This is a background document on British policy I wrote up for friends over here. References are to Mark Curtis, Ambiguities of Power, Zed Books.
A survey of British policy on Indonesia
Indonesia's generals are resisting pressure from the West to install a democratic government and to allow an international force into East Timor. The present regime was created through the 1965 coup that deposed radical nationalist leader Sukarno and installed the thirty-four year dictatorship of Suharto. The coup was barbaric, leading to more than a half a million deaths, as Suharto crushed the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The Central Intelligence Agency provided military support, and the US ambassador provided lists of radicals for execution, while Secretary of State Dean Rusk cabled Jakarta that the 'campaign against PKI' must continue and that 'the military are the only force capable of creating order in Indonesia'. (In Curtis, 218)
British foreign policy followed suit, and Labour Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart visited a year after the slaughter, saying that he was able to 'reach a good understanding with the Foreign Minister Adam Malik' a 'remarkable man' who was evidently resolved to keep his country at peace'. In 1977 Malik said '50 000 or 80 000 people might have been killed during the war in East Timor. It was war. Then what is the big fuss'. (Curtis, 219)
The war against East Timor came about through the withdrawal of the colonial adminstration following the 'revolution' in Portugal in December 1975. Again the US made it clear to Indonesia that the use of armed force would be acceptable. In July the British Ambassador in Jakarta informed the Foregin Office that 'the people of East Timor are in no condition to exercise the right of self determination' and 'the arguments in favour of its integration into Indonesia are all the stronger. Developments in Lisbon now seem to argue in favour of greater sympathy towards Indonesia ... Certainly it is in Britain's interests that Indonesia should absorb the territory as soon and as unobtrusively as possible' (Curtis 220). Britain joined the US in stymieing hostile resolutions at the UN. According to Amnesty International, the deaths in East Timor had reached 500 000 by 1985. British Aerospace signed a contract for Hawk jets to Indonesia with the approval of Foreign Secretary David Owen.
The Conservative Governments (1979-1997) kept up the support for Suharto, who visited the Queen in 1979. BA continued renewed the Hawk contract three times (1984,85 and 86) worth £200 million, the Rapier air defence system followed while the Royal Navy sold three frigates worth £27 million. In April 1993 foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd signed an agreement for a £65 million British loan to Indonesia. 'Referring to human rights issues, Hurd said that Western Countries cannot export Western values to developing nations without making adjustments to local economies and cultures.' (Antara News Agency, in Curtis, 224)
While in opposition, the Labour Party began, slowly, to reconsider its position on Indonesia and arms sales, under the influence of protestors organised by the Campaign against the Arms Trade and the World Development Movement. Internationally, the former colonial power Portugal, the Nordic countries and then later Australia were also moving to a position of hostility to the Indonesia regime, while America insisted until the 1998 economic crisis on the importance of Suharto's regime as a bulwark against disorder.
On 5 May 1995 British Aerospace's annual meeting was disrupted by protesters. In September 1995 Sir David Steel, the former Liberal Democrat leader called for international agreement on trading with countries abusing human rights. He pointed to the fact that Portugal boycotts Indonesia because of its occupation of East Timor, while Britain "happily supplies military aircraft" to the Suharto regime.
In February 1996 Robin Cook, while shadow foreign secretary was speaking at a forum organised by Saferworld, the World Development Movement and the British American Security Information Council, who issued a joint call yesterday for a code of conduct, to be legally enforceable under EU law, on arms sales to Third World countries. Cook rejected the suggestion that the code be made enforceable should Labour come to power. However, he said Labour was committed to an arms export regime that would prevent the sale of weapons to countries that might use them to repress their own populations or attack their neighbours.
In August of that year four women who were cleared of damaging a jet fighter, despite admitting striking it with a hammer. The women agreed that they had caused £1.5 million of damage to one of 24 Hawks destined for Indonesia. The jury accepted the defence argument that they had used "reasonable force to prevent a crime". "It is because of their suffering that we disarmed that jet," said Ms Zelter, of East Runton, Norfolk, a member of the Green Party. "We think we have a very good case to prove that British Aerospace is aiding and abetting murder."
That week Labour's Ann Clwyd scored a direct hit on the Government over reports that UK aid to Indonesia was linked to commercial contracts, many of them military. The government "dismissed my report on aid and arms sales to Indonesia as 'absolute rubbish' she said. "I am confident that the NAO will confirm that the British Government have acted illegally by linking overseas aid money with arms sales to Indonesia."
Then in October 1996 The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1996, in two equal parts, to Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and José Ramos-Horta 'for their work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor'.
'In awarding this year's Nobel Peace Prize to Belo and Ramos-Horta, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wants to honour their sustained and self- sacrificing contributions for a small but oppressed people. The Nobel Committee hopes that this award will spur efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict in East Timor based on the people's right to self-determination.'
Labour's difficulties
Months before the election of the Labour government, Robin Cook was raising the issue more directly. Controls on the sale of arms will be introduced by a Labour government within weeks of taking office, Robin Cook, shadow foreign secretary, pledged. Ministers would refuse export licences on defence equipment bound for regimes who might use it for internal repression or aggression. (14 February 1997) In the manifesto there was undertaking "not to permit the sale of arms to regimes that might use them for internal repression or international aggression". And on taking office the government promised a review of existing procedures covering arms sales as part of its commitment to place more emphasis on ethics in British foreign policy. All departments involved in the annual £5 billion arms trade, including the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office, the Department of Trade and Industry, and Customs and Excise, were included. (26 May 1997)
In July Robin Cook put 'human rights' at the centre of foreign policy. He announced measures to raise international standards, including a £600,000 drive to tackle child labour and sex abuse in Asia, and a £330,000 grant for a new war crimes tribunal courtroom in The Hague. But Cook ducked invitations to revoke licences for British Aerospace to export 16 Hawk jets worth £300 million to Jakarta, ordered under the Conservatives. He warned against taking morality so far that the Government refused to deal with countries whose record was unsatisfactory. "This may provide us with clean hands, but it is unlikely to provide their people with better rights." It would also jeopardise Britain's £32 billion arms trade.
