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Australia received East Timor 'hit list' before Indonesian invasion
ABC Radio Australia - November 27, 2015
A think tank close to Indonesian intelligence agencies gave the Australian Government a 'hit list' of East Timor independence leaders before Indonesia invaded East Timor in December 1975.
The handwritten document from August 1975 has been unearthed from Australia's National Archives by Peter Job, a PhD student at the University of New South Wales, who is researching his doctorate on Australia-Indonesia-East Timor relations.
The document, Steps to Prevent Communist Agitators to Escape, accuses Fretilin leaders like former East Timorese president Dr Jose Ramos-Horta and former prime minister Dr Mari Alkatiri of being 'communist agitators' that should be arrested by Indonesia.
Their names were included on a list of 19 people handed to the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in September 1975 by Harry Tjan, the Indonesian adviser who told Australia that Indonesia was planning to invade East Timor.
Tjan was a founder of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Jakarta-based think tank. Several people on the list were executed after Indonesia invaded East Timor on 7 December, 1975.
Tjan gave the document to Alan Taylor, counsellor at the Australian Embassy and deputy to the ambassador, Richard Woolcott. Taylor sent a confidential memo to the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra on 23 September, 1975.
'Attached for your information is a paper entitled Steps to Prevent Communist Agitators to Escape – given to us by Mr Harry Tjan of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Tjan would not say who wrote the paper,' Taylor stated in the memo.
According to Peter Job, the document was a 'hit list'. 'It has a list of 19 prominent members of Fretilin, the independence political party of East Timor,' he says.
'The list includes Jose Ramos-Horta, who managed to survive because he left East Timor. It also includes people who we know were killed by the Indonesians.'
The former ambassador, Richard Woolcott, however, says he only vaguely remembers the document and it was not a death list. 'Very few people on the list died,' he says.
But former Australian consul in Dili and adviser to United Nation missions in East Timor, James Dunn, says the document is 'very disturbing'.
'It was, I'm afraid, a death list. That's what's worrying. It's not that they should be expelled from Timor, but they shouldn't be allowed to escape,' Dunn says.
'What they wanted to make sure that the Fretilin leaders didn't escape, that they were caught and presumably executed, as some of them were later.
The five handwritten pages accused Portugal of spreading communism in East Timor by financing Timorese student leaders returning from studying in Lisbon.
The Fretilin leaders were accused of supporting communism and establishing links with former Portuguese colonies and like-minded regimes in Mozambique, Cuba, China, Russia, Guinea-Bisseau and Angola and 'other communist countries including the heads of Portuguese Communist Party'.
'The Communism adopted by Fretilin is the same kind of that one developed in Mozambique by Peking-man, Samora Machel,' claimed the report. Fretilin was also accused of having links to PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party.
The paper misspelled independence leader and eventual East Timorese PM Mari Alkatiri's name as 'Mary', and said he was 'signaled as the man who have [sic] obtained contacts for Fretilin and PKI'.
'Jose Gusmao', a possible reference to eventual president and prime minister Xanana Gusmao, is noted as making special attacks against Indonesia through the press. Gusmao was a former journalist who became Fretilin's deputy director of information.
Fretilin leader Roque Rodrigues, who later became defence minister and was found to have illegally transferred weapons to civilians during the political crisis in 2006, was also singled out as 'the top man [who] started up the communization of Fretilin'.
'Under the cover of "progressive" teachers they were able to communize Dili schools, mountain people, etc,' the paper alleged.
The paper urged the Indonesian military to immediately take note and called on Indonesia to 'take the necessary steps to avoid the top people of Fretilin... to escape out of Timor'.
'We do believe that their arrest will be quite important as we can afterwards find out what are the links between Fretilin and PKI and even to establish the whole Communist affair to inside ASEAN area,' the document said.
At least six people on the list were executed, killed in combat, or disappeared during the Indonesian occupation.
Fretilin women's movement leader Rosa Muki Bonaparte was last seen alive at the Dili Harbour wharf, where Indonesian forces executed people on 8 December 1975.
Fretilin president Nicolau Lobato was killed during fighting with Indonesian security forces in December 1978. He was later declared a national hero.
Fretilin minister of education and culture Hamis Basarewan Bin Umar either surrendered or was captured, and disappeared in the first half of 1979.
Leopoldo Joaquim, a member of the Fretilin Central Committee, surrendered in 1978 to Indonesian forces. He and his niece, Maria Gorete Joaquim, disappeared in March or April 1979 after being taken from their homes by the Indonesian military.
Vice-president of Fretilin and justice minister Antonio Carvarino, also known as Mau Lear, was captured in February 1979 and killed soon after while in the custody of the Indonesian military.
His wife, Maria do Ceu Carvarino, or Bi Lear, a Fretilin political adviser, disappeared after surrendering to Indonesian forces.
James Dunn says the document was a deliberate fabrication in parts and the list of 'communist agitators' was nonsense.
'I think its absurd. I don't know any of them who I would class as a communist,' he says. 'I can't believe they had any information suggesting that level of communism in East Timor.'
Dunn says he believes the document was written by CSIS, which he said was close to BAKIN, Indonesia's main intelligence agency at the time. 'My suspicion is it was written to circulate among other ASEAN countries, where of course there was a lot of anti-communism, to strengthen support for what Indonesia was about to do.'
Former ambassador Richard Woolcott says the document by was prepared by CSIS and reflected their thinking.
Harry Tjan, now 82, says he does not remember the document or giving it the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. He says he did not write the document, as his English handwriting was not good enough, but he denies the document came from CSIS.
Peter Job, who re-discovered the document, says the list of Fretilin leaders provides more evidence of a deliberate campaign by Indonesia to target pro-independence groups and individuals in East Timor after the invasion.
That was also the conclusion of the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), which was set up to investigate conflict-related deaths from 1974 to 1999.
Job, however, says there is no evidence the document had any impact on Australian government policy towards East Timor. '[There is] very little evidence from the documents that human rights were a consideration at all, so nothing I can tell was ever done about this document,' he says.
Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of Fretilin's unilateral declaration of independence in East Timor. Jose Ramos-Horta said he was too busy to be interviewed and Mari Alkatiri did not respond to an interview request.
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