East Timor needs urgent international solidarity

Workers' Liberty presents this resolution for supporters of East Timorese independence to put to union, campaign and community group meetings.

1. We denounce the terror and attempted genocide by Indonesian and Indonesian-backed forces in East Timor.

2. We denounce the complicity of successive Australian governments, ever since1975, in supporting Indonesia's conquest of East Timor and supporting the Indonesian military.

3. We support East Timor's right to independence.

4. We call for:
   • Indonesia to withdraw all troops from East Timor now and facilitate the return of all East Timorese forcibly evacuated
   • Trade-union boycotts against Indonesian interests
   • Australia to end all military links with or supplies to the Indonesian government
   • The Australian government to state immediately that it recognises East Timor as an independent nation and will recognise a representative East Timorese national government based on the referendum majority.
   • Immediate aid to be air-lifted to the mountain regions
   • Australia to have an open door for refugees from East Timor.

Indonesian army remains in East Timor, even if a UN peacekeeping force enters.

The Indonesian military and government are the guilty force behind the massacres of the people of East Timor. The Australian Government has been a willing partner in this and is a guilty accomplice, since 1975.

The best support we can mobilise for the people of East Timor is to fight against the role of the Indonesian Government and military, and to demand that our Government cuts all support which can sustain the Indonesian policy in East Timor. That is the focus of our position.

Australian or UN troops are going in only as a result of a deal with the Indonesian government.

Our job is to apply what pressure we can to make sure that any such deal does not do down the people of East Timor (e.g. not a deal to partition East Timor, or for Australian troops to go in and disarm Falintil, etc. Remember Srebenica, where the UN troops went in, disarmed the Bosniacs, then withdrew when the Serbian forces came in and massacred the Bosniacs).

Habibie has conceded the admission of Australian and UN troops because of working-class and popular pressure and the impact of this on the Australian and other governments. Yet the TNI will also remain to work "with the peacekeepers". There will be complications and delays in the entry of the UN forces, the removal of the TNI, the ending of the killings and the achievement of independence.

The need to campaign for independence and the removal of Indonesian troops remains, regardless of the presence of UN peacekeepers in East Timor.