Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, October 27, 1996

By Gwynne Dyer.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist and historian.

Section: COMMENTARY

The Chicago Tribune

October 24, 1996

You can't help but suspect that the committee that gave this year's Nobel Peace Prize to East Timor's Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo knew that he was soon going to meet his people's chief oppressor, Indonesia's President Suharto. Even in the aftermath of genocide, the ironies were too delicious to miss.

It was Suharto who ordered the invasion of East Timor in December, 1985, only six days after it got its independence from Portugal. It was Suharto's troops who slaughtered or starved an estimated 200,000 East Timorese in the following six years to crush the resistance to Indonesian rule. (The territory's population today is only 750,000.)

And now here was Suharto, scheduled to visit East Timor only four days after the announcement of Belo's Nobel Prize. Moreover, he was coming to inaugurate a 56-foot black marble statue of Jesus on a hill overlooking Dili, East Timor's capital.

Suharto, leader of the world's largest Muslim country, should have appreciated that irony, for he is personally responsible for the fact that East Timor is now overwhelmingly Christian. When Indonesia invaded 21 years ago, only about one-third of the people were Catholics. Now, more than 90 percent are, because it is the only safe way to continue opposing Indonesian rule.

The statue itself is just a propaganda exercise, intended to show that Indonesia respects East Timor's Christian traditions. Even so, Suharto did not congratulate the bishop on his Nobel Prize, or even mention it. He couldn't since it implicitly condemns everything he has done to East Timor since 1975. Bishop Belo then compounded Suharto's embarrassment by stating that "the statue may have been inaugurated but it has not been blessed. For Roman Catholics it is the blessing that counts. The statue is still a subject of controversy for us."

The bishop even spoke openly about the fact that "there is still oppression, with soldiers everywhere, watching you, hearing what you're talking about." A small victory in a long tragedy. But East Timor is no closer to freedom today than yesterday.

"This was about to become a forgotten conflict," said Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Nobel Committee, "and we wanted to contribute to maintaining momentum."

A worthy goal, but you have to ask: What momentum? There are only a few hundred guerrillas still active in the mountains of East Timor. The last major public protest against Indonesian rule, at Santa Cruz cemetery outside Dili in 1991, was crushed with the slaughter of some 200 students.

Other countries are eager to invest in Indonesia's booming economy, to sell its government arms, to share in the development of the undersea oil and gas reserves off Timor. "The world is a pretty unfair place, littered with examples of acquisition by force," rationalized Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans in 1990. "There is no binding legal obligation not to recognize the acquisition of territory that was acquired by force."

So why go on? What hope is there that three-quarters of a million people, most of them poor peasants, could ever win back control of their own destiny from Indonesia, which has 200 million people and powerful friends everywhere?

Just this: More than two decades after Indonesia made East Timor its 27th province, the United Nations still does not recognize the annexation. As far as the UN is concerned, East Timor still is a Portuguese colony awaiting a valid act of self-determination. Every year the Indonesians and their friends try to get this UN position changed--and every year they fail.

Borders may seem a slightly old-fashioned notion in the age of the global market and the Internet, but for the weaker and more vulnerable countries in the world--which is the great majority of countries--the sanctity of borders is vital. If borders can be changed by force, then none of them is safe. So the United Nations never recognizes border changes that are accomplished by force: not East Timor, not the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem, not the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait.

Of course, small countries cannot always expect the world to come to their aid if they are attacked. Kuwait had oil, so it got help when Iraq invaded it in 1990. East Timor had no oil, so it got no help. But we can at least insist that the international community does not ratify the results of aggression, so that a door remains open to right the wrong in the future if circumstances change.

But how could the door every open for East Timor? The answer is that the East Timorese are waiting for 1989 to reach Indonesia.

In 1989, as the Soviet Union began to democratize, the impossible suddenly became feasible. A window of opportunity opened, and countries that had been under the Russian yoke for decades or even centuries, from the Baltic states to the Caucasus to Central Asia, seized the opportunity and took back their independence without major Russian objections.

The window does not stay open for long (as the Chechens have discovered in their dealings with Russia), but in the first flush of democratization the impossible briefly becomes feasible. When democracy comes to China, a moment of opportunity may open for Tibet. Democracy will come to Indonesia too, one of these days--and when it does, East Timor will be ready.