East Timor

=
<a href="http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/East_Timor_TOHK.html">http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/East_Timor_TOHK.html</a>

nairn
=
<a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/">http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/</a>

BC cut off mil aide to indonesia


The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975 set the stage

for the long, bloody, and disastrous occupation of the territory that ended

only after an international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999. 

President Bill Clinton cut off military aid to Indonesia in September 1999—reversing

a longstanding policy of military cooperation—but questions persist about

U.S. responsibility for the 1975 invasion; in particular, the degree to

which Washington actually condoned or supported the bloody military offensive. 

Most recently, journalist Christopher Hitchens raised questions about the

role of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in giving a green light

to the invasion that has left perhaps 200,000 dead in the years since. 

Two newly declassified documents from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library,

released to the National Security Archive, shed light on the Ford administration’s

relationship with President Suharto of Indonesia during 1975. Of special

importance is <a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/#doc4">the record of Ford’s and Kissinger’s meeting

with Suharto in early December 1975</a>.  The document shows that

Suharto began the invasion knowing that he had the full approval of the

White House.  Both of these documents had been released in heavily

excised form some years ago, but with Suharto now out of power, and following

the collapse of Indonesian control over East Timor, the situation has changed

enough that both documents have been released in their entirety.

==
<a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/secret-documents-reveal-sick-mindset-people-who-signed-genocide-east-timor">http://www.alternet.org/world/secret-documents-reveal-sick-mindset-people-who-signed-genocide-east-timor</a>

australia murdoch
ecret documents found in the Australian National Archives provide a

glimpse of how one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century was

executed and covered up. They also help us understand how and for whom

the world is run.The documents refer to East Timor, now known as

Timor-Leste, and were written by diplomats in the Australian embassy in

Jakarta. The date was November 1976, less than a year after the

Indonesian dictator General Suharto seized the then Portuguese colony on

the island of Timor.The terror that followed has few parallels;

not even Pol Pot succeeded in killing, proportionally, as many

Cambodians as Suharto and his fellow generals killed in East Timor. Out

of a population of almost a million, up to a third were extinguished.This

was the second holocaust for which Suharto was responsible. A decade

earlier, in 1965, Suharto wrested power in Indonesia in a bloodbath that

took more than a million lives. The CIA reported: “In terms of numbers

killed, the massacres rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th

century.”This was greeted in the Western press as “a gleam of

light in Asia” (Time).The BBC’s correspondent in South East Asia, Roland

Challis, later described the cover-up of the massacres as a triumph of

media complicity and silence; the “official line” was that Suharto had

“saved” Indonesia from a communist takeover.“Of course my British

sources knew what the American plan was,” he told me. “There were

bodies being washed up on the lawns of the British consulate in

Surabaya, and British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian

troops, so that they could take part in this terrible holocaust. It was

only much later that we learned that the American embassy was supplying

[Suharto with] names and ticking them off as they were killed. There was

a deal, you see. In establishing the Suharto regime, the involvement of

the [US-dominated] International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were

part of it. That was the deal.”I have interviewed many of the

survivors of 1965, including the acclaimed Indonesian novelist Pramoedya

Ananta Toer, who bore witness to an epic of suffering “forgotten” in

the West because Suharto was “our man”.  A second holocaust in

resource-rich East Timor, an undefended colony, was almost inevitable....
is was a conspiracy to steal East Timor’s oil and gas. In leaked

diplomatic cables in August 1975, the Australian Ambassador to Jakarta,

Richard Woolcott, wrote to Canberra: “It would seem to me that the

Department [of Minerals and Energy] might well have an interest in

closing the present gap in the agreed sea border and this could be much

more readily negotiated with Indonesia … than with Portugal or

independent Portuguese Timor.”  Woolcott revealed that he had been

briefed on Indonesia’s secret plans for an invasion. He cabled Canberra

that the government should “assist public understanding in Australia” to

counter “criticism of Indonesia”.

==