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 Daily
Independent Online.
* Friday, July 02, 2004.
Old-style shameless neo-colonialism lives on
By Auro Fraser
Even the most ardent
West-basher must these days confess that international relations are a
complex affair and that old analyses pinning the entire blame for every
ill in developing countries on the unadulterated greed and perfidiousness
of Western countries are over simplistic. One has to consider a multitude of factors when
analyzing the policy of a rich country towards a poor one. Sometimes policy options for the
‘senior’ player are not as simple and morally demarcated as one might
have argued before. However,
this month again, there are signs that old fashioned shameless
neo-colonial greed still has the capacity to lead one rich country to
squeeze life and hope from at least one desperately poor nation.
East Timor is the youngest country in the
world. It was born in 2002,
over a quarter of a century late.
A Portuguese colony, it gained its short-lived independence in
1975 as Portugal was forced by its own decline to release its foreign
possessions. A small, seemingly
insignificant country of under a million people, Western nations did
nothing when Indonesia immediately annexed and colonized East Timor by
force. Even the murder of
western journalists who filmed the Indonesian invasion at the hands of
the Indonesian military were kept as quiet as possible and not acted
upon. There were more
important things to think about: maintaining friendship with Indonesia’s
tyrannical government in the context of the Cold War and huge oil
reserves.
So between 1975 and the late-1990s nations
like Australia, Britain and the USA did nothing to stop the Indonesian
regime from detaining, brutalizing, torturing, murdering and generally
devastating the Timorese people whenever they tried to assert their
claims for independence or even as human beings. The British refused to stop
selling arms to the Indonesians despite the fact that even the leading
British investigative journalist John Pilger had gone undercover in East
Timor and returned with horrifying film evidence of the atrocities
perpetrated against Timorese civilians by Indonesian soldiers, including
with that same British-sold equipment. In an interview at the time with Alan Clarke, the
vegetarian British minister responsible for those arms sales, Pilger
asked if the concern the minister had for the lives - and deaths - of
animals extended to the lives and deaths of ‘humans, albeit
foreigners’. ‘Curiously not,
no,’ was the reply.
The Americans refused to condemn the fact
that the Indonesian soldiers they had trained used tactics such as raping
women then cutting out their womb, placing it over their head and hanging
them in the center of villages, or castrating and hanging men with their
genitals stuffed in their mouth, all as a warning to any others who dared
resist their rule. The
Americans turned a blind eye with the cover-all excuse offered by
Indonesia’s dictator that the Timorese were communist insurgents. The Australians, East Timor’s
nearest neighbours, said nothing about the gross human rights abuses
being perpetrated on their doorstep in return for oil concessions for
exploration in the Timor Sea.
During the Indonesian period of rule, the
Timorese were divested of all control of their nation. The Indonesians sought to either
benignly dominate them or brutally pacify them and when they would not
submit, they simply carried out what some might classify as steady
genocide. Their people were
removed from all mechanisms of social, economic and political control,
skill acquisition and decision making and effectively de-educated,
relegated to live not even as second class citizens. A friend working for the UN
Commission for Human Rights in East Timor during the transition period of
the 2002 independence found that even basic skills such as letter writing
were now almost entirely absent among the Timorese who were trying to set
up institutions with which to run the soon-to-be country. She told of how painful and yet
inspiring it was seeing the Timorese grapple with the challenge of state
creation without even superficially adequate experience. East Timor was truly starting
from zero, with little more than the unfailing will of its people, who
had refused to bow even to overwhelming domination.
On May 20, 2002, East Timor at last threw
off the shackles of subjugation to foreign rule and became an independent
country. It has made
incredible progress in establishing itself as a functioning state but the
challenges remain great.
Basic income, health, and literacy indicators are among the lowest
in Asia. Severe shortages of trained and competent personnel to staff
newly established executive, legislative, and judicial institutions
hinder progress. Rural areas, lacking in infrastructure and resources,
remain brutally poor, and the relatively few urban areas cannot provide
adequate jobs for the growing number of migrants seeking work. Rural
families' access to electricity and clean water is very limited. Currently, one in ten children
are likely to die before the age of five. It is the poorest country in Asia and one of the
poorest in the world. With
virtually no industry, an inadequately educated populace and little with
which to emulate the ‘Asian tiger’ model of development, virtually the
entire hope of the country after so many years of ambitions thwarted by
more powerful nations is the oil and gas reserves present under its sea.
One would think, therefore, that it would
be not just right, but necessary and unquestionable that East Timor
should be allowed to enjoy those resources and benefit from the dividends
they can provide. Given the
history of exploitation of the country, the complicity of rich nations in
that abuse and the dire need for income to build the country, it would
seem indisputable what should happen in the post-colonial era: the
Timorese should be given full access to what is, after all, their oil and
probably their only hope if they are to progress substantively. Without it, the Timorese will
likely be forced to subsist on scarce aid donationsfrom foreign countries
for ever, with no hope of escape from dependency and perhaps with the
outcome of collapsing as a failed state.
But no, one of the usual suspects thinks
otherwise and is not the slightest bit embarrassed to say so. In discussions over the oil
reserves Australia has denounced arguments such as those above as
sentimental nonsense and irrelevant moral blackmail. It argues that an agreement it
signed over Timorese oil with the then-occupying Indonesian government is
still valid. The Timorese
have asked for independent arbitration over the issue, but Australia has
preempted them by withdrawing from the International Criminal Court’s
jurisdiction over maritime issues.
As East Timor watches what is probably its only chance of
meaningful salvation being siphoned away by its rich neighbour, Australia
continues to delay further talks while at the same time extracting as
much of the disputed oil as possible. It has even refused Timor’s request that the revenue
earned be held in an account until the disagreement be resolved.
Australia, it seems, has had enough of
morals. It feels it has
adequately compensated for its complicity in the Indonesian subjugation
of Timorese people during nearly twenty five years through its assistance
in the transition process since 1999. Now, it feels its debts to the battered but resilient
Timorese have been paid and it can go on as before, and shamelessly take
their hope away.
Neocolonialism is a word that has gone out of fashion in the past
few decades. It has been
denigrated as an oversimplistic, paranoid attempt by incompetent Third
World leaders to shift the blame for their own failings. But there should be no doubt
that, even in this postmodern world where virtually nothing is as simple
as it seems, such practices continue on as before at the slightest
opportunity, unadulterated in their grotesque inhumanity, and in the full
light of day.
Fraser, Human
Rights Advisor, Human Rights Monitor, Kaduna, writes for Daily
Independent
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