Peter Murphy gives
an account of the recent regime change brought about in East Timor.
Australia’s
Howard government pulled off its first ‘regime change’ between April and
July this year, on the tiny new country of Timor-Leste (East Timor). Since
late May 2006 Australia has had a military presence in East Timor, where
it has presided over the resignation of the democratically elected prime
minister, Mari Alkatiri. Perhaps needless to say, the Australian government
has throughout this period received strong support for its actions from
the US administration. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice called Australia’s
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in early May and ‘is understood to have
told him the US was “right behind” any action Australia took’ (Sydney
Morning Herald, 13.5.06). She phoned up again later in May to ask what
was needed, and subsequently some heavy airlift capacity was added to Australia’s
1300 troops and four warships. This was the Sheriff and the Deputy Sheriff
at work.
Events
seemed to follow the coup d’etat textbook, and the result has been chaos
for almost the entire population of the capital, Dili. At the time of writing,
in mid-September 2006, about 150,000 people, almost the entire population
of the capital, have been displaced from their homes. Somewhere between
700 and 2000 homes and businesses have been burnt down or looted, and the
year’s coffee crop has not been picked.
The
demonised Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri - blamed for everything that has
gone wrong - was finally forced to resign on 26 June, and the pro-US, pro-Australian
Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, was installed as a figurehead Prime
Minister on July 10.1 However, the FRETILIN government itself
has managed to retain power. The stage is therefore now set for an intense
struggle in the campaign for the April 2007 parliamentary and presidential
elections.
East
Timor was formerly a Portuguese colony but after the 1974 democratic revolution
in Portugal, a process of decolonisation was begun. However, before independence
was formally introduced, the Indonesian military invaded, with the agreement
of the US, Britain and Australia. Fretilin (formed in May 1974) led the
long resistance to this occupation, during which thousands were killed by
Indonesian bombardment or died in Indonesian camps.
After
heavy defeats in the late 1970s, the resistance was rebuilt under the leadership
of current Timorese President Xanana Gusmaõ. The strategy shifted from military
struggle to political struggle, eventually creating the National Council
of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) in 1998, which as well as Fretilin included
the Union of Timorese Democrats (UDT), a party also formed in 1974, which
was led by wealthy families of local and Portuguese descent. In August 1975
UDT had been backed by the Indonesian military in an attempted coup against
Fretilin. During this process, in the late 1980s, Gusmaõ resigned from the
FRETILIN leadership in order to facilitate the creation of the wider coalition
for independence. Following the fall of the dictator Suharto in May 1998,
the new Indonesian government could no longer hold East Timor and surprised
everyone by responding rapidly to a mild suggestion from Australian Prime
Minister Howard for a referendum on independence.
The
CNRT led the vote for independence in the subsequent referendum of 1999,
which was supervised by the UN but relied on the Indonesian military for
security. After the people’s overwhelming rejection of integration into
Indonesia, the army and its militias retaliated by murdering more than 1300
people and destroying 70 per cent of all structures in East Timor. The United
Nations then authorised an Australian-led military force to intervene, with
the UN eventually taking over total administration of the country to oversee
a transition to an elected independent Timorese government.
The
first independent Timorese government was dominated by FRETILIN, which won
57.3 per cent of the vote for the Constituent Assembly in August 2001; and
this was converted into the first parliament after formal independence in
2002 (the first Council of Ministers also included members of minority parties
and non-FRETILIN people). After independence the UN mission was mandated
annually, but it was progressively scaled down, mainly under pressure from
the United States and Australia. By April 2006 the UN mission had only 130
personnel, and its mandate was due to expire on 20 May 2006. To maintain
its own security East Timor has an army of 1500 regular soldiers, and a
police force of 3500 officers, both of which were formed by the UN administration
prior to the transfer of sovereignty.
East
Timor’s fast-growing population is now estimated at 950,000. The economic
mainstay is agriculture and the main cash crop is organic coffee. The unofficial
minimum wage, set by the UN administration prior to May 2002, is US$85 per
month. Since independence, East Timor’s budgets have relied on donor funds
held in trust by the World Bank, but it has refused loans from the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in order to avoid neo-liberal conditionalities.
The budget for 2005-06 was just US$89 million. However it has had economic
growth every year since the devastation of September 1999, and with new
revenue streams from oil and gas, its 2006-07 budget was boosted to US$315
million.
