This is a developed write-up of my intervention at the Workshop Timor-Leste organised in May 2022 in Lisbon by Rui Feijo and Zélia Pereira; I would like to thank them for their invitation, and for the opportunity I had to meet again with old friends after a long time. I learnt a lot during this workshop.

East Timor has been and still is a confidential topic, but has created a closely-knit community of (former) activists. I don’t know of anybody in this community who has turned the page. For me and for many others, it will remain a life-long attachment.

I think this workshop was very important. There have been many academic or journalistic works on East Timor, especially after 1999 when their number exploded. But there have been very few on the solidarity network itself, except, to some extent, David Webster’s recent book (Webster 2020). And yet….

First, it was an extraordinary adventure. The size and international spread of this solidarity movement was remarkable.[1] It also played a central role in the eventual independence of Timor-Leste; I do not know any comparable example in the history of anticolonial and independence struggles.

Then, the solidarity movement keeps a memory: the history of the struggle. We know many things, some of which may not be easily accessible to the younger generation of East Timorese. As a single example, the bulletins of the various solidarity groups are a mine of information, and every bulletin contains things that are not available in others. This memory is precious and must be preserved. There are also our personal memories and testimonies — some have already left us.

Finally, for all its imperfections, Timor-Leste is a thriving parliamentary democracy, as spectacularly illustrated by the two latest elections, to the extent that it serves as a model to some Australians;[2] a sadly exceptional fact among countries which have known a violent independence struggle. The influence of the solidarity movement on this, via its interaction with the East Timorese resistance, cannot be underestimated.

More academically, the East Timor solidarity movement per se is an important research topic.

This text is divided in three parts.

(1) Presenting myself as a (former) activist;

(2) An overview of Agir pour Timor’s work and other work in France;

(3) Specificity of the East Timorese struggle for self-determination: an attempt to analyse why it worked, and why it did not work.

Terminology: I use East Timor to talk of the territory under Indonesian occupation, Timor Loro Sae for the transition period under UNTAET from October 1999 to May 2002, and Timor-Leste for the independent country, from 2002 onwards.

East Timor and Me

I am a mathematician. I have always been concerned with issues of justice, and with people not in my part of the world; but choosing this involvement has specific reasons which have to do with my profession, as will become clear below.

I first learned about East Timor in a guidebook during a 1979 trip to Thailand. There was a brief mention of Indonesia’s invasion in 1975 and the “surprisingly strong” resistance of Fretilin, but not much more. This was at the height of the Indochinese refugee crisis; I had been to Thailand partly for that reason and visited Laotian refugee camps there. The book also mentioned the 1965/66 events in Indonesia. Given the context, all this had some resonance, but Indonesia was far away and I only kept it in the back of my mind.

In 1986, I found in a second-hand bookshop of London a book entitled The war against East Timor by Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong (1984). I had been to Indonesia twice by then. I thought that it was a great opportunity to learn more. My reaction was similar to the one Peter Carey describes in his chapter: bafflement and shock. Another genocide, contemporary and geographically close to the Cambodian one, but unheard of.

I found the rigour of this book fascinating: every claim was documented. No advocacy, let the facts speak for themselves. Indeed, a quotation like “50,000 or 80,000 people might have been killed during the war in East Timor…. It was war…. Then what is the big fuss?”[3] does not require any further comment.

Even if the authors’ sympathy was obviously with the East Timorese, the rigour extended to supporting the struggle for self-determination, not independence. Such style was very close to the way we work in mathematics, and therefore a huge appeal to someone wary of political phraseology. It carried a quality of “truth” which is central to our research and so hard to find in real life. Here was a cause in which I could involve myself. For me, it was to become characteristic of the East Timor solidarity movement later. The East Timorese being “abandoned” struck a strong chord, especially as they were trapped in their part of the island with no possibility to escape. Learning that Australia had tried to censor Radio Maubere, the only source of information from the territory, in 1976/77 (Krishna Sen 2000: 100) was chilling, as was the rejection by Western embassies of asylum requests from East Timorese.

