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News :: Anti Racism : Civil Liberties & Human Rights : Education : Indigenous Issues & Reconciliation : Police & Thieves : Politics & Elections |
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East Timor 'rebellion' - mick lambe |
Current rating: 0 |
by mick lambe (darwin)
Email: pariahnt-yahoo.com (unverified!)
Address: darwin NT Oz |
03 Jun 2006
Modified: 11:34:40 AM |
Feature - http://dimc.axxs.org/?action=default&featureview=102
"In 1978, Australia became the only nation to officially recognize Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. The Australian government then divided up the oil rich Timor Gap with the Suharto regime in a deal worth billions to Australia."
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Article with links and images - http://pariahnt.tripod.com/
East Timor 'rebellion' - mick lambe - June 1, 2006
"The 29-member Cabinet is dominated by the Fretilin Party, which won the majority of Assembly seats. Mari Alkatiri, Fretilin's secretary-general, is prime minister and head of government, and Xanana Gusmão -- elected in free and fair elections on April 14, 2002 -- is president and head of state." (US State Department)
Rebel leader
Australian-trained Lieutenant Commander Alfredo Reinado, head of the military police and leader of the 'rebel' force, has accused Prime Minister Marí bin Amude Alkatiri and "other former resistance fighters in the government (of being) communists who've been talking about buying surface-to-air missiles "to shoot down planes."
The 'REBEL COMMANDER' evokes the same Cold War rhetoric used to 'justify' Indonesia's invasion of East Timor
"Suharto claimed (to US President Ford) that Indonesia did not want to interfere with East Timor's self-determination but implied that it might have to because “those who want independence are those who are Communist-influenced.” - (Camp David - July 5, 1975)
Australian socialists have stated that, "Alkatiri and his supporters are neither “Marxists” nor “communists” in an article condemning attacks against the Alkatiri government which revealed the "US ambassador to East Timor openly supported the (Catholic) church in its street protests against the government last year, even attending one of the demonstrations in person."
Gusmão meets with Reinaldo
Reinaldo has professed his "loyalty" to President Xanana Gusmão while referring to Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri as "just a cockroach."
This loyalty is reciprocated. "President Xanana Gusmão reiterated that Major Alfredo and his elements have left F-FDTL Military Headquarters to ensure the safety of the population in Aileu and to calm the situation. Gusmão said Alfredo continues to subjugate to Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak but feels it is not appropriate yet for them to return to Dili. (The) President spoke with the media following a meeting with Alfredo Reinaldo at his residence in Balibar".
East Timor's Ambassador to the United States (Jose Luis Guterres) stated, "he is challenging the leadership of the country's ruling Fretilin Party because he does not like the Prime Minister's management style."
East Timor gets Howard's 'black arm-band' treatment
The campaigns to destabilise the Fretilin government have been ignored (some say encouraged) by Australian PM John Howard, who has blamed Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri for the turmoil and East Timor's continued hardships, citing poor 'governance'.
A view that denies the enormous difficulties the government face after the 24 years of genocidal occupation by Indonesia - which saw over a third of the East Timorese population killed.
Howard would have us see this grim reality - along with the theft of East Timor's resources by Australia who abetted the Indonesian invasion...
...as an irrelevant 'black armband' view of East Timor history.
- In 1978, Australia became the only nation to officially recognize Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. The Australian government then divided up the oil rich Timor Gap with the Suharto regime in a deal worth billions to Australia.
Gusmao - Hypocrisy of his "emergency powers enactment
The decision by Guamao to invoke "emergency powers" supposedly ("stripping Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and his Fretilin party cabinet of all authority to deal with the crisis") is a political one aimed at appeasing foreign concerns and the Catholic church. The arrival of foreign 'special forces' and tanks should have lessened the need for such a constitutionally extreme reaction.
In 2005 - "President Xanana Gusmao condemned the East Timorese Catholic Church's continuing demonstrations against the government ... saying he would not allow street protests to bring down Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's cabinet."
"A change of government, he added, could only take place through elections and a cabinet reshuffle through the action of the governing party."
Resurgence
The 'resurgence' of violence despite armed intervention by 'peace-keepers', is clearly linked to removing Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.
Mr Gusmao's Australian-born wife Kirsty Sword-Gusmao - has stated, "Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri should "step down" to avoid being sacked by President Xanana Gusmao as a catalyst for peace."
A peace reliant on appeasing warring factions with no mandate from the East Timorese people? - That would be a hypocritical position for the 'anti-terrorism' alliance to support - an alliance that claims to be instilling democratic values in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan - to improve human rights.
Australian response favours 'rebels'
"Earlier Australian commander Brigadier Mick Slater said some of the violence that terrorised the capital in recent days had been "opportunistic" acts, but other incidents appeared to have been "well coordinated".
He went on to say, "We do not know yet who is doing the coordination at this stage," he said. "But we are working on it."