Destabilisation
The
progressive FRETILIN government was from the beginning undermined by violent
movements associated with the Democratic Party and the Social Democratic
Party, who did not accept the results of the 2001 elections. From April
2005 new attempts by these parties to destabilise or overthrow the government
came through parts of the Catholic Church, and now included efforts to turn
the military against the government. (The Catholic Church is very important
in East Timor, because it played a positive role in the long dark years
of the independence struggle, but its clergy are conservative, and resent
the lower incomes and lower church attendances that have come with the end
of the occupation.)
In
April 2005, during a 19-day church protest against the FRETILIN government,
some senior church figures asked the army commander, Brigadier General Taur
Matan Ruak, to stage a coup d’etat, but he refused. Then early in 2006 two
nationals and two foreigners - so far identified only as Australians or
Americans - made two separate approaches to Matan Ruak, and one of his senior
deputies, Lieutenant-Colonel Falur Rate Laek, to stage a coup against the
FRETILIN government. Each time they refused.2 Having failed to
win over General Matan Ruak, the next move was an attempt to divide the
armed forces. In early January 2006 Lieutenant Gastao Salshinha, who had
been denied promotion because he had been caught smuggling sandalwood, launched
a movement in the army’s First Battalion, claiming that ‘westerners’ were
suffering from discrimination in promotion. He met every effort to deal
with this complaint by escalating his demands, to the exasperation of President
Gusmaõ, to whom the complaints were addressed. There is in fact no ethnic
basis to the alleged ‘east-west’ tension. East Timor has 16 ethnic groups
located in different areas of the country. The political opposition is mainly
based in the west of the country, but FRETILIN also has very strong organisation
in the west.
Salsinha
led anti-government demonstrations, with the participation of up to 594
striking soldiers, in February, March and April. These failed to bring the
government down, and these soldiers were subsequently sacked by Brigadier-General
Matan Ruak in mid-March, since they had been absent-without-leave for over
a month. Then, on 28 April there was a wild rampage by about 120 anti-government
thugs in Dili, associated with the sacked soldiers. This did shake things
up - it lead to four deaths, 70 civilian injuries and the burning of around
100 homes. But still the state was united, and the army and police managed
to restore order.
However
another figure now joined in the destabilisation, Major Alfredo Reinado,
the commander of the Military Police unit - a man who had received Military
Staff College training in Australia in late 2005, and whose wife was manager
of the 57-strong US Peace Corps, and employed at the US Embassy. On 3 May
Major Reinado led his small force of 17 heavily armed military police out
of Dili, to the mountains at Maubisse, from where he protested against an
alleged order by Prime Minister Alkatiri for the army to open fire on civilians
during the 28 April disturbances. Reinado declared his continuing loyalty
to President Gusmaõ however. Later in May it was Major Reinado’s forces
that were to lead the assault that became the immediate trigger for outside
intervention.
As
well as these skirmishes at home, the East Timorese government was now facing
problems at the UN. In New York on 5 May, East Timor’s Foreign Minister
Ramos Horta, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and almost the entire UN Security
Council, were ready to vote to extend and strengthen the UN Office in East
Timor, with a new mandate lasting to 20 May 2007. This was particularly
important since the first parliamentary and presidential elections since
independence were due in April 2007, and the scare of 28 April had underlined
the nation’s fragility. But Australia’s Ambassador, the former Defence Minister
Robert Hill, and US Representative William Brencick opposed the extension
- and they got their way. The mandate was extended to just 20 June 2006.
Following
on from this, on 11 May the Howard government decided to mobilise a naval
taskforce and 1100 soldiers to be ready to intervene ‘if requested by the
Timor government or by the United Nations’. The Timorese heard about this
only on the news. The die was cast. There was no way that such a taskforce
would be mobilised simply for practice - it was going to intervene.
The
attack came on 23 May, just three days after the second FRETILIN National
Congress, which re-elected Alkatiri as General Secretary. (His victory was
unopposed but controversial, as his main competitor, Ambassador to the UN
and USA Jose Luis Guterres, failed to gain enough support to be nominated,
but said that the election by ‘show of hands’ was bullying.) Major Reinado
and his troops returned to the hills above Dili and opened fire on an army
observation post. Somehow Reinado had managed to arrange an interview with
Australia’s SBS TV Dateline programme, in which he called for international
intervention, immediately prior to the shootout he initiated. The
encounter was recorded and the whole thing broadcast, with Dateline
reporter David O’Shea saying to camera, ‘Surely this will bring in the international
intervention’. Early the following morning, on 24 May, a second group –
this time armed police led by a Commander Rai'los - attacked the army headquarters
and a third group – again police led by a former police commander Abilio
Mesquita - attacked Brigadier-General Matan Ruak’s house in the west of
Dili. That day the police commander Paulo Martins, his deputy Ismael Babo
and many Dili police joined the rebel soldiers and police arms were removed
from the arsenal. (Martins had been police chief under the Indonesians,
and was selected for his post by the UN administration prior to 2002.)
