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Some of the major seminarians in their classroom at the temporary major seminary in Fatu
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Edited from a report by Fr Paul Stenhouse, Australian chairman of Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic charity that aids the
Church in third world or former Communist countries, who recently visited East Timor with the charity’s Australian director, Phillip Collignon.
Much of Dili remains in ruins as I write.
Unemployment is widespread, around 35,000 homes need to be rebuilt, and more than 50,000 refugees remain in camps in Indonesian-controlled West Timor.
Potentially deadly diseases like malaria and dengue
fever pose an added problem for locals and foreign aid-workers alike.
The city has no electricity for a great deal of the night, so homes are in danger from appliances like candles and makeshift kerosene
lamps that are all that is available.
On the night I arrived in Dili (March 16, 2001), a house attached to the building in which I was staying caught fire and was destroyed. (I was in a building belonging to
the Claretian Fathers, alongside the Pertamina petrol depot).
A young man sleeping in one of the rooms escaped with his life but he and a companion lost all their possessions in the fire.
For the time
being, available food appears to be adequate for East Timor.
However, to reverse the social and economic distress caused by the scorched earth policy of the Indonesian withdrawal and by pro-Indonesian
militia will take great courage on the part of the Timorese and much long-term inter-national support.
Community reconciliation is a sine qua non if a viable nation is to rise Phoenix-like out of the ruins
of Jakarta’s failed experiment in social engineering and economic spoliation.
We visited mountain communities along the border with West Timor where hundreds of locals trained by the Church are working to
reintegrate militia members and their families into communities.
Such initiatives appear to be bearing fruit.
When the population of Ainaro in southern East Timor was consulted recently about the
possible return of militia leader Cancio Lopes de Carvalho and his brother Nemesio, most said they were willing to take them back provided they accepted the outcome of the 1999 referendum and were prepared to face
justice.
The militia leaders agreed to these terms and said that they were willing to work towards reconstruction of the country.
If East Timor can continue along this path it will set an
unparalleled example of tolerance and maturity for countries that seem to value vengeance above justice.
Elections are planned for August 30; the UN has been working since 1999 to make free and secure
elections a reality. It has peace-keeping forces scattered throughout the country.
Australian troops patrol the mountainous border with West Timor on foot and in Blackhawk helicopters. A number of local
officials commented that if the Australians were to leave they couldn’t be sure how long the pro-Indonesian militia could be kept out.
This view is supported by Jose Ramos-Horta, East Timor’s Shadow Minister
for Foreign Affairs, who warned recently that premature withdrawal of UN troops and civilian support staff could “destabilise and derail the entire process (of peaceful transition to independence)”.
The
question of compen sation to be sought from Indonesia for the damage caused to the East Timorese economy and infrastructure at all levels of society by the looting and destruction by Indonesian forces – military and
militia – has yet to be broached (the UN estimates that almost 70 per cent of homes, public buildings and civil and commercial infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, and 500,000 people displaced in the reign of
terror after the independence vote).
If Indonesia is to win back the confidence of its neighbours it must accept responsibility for the havoc it wreaked in East Timor, and join in the international effort to
rebuild it.
East Timor deserves a fair go. In 1941 Australia was quick to send troops to this technically neutral country to try to stem the Japanese military advance towards the Australian mainland.
Although based in Dutch Timor Australians operated in Dili, Baucau and throughout East Timor.
To speak of East Timor’s “substantial on-going cost to Australia” as an argument against its viability would be to
ignore the “substantial on-going cost” to East Timor that Australian intervention caused in World War II.
Many thousands of East Timorese died at the hands of the Japanese because of Australia’s intervention
and because of their collaboration with Australian forces. Some put the number who died as high as 60,000.
More than 250,000 East Timorese are said to have died in 1975–80 in a genocidal web that Indonesia
and, especially, the Soeharto family were to weave over the oil and gas reserves (originally estimated to be greater than Kuwait), coffee, cement and sugar cane.
The resources are there. Why else would the
Soehartos and the Indonesian military have been so unwilling to relinquish control and why would they have invested so many hundreds of millions in US dollars there?
The fact that much of the infrastructure
has been destroyed is no reason to lose confidence in its potential as a viable, independent state.
Everything depends on the political will of the East Timorese people who have shown their mettle by voting
for independence in the teeth of murderous intimidation.
They know that on August 30 they need to elect truly democratic rulers who will work for the common good.
They can’t do this without help.
The US has promised a $300 million aid package.
And, if Australia continues the pattern of the past 18 months, the people of East Timor may well prove the pundits wrong – and Australia will have partly
discharged a long-standing debt.
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