An earlier report in The Age describes the gangs as - "Acting with almost total impunity, the mobs used mobile phones to co-ordinate their attacks, waiting for heavily armed Australian forces to leave an area before moving in."
The scapegoat for East Timor's ills - PM Alkatiri
"The diminutive Alkatiri is seen by his supporters as a dynamic man who has led the nationalist Fretilin party to deserved political victory after more than two decades of bitter struggle. To his detractors, he is a radical extremist attempting to impose the ideology of Mozambique's ruling Frelimo party - acquired during years of exile there - on a quite different situation."
In his view, both (Indonesia and Australia) acted with total contempt for East Timorese human rights in the years after 1975. "Indonesia and Australia have to remember that our independence was won at great cost and that a Timorese is very proud to be Timorese." - East Timor and
Indonesia Action Network (ETAN)
Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri has not conceded control of the military despite earlier reports - nor should he.
Alkatiri: "In terms of the economy, we are absolutely sure that East Timor’s economy would not be sustainable if we did not solve the poverty problems from the outset. The eradication of poverty needs to be the main priority of this country."
"Mainly, the development of East Timor should be pillared on renewable resources and not on non-renewable ones. This is what is important, because this is the only way by which we can achieve a sustainable development."
No view could be more antithetical to Australia's economic expectations in the region.
From 'Dili Burns'
The Northern Territory
"Thanks to East Timor, the hotels are still full, the car rental yards are empty of spare vehicles, and the retailers are doing a booming trade. The 4,500 Australian troops on the ground in East Timor and the legion of support staff and humanitarian workers backing up the operation have created a mini-boom in the Territory's economy."
"In a recent interview with the Jakarta Post, Indonesian sociologist and Newcastle University lecturer George Junus Aditjondro discussed his impressions of East Timor after his most recent trip there in January: "I was shocked at the speed of investments pouring in; this certainly has a lot to do with the way Indonesia left East Timor this created the ideal bonanza for foreign investors, especially Australians from the Northern Territory."
"In an earlier article, Aditjondro noted that Northern Territory Chief Minister Denis Burke, after sending his special representative on an urgent assessment mission to East Timor in 1999, had immediately fed the results back to the Darwin business community, which was assisted in applying for registration with the UN agencies and subsequently obtained 40-46 per cent of work in the disaster regions."
"You're replacing the Indonesian-Javanese kind of investment with the carpet-bagger type of investment, which appears to be not necessarily dominating, but it's certainly a problem up there. I think a lot of the investments that are going on up there are very much short-term and when the UN and its entourage moves out I mean there was a figure quoted the other day there are 2700 four-wheel-drives and only three fishing boats. I think that encapsulates the whole thing in a nutshell." (Jenny Denton, Canberra Times - April 14, 2001)
Not the first unrest in Dili
In an article about the Dili riots aimed at Australian business interests in 2002 - I referred to Gusmao as "little more than a neocolonialist puppet now"...
...and also made parallels between the treatment of indigenous (black) people in Australia and East Timor by the Howard government which is disgustingly similar.
"...the angst of Territorians is considered more newsworthy than the 24 years of brutal occupation the East Timorese endured, the destruction of Dili and the relegation of the East Timorese to powerless observers in their own country."
"The Aboriginal people here in the Northern Territory will strongly identify with their situation."
Leak's cartoon - makes a (questionably funny) connection too...
http://pariahnt.tripod.com/images/bill_leak_et.jpg
The recent riots (or rebellion) at the remote Wadeye (Port Keats) Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory also featured machete-wielding gangs.
A result of two centuries of White Australian genocide that does not inspire faith in any Australian-led recovery of East Timor or the Howard government's rationale for removing Alkatiri.
The colonialist/economic/religious systems that created these social conditions are never going to be the solution, they will always be the problem. True self-determination and autonomy is the only guarantee of peaceful progress in East Timor.
While Australian socialists obviously agree, the solutions offered by some, do not seem as appropriate to East Timor's situation as Alkatiri's vision.
As the more pragmatic Alkatiri makes clear - "It's easy for Westerners to assume revolutionary postures, - It's not so easy to govern according to revolutionary principles when you don't have a refrigerator stuffed full." |
See also:
http://pariahnt.tripod.com/
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AFFET - Australians For a Free East Timor - Rob Wesley-Smith talks about the ET crisis |
by darwinmob
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Jun 2006
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http://dimc.axxs.org/?action=newswire&parentview=7233 |
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Re: East Timor 'rebellion' - mick lambe |
by more
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
04 Jun 2006
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http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/14530/index.php |
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Re: East Timor 'rebellion' - mick lambe |
by jonnie-b-good
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Jun 2006
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Disgusting attacks on an afilliated imc from Stacy Scheff and co.
No criticism of the article - just the author by some imc fascists
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/14739/index.php |