In
the face of this crisis, Prime Minister Alkatiri, President Gusmaõ and Francisco
(Lu-Olo) Guterres, the President of Parliament, then invited in Australian,
Malaysian, New Zealand and Portuguese military and police to restore order.
The Australians were the first to arrive, on the evening of 26 May, as troops
loyal to the government drove the armed rebels out of Dili. Government troops
then returned to barracks and handed their arms to the Australians, as ordered.
The
day before this (25 May), two or three government soldiers had attacked
37 unarmed police outside the UN compound in Dili, and this led to a split
in the state structures. Just how this shocking incident took place - 12
police were killed and 25 wounded - is still being investigated, but it
appears to have been contrived in some way. President Gusmaõ and Foreign
Minister Horta, however, reacted to this horror by beginning to separate
from Prime Minister Alkatiri and his government, with the President now
claiming sole power over all the security forces. There has been no evidence
that Prime Minister Alkatiri was in any way connected to this attack, but
it has played a significant role in the campaign against him, both in terms
of the split within the state leadership, and as a justification for subsequent
denigration of the FRETILIN government.
On
26 May - the day that Australian forces arrived in East Timor - Australian
Prime Minister Howard declared that East Timor had been ‘poorly governed
for years’. He repeated this on 28 May, saying that there had to be change
in the government of East Timor.3 This fuelled an already predatory
media agenda against Prime Minister Alkatiri in Australia. The Portuguese
government at this point officially protested at Australia’s interference
in East Timor’s internal affairs. The outside forces had been invited in
to support the government in the face of armed dissident elements. Yet it
was the government that had been disarmed, and was being blamed for the
crisis, while the rebels kept their arms and had free media access.
By
early June Major Reinado had dropped his allegations about Alkatiri’s having
ordered troops to fire on civilians during the events of April 28, instead
arguing that that FRETILIN and Alkatiri were ‘communist’ and had to be destroyed.
On 16 July, claiming that he was acting under orders from the President,
Reinado theatrically surrendered just 12 weapons to Australian forces. According
to Reinado himself, however, he had been enjoying Australian beer with the
Australian troops guarding him at Maubisse from the time of their arrival.
He and twenty other soldiers were finally arrested by Portuguese police
and Australian soldiers on 25 July, in possession of arms and ammunition,
and just across the road from the Australian Army HQ in Dili.
The
Australian government was perplexed that Alkatiri was still in power when
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer visited Dili in early June, but they now
had further support from within the heart of the state. Organised gangs,
backed up and coordinated by armed rebel soldiers and police, burnt hundreds
of houses and looted and burnt many businesses and government offices in
Dili, maintaining a reign of terror - in spite of the presence of Australian
and other forces. Support for Alkatiri’s overthrow was also forthcoming
from the Australian media, as it escalated its campaign. Across most of
the media - and in a way which echoed many CIA media campaigns in Latin
America and elsewhere - there was a wildly inaccurate portrayal of Alkatiri
as an unpopular, authoritarian, fundamentalist Marxist, who ran a corrupt,
nepotistic government. Alkatiri, a founder of FRETILIN and leader of its
External Delegation, is in fact a well-trained lawyer and an effective administrator,
credited along with President Gusmaõ with creating CNRT, and also for creating
South East Asia’s cleanest government, with a deep commitment to constitutional
rule and institutional development. The violence in Dili was detached from
its actual perpetrators and reported as if it was general phenomenon for
which the government was in some way responsible.
On
19 June a programme on Australia's ABC TV called Four Corners launched
an entirely new Alkatiri scandal, alleging that there was a secret FRETILIN
hit squad. A veteran resistance fighter, Commander Rai’los, alleged that
he and thirty men had been given automatic weapons by Interior Minister
Rogerio Lobato as recently as 8 May, and had been ordered by Alkatiri to
kill the 600 striking soldiers, as well as opponents inside FRETILIN. A
list of rifle serial numbers was provided to Four Corners. Rai’los
also took the opportunity to complain that when his group had taken part
in the 24 May attack on the army headquarters at the beginning of the coup
d’etat, they had suffered four casualties. This indication that Rai’los
was part of the anti-government forces from the beginning did not, however,
get in the way of Four Corners’ allegations.
