By Pat Walsh
Indonesia shot itself badly in the foot on November 12, when troops gunned down at least 100 East Timorese civilians outside the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili.
There have been many massacres in East Timor, starting with and including the Indonesian invasion of 1975. The Indonesian military have also carried out many massacres in Indonesia: the massive, officially sanctioned pogrom of the left following 1965, innumerable killings of West Papuans in Irian Jaya, the slaying of Muslim demonstrators at Tanjung Priok in Jakarta in 1984, the wanton slaughter of thousands in Aceh over the last few years.
The Santa Cruz massacre, however, could prove to be a turning point, not only for East Timor but also for Indonesia. What distinguishes this particular piece of butchery from other excesses is its timing and the fact that it happened in the presence of foreigners.
Foreign minister Ali Alatas and Jusuf Wanandi, the head of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, see the slaughter as a major "setback". It is not difficult to see why when one looks at the context of Indonesia's foreign policy and internal evolution.
World trends in favour of democracy and human rights have not been lost on Indonesia, which remains heavily dependent on foreign aid and aware that its geopolitical status has lessened with the end of the Cold War. Jakarta has been striving to improve its international ratings and take a higher profile in world affairs commensurate with its size and growing self-confidence.
Last year it joined the UN Commission on Human Rights for the first time. This was preceded by the normalisation of relations with China and the then Soviet Union. Recently it finally won leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement and undertook an expensive cultural offensive in the US designed to present itself as a sophisticated, creative society and to dispel the image that it is, in the words of former foreign minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, "a nation that eats people".
The appointment of the urbane Sabam Siagian, a civilian and professional journalist, as ambassador to Australia, was part ofthis strategy. "I am the new face of Indonesia", Sabam told the Ray Martin show soon after his arrival in Canberra.
The Dili killings and the subsequent tough talk by senior military have undone much of this work. Indonesia has once again been unmasked as a military regime that rules by the gun. It is not surprising, then, that following the massacre Jakarta quickly moved into damage control mode and sought to minimise the harm by setting up an inquiry and presenting the "incident" as a local "aberration".
The massacre also coincides with a movement for change in Indonesia. An embryonic movement for democracy is emerging which is questioning the security approach to development and government and seeking greater openness and respect for basic rights.
In the words of one Indonesian commentator, the Timorese who died at Santa Cruz are "martyrs for Indonesian democracy". Though the report of the official inquiry into the massacre is, in Amnesty International's view, "fatally flawed", its establishment was welcomed by liberal Indonesians because it represented a victory over the military and an unprecedented first step in support of the principle of accountability.
This school of thought may be more interested in the political future of Indonesia than of East Timor, but, either way, it is privately encouraging the continuation of maximum international pressure on Jakarta over the event.
Not least, the Dili tragedy has demonstrated even to the crudest apologists for Indonesia that the integration of East Timor is bankrupt and only kept in place at gunpoint.
The several thousand protesters on the day covered a wide spectrum of East Timorese society: young people, many of them very young or unborn in 1975, public servants, representatives of both Fretilin and UDT and the majority Catholic Church. This amalgam and their clear calls for independence substantiate the observations of many that the resistance movement is not only transgenerational but enjoys wide support and is essentially nationalist in character.
The massacre will undoubtedly have stiffened their resolve. As a foreign missionary present on the day put it, if 80% of East Timorese were anti-integration before the massacre, the figure must now be 95%.
Whether the massacre marks a turning point on the road to democracy for both Indonesia and East Timor will be determined largely by the international community. There can be no doubt that, taken together, the factors highlighted above represent a unique opportunity for the world to act.
In setting up the inquiry, cooperating (to some extent) with the UN and disciplining (to some extent) its military, Jakarta has clearly shown its responsiveness to outside pressure. If the quite modest pressure applied so far can win these concessions, it is arguable that more decisive, collective pressure by the world community, including Australia, could achieve more substantive change, and not least a long-term settlement of the East Timor conflict.
It is a matter of profound regret that the international community is largely choosing to ignore the current opportunity to act. Australia exemplifies this moral and political analysis. Ignoring repeated offers by the East Timorese to engage in talks with Indonesia under UN auspices, Australia's foreign minister, Senator Evans, talks instead of "reconciliation".
The term is interesting on two counts: it is President Suharto's current buzz word for integration, and it is the central plank in the Australian government's new policy on relations with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The clear implication is that the East Timorese must face the fact that their integration with Indonesia is irreversible and reconcile themselves to their fate. Australia is no more sympathetic to the Timorese than it is to the sovereignty bid of the Aborigines it removed from the old Parliament House in Canberra recently.
Lois O'Donoghue, chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, put it very bluntly when she said recently, "It seems to me that ... reconciliation is asking Aboriginal people to stop beating their heads against the now unalterable facts of Australian history".
There are a number of obvious commercial and strategic explanations for Australia's unwillingness to push the issue within the UN, including its current defence of the Timor Gap Treaty at the World Court. It is a shocking irony, however, that Australia's Timor policy might also be driven by defensiveness over the appalling treatment of the Aboriginal people, which Indonesian critics of Australia delight in highlighting.
East Timorese, who know their rights and entitlements and know Indonesia, are not about to enter a relationship on terms dictated solely by the aggressor, nor should they be expected to. Talks yes, but under UN auspices.
Portugal, to its credit, has convinced the European Community of the merits of this proposal. It is an idea whose time has come, and it should be vigorously supported, if necessary by withholding military sales and cooperation.
Should it fail, however, considerable blame will rest with Australia, which now not only opposes self-determination for the East Timorese but actively champions integration in the forums of the world.
[Pat Walsh is director of the Human Rights Program of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid and coordinator of the East Timor Talks Campaign.]