Putting emotions apart, two things struck me most: first, the mixture of secrecy and pride from the Indonesian occupiers. Pride is exemplified by the above quotation of Adam Malik; it is quite similar to Sarwo Edhie’s boasting to have killed 2 million communists in 1965/66 “and having done a good job”, or to the outrage of some Indonesian generals at the revelation that the American CIA had given them help by handing over lists of people[4] and, more spectacularly, by Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary on these killings in North Sumatra (Oppenheimer 2012). It is not the banality of evil of Hannah Arendt, but the forceful claim of evil. Secrecy is the fact that the situation was presented as normal and under control while almost no information was given – which paradoxically helped East Timor’s eventual independence as I will argue in the reflections section of this chapter.

The second thing which struck me was the extent and diversity of international complicity: see Horta’s Funu (Ramos-Horta 1996). One might view East Timor as a Cold War issue, but this would be an oversimplification. It would overlook how Suharto had the genius to put all important world players on his side: the Western camp of course, but also the Soviet one,[5] ASEAN for “regional solidarity”, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (as the country having the largest Muslim population in the world), the Vatican to an extent (because of the large Catholic minority in Indonesia) and the Non-Aligned Movement (because of Indonesia’s aura as a founding member), while defending completely different interests at home. Even, to an extent, Portuguese politicians of the Carnation Revolution!

For me, these were two defining aspects. Another revelation was that colonialism was not limited to Western countries. Even if they supported the occupation, it could not be construed as colonialism by proxy, because Indonesia controlled the territory by itself and had its own motivations. I was to discover that this idea met enormous resistance or even outrage from former Western colonies, to the delight of Suharto’s government which could successfully argue that it had liberated the East Timorese from Portuguese colonialism (and perhaps believed it sincerely).

In 1988, I planned a third trip to Indonesia to try enter East Timor. In Kupang (West Timor), I met another French traveller, Olivier Duffau, who was there for the same reason! But East Timor was closed to visitors until 1989: we tried and failed together. Back home, I kept in touch with Olivier and eventually was contacted in 1989 by António Dias, then in the Association de solidarité avec Timor oriental (ASTO) to which I had written previously. He was a mine of information, having done his military service in East Timor under Salazar and befriended there José Ramos-Horta, Mari Alkatiri and other future members of Fretilin; he was also an insider of the solidarity movement from its beginnings. Eventually, with him, Olivier and Carlos Semedo, we founded Agir pour Timor.

Agir pour Timor

See Carlos Semedo’s chapter for a complementary account.

Creation. The Association Agir pour Timor was founded in August 1989 by António Dias, Olivier Duffau, Bruno Kahn and Carlos Semedo. It was soon joined by other members, among whom Filipe Rios and Eduardo Rogado Dias. The latter, director of Maison du Portugal (Résidence André de Gouveia) in the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris, was instrumental in our first few years: he provided us access to the Maison’s address book, support for sending mail and a free place for our meetings. He was a man of heart, who died in 2009. Two other important figures were Alexandre Milheiro and most of his family, and Carlos Ventura, who helped the association many times with his taxi.

Our first action was a press conference in September 1989 on the occasion of the visit of Pope John Paul II to East Timor. It had a modest following, as did the subsequent demonstration, but it was a beginning. This is when we first got acquainted with the Renseignements généraux (domestic intelligence), who politely contacted us every time something important was in the wake.

The Portuguese angle. Initially, a large majority of Agir pour Timor’s membership was Portuguese. The initial strategy was to raise awareness within the Portuguese community in France. This made sense, since it was one of the largest expatriate Portuguese communities worldwide, and exceptionally well-incorporated into French society. But it proved disappointing: somehow mobilization never took off, and as a consequence, did not do more than dribble out to the French society at large. A notable exception was the association Cap Magellan. CCPF, the Council of the Portuguese community in France, also played a significant role.

The bulletin. We started one, named after the association. It appeared irregularly until 2001 (30 issues).[6]

The UN. We made regular submissions to the UN Decolonisation Committee, and once to the UN Human Rights Commission: I met Carmel Budiardjo for the first time at such an occasion in 1990 in Geneva.

