Fiji's Daily Post: 11 September 1999
EAST TIMOR: OPINION: 'STOP THE BLOODBATH'
Fiji's Daily Post says: "The world must take the initiative and move to stop the bloodshed [in East Timor]. What is needed is a multinational force to replace the Indonesian military presence and protect the people of East Timor from further atrocities."
THE WORLD continues to look at East Timor as it had done a quarter of a century ago when Indonesia invaded it and killed nearly 100,000 people in the process.
Even this time, when the East Timorese people are being slaughtered and driven from their homes by Indonesia-friendly terrorists, the world still watches. The problem is that the world is still listening to Indonesia, just as it had been listening to it since the 1975 invasion that began one of the world's worst cases of ethnic cleansing and racial terrorism.
What is happening in East Timor today is no different from what happened in Europe. Yet, while the world was quick to rush into Bosnia, the superpower leaders watch East Timor from the APEC meeting in Auckland and are doing little to stop the bloodbath.
The United States did not need any convincing when it stormed into Kuwait to stop Saddam Hussein. Yet for 24 years it has watched the people of East Timor being put through one of the world's worst cases of atrocities, and done nothing.
The problem too with East Timor is that the arm that crushes it belongs to Indonesia, which has one of the world's biggest armies, and is also a key foothold for western militarism in Asia.
But that should not stop the world from moving in to stop the killing. The result of the referendum, which voted overwhelmingly for independence, means that Indonesia has no more rights in East Timor, not that it had any in the first place. Indonesia's forceful occupation of East Timor has never been legalised, not by the United Nations, which is now likely to flee the country because of the killing by Indonesia-backed pro-Jakarta terrorists.
We in Fiji and the Pacific Islands should be more concerned with what is happening in East Timor because, in essence, East Timor is a Pacific Island country. The lackadaisical attitude of the superpowers, most of whom are gathered in Auckland for APEC, to immediately end the Timor ordeal, suggests that the island states of the Pacific are categorised in the same sense of unimportance.
To stand at the podium in Auckland and make noises is not enough. The world must take the initiative and move in to stop the bloodshed. What is needed is a multinational force to replace the Indonesian military presence and protect the people of East Timor from further atrocities.