IN August Cook was in hot water over a visit to Indonesia: "Britain's interests in the region are extensive and continue to grow. I intend to use my visit to give new impetus to Britain's relationship with its South-East Asian partners." A spokesman for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade said Mr Cook was wrong to give his "tacit approval" to the Indonesian regime with an official visit. When he arrived, his threat to restrict defence sales to Indonesia and other regimes with poor human rights records drew a cool response in Jakarta, where a senior minister warned him that the country would simply take its business elsewhere.
Cook's embarrassment was compounded when the New Statesman dug up articles that he had written in the 1970s against the "tacit conspiracy" of "Britain's arms bazaar" - the annual Royal Navy and British Army Equipment Exhibition, an event he was now in charge of. Rachel Harford, of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, said: "The existence of this fair flies in the face of Labour's ethical foreign policy." Cook, who visited the exhibition for the magazine, wrote of the event's "naked commercialism . . . which demonstrates how little we care with whom we do business". He wrote: "One major group of customers are those governments who are so unpopular that they only stay in power by terrorising their population: Iran, Indonesia, Bahrain, South Korea. Wherever weapons are sold there is a tacit conspiracy to conceal the reality of war." Cook had attacked the Indonesia contracts which Ministers "sought to defend the sale on the grounds that the Hawk is only a trainer aircraft," he wrote . "But the current catalogue enters the Hawk as a 'ground attack/trainer aircraft' . . . No one need pretend that such a plane will not have a devastating potential against secessionist movements who have no air cover."
By September 1997, Cook's embarrassment was moving inexorably towards a ban. Three applications to export defence equipment worth around £1 million to Indonesia were rejected. Robin Cook said the applications were rejected because they failed to meet the Government's "ethical" foreign policy requirements.
Suharto's Collapse
In the economic crisis that engulfed East Asia late in 1997, the US attitude towards Indonesia began to shift. Larry Summers, America's deputy treasury secretary, flew into the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, for talks with President Suharto and demanded that Indonesia should keep promises it made when securing a £27 billion bail-out in November. Washington made clear that its support for Mr Suharto was not open- ended. The NSC spokesman said Jakarta needed "a more open, pluralistic and accountable political system". He hinted that Washington was already looking to an era in which Mr Suharto was no longer the dominant figure. (13 January 1998)
Japan and Germany stepped in to press the president to swallow the IMF medicine. Chancellor Kohl phoned Mr Suharto to express the hope that Indonesia would soon emerge from its crisis and to imply that recent promises must be kept. Earlier, Japan's Prime Minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, spoke to Mr Suharto and gave him the same message. These interventions follow calls last week by President Clinton and Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard. William Cohen, the American Defence Secretary, was also in the Far East yesterday, calling on Indonesia to meet its obligations.
In May 1998 finance ministers of the G8 countries, meeting in London, warned Suharto to enact speedy economic and political reforms. Gordon Brown said: "The world is now watching Indonesia. The international financial community as well as governments are watching Indonesia and watching what they are doing. The economic reform will have to be matched by political reform that respects individual rights." Later that month Suharto was forced out of office by the military and the puppet regime of president Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie installed.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said "This is a wonderful opportunity now with the change of leadership in Jakarta and with the reform process about to get under way, for there to be progress made on the question of East Timor." (25 May 1998) Australia spent many years pursuing close relations with Suharto's regime, and especially with the Indonesian military, incurring the condemnation of human rights activists and supporters of East Timorese independence. The Canberra government has made little attempt to hide its view that President Habibie is an unwelcome stop-gap leader.
The next month the EU sent a delegation to East Timor. Robin Christopher, the British ambassador to Indonesia, told independence protestors: "Your voice has been heard. We all have taken your messages away with us. We congratulate this good and disciplined demonstration . . . We want the future of East Timor to be peaceful." But they had to cut the trip short after Indonesian intelligence agents accompanying the diplomats opened fire on a crowd of pro-independence supporters in Dili, killing a man in his 20s and injuring five other men. (1 July 1998)
The changing attitude towards East Timor was forced upon New Labour by the logic of its 'ethical foreign policy'. In opposition Robin Cook and Ann Clwyd scored significant points off the Conservative government over arms sales. By the time they were in office, they were morally committed to a foreign policy that favoured independence. The rhetoric of that policy was written by the activists of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and the World Development Movement.
The political commitment to Suharto's regime was real enough, but in the end it proved to be specific to its historical mission: the defeat of the nationalist movement in Indonesia. Acting as policeman in Portugal's collapsing empire was a plus for the West, but support for the occupation was always pragmatic.
At one level the shift was possible because of a generational turnover in foreign policy establishments. This was particularly marked in Britain, where the increasing identification of the pro-Indonesia policy with the Thatcher-Hurd team made indicated that it had passed its sell- by date. For nations with less strategic baggage, like Norway, Australia, and the sulking former power Portugal, it was relatively easy to switch to a rhetorical position of support for East Timorese independence. But for the US that was a big step. In the end it was only the new conditions of the East Asian crisis that persuaded the US that Suharto had outlived his usefulness. They feared that the students would blame the West and the IMF for their problems, so they tossed them Suharto. From that point on it became a given than support for the occupation of East Timor would lose its rationale.
-- Jim heartfield