“A weapon more powerful than guns”: diplomacy, foreign policy and activism
Ascending the stage in Oslo in 1996 to accept a Nobel Peace Prize, José Ramos-Horta opened with gratitude. He singled out for thanks a global movement that stood in solidarity with the cause of human rights and self-determination for his country, Timor-Leste (East Timor, in English). “With the men, women and children in many parts of the world who have given us so many years of their lives I wish to share this moment of joy,” he said. “Without the generous solidarity movement, we would be even poorer and alone” (Ramos-Horta 1996).
This book looks at the “everyday diplomats” who made up that movement. Less than three years after Ramos-Horta’s speech, Indonesian troops were forced to end their occupation of East Timor (1975-99) by an international diplomatic intervention. Governments that had once supported or acquiesced in Indonesian rule had come to oppose it. Solidarity movement diplomacy was significant in this change, suggesting that studies of international relations must see non-state diplomatic movements as a valid and often powerful form of diplomacy.
Diplomacy is generally understood to mean an “established method of influencing the decisions and behaviour of foreign governments and peoples through dialogue, negotiation, and other measures short of war or violence”, and mostly concerned with relations between sovereign states (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Popular lore often regards diplomacy as an elusive activity performed in shady corridors by people used to secrecy, duplicity and cynicism, trained to place whatever interests they are entrusted with over any principles. An anecdote has it that when a diplomat says “yes”, he means “perhaps”; when he says “perhaps”, he actually means “no”; and if he ever says “no”, then he is not a real diplomat.
That is not the case with the “everyday diplomats” we address here. They practiced “people’s diplomacy” (Nemenzo 1995) that aimed to influence the decisions and behaviour of governments, but was very willing to be publicly critical in ways that traditional diplomats were so often at pains to avoid.
Diplomacy is not an activity devoid of internal evolution and evolving forms. In the 20th century, many were the innovations that changed the way diplomacy was used, from the emergence of multilateral institutions alongside sovereign states as main actors to the creation of a class of international civil servants or the reinforcement of their professional status. Among these novelties, one must consider the “unofficial” activities of nongovernmental, civil society elements. These are the focus of the present book.
Unlike the carefully crafted official diplomacy’s vocabulary and preference for shady and discrete rooms, activists of the solidarity movement employed harsh words, shocking images, disturbing initiatives, and public spaces. The panoply of items in their toolbox was considerable, as the chapters in this volume illustrate: street demonstrations and massive protests on the occasion of official diplomatic events (such as Suharto’s visits to Germany or Canada), publication of bulletins, brochures and books, organisation of speaking tours by Timorese activists, organisation of university seminars, lobbying politicians, exploring the mass media’s capacity to expose crude facts and conveying messages, contestation of Indonesian economic and/or military interests (such as the East German or French aborted sale of military equipment).
Taken as a whole, the initiatives of these activists can be framed in two categories:
(1) those destined to challenge their own national governments’ official stance or – when this was no more than a façade for connivance with Indonesia – to persuade politicians to alter their foreign policy. This persuasion effort was not directed at an outside entity, but rather at the activists’ own country’s authorities. Public opinion carries weight, and the diffusion of material showing the drama of life in Timor-Leste and the exposure of collusions with the oppressive regime was often a matter of “domestic” rather than “foreign” policy.
(2) those whose purpose was, just like traditional forms of diplomacy, to influence and bring about substantial changes in foreign countries – first and foremost, in Indonesia, but also in its main supporters (USA, Australia, Japan) and in multilateral organisations whose performance was deemed inadequate or plainly perfunctory.
The ensemble of non-state actors who challenged the monopoly of the state over “diplomatic” agency and emerged as actual players in societal interactions across borders – some of which are presented and discussed in this volume – may be regarded as performing what Susan Henders and Mary Young (2012) have called “other diplomacies”. They were key actors in Timor-Leste’s international efforts to secure self-determination. Lacking a large diaspora (except in Portugal and Australia), Timorese activists sought support from within the civil society of countries around the world, defining diplomatic action as one of three “fronts” of the resistance movement. Facing trial at an Indonesian court for treason in 1993, armed resistance leader Xanana Gusmão conceded that his guerrillas had been defeated, but added that the “moment has come for Jakarta to realise its political defeat” (Gusmão 1996). If armed resistance had not freed the country, he argued, global public opinion had shifted and Indonesia was losing that diplomatic battle.
