A brief history of the Timor-Leste solidarity movement in Japan

When Indonesia invaded Timor-Leste in 1975, a small group of university students who were studying foreign languages in Osaka conducted a rally in front of the Indonesian consulate in Kobe. By this time, Japan’s deep involvement in the Suharto regime through its economic relations had become visible. The so-called Malari affair in which Indonesian students criticized Japan’s “corrupt relations” with Suharto and his business partners had just hit the headlines in the previous year.[1] The Indonesian invasion of Timor-Leste, with the pretext of a communist threat, sounded anachronistic against the mood of détente after the anti-communist intervention in Vietnam by the U.S. and its allies had ended with a miserable result in April 1975. But, as information from inside Timor-Leste dwindled, the group in Japan could not continue its activities.[2]

It was in the early 1980s when a new solidarity group for Timor-Leste appeared. The Kure YWCA East Timor Group was born in the small city of Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, upon the initiative of an American woman, Jean Inglis. She was a student in Yogyakarta when the 30 September Affair rocked Indonesia. She felt helpless amid violence and returned to the U.S. Then she went to Japan and settled in Hiroshima, which had become a centre of the post-war peace movement. She was a reader of the Tapol Bulletin.[3]

Inspired by Jean Inglis, we started an informal group in Osaka around 1983. Furusawa was a graduate student of economics doing research on West Java. Matsuno was an assistant professor in the Indonesian Studies department. We had known each other since we were students in Tokyo. Among the starting members was Mikio Monju, also an economics student, who had some experience of high school student movements. In 1985 we organized a public meeting in Osaka with José Ramos-Horta, Fretilin’s New York representative at the time, who came to Japan upon the invitation of the Protestant church to attend a peace conference in Okinawa. After that, we established the Solidarity with an Independent East Timor (later the Osaka East Timor Association). In September of that year, we published a 90-page booklet on Timor-Leste, the first “book” on Timor-Leste’s independence struggle in Japanese.

The next year saw a rapid development of solidarity activities in Japan. In August Rep. Satsuki Eda flew to New York to deliver a statement at the hearing of the Committee of 24 (UN Special Committee on Decolonization). In early November the first speaking tour on East Timor was organized with Mgr. Martinho Lopes da Costa who traveled from Portugal and Mimi Fereira of the Darwin Fretilin committee, covering nine cities. Their visit gave birth to the Diet Members Forum on East Timor. Seventy-two parliamentarians joined the supra-partisan parliamentarians’ group. Senator Chozo Akiyama of the Socialist Party became the first president, and Rep. Satsuki Eda of the Social Democratic League the secretary. In late November the Osaka group published a Japanese translation of Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong’s 1984 book, The War against East Timor.

In 1987 a speaking tour with Fretilin’s ambassador to Angola, Roque Rodrigues, led to the establishment of the Free East Timor Japan Coalition in 1988.[4] The Coalition was a network organization with no central leadership nor office. Decisions were made only with consensus, and nothing was imposed on others. If there was disagreement, the task was done only by those groups that agreed. Members of the Coalition and parliamentarians coordinated actions in both Tokyo and constituencies, and Kiyoko Furusawa also worked for the secretariat of the Diet Members Forum.

The period from 1986-89 saw both encouraging and discouraging political developments in Asia. Encouraging developments were the collapse of the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos regime in February 1986, the so-called declaration of democratization by the South Korean presidential candidate Roh Tae-woo in June 1987, and the Taiwanese Lee Teng-hui’s presidency after the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1988. The Tiananmen massacre in June 1989 was a tragic set-back, but the upward trend of democracy in Asia could not be questioned. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a decisive blow to the Cold War rhetoric, and a new global atmosphere was soon to come.

