[asia-apec 144] apcet, apec, sticks & carrots

[George J. Aditjondro by way of daga <daga at hk.super.net>]

Pre script: There are some minor changes in the article, compared to the
one I sent earlier, namely that the Jakarta regime has tried to bribe its
supporters and/or opponents in all the five continents. I made this change,
after reading the complete William Safire Op-Ed essay in the NYT, copied by
Charles Scheiner on KDP-net, today, Oct 8, 1996. Please be alerted. Thank
you, GJA

I am sending you a copy of my revised 'stick-and-carrot' article, which has
not yet been published in the Nation (they have already published two
articles of mine in a month's time). If it is not going to be published in
the Nation, can you find a newspaper, magazine or journal which can publish
it, hopefully in Malaysia and/or the Philippines, so that this piece of
research can serve its purpose to attack Jakarta's barbarous international
diplomacy -- and add some ammo to the ET solidarity movement as well?

Getting it published in Malaysia and/or the Philippines, prior to Apcet2 and
the APEC meeting seems to be important, since I suspect, that Jakarta is
currently, behind the scenes, already working to put pressure on KL and
Manila, to ban Apec2 as well as the parallel NGO-Apec conference. Or, to
set up a black-list of individuals who would not be allowed to enter Kuala
Lumpur and Manila, as has been the case in the first Apcet and the
consequent Bangkok NGO conference, where Jose was kicked out from the
country. So, this article can alert our friends in KL and Manila on what to
expect -- or, deter the Indonesian government from doing the things they
did in Manila and Bangkok two years ago.

While waiting for your reply, I remain your companhero de luta!

George
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Article for the Nation, Bangkok,

                        Jakarta's sticks and carrots in dealing with its
international East Timor diplomacy
                                                        George J. Aditjondro

THE crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Indonesia has triggered
numerous demonstrations all over the world by local human rights activists
as well as Indonesian, West Papuan and East Timorese refugees. These public
protests have now also been joined by Burmese pro-democracy activists, who
are unhappy with Jakarta's support for to the Slorc's acceptance into
ASEAN.

These protests seem to attract increasingly more 'impolite' responses from
the Indonesian diplomatic corps. It seems that the brutal 'in-house'
behaviour of the Indonesian insecurity apparatus has "rubbed off" to
Indonesian diplomats overseas. Or, it may also indicate the depth of
military involvement in Indonesia's diplomatic corps, a major source of
headache to Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, a seasoned civilian
diplomat, whose dreams to become the next UN Secretary General was
shattered by the Nov 12, 1991 Dili massacre.

In the last six months, harrassments of demonstrators by Indonesian
diplomats -- in and outside Indonesian diplomatic compounds -- have been
reported three times from Australia (Darwin, August 17, 1996; Canberra,
April and September 14, 1996), and once from Hong Kong (August 29, 1996).
In Darwin, two young Australian women, Sally-An and Jess, were harrassed at
the Indonesian consulate, when they tried to deliver the petition from the
AFFET (Australian Friends for a Free East Timor) to the Indonesian consul.
As they tried to leave the consulate, two Indonesian man rushed out to the
two small women and began to hit, kick, and punch them.

Adding insult to injury, after this unfriendly diplomatic encounter, the
two female human rights activists were still treated as criminals by the
Australian police. They had to spend four hours of questioning, accompanied
by the usual treatment of criminals (such as finger printing, their photos
taken). Before they were released, to the chagrin of the police officers
present, they insisted on laying complaints against the Indonesian
consulate staff who had assaulted them. Both women suffered trauma as
result of the assault, and both had bruises on their legs as a result of
the kicks they received, plus some bruising on their arms. The Indonesian
consulate, obviously, denied that they had mistreated the two activists,
and accused them instead of trying to lower the Indonesian red-and-white
flag in the diplomatic compound. This accusation has already been denied by
the AFFET activists earlier, in their press release on the internet, two
days earlier.

Likewise, in Hong Kong, Lina P. Cabaero, an activist from the Asian
Students' Association (ASA) was harrassed by a male staff of the Indonesian
consulate general, when she tried to deliver the demonstrators' statement
to the Consul General. Apart from that, several staffpersons from the
Indonesian consulate tried to obstruct the demonstration, by repeatedly
taking close-up pictures of the protestors. A surveillance tactic, which
the Indonesian consulate in Perth, West Australia, has also been carried
out during demonstrations of the Friends of East Timor (FOET), until FOET's
complaints to the Australian Special Branch prompted a visit by the police
to the consulate, asking them to quit their undemocratic practices on
Australian territory.