Timorese leaders took a deliberate decision to foster a solidarity movement as (in the words of British activist Carmel Budiardjo) “a weapon more powerful than guns”. Of course, as John Waddingham recalls in his chapter, the solidarity movement was far from monolithic. It was often torn between conflicting sympathies or political and ideological orientations – not to mention personal rivalries and other unfortunate manifestations of the human condition…. The Timorese resistance itself was also pluralistic and this fact was unavoidable for all those who offered their support. The twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation witnessed a significant realignment of political and ideological groups, and this evolution was also felt among those who provided support abroad.
In engaging with governments and with the diverse Timorese resistance movement, solidarity activists were engaged in a form of diplomacy. It was messy and often loud, an unconventional approach compared to state diplomacy. Yet the movement emerged as an effective tool for the Timor-Leste cause and as an effective form of “other diplomacy” that often proved influential in shaping both government and Timorese actions. Its role becomes clear in a sketch of Timor-Leste’s move from self-rule, to Portuguese colony, to aspiring state, to occupied territory, to UN administration, and finally to full independence.
Timor-Leste: the dramatic birth of a (post-colonial) nation
Independence: long time in the making
20 May 2002. The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (RDTL, in its Portuguese-language acronym) proclaims (the restoration of) its independence to universal acclaim, following a self-determination referendum (30 August 1999) and a brief transitional period under UN administration. A few months later, the first new sovereign and independent nation of the 21st century was unanimously admitted as the UN’s 191st member state. These events were the culmination of a very long, belated and dramatic process of self-determination with unique features.
Starting with the Carnation Revolution in Lisboa on 25 April 1974 – the day the Portuguese authoritarian and colonialist regime was overthrown and the path open to reverse its stubborn refusal to grant self-determination to its overseas territories in Africa and Asia – the trajectory of this small half-island in maritime Southeast Asia comprised several key moments. First, the emerging of a pluralist nationalism (1974-75), expressed in the formulation of three “nations of intent” (Leach 2023), each offering a different future and each embodied in a political party. One proposed a reconfiguration of its ties with a would-be “federal” Portuguese state (the policy of the Timorese Democratic Union, UDT), another sought integration as an autonomous unit in the Republic of Indonesia (the policy of the Timorese Popular Democratic Association, Apodeti), and a third asserted the unambiguous right to independence (the policy of the Independent Timor-Leste Revolutionary Front, Fretilin). These three clashed in a severe internal conflict (August-September 1975), causing the collapse of the self-determination process conducted by Portugal. Winning the internal conflict, Fretilin declared independence (28 November 1975). Then, it endured twenty-four years of brutal “Third World Colonialism” (Weldemichael 2013; Nixon 2012) in the form of Indonesian occupation. Finally, in the wake of a tripartite UN-Portugal-Indonesia agreement (5 May 1999), Timorese voted in an internationally sponsored and supervised referendum. On 30 August 1999 a massive turnout (98.93%) of East Timorese voted thus: for “special autonomy within the Republic of Indonesia”: 21.5%; for independence: 78.5%. A lasting solution based on international law was finally established, and a UN mission would help the country back to its independence.
Timor-Leste as an Indonesian province
7 December 1975. Indonesian troops formally invade “Portuguese Timor” – as defined by UN General Assembly Resolution 1542 (XV), December 1960 – or the “Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste” unilaterally declared by Fretilin, but only recognised by a handful of countries. A military option was long in the making in Jakarta, first in the context of Operasi Komodo, then of Operasi Seroja, and skirmishes along the border were frequent since August 1975.
The Indonesian military commanders boasted they would “have breakfast in Batugadé [Timor-Indonesia border], lunch in Dili [the territory’s capital city], and dinner in Lospalos [the easternmost district]” (Sousa 2018). However, it would take the best of three years for Indonesia to obtain control over the territory, symbolically marked by the assassination of Fretilin leader Nicolau dos Reis Lobato on 31 December 1978.