Interior
Minister Lobato was hauled in for questioning after the programme, and placed
under house arrest. The media was then told by unnamed ‘court officials’
that he had admitted guilt and implicated Alkatiri. Calls for Alkatiri’s
resignation redoubled, but he again flatly rejected the allegations. On
17 July, the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in East Timor apologised for
wrongly reporting that Lobato had twice admitted guilt and implicated Alkatiri
(Sydney Morning Herald, July 27.7.06). In early August, the Judicial
System Monitoring Mission asked why Rai’los had not been investigated, while
such attention had been focused on Lobato and Alkatiri.
On
21 June, President Gusmaõ publicly demanded the prime minister’s resignation
at a Council of State meeting. That night the Australian and US Embassy
staff and local opposition figures threw a party in the Hotel Timor bar.
Next day anti-government protests swelled from 150 to 2000, as young men
were trucked in from Maliana in the west, to roam around Dili in large packs
shouting ‘kill the communists’, ‘kill Alkatiri’. On 22 June President Gusmaõ
gave a 90-minute speech to the nation, denouncing FRETILIN and saying its
leaders had not been legally elected. (On 11 August, however, the Court
of Appeal in Dili ruled that the elections at the FRETILIN Congress were
legal.)
Still
FRETILIN insisted that Alkatiri should stay as Prime Minister, based on
the fact that they had received 57.3 per cent of the vote in the 2001 elections,
and on the constitution. But then Foreign Minister Horta resigned and Gusmaõ
also threatened his resignation. To forestall this, and in the interests
of maintaining national unity, Alkatiri resigned on 26 June. On 28 June
he addressed FRETILIN supporters in a public rally to the east of Dili,
calling on them to defend the constitution, and to focus on winning the
2007 elections. Despite long delays by the Australian military, 20,000 people
were finally allowed to assemble and parade in Dili on 29 and 30 June, where
they called on President Gusmaõ to uphold the constitution and to work with
the elected leaders to resolve the political impasse legally and peacefully.
They called for reconciliation. The President responded positively.
Jose
Ramos Horta was sworn in as Prime Minister on 10 July, technically nominated
by FRETILIN. On 14 July, Agriculture Minister Estanislau da Silva, a strong
supporter of Alkatiri and a senior leader of FRETILIN, was sworn in as First
Deputy Prime Minister. (Da Silva is also the Chair of the Council of Ministers.)
Jose Luis Guterres (the man defeated by Alkatiri at the FRETILIN congress)
is now Foreign Minister. The Health Minister Rui Maria de Araujo, an independent,
has become the Second Deputy Prime Minister.
On
18 July, Prime Minister Howard flew to Dili to congratulate the new Prime
Minister.
The
Democratic Party, with seven seats in the 88 seat parliament, and the Social
Democratic Party, with six seats, have never accepted the 2001 election
outcome, and have not been a constructive opposition. They have repeatedly
used destabilisation tactics, including violence, and have exploited the
well-known tension between President Gusmaõ and FRETILIN to pressure the
President to dismiss the government.
It
was this negative dynamic that was used and amplified by foreign interests
in 2006. An important background to these events, however, is western strategic
relationships with Indonesia. Both the Howard and Bush governments are focused
on the ‘global war on terror’ and relations with China; and Indonesia and
the Indonesian armed forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia - TNI - who still
play a dominant role in Indonesian politics) thus loom very large in strategic
value for both governments. The Bush administration wants a renewed alliance
with the TNI, and to keep Chinese influence in Indonesia to a minimum. Australia’s
interests are slightly different. Though recognising the need for co-operation
with Indonesia in the interests of the global alliance against terror, all
Australian governments see Indonesia as a strategic threat, or as the pathway
of an invader from further north. The Australian strategy is thus to placate
Indonesia, but always to be able to defeat the TNI in a conflict, and to
have guaranteed US support for this. Both Howard and Bush want to suppress
any Al-Qaeda development in Indonesia. Thus on 6 June, while chaos was reigning
in Dili under the gaze of Australian troops, US Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld was visiting Jakarta to develop practical aspects of military cooperation.4
The
US and Australian governments are currently seeking to normalise relations
with the Indonesian military. Both governments have previously quarrelled
with TNI over East Timor. The US broke relations with the TNI after the
Dili Massacre in December 1991, restoring them only in November 2005. And
the TNI abruptly broke relations with Australia in September 1999, when
the UN military force, dominated by Australia, entered East Timor, and the
TNI had to withdraw forever from the territory they had seized in 1975.