The Japanese government’s position

The Japanese government’s position following the invasion of Timor-Leste was to support the Suharto regime both politically and economically. That was despite its official position not to recognize Indonesia’s annexation of Timor-Leste. Japan voted against all resolutions on Timor-Leste at the UN General Assembly from 1975-82. When the Commission on Human Rights in 1985 decided not to include the human rights situation of Timor-Leste in its agenda by a narrow margin of two votes, Japan was one of the two countries that voted against it. According to Shizuo Saito, who was the ambassador to Indonesia in 1965 and later became the UN ambassador, wrote in his book that on the question of Timor-Leste, “Japan always took an active and leading role because of its position at the Security Council as the only one member-state from the Asia group, its policy of cooperation with ASEAN and considerations of its Indonesia relations” (Saito 1984: 13-19).

The government convinced itself that Timor-Leste could not be an issue domestically. When a member of the Kure YWCA group called the Foreign Ministry asking why Japan had voted against UN General Assembly resolutions on East Timor, the reply was, “Most of our people don’t know it. So, it’s all right.”[5] The solidarity movement in Japan then vowed to let people know what was happening in Timor-Leste and what the Japanese government was doing about it.

Japan’s unconditional support for the Suharto regime or even deliberate complicity with it could be mostly explained, though not exclusively, by its economic interest in Indonesia at least until Suharto stepped down in 1998. For Japan, Indonesia was a major oil and gas supplier. Indonesian LNG constituted a roughly half of the total LNG that Japan imported through the 1980s. In 1985 Indonesia ranked as the third importer after the US and Saudi Arabia. For Indonesia, Japan was number 1 in all export, import and direct investment. A cluster of Japan-related buildings on both sides of the central M.H. Thamrin road was illustrative of Japan’s heavy presence in New Order Indonesia.[6]

The solidarity movement exposed a suspicious Japan-funded project that might have helped the Indonesian military to destroy radio communications between the East Timorese resistance and its supporters in Australia. Japan gave loans to an Indonesian radio frequency monitoring project that set up one of its mobile monitoring stations (vehicle) in Kupang at the latest by March 1985. Radio communications (Radio Maubere) had restarted in early 1985, but they came under more precise attacks in 1986 and had to stop completely in 1987. The foreign ministry refused to reveal more information on the areas of monitoring because it was “a matter of the Indonesia’s radio monitoring administration”. The government also refused to put any conditions upon the project nor to remind Indonesia of the principle of nonuse of Japanese aid for military purposes (Furusawa and Matsuno 1993: 210-211).

Against such an attitude of Japan that even did not try to hide its support to the Suharto regime, Xanana Gusmão’s message was clear. The solidarity movement often quoted the following passage in his message to the 37th United Nations General Assembly in 1982:

Two former soldiers

For the solidarity movement in Japan, the Japanese occupation of the then Portuguese Timor during the Pacific War was a crime that was yet to be redressed. Thus, it remained homework for the movement until research would become possible after Timor-Leste’s liberation. While most war veterans in Japan appeared to be pro-Indonesia over the question of Timor-Leste, some were sympathetic to the Timorese cause. Two must be mentioned here.

One was Masamichi Kijima,[7] who was a paymaster of the army command in Dili during the war. After the war, he became an adviser to prominent socialist leader Saburo Eda, who later quit the Socialist Party to create a group of what was to be called “pro-civic” line. Kijima also supported Saburo Eda’s son, Satsuki Eda, who succeeded the pro-civic line, and his long-time comrade, Naoto Kan.[8] Both became members of the Diet Members Forum on East Timor. It was Kijima who, in the mid-1980s, contacted the Kure YWCA group and introduced the grassroots solidarity movement to politicians at the centre.