Soon after seizing power in Dili, the Indonesian authorities established a “Provisional Government” formed from cadres of the local pro-integration movements, and headed by Arnaldo dos Reis Araújo of Apodeti. On 31 May 1976, a controversial ceremony was held: a number of traditional leaders – liurais – were assembled under duress and intimidation, and pressed to vote for a “request” to President Suharto to accept the integration of Timor-Leste. This so-called “Act of Free Choice” – soon dubbed the “Act of No Choice” – emulated the one performed by Indonesia in 1969 in West Papua, which had been controversially recognised by the UN as a legitimate form of assessing its people’s wishes. Not this time. In spite of being internationally isolated, the parliament of Indonesia voted in favour of accepting Timor-Leste as its 27th Province, Timor-Timur (East Timor, abbreviated as Tim-Tim), and President Suharto duly signed the respective diploma in July 1976. Very few countries – amongst them, Australia – ever recognised this status.
Portugal responded to the military aggression by severing diplomatic ties with Indonesia and bringing the issue to the attention of the UN, underlining that this operation blatantly violated its Charter. A major point in the Portuguese stance on the issue consisted of not surrendering its status as “administering power of a non-autonomous territory” – and for the ensuing quarter century, international law recognised Portugal’s status and thus its legitimate claims to act on behalf of the people of Timor-Leste.
The military operation was soon condemned by the UN Security Council (UNSC), which also criticised Portugal for lack of adequate management of its decolonisation – UNSC Resolutions 384 (22 December 1975) and 389 (22 April 1976) – before plunging into a long hibernation until May 1999 (Carey & Walsh 2008).
The UN General Assembly also rejected the Indonesian move from December 1975 – UNGA Resolution 3485 (XXX) 12 December – and it continued to do so until 1982, when a new approach was implemented and the UN Secretary General was invited to “initiate consultations with all parties directly concerned with a view to explore avenues for achieving a comprehensive settlement of the problem” – UNGA Resolution 37/30, 23 November 1982. Having vanished from the UNSC and the UNGA, the issue would be kept alive, with important implications, in Geneva where the UN special institutions dealing with human rights have their seat. This new development was critically important, as it offered greater opportunities to NGOs and direct voices coming from Timor-Leste to make themselves heard, on top of the diplomatic representatives operating within New York circles. Solidarity activism had been present since 1975, but it became increasingly important from this point onwards through this UN-provided space.
Annexation and Resistance
In Timor-Leste itself, Indonesian rule was met with multifaceted opposition and resistance.
First, under the influence of Fretilin, “liberated zones” (bases de apoio) were created and maintained that slowed the advances of the enemy forces and aimed to keep a political and social organisation in line with that party’s principles. This strategy was highly controversial, even among Fretilin cadres, and could not sustain the lethal superiority of the Indonesian forces. Through campaigns like “Encirclement and Annihilation” – a name that reveals the extent of the Indonesian destructive, even genocidal intents – using US supplied OV-10 Bronco aircraft and Swiss-manufactured napalm to target civilian populations, the invaders dismantled the “liberated” areas and assumed control of the entire territory.
From the ashes of defeat rose a new form of resistance, under a new leader – Xanana Gusmão. As large sectors of the population were reintegrated in “normal” life, some having surrendered and faced prison, a few remained actively engaged in the pursuit of armed conflict, a guerrilla type of warfare. The armed front of the Timorese resistance survived until 1999. Its actions were of significant symbolic nature, highlighting the fact that the guerrillas were actively supported by the population at large, and discharging periodic spectacular attacks on “the enemy”.
However, unlike most guerrilla wars, these freedom fighters could not rely on safe havens across borders, nor was it easy to acquire weapons and fresh ammunition – commander Falur Rate Laek (2018) speaks of Indonesian soldiers being lured to sell theirs – nor were they able to support their activities from commodity trade. Their role was, thus, limited, and no one ever expected a military victory or territorial gains – only significant attrition and wearing down of the enemy’s morale.