French diplomacy. We also had regular “advocacy” meetings with officials in the French Foreign Ministry. We rose from the level of meeting the person in charge of Indonesia to the Southeast Asia sub-department to the Asia directorate in 1992 (see below), before being downgraded back to the previous sub-department. The officials we met invariably told us that our information was very important for their work, without ever giving us much in return, except unwittingly. Another recurring theme was the dubious “France does not have an independent policy towards Indonesia; all is done in coordination with the European Union”.

The effect of these encounters is difficult to measure. It is unclear whether they did much to inflect French policy more favourably towards East Timor.

International solidarity meetings. We attended most of the international solidarity meetings which took place in Europe from 1990 to 2000.

Building a solidarity network in France. This was perhaps the major part of our action. At our creation we had had the support of some small associations, but these had no commitment towards East Timor on their own, except a few Portuguese ones. This changed from 1991 onwards, when we succeeded to reach important French organisations and motivate them.

The Santa Cruz massacre. In 1991, we got in touch with the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) and with France Libertés, the foundation of Danielle Mitterrand, the wife of the then French president. We decided to jointly invite José Ramos-Horta in November 1991. A press conference was planned for November 14. When Horta arrived on the 13th, it was in the wake of the Santa Cruz massacre. We got much more coverage than expected…. This was the first of a strange string of synchronicities.

From IGGI to CGI. In 1992, Indonesia terminated the Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI): this was aid to development, held in The Hague since 1967. Suharto was angered that Canada, Denmark and The Netherlands had partially suspended their aid after the Santa Cruz massacre: linking aid to human rights was unacceptable. He had it replaced it by the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI), held under the World Bank in Paris. It was then our responsibility to organise protests, which we did from 1992 to 1995. Some years we got reinforcements from opposition groups to Indonesia, for example, from the Netherlands. This was mainly limited by the police to pickets in front of the World Bank’s headquarters, but we had sometimes wider demonstrations.

The capture of Xanana. In November 1992, three things happened simultaneously: (1) We invited to Paris José Amorim Dias, just freed from Indonesian jails and then deputy representative of CNRM to the European Union (2) resistance leader Xanana Gusmão was captured (3) a visit of Suharto was planned in Paris at the same time.

This was a dramatic period. We had made an appointment with Jean-David Levitte, then head of the Asia directorate in the Foreign Ministry, to which we went with Amorim. Mr. Levitte was late because, as he told us for an apology, he was just out of the final peace talks on Cambodia (with the participation of Ali Alatas, then Indonesian foreign minister…). With utmost diplomatic skill, he managed to occupy the speaking space for the whole hour, leaving Amorim no opportunity to tell him the situation in East Timor first hand. Needless to say, getting action from the French government in favour of Xanana and the other East Timorese prisoners was a complete failure. On top of this, Mr. Levitte asked us not to demonstrate; we duly failed to grant his request the next day, in front of Suharto’s hotel.[7]

The four months campaign. In 1993 we met another association, Peuples solidaires, which became very interested in East Timor. This eventually led to the campaign 4 mois pour Timor-Est (4 months for East Timor) in 1994, with a collective of 12 associations.

Unbeknownst to us, a big funding conference for Indonesian NGOs had been planned in Paris at the same time: INFID, organised by the Comité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement (CCFD). The latter was rather terrified that we would be firebrands having a negative effect on INFID, and put up pressure on some members of the collective to cancel our campaign. This pressure was resisted; eventually we met CCFD (in the person of the wonderful Sergio Regazzoni who passed away in 2009 like Rogado Dias). This cleared up misunderstandings and we remained in contact until independence.

Forum Timor. On the heels of the 4 months campaign, a Forum Timor was created.[8] We organised a two-week speaking tour, Japanese style (see the chapter by Matsuno and Furusawa), in May 1995, with six East Timorese.

Nobel Peace Prize. In November 1996, a press conference with Ramos-Horta for the Peace Nobel Prize was held at France-Libertés, under the ægis of Forum Timor. This is where he met Natacha Meden, his future press attachée. Yet another synchronicity: B.J. Habibie, then Indonesia’s minister of Research and Technology, was visiting Paris at the same time. This may be why Horta was snubbed by the French authorities. Of course, protests against Habibie’s visit and French arms sales to Indonesia were organised on this occasion.

