East Timor

As the massacres continue, it's "business as usual" with the butchers of the Indonesian regime.

Ever since the Indonesian military invaded East Timor in 1975, there has been a wall of silence around the horrific repression there. The major powers in the region- Australia for example, chose to ignore the plight of the East Timorese. With the exception of the libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky and rare journalists like John Pilger, the world press chose to ignore East Timor. A recent cartoon sums up the situation- a map of the world with only East Timor named, and 'Amnesia' placed on every other state.

At least 200,000 people have been butchered in East Timor in the last 25 years and the total is mounting. In the meantime Indonesia has been supplied with arms and other materials and no pressure has been put on them to leave East Timor. Even in the midst of the violence the Blair government defended the sale of Hawk jets to Indonesia, even when they were taking intimidating flights over East Timor and defending the invitation of the Indonesian regime to the arms fair in Britain.

The present Indonesian regime was founded on the military coup that overthrew Sukarno and the massacre of half a million people in 1965. This was connived at by America's Central Intelligence Agency and US administration.

But is it a good thing that The United Nations is now intervening in East Timor? No. The whole history of the UN exposes it as a tool of American interests. In East Timor it is a cover for the Australian armed forces to increase their influence in the region. The express aim of the UN forces is to disarm not just the murderous militias armed and paid for by Indonesia, but any militias set up to protect the local population. Already the idea of partition of East Timor has been raised by some of the pro-Indonesian militias. Indeed, the UN might connive at this, using its armed forces to help this come about. For their part, the French government has been the most gung-ho in calling for armed intervention in East Timor. This is done not out of humanitarianism but because France has interests in the region and wants to upstage Australia.

Intervene

Indeed, the "four year transition period" put forward by the United Nations will mean that the secession of East Timor from Indonesia will be supervised by Australian military might. Australia will be that closer to Indonesia's borders, useful if friction between the two regional superpowers spirals into hostilities. If the Indonesian masses succeed in overthrowing the regime, then Australia and its Western allies will find it that much easier to intervene to put down revolution.

It might be easy to call for UN intervention in East Timor in the face of the horrific slaughter there. But any UN involvement is only to ensure a swift transition to democracy. This is what the US, Australia and the other Western powers want. Democracy is in their eyes a much better system for increasing the i