Australia Knew of Genocide Plans

by Sonny Inbaraj

Australia's top diplomats, according to intelligence reports quoted by a magazine article, had direct evidence -- months before an orgy of killing broke out in the troubled territory after the Aug. 30 vote for independence from Jakarta -- that the Indonesian military was running the militias.

An expose late last week by The Bulletin magazine revealed that on June 21, eight weeks before the referendum vote, a senior Australian military officer flew to Jakarta to confront senior Indonesian army officers.

According to The Bulletin, vice-chief of the Defense Force Air Marshal Doug Riding had a collection of satellite pictures, transcripts and intelligence assessments that "showed beyond doubt that the Indonesian military was complicit in the establishment, fostering, funding, training and coordination of the militia" -- who would later kill thousands of people.

Riding's material, said The Bulletin, had been gathered by Australia's leading intelligence organizations -- human intelligence gathered by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service; a mass of electronic eavesdropping by the Defense Signals Directorate's facility at Shoal Bay, near Darwin and military intelligence by the Defense Intelligence Organization.

The Bulletin article now highlights the credibility gap in recent testimonials of Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) officials representing Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in Senate inquiry hearings into Australia's East Timor policy.

On Aug. 13, seven weeks after Riding's Jakarta meeting, DFAT Deputy Secretary John Dauth told the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade References Committee that he could not confirm reports of Indonesian Kopassus troops in East Timor, saying "I am really not able to say, not because I am hiding anything but because we do not have definitive information on that... I simply do not know whether it is true."

Labor Opposition Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Laurie Brereton hit out at DFAT saying Kopassus' orchestration of the pro-integrationist militias had been a critical element in the unfolding East Timor debacle.

"Giving false or misleading evidence to a Senate inquiry is a very serious matter for which Mr Downer, as the Foreign Minister, must take responsibility," Brereton said.

"It is an old saying that a diplomat is the person sent abroad to lie for their country. The Howard government has sent our diplomats to deceive the Australian parliament and the Australian people."

"A wide-ranging judicial inquiry is essential to restore public confidence in the management of Australia's foreign affairs," Brereton added.

Responding to opposition calls for an inquiry, Downer said:

"I think the public do believe the Australian government has handled this issue well. Obviously no government in the world, in Australia or anywhere else, is going to destroy its relationship with other countries by making public all diplomatic correspondence and discussions."

If it is proved that Downer abrogated his ministerial responsibilities, he will be forced to resign.

The scale of slaughter in East Timor is still unknown and rights groups say the territory-wide purge was well-planned, with refugees recounting Indonesian military-supported militias working from lists as they singled out victims.

According to The Bulletin, Alatas told Downer on Feb. 23 the arming of the groups was "legitimate."

Responding to the allegations, Downer told reporters Alatas had not referred to militias but "auxiliaries found right across Indonesia" which supplemented "under-resourced police and military personnel."

"He (Alatas) made it clear that in Indonesia they'd established, straight after the events in May 1998, security auxiliary groups which supplement the police and the Indonesian military, and he said they were armed, they were armed mainly with sticks and batons," Downer told the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corp.] TV's 7:30 Report.

"The existence of these auxiliaries which exist, by the way, throughout Indonesia in most, if not all, provinces of Indonesia -- that was widely known," he added.

While The Bulletin articles could be used as important pieces of evidence in a formal inquiry into DFAT and Downer's ministerial responsibilities, they have also caused a certain degree of embarrassment in U.S.-Australia ties.

In early August, the U.S. State Department was looking for hard evidence to force the Indonesian military to back off its plan to "scorch" East Timor in the event of an independence vote.

The United States was responding, at that time, to a leaked secret Indonesian government report indicating that a sharp increase in violence will accompany a result favoring independence in East Timor.

The document called on the Indonesian government to confirm its commitment to the militias by "empowering" the pro-integration forces. The document also instructed the paramilitaries to destroy vital facilities in East Timor during their withdrawal.

Australia did something it rarely does: say no to the United States. Canberra argued instead that since the information was gathered solely by Australian intelligence agencies it could not be shared with Washington as it could compromise their sources.

Australia said it alone wanted to confront the Indonesians, and no one else.

"The Australian government went out of its way to cover Jakarta and of course the end result of that is a tremendous tragedy for the people of East Timor," Labor's Brereton said.