Among the population at large, the opposition to foreign rule and its brutal methods grew steadily. Many East Timorese became engaged in covert activities in support of the Armed Front and the purpose of expelling the invaders. A “clandestine front” was thus formed. Both new actors, like the growing number of students, and old ones who had earlier accepted or even welcomed Indonesian rule, moved to broaden and enlarge the crowd of activists and clandestine members of the Timorese resistance. Nowadays, the RDTL has established programmes directed at honouring those who took active part in the Resistance, vetting their life stories, and it has drawn a list of tens of thousands of activists who benefit from symbolic and well as financial compensation for their deeds.
One can grasp the sense of this movement by observing the way in which nationalist “umbrella” organisations evolved, from the Fretilin-dominated CRRN (Revolutionary Council of National Resistance) to the broader CNRM (National Council of Maubere Resistance) to the ultimate CNRT (National Council of Timorese Resistance) created in 1998 with a wide spectrum of political sensibilities on board. In addition, the Timorese Catholic Church became a critical player. After being a pillar of Portuguese colonial rule, and having supported and welcomed the option for an Indonesian takeover, this institution – mostly under the guidance of the first native East Timorese cleric, Mgr. Martinho da Costa Lopes – which had undergone a process of “Timorisation” of its members, increasingly sided with the suffering people against the oppressors. Bishop José Joaquim Ribeiro initially said: “I saw the [Indonesian] paratroopers descend from the sky as angels from heaven, coming to liberate us from communism”, only to be forced to add, “but soon I realised they were worse than devils from hell” (Paz é Possível, 1995). In spite of strained relations with the Vatican, Timorese Catholics managed to integrate a worldwide network of likeminded activists and contributed to counter the argument that the Timorese resistance was a “communist” movement. Global religious solidarity became an important factor.
The Resistance abroad
In anticipation of the Indonesian invasion, a number of key Fretilin cadres were sent abroad in order to defend the territory’s new situation before the international community and its organisations. After 7 December, they could not return, and established themselves in a number of Western and Third World countries. That was the seed of the “external front”, also known as “diplomatic front”, whose main figure was José Ramos-Horta.
The diplomatic front engaged in two distinct forms of activity: (1) the traditional lobbying of governments and international organisations, sustaining the need to uphold international law and the East Timorese people’s right to self-determination that had been thwarted by the Indonesian invasion; and (2) encouraging, coordinating and monitoring civil society, grassroots organisations that bloomed in support of its people, and devising ways to reach ever growing strata of world public opinion with information that testified to the atrocities being performed in Timor-Leste over the years and the passivity, if not actual connivance, of national governments and international institutions who proclaimed to adhere to international law, human rights and democracy – only to be confronted with their hypocrisy and waiver of stated principles.
This book is mostly about the second of these two aims of the diplomatic front, and the worldwide civic mobilisation in support of the suffering people of Timor-Leste.
Was Timor-Leste alone?
1975 was a critical year in terms of the Cold War and the international balance of superpowers. Initiatives to lower the sharp edges of the conflict materialised in the Helsinki summit and agreement (July), and the ensuing détente in Europe. However, this was also the year that witnessed the collapse of the US presence in Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), the emergence of five newly independent former Portuguese colonies in Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Guinea-Bissau), all adopting Soviet-sympathetic single-party rule, and the demise of Haile Selassie’s regime in Ethiopia at the hands of a new, Marxist oriented rule.
It has been argued that the Cold War was mostly fought by “proxy players” rather than directly by USA or USSR forces, and that political backing for conflicting sides took precedence over military engagement (although this was obvious in several instances). In the case of Timor-Leste, which Ramos-Horta (1996) considered to be no more than a footnote in the history of Cold War, the situation was unusual.
