarized the issue neatly: 'East Timor is
> Australia's Haiti'" -- in other words, it's not a problem for the United
> States, which helped create and sustain the humanitarian
> disaster in East Timor and could readily end it. (Those who know
> the truth about the United States in Haiti will fully
> appreciate the cynicism.)
> 
>                       Reporting on the terror from the scene, Nobel
> Laureate Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo called for "an
> international military force" to protect the population from
> Indonesian terror and permit the referendum to proceed. Nothing
> doing. The "international community" -- meaning Western
> powers -- prefers that the Indonesian army provide "security."
> A small number of unarmed UN monitors have been authorized
> -- but subsequently delayed -- by the Clinton administration.
> 
>                       The picture in the past few months is particularly
> ugly against the background of the self-righteous posturing in
> the "enlightened states." But it simply illustrates,
> once again, what should be obvious: Nothing substantial has changed,
> either in the actions of the powerful or the performance of
> their flatterers. The Timorese are "unworthy victims." No
> power interest is served by attending to their suffering
> or taking even simple steps to end it. Without a significant
> popular reaction, the long-familiar story will continue, in East Timor
> and throughout the world.