East Timor's ex-fighters preach civil disobedience

By AUDREY YOUNG

East Timor's former warriors of independence are now preaching peace over armed struggle.

President Xanana Gusmao led the guerrilla army Falintil while Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta roamed the world seeking support for resistance to Indonesian rule.

Today they sound like pacifists.

Ramos Horta, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said the independence movements of Indonesian provinces West Papua (Irian Jaya) and Aceh in northern Sumatra could harness support within Indonesia without resorting to violence.

"West Papuans and the Acehnese can mobilise the Indonesian people to their side in sympathy. But to do that they have to avoid at all cost resorting to violence against civilians."

Today's struggles were taking place in a completely different Indonesia to that which faced East Timor after the invasion in 1975, he said. It was now a "dynamic civil society with a dynamic active media".

Ramos Horta had also advocated civil disobedience for the Palestinians - a few weeks before Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razek Yehiyeh made the same call.

"Can you imagine three or four million Palestinians sitting down in civil disobedience?" asked Ramos Horta.

"They would paralyse Israel and they would mobilise millions of people around the world in sympathy. It would be far more effective than these human bombs.

"When you are dealing with democratic regimes where you have a strong civil society and media you can resort to civil disobedience.

"Israel is one of the few countries where the Government allows live media coverage of the violence the Israeli Army does on civilians - everybody watches.

"Many other conflicts in the world are totally hidden.

"In the case of East Timor, if there had been civil disobedience in the '70s and '80s, who was going to see it?

"The Acehnese, the West Papuans, if they pursue this strategy ... it would be far more difficult for the Government to repress."

Gusmao said that in 1989, while he was leading Falintil, Acehnese rebels sought his agreement on forming an alliance of independence movements among East Timor, Aceh and Irian Jaya.

"I could not accept this idea because we are different.

"Our struggle was different. We were never part of Indonesia, and this is why we didn't agree to join with movements inside Indonesia."

While respecting other views, Gusmao said that having experienced oppression and war, "what we can say is any solution must be, should be a peaceful solution".

Ramos Horta said the lesson to be learned from the East Timor experience was the importance of staying united.

"Avoid extremism. Avoid gratuitous violence. Present a cohesive, unified front at all times.

"Compromise among yourselves to reach a consensus. No one has exclusive truth, monopoly on truth.

"The Timorese side must shoulder a share of the responsibility, because in August 1975 two major East Timorese political groups engaged in a civil war that cost the lives of many hundreds of East Timorese and paved the way for Indonesian intervention.

"I refuse to simply say 'blame everything on Indonesia and on the Americans and Australians, and the East Timorese are all angels'.

"Sorry. I was there. I witnessed it, I was part of it and I saw so much irresponsibility, so much extremism on our side in 1975."

Further reading
Feature: Indonesia and East Timor

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