The other was Shohachi Iwamura,[9] who was a platoon commander in the Baucau-Viqueque area during the war. After the war, he worked as an engineer and became a union activist. He joined the Osaka group, and in 1987 he traveled to New York to make a speech in support of Timor-Leste at the UN Special Committee on Decolonization.[10] In 1993, he was invited to Australia by veterans of the 2/2nd Commando Squadron. Former “foes” promised to work hard together for the cause of the East Timorese.[11] Iwamura talked about his experiences as a soldier in Timor-Leste on several occasions in Japan. Among the topics he mentioned in such talks was the problem of sexual violence by Japanese soldiers against local women.[12]

The speaking tour

Speaking tours with East Timorese activists were a major annual event.[13] With no East Timorese resident in Japan and very few news reports on the war in the faraway country, most Japanese did not even know where Timor-Leste was located. Against this background, the annual speaking tour aimed to make Timor-Leste known in Japan through direct contact with East Timorese people. The speaking tour served multiple purposes. For journalists, it provided them not only with news of campaigns but also with motivation to follow the issue constantly from a longer perspective, thus preparing journalists for eventual events. For the Coalition, it helped maintain a nation-wide web of support groups which were ready to act once a campaign was launched. For young East Timorese activists, the speaking tour was a source of empowerment.

Through the 1990s, demands for East Timorese speakers increased across Japan. At its peak period, the Coalition organized public events at more than seventy places with three to four speakers in one year. Crucial to the success of the speaking tour was active participation of local human rights groups, churches, and universities. As demands for speakers increased, decentralization became inevitable. The Coalition then divided Japan into blocks and tours were organized within respective blocks. Speakers literally traveled from one city to another in one area. This method dramatically reduced travel costs enabling small groups to organize events without being bothered by budget problems.

As can be seen in the list of speakers, there was a shift from senior political leaders in the early years to young activists in the later period. A practical reason was that speakers were asked to stay longer, and senior leaders were just too busy to make a long trip. Another reason was a thematic shift of the campaign from the invasion to occupation. Events in East Timor around the Pope’s visit and US ambassador John Monjo’s visit revealed the emergence of young activists, and the Santa Cruz massacre decisively shifted attention to the role of the youth. The speaking tour needed to reflect this trend.

Women’s leadership

One noticeable feature of the Coalition was the prominent role of women activists. Jean Inglis’ pioneering work, Kiyoko Furusawa’s leadership in the Coalition, and Sr. Monica Yoko Nakamura’s irreplaceable role in the Catholic Council for Justice and Peace were particularly noteworthy. Those who coordinated with parliamentarians and city council members at the local level were mostly women.

Women’s rights were an important campaign point from the early days. Kiyoko Furusawa’s critical article on the UN Population Award given to Suharto became the cover story of the 21 July 1989 edition of weekly Asahi Journal, a renowned weekly of the media company Asahi Shimbun. The Indonesian government was infuriated and threatened an Asahi Shimbun Jakarta correspondent with expulsion. The Indonesian government withdrew the threat after Asahi Shimbun explained that the article was largely descriptive and factual.

The speaking tour invited more women activists than men. Out of 29 speakers who were invited, 18 were women (64%). The Coalition sent Kiyoko Furusawa to the World Conference of Women held in Beijing in 1995. Furusawa coordinated with East Timorese women activists such as Milena Pires, Inês Almeida, Céu Brites, and Odete Gonçalves during the conference. She organized a workshop on women under occupation inviting activists from Western Sahara, Tibet, Burma, New Caledonia etc. These activities at the Beijing conference became part of an NHK television documentary program.

The Coalition’s idea to promote women’s participation in the peace process brought an East Timorese activist to Guatemala with the help of a Latin America support group in Japan, RECOM or Red de Cooperación Mutua entre Japón y America Latina. In 1994 Maria do Céu da Silva Lopes and Kiyoko Furusawa traveled to Guatemala to learn from the CONAVIGUA or the National Coordination of Widows of Guatemala how civil society could engage in peace negotiations. Maria do Céu brought a letter from José Ramos-Horta to the 1992 Nobel Peace Laureate, Rigoberta Menchu.

The Coalition also called for the inclusion of women in the All-Inclusive Intra-Timorese Dialogue that was held twice in Austria in 1995 and 1996. At least one woman participant was invited to the second meeting of the Dialogue, and the statement included the protection of women.

