***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 13:14:52 +0600
   [From]: partha <partha@drik.net>
     [To]: comrades@onelist.com, drik@onelist.com, forum <forum1@herz.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Re: East Timor

Dear Friends,=20

I am getting a good response on East Timor issue. Following are the
three
articles which have been sent to me by Earl Mardle(Australia), Sameera
Huque(Bangladesh)=20
and George (New Zealand). Feel free to send me your expression on the
issue and let a=20
lone voice be heard over the net. I can then forward all the messages to
Sam who is
maintaining a web/online content regarding East Timor
(http://www.freetimor.com) in=20
Australia. Any criticism to these articles can be sent directly to our
discussion board=20
( http://www.drik.net/wwwboard/wwwboard.html) Regards and apologies for
cross postings
..............partha



Partha and Onelisters
from Earl Mardle

Thanks for the email list yesterday, I have sent it on to as many as I
can think of.

Like many of us, I feel very helpless in the face of what is happening
and, being a writer mostly, I have only words to offer.

Here are some that kept me awake last night.

Timor

Perhaps they lie
Among the bones and rotting meat
The open shells of newly hatched souls
Perhaps they lie
Amid the smoke and glass and broken streets
Of Dili, Suai, Maliana, Bobonaro
Perhaps they are the rapists and thieves
The unsuspected killers
The cannibals and parasites that feasted off their own
Caught in the twisted gears of fate
And slaughtered not for their crimes
But the sin marking a slip of paper
In the wrong place.

But not the woman cooking meal over a low fire
Not the old man wishing for a peaceful end
And surely not the children

The generals in their uniforms
Smooth brown, smooth green, machete-sharp creases
In their smooth brown voices from behind dead eyes
Say the smooth green words they think we want to hear
As if between their indifference and our need
Enough saying can make them true
Uniforms, voices, words, dead eyes
Smooth brown, smooth green
The colour of shit and rotting meat
Perhaps they are drowning in rivers of blood
Perhaps they lie

And what do we do but shout "stop!"
Shout stop to those who cannot hear
Who cannot hear and do not care
Who do not care and do not dare to stop
Shout stop and wring our hands
Write letters, write poems
Witness, shame and shun
It is not much indeed, but not nothing
Not nothing, but not much indeed

When their blood soaked blades are grown
Too burdened with death to lift again
When the second to last bullet has flown
And the cries of the dying die into silence
Standing ankle deep in blood
Wreathed in smoke
Retching on the stink
Ears filled with the sound of dogs feasting on the dead
Will that have satisfied their appetite for bitter disappointment?

And what then?
Perhaps they will lie
Perhaps just deny
Perhaps, confronted with the ghosts
They will go mad
To be mad, and then go mad
Is a hard cold sanity.

Perhaps they will shrug and shift the blame
To the brown, green land, saying
We smell it in the air
We read it in the smoke
We hear it in the dog snarls
In a long dead tongue we speak its name
Timor
Which means
Fear

-------------------------------------------------------------------------=
----

Home Grown Violence
by Sameera Huque

An unanimous win for the people.  Public revolt, and ensuing martial
law.  Curfews,=20
and the blind  terror of a state-indulged genocide. These themes so
heartrendingly familiar=20
from accounts of Bangladesh=92s War of Independence in 1971 come up again
and again in the media  =20
=96 this time from East Timor.   The black and white pictures from =9271
echo harrowingly in the=20
latest images from Dili. Today, the CNN live cameras translate to me the
events of 28 years ago,=20
putting faces on the suffering handed down to me from those who lived
through it.  And yet after=20
years of misery-turned profits on the media=92s behalf,the original
culprits remain safe within=20
shadows of honeyed diplomacy and multifarious =91national interests=92.=20

Growing up at a time when bloodshed and war is smoothly gulped down with
meals in front of
the evening news, violence tends to infiltrate every facet of life.  The
jargon, the battles, the=20
dead are carried through digitally from TV to movies to computer games =96
until death becomes=20
just another reeling character on-screen, and war a simple childhood
game.=20

After all, it only happens to the poorest people in poor countries,
never to =91us fortunate ones=92, so what
does it matter anyway?!  =93A little bit of fighting never hurt anyone,
and we=92re standing up
for our rights to choose!=94 And with that we justify violence present al=
l
around the world,
virtual and real, carried out openly and secretly, by governments and
civilians, on young
and old irrespectively.=20

What if the violence was brought closer to home?  What if one could feel
the " encrusted four=20
day old East Timorese blood being greedily eaten by an Indonesian with
bloodsoaked hands"? =20
Would essentially 'real' images like those repel you from ever reading
the morning paper or=20
tuning to the news channel?  It is all closer to home than we feel it to
be, so close that it could=20
be happening in your own kitchen.


