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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