> Andy had said:
>
> >Yes of course everyone knew that bloodshed would be the result of a
> pro-independence vote, the 78.5% who voted that way included i'm sure.<
>
> of this, i'm not so sure. you'll recall the UN posters all round east
> timor assuring potential voters that the UN would protect them. ie.,
> whilst various governments and intelligence agencies, the CNRT, and of
> course, the Indonesian govt and military knew that bloodshed would result,
> two things happened simultaneous with this knowledge: a) the UN spent a lot
> of time assuaging fears of bloodshed amongst the east timorese; b) the
> Australian govt, on behalf of the Indonesian govt, lobbied the UN to accept
> an _unarmed_ UN presence during the ballot for the ostensible reason that,
> as documents now make clear, it was deemed that 'reconciliation of the
> factions' would not be possible under such circumstances and was the
> priority.
I not sure what you're saying about the lobbying of the Aust govt, Ange. Was it that "reconciliation of factions" (in East Timor? you mean including the militia and/or Indo military as "factions"?) was not possible, or less probable, with an armed UN faction there that might be able to prevent the bloodshed? So in effect they were arguing for massacre as reconciliation? As you know, the UN, the body that ostensibly needed "convincing" to use unarmed personnel, had reports of the the impending bloodshed weeks in advance. What do you suppose the *real* argument of the Aus/Indo govts were, if you think it was necessary to make any real arguments? Was their any branch of imperial capital that needed convincing that the ET people should not be protected? Was there anybody besides the CNRT that argued for more protection?
> in short, whereas everyone knew of the scheme to massacre and
> destroy the east timorese economy, much effort, by those who knew, was put
> into convincing both the voters (and the rest of the world) otherwise.
So what happened to most of the ET leaders who did that convincing of their own people, if you have been able to find out? Escape to the mountains? Surely they had time to plan that kind of a defense, didn't they?
> lambs to the slaughter. i was literally sick after hearing a nun talk of
> the christ-like sacrifice of the east timorese at the end of the millenium.
> the evil of the indonesian military is readily admitted; the evil of this
> kind of desire for sacrificial spectacles i'd have to say is in a lunacy
> all its own, especially since it parades as concern.
But, Ange. It's unlikely the nun had a desire for the bloodshed. Rather her statement sounds more like the rationalization you would expect from her. Rationalizing death is what nuns do. But I agree, in this context, to try to enoble the victims of the slaughter that way is particularly egregious.
> > It always seemed to me that delays went against the independence forces
> in favor of the militas. It would give milita time time to prepare, build
> up weapons, etc. <
>
> you mean delays in the ballot or delays in the intervention? it seems to
> me like the latter was already part of the plan. there was no 'delay' as
> such.
>
I think he meant ballot delay. As I said before, the question of what to do about the vote is the heart of the matter, the point of crisis in this whole thing. It's important to understand the choices and what happened.
> > As far as waiting a year or so I would see that as risking the military
> consolidating it's power, the fall of habibie's gov and perhaps losing the
> window of opportunity for the vote. What guarantee's would there be that a
> vote delayed a year would take place at all? Or that the situation would
> be any better?<
>
> there are no gurantees, that's for sure. but what is also certain is that
> this was no window of opportunity. the indonesian govt and military
> decided to call the ballot at this time. it's important not to forget
> this. it aparently surpassed the expectations of the UN, Australia,
> Portugal and the CNRT. Until that point, eg, Australia had been arguing,
> along with Belo, for a transitional period of autonomy. as i said, it was
> a mouse-trap: it was the timing of a decision that Habibe knew was
> inevitable, but whose timing and thus context (the continuing dominance of
> the military in indonesian politics, the continuing force of things like
> kopassus within the military which had strong economic interests in ET,
> etc) allowed such a decision to be taken on their terms, with an outcome we
> all know, even if we forget that the way in which this decision for
> independance was taken presents the UN/IMF/Australia/Portugal as the
> saviours and agents instead of the those east timorese, indonesians and
> indeed even australians who have been struggling for over twenty years on
> this question.
Here you argue that the Indo gov't military called the vote. And they brought along Aus and presumably the US, getting their help to prevent the UN from interfering. Yes, and they had good reason to want the vote: it clarified the situation for them in several ways. They could better plan the size of the task they faced in trucking people to West Timor, the activity surrounding the vote allowed them to added to their list of ET leaders to be killed, etc. (btw, since the first couple of days, I have not heard anything more about the trucking of West Timorese into ET to replace the people forcibly removed--did that actually happen?) And to complete the plan, the UN "peacekeeping" force was all set up to enter after the destruction was essentiall finished, or as much as they could reasonably do in the alloted time, to try to blot out the inhumanity of it all with the coming months of "humanitarian" action.
But this still leaves open Andy's question. Indo wanted the vote. But were the ET people really trapped? Was a boycott possible to delay the vote? Was there enough unity in ET leadership and influence with the people throw a monkeywrench into the Indo/Aus/ US plan by refusing to vote? If they could, would it have made sense to do so? Or would the "factionalism" reason you cite above--a vote boycott would certainly heighten that--be simply used as the substitute basis for the massacre. The massacre, of course, needed no reason; as far as I can tell none has been given. The bloodshed has simply been presented as rogue action that could not be controlled by anybody who could have stopped it. All the Indo govt needed was a pretense.
So perhaps the vote wasn't as much of a crisis point as I had originally thought. It's still true, I think, that the only intervention that would have really mattered was an armed one before the vote to protect the result. But the ET people weren't going to get that; it was not possible. The branches of capital, however you want to sort them and their interests out, had planned the destruction of ET for more than a year. It was going to be done, whether on the heels of the vote, their preferred option because it allowed the most organization, or under some other excuse. The ET people were going to left alone to face the onslaught. Their job was to figure out how to survive.