End support for thugs
The Australian government has announced that the Indonesian Armed Forces have been invited to participate in the next big Australian army war games, Kangaroo 95. This announcement was made in Darwin, a city where many East Timorese live, having fled the Indonesian regime's military occupation of their country.
This announcement should surprise nobody. The Keating government, supported by the Liberal/National Coalition, has been escalating its policy of close collaboration with the Indonesian regime over the last few years. Keating has visited Jakarta three times since his installation as prime minister, and is planning another visit for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting this November.
The Australian government has also just spent $12 million of working peoples' tax money on a massive promotion of Australian companies in Jakarta. There is no doubt that behind the escalation of the policy of collaboration is the profit motive.
Keating told a big business audience in Sydney in May that the bilateral relationship with Indonesia was Australia's most important. The idea of getting privileged access to a market of almost 200 million people is making Australia's business people's mouths water.
Access to the immense natural resources of Indonesia and East Timor is another incentive. Australian oil companies are about to start operations in the Timor Gap. These are more than enough reasons for Keating and his big business backers to put every other consideration out of their mind — considerations such as human rights and environmental protection.
Keating is on record urging US President Clinton to ease up on pressuring Indonesia's President Suharto on human rights. When Suharto closed down Indonesia's three major news weeklies in late June and had his police bash up protesters, Keating's office stated that this was an internal affair of the Indonesian government.
Suharto, realising the public pressure on Keating, raised the banning issue with Keating during his recent visit. Keating was thus able to say that he had discussed the issue and that Suharto had "seriously listened". Keating's only concern was to relieve some of the pressure on him in Australia, not to exert any pressure for change in Indonesia.
The most blatant hypocrisy surfaced recently when foreign minister Gareth Evans acknowledged there are both "thuggish" as well as "sophisticated and liberal" elements in Indonesia. The government's current foreign policy, however, is based on the closest possible relationship with the most thuggish elements: Suharto and his close associates. Nobody should be under any illusions that it was not Suharto, who oversaw the slaughter of almost 1 million Indonesians in 1965, and who runs the regime's brutal policies in East Timor and Indonesia. Nobody should therefore be surprised that 200,000 East Timorese have already lost their lives, or that protesters are attacked.
Trade and commerce between neighbouring countries is inevitable. But this should not be promoted at the cost of remaining silent about, and even defending, the record of the dictatorship and invasion of the Suharto regime. Rather than spend millions on trade promotions, military cooperation and economic aid to a self-enriching and corrupt regime, the Australian government should channel these funds to non-government and community organisations who are the closest to the East Timorese and Indonesian people.
With the Indonesian regime increasingly on the nose internationally, its number one backer, the Australian government, is also looking increasingly shabby. Its time to end support for thugs.