Two speakers in the 1999’s speaking tour were invited from Fokupers, a women’s rights group established only a few years before. Director Maria Domingas Fernandes Alves and staff member Laura Abrantes talked about violence against women, particularly sexual violence, under Indonesia’s military occupation. They also described the situation of the victims who were neglected, discriminated against, and marginalized in their own community. Sexual violence was a taboo subject and the victims were silenced. But it was soon to become an issue for public debate after Timor-Leste was freed from occupation. The Coalition continually followed developments on women’s rights in the post-referendum period while itself embarking on new research into the Japanese military’s wartime sexual slavery. In 2005 the Coalition and the HAK Association started a joint research project on “comfort women” in Timor-Leste. The result was published as a report, Luta ba Lia Loos no Justisa (Fighting for Truth and Justice), in 2016 (Asosiasaun HAK 2016).

The Indonesian pro-democracy movement

Both of us and Jean Inglis all came to know Timor-Leste through our relations with Indonesia. Some Japanese Indonesia scholars, especially those who gathered around the PARC or the Asia-Pacific Resource Centre, were sympathetic to Timor-Leste, and they supported the solidarity movement in one way or another. Among them was the late Yoshinori Murai, a professor of Indonesian studies at Sophia University and leading activist at the PARC. In the early 1980s, a group of concerned young Indonesia scholars met to discuss the New Order’s authoritarian development policies such as the forced eviction around the construction of the archeological park of Borobudur. Some, including both of us, attended the annual conference of the INGI or International NGO Forum on Indonesia (later INFID or International Forum on Indonesian Development) under the leadership of prominent lawyer and reformist Buyung Nasution who was leading the YLBHI or the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute. Involved in the INGI were, among others, human rights lawyers Yap Thiem Hien, Todung Mulya Lubis, critical academics Arief Budiman and George Aditjondro, and Nahdlahtul Ulama leader Abdurrachman Wahid, nicknamed Gus Dur, who was to become the President of Indonesia in 2000. The INGI submitted recommendations for policy reform to the Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI), a donor coordination meeting presided by the Netherlands (after 1991 by the World Bank under the name Consultative Group on Indonesia). The INGI was not a solidarity movement. Its aim was to work within the limits of the New Order’s political framework.

We were regular participants in the INGI as we were also members of the PARC. In 1993 a team headed by Professor Hiroyoshi Kano organized an INGI conference in Japan. At one free event during the conference, we showed the documentary film of British journalist Max Stahl on the Santa Cruz massacre, Cold Blood. Gus Dur quietly watched the film with other Indonesian participants. Much later, after Suharto resigned, he and opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri met with Bishop Carlos Belo in Jakarta and reportedly supported the Bishop’s claim that people of Timor-Leste had not been consulted yet over the status of Timor-Leste.

At one time, when we met with activist Buyung Nasution, we asked him if he would agree to a referendum in Timor-Leste. Buyung said, “I can agree with [the] independence of Timor-Leste but not about Irian Jaya (West Papua)”.

In June 1998, Matsuno was chosen to chair the Japan NGO Network on Indonesia (JANNI). After Suharto’s resignation, a persona non grata also could be chosen to lead a group that worked with Indonesian NGOs. The first project of the JANNI was the Japan tour of Amien Rais. In his Tokyo lecture that attracted some 400 people in July, he said that he would support the self-determination of Timor-Leste. The JANNI also organized other prominent Indonesian pro-democracy intellectuals such as economist Rizal Ramli, TEMPO’s chief editor Goenawan Mohamad, and dissident academic Arief Budiman.

The critical juncture of Indonesian politics provided the solidarity movement with good opportunities for collaboration with Indonesian pro-democracy groups. The Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Institute (PBHI) and Solidamor (solidarity group with Timor-Leste) had emerged in the widened space of political freedom. In June 1998, the Coalition invited Fernando de Araújo, who had been just released from prison and Helmy Fauzi of the PBHI for the speaking tour of that year. The point was that Indonesia’s democratization and Timor-Leste’s self-determination must go together as they were inseparably related.