The USA, alongside regional powers like Australia, abetted and supported Indonesian expansionist intents. It is well known that President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were in Jakarta the day before the invasion, and expressed their “understanding” for the move – only asking for it not to be initiated before their plane had left the Indonesian air space (National Security Archive 2019). On the other side, however, the alleged alignment of Fretilin with the Soviet bloc was far more feeble than the Western propaganda made it – it was virtually nonexistent. Both the USSR and the People’s Republic of China were working to restore friendly relations with Jakarta after the dramatic repression of communists and leftists during the 1965-66 massacres. Neither of those powerful nations was keen to support a romantic adventure, a new Cuba in Asia, and risk offending Indonesia. Years later, Abílio de Araújo – a leading cadre of Fretilin in exile – revealed in his memoirs (2012) that, when he visited Cuba, he had sought the support of his hosts to set up a high-level meeting with Soviet officers – but he was never invited to Moscow; as for China, he visited Beijing and was greeted by a second-rank figure who offered him a one-off sum of $150,000. At the UNGA the Soviet bloc was far from unanimous in its vote for Timor-Leste, several of its member states opting to abstain or even to side with Indonesia. After all, Indonesia was a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement – and that carried weight when it came to cast a vote.
This overall picture did not bode well for the “Timor issue” and the cause of its people. International law was not an instrument carrying sufficient weight to counter the politics of interests. Multilateral institutions supposed to uphold the rule of law and instill a modicum of decorum in international relations were inefficient, if not paralysed. Among the plethora of possible relevant examples, the US ambassador to the UN under President Ford, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (a Democrat), boasted in his memoirs: “The State Department was determined that the UN should prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook [in regard to Timor-Leste]. This task was given to me and I carried it through with considerable success” (Moynihan and Weaver 1978). A few years later, a Portuguese diplomat recounted to one of the editors how they witnessed the Secretary-General advising Moynihan and his government to “drop down international law, acknowledge the fait accompli, and seek a mutually acceptable agreement that would save the faces of everybody”.
It became increasingly clear that, apart from initiatives based on formal and traditional diplomacy, using official channels and institutions, arguing on the basis of the breach of international law, the cause required the use of new, imaginative instruments to try and change the course of “inevitability”.
Human Rights and Public Opinion
The right of all peoples to self-determination, including the right to independence, enjoyed significant worldwide public support after World War II, even before it was enshrined in UN resolutions. This basic human right was tantamount to emancipation, and it conveyed a sense of a better future for large swaths of humanity. However, in the late 1970s and onwards, its aura had faded (under the weight of many experiences of bad government, mismanagement, corruption and brutality in newly independent countries), its target moved from the Third World to new venues (Québec, Catalonia, Basque Country, Scotland), its rationale and wisdom questioned on grounds of the “feasibility” of granting it to small, “unviable” territories (of which Timor-Leste could arguably be a case). In a sense, self-determination and the demise of colonial rule had dominated the international arena from 1945-75 and successfully changed the political landscape of Asia and Africa – but by and large it was a process of the past. It was not easy to convey a message based on the need to finish up the process in a tiny, remote half-island, which – some argued – had been “criminally divided by the colonial power” only to be reunited to its “natural cultural environment” (Traube 1986).
A new international agenda emerged in the 1980s, and grew stronger after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Cold War (1989-91) – the agenda of human rights. In this new environment, in which world public opinion was increasingly sensitive and vocal about political and ethical principles, the “Timor issue” gained a new configuration (Rothschild 2023). Of course, at the end of the day, it remained a case of international law and the implementation of UN resolutions (namely UNGA Resolutions 1514, 1541 and 1542, all of December 1960). But it was also a case of the flagrant defiance of other, more common, human rights. In its devastating report made under the aegis of the UN after the referendum of 30 August 1999, the CAVR (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação / Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation) listed illegal detentions, torture, rape, sexual slavery, forced marriages, unfair trials, work under coercion, destruction of dwellings, livestock and cultures, and massive deportations. More than this, CAVR estimated that the number of deaths directly or indirectly derived from the occupation (computed as excessive deaths in relation to “normal” conditions”) could have reached the upper level of 186,000, mostly concentrated in the first years – and did not rule out that claims such as that of the International Red Cross (over 200,000) were plausible. The estimated population of “Portuguese Timor” in 1975 hovered around 670,000. In comparative terms, this level of mortality would have surpassed that of the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia. Despite the controversies surrounding the precise definition of “genocide”, Clinton Fernandes (2023) has established that “genocide” is an adequate concept to describe the events of Timor-Leste if one accepts the “reasonable grounds standard” rather than a more stringent “beyond reasonable doubt”.
