Indonesia's

 

2/th province
or an
independent
country?

Jim Chliboyko
&

John Morash
indulge in
some
speculation
about East

Timor

July 1998 Page 8

 

E. TIMOR

  

ii.

 

Hope arrives
for a hopeless situatior

Timor again?, one might ask. And if
again, why now?

A fashionable topic for most of the
1990s, the plight of the East Timorese
and their most hostile of take-overs by
Indonesia has been an easy cause célébre
for those here in the West who consider
themselves media-savvy. It is not
just that pundits like Noam
Chomsky have taken up the
battle cry of the Timorese.
It is that the story seems so
simply drawn. The heroes
are seen to be an innocent
bunch of village-dwelling
agrarians, and the villains are
clearly delineated as wild-
eyed, well-armed, knee-jerk
commandos, dressed in

sweaty khakis and doing the dirty work of

the families of the Jakartan billionaires in
power.

The issue of Timor was prominent at
last year’s APEC meetings in Vancouver.
But it has been in the news for most of

 

the past ten years or so, after having been
ignored for the previous decade by all but
a few Australian journalists who were
present when the initial invasion occurred,
and who have since been murdered.

But something has happened to make
change—even in a place so corrupt and so

set in its ways as Jakarta—seem
possible.

The world has been pleas-
antly surprised over the last
six weeks, when mainly stu-
dent-led demonstrations that
were taking on a decidedly
Tiananmen-like flavour,
appeared to actually sway the
fattest of the fat cats in
power. The country’s ruler
for 32 years, General
Suharto, stepped, down in favour of his
old pal BJ Habibie, and only six demon-
strators were gunned down in the process:
Change is happening in Indonesia.

‘To be sure, there had been whispers
that the old man would be stepping down

 

Indonesia—Powder keg extinguished?

JIM CHLIBOYKO

The crowds mass in the streets of the
capital, The local talk is punctuated with

the names of “politicians” that haven't

been heard of before. The army assembles

every day, backs off every night. Contrary
messages that blare from tinny
loudspeakers echo off the walls of the
buildings downtown. Things get
progressively more tense as the days pass,

as the country heads for some kind of
inevitable confrontation.

This could describe many different
places in the world over the past century.
But it is happening in Indonesia now. And
though the world felt collectively relieved
when the protests claimed the lives of
only six people, the situation is still very
volatile.

 

According to the Canadian Encyclo-
pedia, student protests have been around