But
tiny East Timor continues to upset the main game. For the TNI, East Timor
is a symbol of the treachery of Canberra and Washington; and East Timor’s
first government, led by the national liberation movement, is a neon sign
in the region that the TNI can be thwarted. This is particularly dangerous
for the Indonesian government as their rule over the provinces of Aceh and
Papua is under serious challenge. They therefore use the fact that the US
and Australia need their co-operation in order to pressurise their governments
on regional issues. Thus for both Howard and Bush, beating up on the FRETILIN
government made good strategic sense.
And
the Bush administration also had another motive to punish East Timor’s government
- its agreements with the Cuban republic for 220 Cuban doctors and 30 medical
technicians to work in East Timor’s public health system, and for 300 Timorese
students to study medicine in Cuba. (Health care in East Timor is now widely
available and free.)
What’s
more, both President Gusmaõ and Prime Minister Alkatiri had offended Australia’s
Foreign Minister Downer during the protracted negotiations about the seabed
boundary between their respective countries, and the share of each in Timor
Sea gas and oil revenues. In the 1980s Australia’s Labor government had
signed a Timor Sea Treaty with Indonesia to facilitate oil and gas developments,
on terms exceedingly generous to Australia. Under the UN administration,
a new treaty was negotiated on fairer terms to East Timor, which Alkatiri
was pressured to sign in 2002. At this time there was also disagreement
about the seabed border, which has yet to be resolved, partly because the
biggest gas and oil field lies in a highly contested zone and the arguments
about revenue share and the border were linked. Only in January 2006 was
it agreed that Timor and Australia would share equally in the revenue from
this field, but there will be no seabed boundary determined for 50 years.
Alkatiri is widely credited for getting this better than expected - but
still unfair - outcome, though both he and President Gusmaõ were reviled
in the Australian foreign affairs establishment for their defiant stance.
This provided further emotional context for official venom against him this
year.
Senior
Murdoch media commentators Paul Kelly and Greg Sheridan each had articles
in The Australian at the end of May projecting a view close to the
government - that, post-9/11, Australia had to interfere in and change regional
governments to avoid ‘failed states’. (There was also the more extreme view
from the Jakarta lobby in the Department of Foreign Affairs, that East Timor
should never have been independent.) On 30 May Kelly wrote that Australia’s
military intervention was ‘a highly political intervention in its impact,
atmospherics and consequences’. He continued: ‘In this sense Australia is
operating as a regional power or a potential hegemon that shapes security
and political outcomes … We have taken complete charge of law and order
in East Timor and its domestic power struggle is conducted against the backdrop
of our unstated pressure’.
Endnote,
21 September 2006
The
story continues to unfold - at the end of August Reinado led a breakout
of his troops from Becora jail, after troops under Australian command withdrew
from the area for four days. In September it was revealed that Gusmaõ had
paid part of Reinado’s hotel bill at Maubisse, and that Mesquita - arrested
with 16 automatic weapons in Dili on 19 June - had provided a written statement
to the US Embassy and Australian military officers about his role on 24
May, claiming he was under orders from President Gusmaõ. Reinado, again
armed and on the loose, again well connected to the media, has now harshly
attacked the new Prime Minister, for failing to keep his promises, echoing
the demands of the Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party to immediately
take over government.
This is Peter Murphy’s personal account and does not
necessarily represent the views of the SEARCH Foundation.
Notes
1.
Mr Horta, part of the External FRETILIN Delegation since late 1975, resigned
from FRETILIN in the early 1990s to become the personal ambassador of Xanana
Gusmaõ (now President of East Timor, then leader of the liberation struggle).
Horta was never a leftist in FRETILIN, and in his diplomatic life appears
to have absorbed the conventional neo-liberal wisdom. At the time of the
coup he was Foreign Minister of East Timor. (To become prime minister Horta
had to put off his strong ambition to become the next UN Secretary-General.)
2.
See Australian journalist John Martinkus, New Matilda, 28 June 2006.
3.
Transcript, ABC TV Insiders, 28 May 2006.
4. American Forces Press Service, 6.6.06.
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