East Timor invasion ‘preventable’: Jose Ramos-Horta on Australia’s 1975 failure
East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta has delivered a scathing attack on Gough Whitlam, claiming Australia could have prevented Indonesia's devastating 1975 invasion.
Jose Ramos-Horta believes Indonesia’s invasion and annexation of East Timor on December 7, 1975 – 50 years ago this week – could have been prevented if Australia had appealed to the US and Portugal to intervene.
Although Gough Whitlam had been dismissed from office a month earlier, and Malcolm Fraser was prime minister ahead of a general election later that month, Mr Ramos-Horta is scathing of Whitlam’s tacit approval for the annexation.
“If East Timor was an obstacle to anything that Indonesia wanted, then Australia would support Indonesia,” the East Timorese President said in a new interview.
“Self-determination was not something that they really cared about much.”
Whitlam told Indonesia’s president Suharto that he thought East Timor should be part of Indonesia but did not support an invasion and violent takeover. Instead, he advocated an ill-defined act of self-determination for the East Timorese people. Whitlam did not regard East Timor as a priority issue for Australia.
Mr Ramos-Horta was a leader in the left pro-independence Fretilin group at the time and visited Canberra to talk with policymakers and the media to advocate for East Timor’s independence and for peace and stability.
“Whitlam had complete disdain about Portuguese Timor – that’s how they called it at the time,” he recalled. “Either it stays with Portugal or (it is) hand(ed) over to Indonesia. The notion of self-determination or possible independence is something totally irrelevant for Gough Whitlam.”
He suggested that an invasion could have been “prevented” if Whitlam had appealed directly to the US and Portugal not to allow Indonesia to annex the former colony. Andrew Peacock, the Coalition’s foreign affairs spokesman, argued for ASEAN countries to help secure peace. But Whitlam was certain the US would not intervene.
Suharto and Whitlam discussed East Timor during 1974 and 1975. Although Whitlam argued that East Timor “should become part of Indonesia” he emphasised that this should only happen if the people of the former colony wanted it. Suharto reassured Whitlam there were no plans for invasion.
A newly declassified cable from September 1975 reveals that Whitlam told Suharto “the overriding importance of the Australian-Indonesian relationship” was the “guiding principle” regarding East Timor.
Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, agreed with this approach and added that incorporation was inevitable and could not be halted. He said Australia should continue to “remain as uninvolved as possible” because the Indonesia relationship was “unquestionably more important”.
While Whitlam supported decolonisation, a process set in train following a military coup in Portugal in April 1974, he was concerned East Timor might not be a viable state and could become a haven for pro-communists. The Australian government thought integration into Indonesia was the “neatest solution”.
Mr Ramos-Horta said the deaths of five Australian-based journalists at Balibo on October 16, 1975 – killed by Indonesian forces – could have been prevented if Whitlam urged Indonesia to guarantee their safety as non-combatants. He should have “alerted the Indonesians” that the journalists were there and “do not do any harm to them”.
He said no pressure was applied to investigate the murders and little information was provided to the families. “(Australia) didn’t do anything – even when its own citizens were murdered,” he said. “The civility towards Indonesia was such that they engaged in (an) active cover-up.”
Appearing before several later inquiries and in interviews, Whitlam said he had advised journalist Greg Shackleton not travel to East Timor and journalists knew the risks, having filed reports about the likely invasion through Balibo. He supported Indonesia’s annexation for decades until its vote for independence in August 1999.
Troy Bramston is the author of Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New (HarperCollins).
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