Leave Day Three

A blood splatted wall near the end of the movie... blood trying to engulf East Timor.

Today is remembered by the movie we watched at home: "Balibo Five", the story of how two TV journalist teams (totaling five men) were murdered by the invading Indonesian troops in 1975. Peter remembers the event of the invasion and could not understand why Gough Whitlam, as our prime minister, sat on his hands in response. Then in November 1991, two hundred and fifty young East Timorese people were slaughtered at a cemetery. At that time Peter was so upset that he vowed to send 250 crosses to that suck of a foreign minister Gareth Evans for sitting on his hands for that. Peter ended up not doing it because it was just one more thing to do in a swirling life. But the Australian government was embarrassed and so they should be. The world started to be aware of the foul smell coming out of Indonesia after that turning point.

After seeing the movie, Peter did a little historical research and found that freedom of information showed the USA actually supported Indonesia in the invasion and probably told Australia to go and sit on its hands the way it did. You see, America had just lost the Vietnam war and was against anything that looked "communist". Because one of the East Timorese parties sharing power (Fretilin) looked Marxist in their polarised view, they gave Indonesia the OK to do what it liked and to supplied most of the arms and aircraft.

Well, to cut a long bloody story short, after the Berlin Wall fell and the threat of communism evaporated and that excuse used by Indonesia fell away. America was forced to change its mind and allowed the UN to push for a referendum (1999) which went about 85% wanting to be independent. This brought more bloodshed, but eventually the UN had a force there to resolve things. In all Indonesia murdered 183,000 East Timorese out of a population of only 800,000. This story is a blight on Australia and the USA, and we are ashamed that our government could be such "crawlers" to let it happen the way it did.