TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
US stood by as Indonesia deployed militia in Timor Leste conflict: Declassified documents
Newly declassified United States government files reveal that Washington may have “tolerated” and “abetted” plans by Indonesia’s military to violently thwart Timor Leste’s independence referendum 20 years ago.
Change Size
Wearing different hats: Coordinating Political, Security and Legal Affairs Minister Wiranto (right) and Timor Leste’s lead border negotiator Xanana Gusmao exchange documents as part of an agreement on land borders signed in Jakarta, on July 22. Both figures were instrumental actors during Timor Leste’s independence referendum in 1999. (Antara/Sigid Kurniawan)
T
he United States government was aware for months that Indonesia’s armed forces had created, armed and directed militias in Timor Leste in the lead-up to its referendum 20 years ago, recently declassified US government files have revealed.
More than 200 documents produced in 1999 by the US Embassy in Jakarta, State Department, Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Pacific Command and Defense Department were declassified and obtained by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research and archival institution at George Washington University.
In the year leading up to the Timorese referendum vote on Aug. 30, 1999, the US administration under president Bill Clinton was already aware that the then-Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI) was determined to thwart the independence vote with terror and violence. But Washington still chose to preserve military ties with Jakarta, according to Brad Simpson, the director for the institution’s Indonesia and Timor Leste project.
“US Embassy and intelligence agencies noted overwhelming evidence of direct Indonesian military involvement in militia violence, and some [US] State Department officials pressed their Indonesian counterparts to rein in the terror and allow a free vote in East Timor,” Simpson said in briefing notes on Thursday.
“But US military officials resisted efforts to pressure the Indonesian armed forces and opposed efforts to reduce military aid, convinced that the Indonesian military remained a crucial force for political and military stability in the archipelago during a fragile democratic transition.”
The US Embassy in Jakarta was not immediately available for comment.
The documents were released as a result of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the National Security Archive between 2002 and 2007. They comprise a substantial portion of the daily reporting on Timor Leste – known as East Timor under the Indonesian occupation – by the US Embassy in Jakarta and US intelligence agencies from late 1998 through September 1999.
