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Brushtail Graphics

An honourable course of action

9 September 1999

"Gough Whitlam came in for a few minutes this afternoon, but you know the funny thing is, I always thought he was very tall, but he's just a little bloke, really short", Joadja said.

"Yeah, it's weird how that idea got around. Actually he's not much taller than Paul Keating, or even little Johnny Howard, who's only just a bit taller than that little piss-ant Habibe", I replied.

We were sitting in the Brushtail Café late on Saturday morning waiting for the news from East Timor. The thugs of the pro-Indonesian militia were still rampaging through the streets, under the control of Indonesian officers, killing and burning.

It was another "blemish" on Australian history. A third of a century of obsequious co-operation with a tyrannical regime of mass murderers and looters, in which Liberal and Labor had competed in grovelling to Suharto, dividing up the spoils, and training the Indonesian army.

I wondered where Paul Keating was. Perhaps he was also waiting for the results of the plebiscite, drinking Bollinger in some Paris brasserie, with the Suharto kids, or even up in Jakarta commiserating with his good friend, the old looter himself? Was he muttering darkly about his mate, Laurie Brereton, and contemplating the transient nature of 'mateship' in the NSW Right?

Suddenly I became aware of Maria, the mysterious Timorese, sitting beside us.

"Can you imagine how our people feel", she said, "They must lie low out in the bush and hold their fire. They have seen so many die, and they must accept the militias will kill many more before the time is ripe for their intervention.

"The Indonesian army are nothing to do with national defence. They are an internal police army a bunch of thugs trained by the SAS. Who are they there to defend Indonesia against? Australia? Hardly. The Philippines? No. Singapore? Bizarre. Vietnam? Nope. China? Totally unlikely, and you'd get about 20 years warning. Japan? Not these days. Burma? Cambodia? Thailand? Oh Please! The Indonesian army are there to help the Javanese capitalists loot the subject peoples of their little empire and defend their privileges against their own people."

Just then, Kofi Annan came on the radio. We waited impatiently while he plodded through a long explanatory preamble and then the expected news came: 78 per cent for independence. There was wild cheering, but it subsided quickly.

Nothing much had changed by Sunday night, and on TV Dili looked like a ghost town. The populace had fled to the hills and the UN boys and girls were holed up in their compounds under fire, and any journalist who could get on a plane was out of the place.

If you believed the gibberish coming out of Jakarta, the army, the police, and their militia puppets had gone feral, and more generals would be despatched to bring them under control.

"It is all lies of course", said Maria, "They are all under control. They are under the control of that lying bastard Wiranto, and Jakarta has no intention of giving up East Timor, and it never did have. And still Mr Howard chides Mr Habibe as if he were just a bit of a laggard".

She was right of course. The only decent, responsible, honourable course of action for Australia to take now, would be to immediately recognise East Timor and drop about a hundred tonnes of arms to Fantilil.