the upcoming referendum in East Timor - was The weakness of the anti-war movement

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Thu May 20 22:11:23 PDT 1999


Interesting, but not to the point. The question was about the justification for Chomsky's comment that "Today there's strong opposition to US support for Indonesian slaughter in East Timor [in spite of the fact that] there are no American body bags" -- and that's clearly true.

On Fri, 21 May 1999, rc-am wrote:


> >and the upcoming referendum in East Timor
> >resulted from the brave Timorese resistance joined to a vocal opposition
> >strong enough to bring it to world attention (as the Nobel prizes showed).
>
> bosh. the upcoming referendum, and the swiftly unfolding campaign of
> violence and 'hamletting', is a carefully calculated attempt to frighten
> the hell out of the opposition to Indonesian rule in east timor. it is
> a sign of the weakness of the resistance; as the recent agreement b/n
> Portugal and indonesia brokered by the UN was a sign of its military
> weakness: it places the onus on Falantil (Fretilin) to disarm,
> apparently alongside the disarming of the paramilitaries, who of course
> can be re-armed at the drop of a hat. the resistance is indeed brave,
> but unfortunately, it is not in a position to do much at present other
> than denounce the atrocities committed daily by the paramilitaries in
> the lead up to the first (and probably last) referendum. Falantil do
> not want to fight the paramilitaries, they do not want to allow this to
> be transformed from a struggle against Indonesian rule to one of 'civil
> war', but I fear they have been outflanked. if nothing changes in the
> lead up to the referendum, I would be astounded if there isn't a vote
> for autonomy (remembering that this would mean no subsequent vote on
> independence).
>
> the east timorese resistance is either terrified and gone underground,
> has fled, or is in exile. it is not strong. at present it is very
> weak; and pretending that it is strong is only an excuse not to pay
> attention.
>
> Angela
> ---
> rcollins at netlink.com.au
>
>
>



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