In a rather more 'milder' way yet still politically intimidating, the
Indonesian Embassy in Canberra has twice this year refused to take part in
public events, where East Timorese supporters also took part. In both
cases, the Australian organisers of those events yielded to the pressure
from the Indonesian diplomats, at the cost of the East Timor supporters --
and their cause, of course. In April 1976, the East Timor Relief
Association (ETRA) was prevented from exhibiting at the National Folk
Festifal in Canberra, because the organisers wished to protect "Indonesian
sensitivies."

This happened again at the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Social
Education Association Expo, only last month (Sept 14, 1996). Although ETRA
had permission to exhibit at the expo, but because the Indonesian Embassy
objected and threatened to pull out, consequently the East Timor supporters
were asked to withdraw "graciously," which they refused to do. The Embassy
staff, true to their threat, removed their exhibit (Letter to the Editor by
Gareth W.R. Smith inCanberra Times , Sept 17, 1996).

Refusing to co-exist with East Timorese and their supporters, even in
international business, cultural and sport events, also seems to become a
more popular tactic of the Indonesian diplomatic corps. In Maputo,
Mozambique, Indonesia's ambassador to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Swaziland,
recently issued another unsophisticated attack on human rights activists in
that African country, which has provided refuge for many East Timorese
activists. In a statement released by the Indonesian official newsagency,
Ambassador Sutedja Kartawidjaja said that "Ramos Horta and Mar'ie Alkatiri
followers" had tried to disturb an Indonesian trade exhibition in Maputo.
According to him, that attempt was not successful, and will not occur
again, "because the local security apparatus have promised that they will
take tough actions against them, including threatening them to shoot them
on sight and kick them out of Mozambique." So said the ambassador on the
phone to Antara  from Harare, on Sept 3, 1996.

It is hard to believe that the Mozambiquean authorities, who have provided
sanctuary for the East Timorese refugees for more than two decadess, and
have constantly opposed Indonesia's occupation of East Timor in the UN, did
indeed made such blatant promise to the Indonesian ambassador.
Nevertheless, the very fact that the Indonesian diplomat could make such a
statement through the official news agency is in itself a major diplomatic
scandal. That public statement indicates an increasingly higher degree of
desparation of the Indonesian diplomatic corps, an increasingly higher
level of penetration of Indonesia's military into the civilian diplomatic
corps. Or, simply an inspiration from the "tough actions" taken against the
PDI activists in Jakarta on that bloody Saturday of July 27, 1996.

A similar desperation was shown, again by the Indonesian consulate general
in Hong Kong, when a Hong Kong-based Portuguese soccer player, Pedro
Xavier, was denied an entry visa to take part in an international soccer
match in Indonesia. Xavier's South China team was going to play an
Indonesian team in Bandung on Sept 19, 1996, in the Asian Cup competition.
The manager of South China soccer team, Lee Yun-Wah, who was born in Macau
and holds a Portuguese passport, was also prohibited to travel with his
team to Indonesia because of the visa problem (Lusa , Sept 19, 1996).

Ironically, in another international sports event, Indonesian athletes
could not avoid playing Portuguese athletes, who openly expressed their
support for East Timor. This happened in Yerevan, Armenia, during the 13-th
Chess Olympiade on Sept 30, when two Portuguese athletes, Tania Saraiva and
Aida Ferreira, faced their Indonesian counterparts, Upi Tamin and Lisa
Lumongdong, on the chess boards, wearing black arm bands with "East Timor"
in big letters on their upper arms. According to the Indonesian news
agency, Antara ,  the two Indonesian athletes won the game, although they
were strongly annoyed by the pro-East Timor symbols worn by their
Portuguese competitors. That, in itself, was a double irony, considering
the fact that both teams were playing in the territory of a nation,
Armenia, whose independence has been denied by its two powerful neighbours,
Russia and Turkey, who have both been guilty of horrendous massacres of the
Armenian people.

(end part 1)
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