Margarita Windisch, Melbourne
On July 5, anti-war and Timor Sea oil protesters targeted foreign minister Alexander Downer over Australia's theft of East Timor's oil and gas and its ongoing role in the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Downer was addressing a meeting co-hosted by the Australian-American Association, the Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Age newspaper on the topic "The world according to Bush: Australia, United States and the world — a foreign policy perspective".
The Timor Sea Justice Campaign (TSJC) and Melbourne Stop the War activists accused the Australian government of stealing oil from highly impoverished and recently independent East Timor. They also called on Downer to listen to Australian public opinion and withdraw the troops from Iraq.
Activists dressed up in suits and masks of Downer and former foreign minister Gareth Evans, toasting with oil-filled champagne glasses the bonanza theft enriching transnational companies on the backs of suffering Timorese. An impromptu "people's court" found Downer guilty of war crimes, theft and human rights abuses, and agreed that he was a serious threat to society and needed to be locked up for life.
The TSJC's Tom Clarke said before the protest that "although the Australian government is set to short-change East Timor with the recently proposed resource sharing deal, the dispute about maritime boundaries" between Australia and East Timor is "far from over".
According to Clarke, "There's a lot of unfinished business and Mr Downer needs to stop stalling and instead put his head down and get the job done. If drawing a line halfway between two coastlines is too hard for him or his department, they should simply take the matter to the International Court of Justice and let the independent umpire settle the dispute once and for all."
Clarke added: "In the case of the Timor Sea dispute, it's a matter of a powerful nation shunning multilateral organisations such as the United Nations and blatantly ignoring international law to profit from the theft of petroleum resources, so obviously we have similar concerns to the Stop the War Coalition about the Australian government's behaviour."
From Green Left Weekly, July 13, 2005.
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