Fear of Communism....

EAST TIMOR INVASION

By Anton Alimin

THE 7th December , 1996 marks twenty-one years precisely since Indonesian troops moved into East Timor. But the issue of East Timor still attracts worldwide attention.
It will remain an issue so long as the United Nations and the world community do not acknowledge the Indonesian claim to sovereignty over the island.
Despite all that has been written and broadcast about Timor, there has been little attempt to understand Indonesian motives behind Indonesian intervention.
If the issue is to be resolved sooner rather than later, the motivation of the major player should be understood.
I was born an Indonesian citizen, but this does not prevent me from feeling anguish over the death of Dili residents in an “incident” which has its fifth anniversary on 12th of this month, November.
Furthermore, I was in Timor in 1975, working with an Indonesian company dropping medical supplies to the Indonesian Red Cross in Timor. In some way, I feel as though morally involved in creating the situation in East Timor.
In remembering the tragic incident in Dili five years ago, costing too many lives, I would like to present a poem I wrote not long after :

More than 2000 years ago
an ancient Greek poet, Aschylus, wrote
“Even in our sleep pain that cannot forget,
falls drop upon the heart,
and in our despair, against our will,
comes wisdom t us by the awful grace of God.”

Ten days ago, I wrote a poem in remembrance of the Timorese killings,
“…in the naked Tuesday afternoon,
a bunch of humans representing evil
spreading death among innocent people
smells of blood and ammunition mixed together
but remember, we who are left behind will remember
we will always remember the day
in the naked Tuesday afternoon,
the day you were gone…..”


Despite, or perhaps because of, my personal anguish over the deaths on Timor, I believe it is important to understand Indonesian motives at the time. They can be summed up easily in one phrase: Fear of communism. To understand this fear, one has to look at modern Indonesian history.
On 18th September, 1948, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) seized the little town of Madiun, in Central Java, appointed new officials, an announced plans for establishing an Indonesian Soviet State, which would fly a red flag. The leadership of the Indonesian army, while defending the new republic against the Dutch colonials, called this action by the Communists “a stab in the back”
In 1965, there was a coup d’etat. The Indonesian government claimed that, for the second time, the Indonesian Communist Party was responsible for violence which had so far caused the death of nearly half a million people. Since the, anti-communism has become the official ideology of the New Order Soeharto government.
The East Timor issue cannot be separated from the global political context of the day. (For example, South Vietnam fell into Communist hands on the morning of 30th April, 1975).