Working with politicians

To influence government policies, collaboration with parliamentarians was essential. Thanks to Masamichi Kijima’s intensive efforts, the Diet Members Forum on East Timor was formed in 1986 as a supra-partisan group. Founding members of the Forum came from a wide spectrum of political parties including the ruling LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), the Socialist Party, the Social Democratic League, the Komei Party, and the Communist Party. Through the 1990s there were lots of changes in political alignment. The changes were complex, but basically the core members who remained committed until the referendum were mostly from the Socialist Party and the Social Democratic League. Due to limited space, only two are mentioned here.

One is the late Satsuki Eda, as already explained above. Student activist-turned judge, he studied law at Oxford. His father’s sudden death made him decide to become a politician succeeding to his father’s constituency. He went to speak at the Special Committee on Decolonization in 1986 and to Portugal in 1987. He together with Eric Avebury (UK) and Tony Hall (US) established the Parliamentarians for East Timor. He led the observer delegation of the Democratic Party for the referendum in 1999. He also once assumed the chair of parliamentarians for Amnesty International and Parliamentarians for Western Sahara.

The other is the late Tomiko Okazaki. In 1994 when she was the parliamentary vice-minister for education, she led a delegation of the Diet Members Forum on East Timor to Indonesia and Timor-Leste to hear from various parties on the human rights situation in Timor-Leste, particularly the circumstances around the Santa Cruz Massacre. The delegation went to Jakarta first and met with Foreign Minister Ali Alatas. They had a meeting with Indonesian human rights advocates such as Ade Rostina Sitompul, Ponce Princen, Permadi and Asmara Nababan. In Bali they met with Udayana Commander Ruchiatna, and in Dili with Governor Osorio Soares, Bishop Belo, and Father Domingos Soares. They visited the Santa Cruz cemetery and the Wirahusada army hospital.

The solidarity movement closely coordinated with this delegation. Two members of the Coalition accompanied the delegation. Meetings with human rights advocates in Jakarta and Catholic clergy in Dili were arranged through the solidarity movement.

Two TV stations, NHK and Asahi, respectively broadcast a special report on the visit. NHK combined the delegation with two damning interviews, one with Max Stahl and the other with João Diaz and Aviano Faria. The latter two were witnesses of the so-called second massacre at the Wirahusada army hospital. They were all in Japan upon receiving an invitation from the solidarity movement in 1994.[14]

The delegation’s visit, however, probably would not have become front-page news, if the “interpreter problem” was not revealed. One Jakarta embassy staff accompanied the delegation as an interpreter. Because of his Indonesia-leaning mind, consciously or unconsciously, he twisted what was exchanged. The records of all the conversations were examined, and the result was submitted to Foreign Minister Kono. Reading the result, Minister Kono apologized to the delegation and this became a newspaper headline in the evening of that day.

But why did the Indonesian government agree to the request of the Japanese parliamentarians, despite their declared intention to visit Dili and investigate the Santa Cruz massacre? The request was communicated to the Indonesian government by the foreign ministry of Japan. At the time, the cabinet was a rare coalition cabinet of the Socialist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the New Party Sakigake, with the prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, chosen from the Socialist Party. We can guess that the Indonesian government could not refuse the request of parliamentarians because it was backed by the government. All five members of the delegation were from the ruling coalition.

The Murayama coalition government, which lasted only for 13 months, tried to modify Japan’s traditional position on Timor-Leste. It shifted the position from that of “quietly observing” to that of “supporting” the UN mediation efforts and based on this shift it decided to provide funds to the All-Inclusive Intra-Timorese Dialogue.

Before the shift took place, 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate from Northern Ireland Mairead Maguire, also a supporter of self-determination for Timor-Leste, visited Japan. On 2 September 1994, she visited Prime Minister Murayama and encouraged him to act. The meeting was arranged by the solidarity movement in collaboration with the Diet Members Forum.