A video. António Dias, Catherine Leconte, Patrice Le Bellec and Carlos Semedo produced a video in 1997: Lettre à Xanana, published by Les éditions du crocodile.

A web site. I created a website in this period: it is still online (not updated since October 1999).[9]

French arms sales thwarted. In June 1997, Habibie came back to France both to receive the “Grand Officier de la Légion d’Honneur” medal, and to attend the Paris Air Show. The etimor-private list forwarded two Antara news dispatches announcing this and saying: “France will not set any political condition if Indonesia wishes to purchase its warplanes, the French Embassy’s military attache, Col M Jean Roucher, said here Wednesday [….] He neither confirmed nor denied that Habibie is exploring the possibility of buying the Mirage-2000 after the official cancellation of the purchase of the F-16s” (the latter had been cancelled by Indonesia in protest against US criticism of its repression in East Timor).

A French journalist, Paul Moreira, had shown an active commitment to East Timor and I forwarded him these dispatches. He went to Habibie’s press conference and asked a question related to this possible sale, raising the issue of the repression in East Timor. Being his usual self, Habibie straightforwardly confirmed the intention and said that there was nothing wrong if the planes were to be used in East Timor. This was aired on television (Canal+); the embarrassment was such that the sale was cancelled.

Observers. In 1999, Agir pour Timor participated in the International Federation for East Timor (IFET) observer project for the 1999 referendum in East Timor. We were able to send three French observers: Louis Philippe Delacroix, Ludovic Bourlès and René Queffelec. The latter participated UNTAET’s mission later, working with Aide médicale internationale, a French Doctors NGO similar to Médecins sans frontières and Médecins du Monde, but lesser known (AMI had worked with us quietly, prior to the referendum).

CNRT Congress, 2000. Carlos Semedo and I went to Timor Loro Sae to attend the CNRT Congress, in August 2000.

The end of Agir pour Timor. After the referendum, there was an ongoing debate on the future of the association. For some, Agir pour Timor had to become an association in support of the future independent Timor-Leste and its leadership, and help develop relations between France and the new country. This was the viewpoint of Carlos Semedo who created a new association to this effect, France-Timor-Leste.[10] For others, including me, Agir pour Timor had to keep its original missions: defend human rights, hence fight Indonesian impunity and keep a critical eye on power in Timor-Leste. The debate became increasingly polarised, until the 2004 general assembly in which Carlos proposed to finish Agir pour Timor and replace it by France-Timor-Leste. This was not done, but Agir pour Timor was effectively, if not legally, terminated. I maintained a mailing list (mostly news) on the association’s Yahoo group until 2020, when Yahoo put an end to these groups.

Solidarity with Indonesia. I had felt since 1996 or 1997 that it was important to create a new association for solidarity with Indonesia. This became possible in September 1999 at the time when Abdurrahman Wahid, also known as Gus Dur, was elected the new president of Indonesia. ADIL, Association Démocratie, Indonésie, Liberté, was born. It was very active – notably we received Sulami (a former organiser of the women movement Gerwani and then 1966 political prisoner), and Praoedya Ananta Toer. We also had activities around Aceh, the Moluccas… then it sadly disappeared after the fall of Gus Dur in 2001. Another one, CDI (Comité pour la démocratie en Indonésie), followed it with the same fate.

ADIL organised jointly with Agir pour Timor a solidarity week with peoples of Indonesia and East Timor in 1999; then another one in 2001, including also Burma with the help of Info Birmanie.

Ibarruri Sudharsono (Iba), the daughter of late PKI head Aidit, was a refugee in France and was instrumental in ADIL. She had previously helped us in Agir pour Timor, getting us in touch with the CGT union.

Various. It was the practice for activists to host other activists. It happened for example at solidarity meetings. I had the honor to host José Ramos-Horta, José Amorim Dias, Juan Federer, members of the 1995 French Speaking Tour, Charlie Scheiner and Jill Sternberg, Carmel Budiardjo, Jusfiq Hadjar…. These remain dear memories and a source of pride.

