>Why not start with a demand that the West, i.e. the US, immediately cease
>all military aid to Indonesai right away. Were the US even willing to do
>that much, we might see Indonesian generals finding ways to sway the
>militias to cool it.
>
>Indonesia is far more economically and militarily dependent on the US
>than Yugoslavia. So, yeah, there's a massacre going on in East Timor.
>I'd say, stop all aid would be an appropriate start.
Do you mean military aid or economic aid. Only the latter with a threat to crash the rupiah again could stop the massacres in time.
>Sydney Morning Herald
>Friday, September 3, 1999
>
>A$67 (US$47) billion threat will plug boodbath
>By DAVID JENKINS, Asia Editor in Jakarta
>
>The Indonesian Government was in disarray yesterday over the escalating
>violence in East Timor, with the civilian government of President B. J.
>Habibie wringing its hands and hinting at a possible foreign peacekeeping
>force as an increasingly defiant army showed no sign it was willing to stop
>instigating the unrest.
>
>It now seems that nothing short of an international threat to pull the plug
>on a $US43 billion ($67 billion) IMF bailout of the stricken Indonesian
>economy will succeed in persuading Habibie to rein in his generals, who
>have made it plain in private briefings that they are determined to hold
on to
>East Timor at all costs.
>
>A freeze on the disbursement of emergency aid could have a devastating
>effect on Indonesia's fragile economy, sending the rupiah into a new decline.
>And as East Timor edges closer to anarchy, the Indonesian Army (TNI) is
>looking for all the world like a runaway institution, supporting the
>policies of Habibie in public but working assiduously to undermine them in
private.
>
>"The only way to avoid a bloodbath and end the conflict is for the world
>community to apply high-level economic pressure on the central government,"
>said a Jakarta analyst with high-level army contacts.
At 14:10 06/09/99 -0400, WDK wrote:
>I'll bet neither the U.S. nor the U.K. government will lift a
>finger over the Indonesian government's continuing slaughter in East
>Timor.
>
>Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net
I am struck by the confidence with which you can identify what is crap in this complex and contadictory situation.
You are sure that the imperialist powers are not lifting a finger to intervene against the slaughter. But by this logic you are presumably in favour of intervention as "not crap"?
By whom? Are you automatically in favour of this call below by the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia to send in Australian troops? If so, how sure are you that Australian troops will not be the surrogates of the British and Americans? Perhaps someone else will confidently denounce this as crap and the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia as revisionists.
>UN/Australia must act NOW to stop bloodbath in East Timor!
>
>Statement by the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party
>(September 6, 1999)
>
>The Democratic Socialist Party calls on all supporters of democracy to
>mobilise to demand that the Australian government insist that the United
>Nations authorise the immediate dispatch of Australian troops to East
>Timor. The task of these troops must be to assist the East Timorese
>resistance forces to stop the current bloodbath being organised by the
>Indonesian armed forces (TNI) and police (Polri).
etc.
Chris Burford
London