After the referendum, the Democratic Party sent a team of former prime minister Tsutomu Hata and Satsuki Eda to the devastated Timor-Leste in December 1999. The Party also sent an observer mission to the Constitutional Assembly Election in 2001. The Democratic Party was a merger of centre and centre-left politicians, including some from the conservative LDP.

It is noteworthy that the city councils of three cities in the Tokyo Metropolis, namely Mitaka, Chofu and Hino, adopted a resolution on East Timor in the early 1990s. The resolutions called on the Japanese government to ask for the withdrawal of the Indonesian forces from Timor-Leste, to engage more actively in the UN-led mediation to realize the right to self-determination of the East Timorese, and to make the military’s withdrawal conditional for the provision of aid to Indonesia. It was women activists in these cities who advocated hard to the city councils on East Timor.

The international dimension

The end of the Cold War and the development of the internet should not be underestimated when we look at the development of civic activism in the 1990s. The end of the Cold War shortened flights from Japan to Europe from 16 to 11 hours as Russia allowed western airlines to fly over its territory. Digital communication that developed from electronic conferences to emails dramatically enhanced the speed and volume of information flow. Detailed news and analyses on East Timor posted by Carmel Budiardjo (UK) and John McDougall (USA) circulated quickly. Before that, fax was common in Japan while it was telex in Europe. Geographically isolated Japan particularly benefited from these new technologies. In the 1990s the solidarity movement in Japan stepped up its activities at the international level.

The democratic transition in the Philippines directly affected the course of the issue of Timor-Leste in the Asia-Pacific region. In November 1987, the 5th conference of the NFIP or Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific was held in Manila, and the conference was followed by the first conference on Timor-Leste in the Asia-Pacific region. Two members of the Coalition attended it and confirmed that solidarity work with Timor-Leste needed more coordination and collaboration within the region.

In 1991, the Japan Coalition took the initiative to establish the International Federation for East Timor (IFET) and to register it as an Associate NGO at the UN Department of Public Information. The first president was Ohtori Kurino, former ambassador to Syria and Cambodia. The idea to create an NGO with a status at the UN came from former UN staff, the late Kan Akatani, who lived in New York after he retired from the UN. He was an air force pilot during the Pacific war, entered the foreign service after the war, and worked for the UN. He encouraged citizens to use UN mechanisms more effectively.

The end of the Cold War also opened a new era of multilateralism and created a new atmosphere. The Coalition sent members to events such as the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, the first APCET in Manila in 1994, the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the second APCET in Kuala Lumpur in 1995, the International Conference on National Security Law in Seoul in 1995, and the third APCET in Bangkok in 1998.

In the period up to the Vienna conference, the controversial concept of “Asian values” emerged as a counter-argument against the inseparability and universality of human rights. Joining the pro-universality camp of civil society, the Japan Coalition and the IFET sent two members, Kiyoko Furusawa and Jean Inglis, to the Asia Regional Meeting held in Bangkok in March 1993. Both NGOs had obtained accreditation from the UN, but the UN conceded to the Indonesian request to ban the two organizations from participating in the meeting.[16] But the refusal of the Japanese participants instead highlighted the problem of Timor-Leste. It indeed became a pattern through the 1990s that Indonesia’s attempts to block activities for Timor-Leste outside Indonesia often had a contrary effect. The Manila APCET in 1994 grabbed headlines precisely because the Indonesian government pressed the Philippine government to prevent the conference. The Bogor APEC in 1994 also provided a golden opportunity for East Timorese activists to draw the attention of the world. East Timorese students occupied part of the US embassy’s compound in Jakarta. Suharto’s visit to Germany in 1995 met with a large demonstration in Dresden. Angry Suharto put the blame on Indonesian activists, but it again only revealed the desperation of the regime.

Solidarity work at multiple fronts through the 1990s was effective in embarrassing the Suharto regime. It was such embarrassment that finally prompted President B.J. Habibie’s administration to wish to get rid of the issue and think of the second option (independence). In that sense, it can be said that the global solidarity movement, of which the Japanese one was part, contributed to freedom of Timor-Leste.

References