Academics. I cannot end this description without mentioning these other very important actors: Stéphane Dovert and Frédéric Durand. We had become acquainted to the first right at the beginning, in 1989, and by way of consequence to the second because they were close friends. Stéphane wrote (an outgrowth of his Ph.D. thesis) in 1991 under the nickname of Gabriel Defert, and had an influence on French diplomacy when he was cultural attaché in Jakarta in the early 1990s. He also published a number of articles in Le Monde diplomatique. For his habilitation thesis, he wrote a book on West Papua (Defert 1996). Frédéric’s thesis was on deforestation in South East Asia (Durand 1994), with a strong focus on Indonesia, and he later wrote a large number of works on East Timor, including an Atlas (Durand 2002).

From a different angle, Olivier Duffau moved from cofounder of the association to his favourite work, photojournalist. He went to East Timor several times during the occupation and produced a number of consequent reports. He also participated in the editing of a French translation of Ramos-Horta’s Funu.

An evaluation. In my feeling, French solidarity had no decisive impact, but was not negligible: in particular, the Four Months Campaign generated questions to the French government from ordinary people and elected officials, forcing it to reply (see Forum Timor 1994). Among others, there was the symbolic figure of Danielle Mitterrand. Her foundation, France-Libertés, supported Ramos-Horta several times; she helped put the spotlight on APCET when she was banned to travel to the Philippines; she was a keynote speaker at the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) congress in Dili, in 2000.

Reflections

In this final part, I propose to analyse the successes and failures of East Timor’s struggle for independence. I should stress that I am not a social or political scientist; these reflections correspond purely to my experience on the ground as an East Timor activist.

Why did it work?

What worked?

(1) East Timor’s self-determination (and subsequent independence);

(2) The democratic nature of the resulting State.

Timor-Leste is one of the rare successes worldwide on both.

What made them possible? Here are the characters of the play:

East Timor. The main points are: inside, collaboration of Resistance/Church; outside, unification Fretilin/UDT.

Both were mainly due to the action of Xanana Gusmão, helped by Indonesia’s ruthlessness: the latter was so extreme that it created a “gravitational pull” strong enough to bring together components of East Timor’s society which were initially at loggerheads.

Military defeats and the relocation of the population in concentration camps forced the armed resistance to rely on clandestine networks. They provided links between towns and the resistance, helped smuggle information outside, and organised demonstrations. This was completely parallel to the action of solidarity groups outside – but infinitely more dangerous. They were quietly helped by the Catholic Church, which Indonesia found difficult to attack frontally. This non-violent turn was thus not a policy choice, but an organic necessity; it made East Timorese resistance more popular to the outside world only as a side-effect.

Xanana Gusmão had succeeded in removing (party) politics from the struggle inside Timor-Leste by creating the National Council of Maubere Resistance (CNRM, later renamed CNRT). Outside East Timor, the “reconciliation” of Fretilin and UDT eventually worked out with the help of José Ramos-Horta. It showed a united front against the occupation.

Indonesia. Here, the main point was the collaboration between Indonesian democracy activists and East Timorese activists. Indonesia made a classic mistake of colonial regimes: wanting to “integrate” East Timor by providing Indonesian education to East Timorese, it allowed them to have more freedom in their activism and get in touch with Indonesian opposition. But its strategy of secret also backfired: the Indonesian population was uninformed and naïve. There was no polarisation as in Morocco for Western Sahara, no “Green March” of any kind.

Solidarity groups. When I arrived, I was stricken by a feeling of complete agreement among these groups, but also with the East Timorese resistance. Also, there was a sense of unity and togetherness. One could really talk of a solidarity movement. The International Federation for East Timor was created in 1991. It was accredited with the United Nations and organized an all-important observer project for the 1999 referendum.[11]

A fundamental point was electronic communication, which also started in 1991. The Greennet network of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) hosted the major forum and news provider for us: reg.easttimor.[12]

This was revolutionary. All of a sudden, the drip of information (key to Indonesia’s silence strategy) became a flood, and communication became much faster and cheaper, overriding the need for expensive phone calls and faxes. Indonesia completely missed the point: they didn’t counteract (trolls came very late, if any). In 1995, we created a non-public list etimor.private to discuss confidential matters.