A Recipe for Healthy Violence (Italian Flavour)=20

First I gather up my artillery: serrated knife, chopping board, peeler,
and the garbage
dish.=20

Hunting out my selected victims from the pile of onion camouflaged in a
reed basket, and
the garlic crouching behind their paper-shielded cousins, first I rip
off their skins.
Chopping clear the head and tail, I run my saw-toothed knife in and out,
until the enemy is
lying desiccated on the smooth board.=20
The lubricant in my gleaming Teflon 29=94 Super-Fryer sputters
expectantly. On contact with
the shards of onion and garlic, it expels searing vapour and body-water
from the foe spits
angrily out of the pan.  Blue embers of burning gas keep on the pressure
as I stir, burning
into the last living cells.=20
Meat is next.  After being hacked off one cow=92s leg and ground by the
precision blades of
my Braun Mini Maestro, it lies in a pound heap of pink-speckled fibre
and fat.  I add it to
the 29=94, my ears drowning in furious sizzles.  To create the right
coverage, salt, crushed
red chilli and herbs go in together, flushing out the perfect scents of
harmonious
destruction.=20

Tomatoes - blanched in boiling water, slowly skinned and chopped in
cubes -lie in their
wash of red juice.  My pan attacks those bits of tender flesh with
energy hitting out to
the whirring exhaust.  I slowly ease the rage of flames pushing on the
29=94, and its
volcanic mass coagulates down to glutinous bubbles.  The air fills with
edible tension as
more shells of fragrant garnish choke into the red magma.=20

Off the heat finally. Pouring onto the steaming bedrock of oiled pasta,
my nose sponges up
the charged scents and saliva starts building.  Shreds of Parmesan melts
white into the
crimson sauce.  Fork at hand.  I dig in with force.=20

Aaaaaaarrgh...!=20

My tongue rebels from the heat. I carefully nurse it with sterile water
chilled and iced.=20
The steaming plate of red and creamy white, ravaged and willfully
conquered, stares up at
me.  Like in a military funeral on CNN, I salute my handiwork with the
dress weapon, and
settle down to enjoy my feat.=20

-------------------------------------------------------------------------=
---------------------------

Dear Circlers and others -

A year ago last May, when the riots and building burnings and killings
swept Jakarta and other cities in Indonesia, and the president, Suharto,
had to resign, the world watched on TV. Indonesia, which had kept a low
profile for years and was virtually unknown to most people, suddenly
became
very well known as a place of violence and instability.

Foreign investment and spending, which had been 97% of Indonesia's
intake
of foreign money the year before the riots, dropped to 3% last year.

This year, recovery was slow but steady. The rupiah was regaining its
value
gradually. Then: East Timor. In just the past two weeks the rupiah has
lost
30% of its value, and I would think foreign investment will freeze.

Consider East Timor as a world media story. Without intending it, world
events compete for media coverage. East Timor has had no competition.
The
NATO bombing of Kosovo is finished, and the occupation of Kosovo has
been
reduced to sporadic coverage. The mini-war between India and Pakistan,
which ruffled the white folks' nuclear club's anxieties, has finished.
Turkey has had its earthquake.

The media field has been wide open, and in stormed East Timor. The
ground
was already well prepared by more than twenty years of sporadic coverage
of
the Indonesian army's repressive actions in East Timor. Name
recognition,
very important in media coverage: the world knew the name East Timor.

The carnage in East Timor could not have come at a worse time for
Indonesia's image in the world. More than three hundred journalists were
in
East Timor covering the UN-sponsored voting. The aftermath was not
expected, except by those who planned it. Driving out nearly all of the
journalists simply made matters worse for Indonesia: the media were left
only with footage shot during the first few days of the violence, and
this
footage was replayed again and again during news reports.

Now, two basic truths underlie television news coverage:

Television news is not primarily a visual medium. It is a word medium;
most
of the information is carried by words; picture is there because it's
television, and of course picture carries impact, for the eye takes
precedence over the ear. If you broadcast a news report with an unseen
correspondent speaking, and the covering picture is of violence and
intimidation, replayed again and again, the impact is enormous. Then,
nearly a week later, you broadcast smuggled picture showing the
aftermath:
a city destroyed, streets empty, the viewing audience has no trouble
imagining what happened during that week.

The other basic truth is that all stories are local stories, no
exceptions.
President Clinton signs a bill into law. Even though the signing has
national or even world implications, the fact is that a man with a
ballpoint pen at a desk in a city signs a piece of paper. An earthquake
destroys cities and villages and kills a lot of people: a local story
with
wider implications, but nevertheless a local story. The electronic
everywhereness of television news creates the illusion of everywhereness
of
implication, and that's the impression left with viewers.

East Timor is a local story with explosive national and international
implication built in from the start, waiting to be realized: name
recognition, preset viewer opinion, confirmation through picture. What a
mess for Indonesia!