I feel that certain actors had a special role:

• TAPOL had a unique contribution by its bulletin, which was primarily devoted to Suharto’s Indonesia, East Timor being a corollary; it thus gave an invaluable context. TAPOL certainly contributed to the link between Indonesian and East Timorese activists. It had a strong impact on the media and triggered beautiful movements like the Ploughshares (Needham 2016).
• The creation of ETAN/US in 1991 was decisive. They immediately meant business and soon got concrete results: in June 1992, the House voted unanimously to terminate a training programme of Indonesian military. For me this success was fundamental, the US being the major country supporting Indonesia.
• Solidarity in the Philippines, the topic of Gus Miclat’s chapter (see Miclat c. 1995; and Asia-Pacific Coalition for East Timor 2013). This marked an extension of the movement to non-industrialized countries, which destroyed Indonesia’s narrative that East Timor was a colonialist cause only supported by Westerners (and Japanese). Especially, the first APCET conference being hosted by an ASEAN country was a direct and very successful provocation to Indonesia.

Political figures. In France, Danielle Mitterrand has been mentioned in the previous section. Nelson Mandela’s role is described in Jo-Ansie van Wyk’s chapter; that of Ana Gomes in Portugal’s negotiations with Indonesia was also important. Lord Avebury in the UK was also instrumental. Finally, one must stress that of Kofi Annan in the preparation of the 1999 referendum,[13] especially in view of the way UN’s role was vilified after the deployment of violence following it (more than the role of Indonesia, typically).

Academics. In France, Stéphane Dovert and Frédéric Durand were important. Professor Barbedo de Magalhães played a central role in helping link East Timorese and Indonesian activists.[14] Many former activists are also academics.

Timor-Leste is a democracy. In the early 2000s, some voices predicted that the newly independent country would be a “failed State.” At the time of writing of this text, Timor-Leste is one of the most successful parliamentary democracies in the region. The post-independence violent episode of 2006 was resolved and is now a thing of the past. For me, this success is due to several factors (see Swenson 2022 for another analysis):

• Strong leanings of the main independence leaders, José Ramos-Horta and Xanana Gusmão, towards this political system; the former was in constant touch with such democracies;
• The presence of UNTAET from 2000 to 2002; it was constantly consulting and interacting with the East Timorese leadership. Credit must go to its administrator, the late Sergio Vieira de Mello;
• The constant interaction of East Timor’s resistance with a democratically-minded solidarity movement. An illustration is the presence of La’o Hamutuk in Timor-Leste, described by Charlie Scheiner in his chapter, recognised and respected by Timor-Leste’s successive governments;[15]
• But the main reason rests with the East Timorese, who make the democratic spirit work: first by their overwhelming participation in the 1999 referendum, then by their constantly high participation in elections and, finally, by the direct democracy embodied in local councils.

Why did it not work?

What did not work?

(1) The post-referendum destructions;

(2) The struggle against impunity.

In East Timor. There were positive points: the return of many refugees or deportees, the (belated) return of some stolen children, the Serious Crimes Unit, and the Commission on Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR). These attempts to address impunity, however, only concerned relationships between East Timorese.

In Indonesia

• The ad hoc human rights court in Indonesia was totally inadequate: 18 indicted, 12 acquitted, all other convictions over- turned by Indonesian Appeals & Supreme Courts;
• Prabowo is the current president! When he was defence minister, he was received with honours in 2020 by the French defence minister, Florence Parly;
• Militia leader Eurico Guterres got a medal from Joko Widodo; “patriotic certificates” were delivered to 11,000 militia;[16]
• Intelligence chief A.M. Hendropryono and three other military men were honoured by President José Ramos-Horta on August 20, 2023.

The only successful action against impunity that I am aware of is the award of punitive damages against Gen. Sintong Panjaitan in 1994 for the murder of Kamal Bamadhaj (not an East Timorese) during the Santa Cruz massacre, discussed in Leabeater’s chapter (see documentary by Goldson 1999). For me, there was a missed opportunity when Abdurrahman Wahid was president. This could be analyzed much more thoroughly. A key point is the link with 1965/66 massacres, still a taboo in Indonesia, though apparently to a lesser extent now (see documentary by Oppenheimer 2014; see also Earle 2023 on the question of impunity).