If Indonesia had permitted a referendum in East Timor twenty years ago,
when the UN asked for it, the vote no doubt would have been
overwhelmingly
in favor of remaining in Indonesia. By this year, when Habibie
incomprehensibly offered a UN-monitored referendum with independence as
an
option, positions in East Timor had become fixed: the populace was
disillusioned with Indonesian penetration and brutality, and an
Indonesian
army faction had become institutionalized and had developed a
constituency
nationwide.=20

Now, throughout Indonesia, there are veterans, families of veterans,
orphans, widows -- and outrage at the vote for independence. This vote
may
be popularly accepted, in fact welcomed, in the rest of the world, but
it
is not accepted in Indonesia. There will be trouble.

Yesterday General Wiranto, the army chief of staff and defense minister,
went to East Timor with the five UN ambassadors sent here by the UN
Security Council to assess the situation. Wiranto had been there the
week
before with the foreign minister and several other ministers, but they
were
not permitted by the militias to leave the airport.=20

Wiranto obviously was not in command of the troops there, who armed the
militias to intimidate the East Timorese and have been helping them in
the
displacement and carnage since the vote for independence. By yesterday,
with new troops, Wiranto had enough control to escort the UN ambassadors
(wearing flak jackets) through Dili.

So the question: who are these soldiers who can defy their commander and
arouse the world against Indonesia?

Many of them appear to be among the elite headbusting troops, trained in
the United States, formerly under command of Suharto's son-in-law,
General
Prabowo. The hand of Suharto. His family is reported to own 40% of the
land
of East Timor. I doubt this. More likely, his family owns 40% of the
coffee
plantation land.

Is there a West Timor?

Yes, the western half of the island, which has been part of Indonesia
from
the start, is not called Western Timor. It is called Nusa Tanggara
Timor.
The word 'timor' means 'east.' So western Timor is actually the eastern
part of an island group called Nusa Tanggara. Timor Timor, where the
trouble is, is the eastern half of the same island generally called
Timor.
East East.

Under the ocean separating Timor from Australia is a large deposit of
oil
and natural gas. This field has been known for twenty years, and there
is
assessment drilling there. Extend the boundary between East Timor and
'West
Timor' into that field, and you divide it, and you also divide an
arbitrary
rectangle of ocean called the Timor Gap, which was established years ago
when Indonesia and Australia were negotiating drilling rights in the oil
&
gas field. In the Gap, both countries can drill.

Australia is outraged by the carnage and intimidation by the militias
and
the army in East Timor and has assembled a military peacekeeping force
to
go in if approval of Indonesia can be obtained. Australian unions are
refusing to service communications links between Indonesian embassy and
consular offices, refusing to collect garbage from the Indonesian
compounds, and are refusing to service Indonesian aircraft at Australian
airports. I think Australia might, just might, find it easier to deal
with
an independent East Timor than with the Indonesians regarding oil and
gas
-- some day.

But strangely, I think oil is not an issue. The field cannot be
exploited
just now, for there is no place to pipe the oil and gas. That is
negotiable, and depends on on-shore facilities which do not yet exist
near
the field in either Australia or Indonesia.

The issue is independence for East Timor and all of the emotional
upheavals
preceding and following the East Timorese overwhelming vote for
independence.

And the issue is control of the army and of Indonesia. A standard
argument
by 'experts' appearing on television is that cutting off IMf and World
Bank
and other fiscal aid to Indonesia will impoverish the country still
further. Hogwash. Half of the population is already below the poverty
line.
What portion of the funds infused into Indonesia is stolen is anybody's
guess. Put it conservatively at twenty percent. The current tranche of
IMF
funds now delayed would be half a billion dollars. Twenty percent of
that
would be a hundred million dollars, minimum, denied to the Big Thieves.
That's htting them where it hurts.

Being in the Indonesian army is worth money. Recruits pay to get in.
They
can steal here and there, by intimidation. As they rise, the rewards get
larger. Officers do well, and being a high officer, colonel, general, is
worth millions. This is a very big country.

There are questions journalists never seem to ask until well after an
event. From the start of the post-voting violence, I have wondered:
where
are the ballots. They were all helicoptered in blue boxes to the museum
in
Dili where they were counted. Where are they now? They are the physical
evidence of the voting. If the militias and army could get their hands
on
the ballots, the election would be invalidated. I suspect they were
flown
to the UN building in Jakarta, or to Australia, and I hope they were
flown
to the UN building in New York.

* * *

In this house of Gigi's here in Jakarta there are four quartz wall
clocks,
three small table alarm clocks, three digital clocks in the VCR and CD
players, six wrist watches (the usual collection of two people) and the
clock in the computer -- all of them (except my wristwatch) set at
different times having no pattern or relation to each other.

Why?

I have asked Gigi many times, and what I have gotten were giggles and
what
I call Asian Evasions. Last night I asked again while Gigi was half
asleep.
She said, "It depends on my fancy." It all became clear: Gigi imagines
what
time she would like it to be and then finds a clock that more or less
agrees with her fancy. Being with Gigi is a trip.

Kindest regards,

George
New Zealand

--
Partha Pratim Sarker
Chief, Drik Multimedia
Founder Editor, Bytes for All
http://www.drik.net
http://www.bytesforall.org