All that was happening in Timor-Leste under Indonesian rule offered solid grounds to root the condemnation of the invaders. The question was: how could the Timorese make themselves heard? Who would support their cause? What were the necessary instruments to convey to world public opinion the raw data on the scale of their suffering? These became the critical questions. The response to those questions required imagination, creativity – and determination. This book seeks to analyse the actual forms that solidarity activism historically displayed.
Scope and Structure of the Book
This book emerges from the international workshop Solidarity with Timor-Leste’s struggle for self-determination: actors, institutions, contexts, held in Lisboa, 16-20 May 2022, itself an initiative developed in the framework of a larger research project (The Self-determination of Timor-Leste: Transnational Perspectives, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology’s grant FCT/PTDC/HAR-HIS/30670/2017).
Solidarity with Timor-Leste’s struggle for self-determination mobilised people all over the world, from neighbouring Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, and even Indonesia, to Asian key nations such as Japan and the Philippines, to Africa (the Republic of South Africa and Mozambique and other former Portuguese colonies), the Americas (USA, Canada, Brazil), and Europe (including the former colonial power but also France, Germany, UK and Ireland. This movement made its imprint both in major international centers (New York, Washington DC, Tokyo, Canberra, Lisboa) and in “out of the way places”.
Before moving to consider individual chapters and the experiences they report and analyse, we pay tribute to three outstanding figures in the international solidarity movement with Timor-Leste’s liberation struggle. These three simple texts are authored by individuals who were in close contact with those personalities, and shared with them valuable contributions.
President José Ramos-Horta, the main figure of the external / diplomatic front, writes on Max Stahl – the British journalist whose bravery, courage and calm permitted the massacre of Santa Cruz to be taped on video and smuggled out of Dili to astonish the world and expose the naked cruelty of Indonesian rule. That episode turned a page in the Timor-Leste saga, as from that moment it became impossible to deny the atrocities being committed and the need for the international community to press for radical change. Max (Christopher Wenner) sadly passed away a few months before our workshop, on 28 October 2021, after a long commitment to Timor-Leste and its people from which emerged the Max Stahl Timor-Leste Audiovisual Centre, a key institution in preserving the memory of the dark days.
Liem Soei Liong, an Indonesian born activist who moved to Europe and was active in the solidarity movement, writes on the late Carmel Budiardjo (1925-2021) a British human rights activist who had founded TAPOL to campaign for Indonesian political prisoners like her Indonesian husband who was imprisoned in Jakarta – a fate she herself had suffered for more than three years before being expelled. TAPOL later extended its breadth and became one of the first and major organizations who took the Timor issue to heart and placed it in the public agenda.
Finally, Roque Rodrigues, a veteran of the Timor liberation movement, former Fretilin leading figure and sometime member of the post-independence government, who was among those who had been sent abroad in early December 1975 to campaign for the rights of their people and carried out those duties mainly in Portugal and Angola, pays homage to Professor António Barbedo de Magalhães. Professor Barbedo was a military officer serving in Portuguese Timor in 1975, where he and his wife undertook a reform of the schooling system that was aborted by the civil war. Upon returning to Portugal and after the Indonesian invasion, he became a towering figure in the solidarity movement. Almost single-handed, he stubbornly organised, under the aegis of the Universidade do Porto (where he was teaching), several jornadas (workshops), major events that conveyed to the public the brutality of living conditions in Timor and the breadth of the international solidarity when the cause was struggling for recognition. His vast archive – perhaps the largest and richest in Portugal – is now properly organised and open for consultation. Unfortunately, his health condition did not allow him to attend our workshop. We were saddened to learn of his death in May 2025 as this book went to press.
The book then moves through chapters that tell the solidarity story from around the world, beginning with movements that started as early as 1975 and tracing their histories. Jean-Pierre Catry offers a detailed parallel examination of events in Timor-Leste, the policies of the Portuguese government – internationally recognised as the administering power of its former colony – and Portuguese solidarity groups, who lobbied their government for a stronger stance. Each of these three levels of analysis interacted. He concludes that – in spite of a winding road that was far from easy to travel – “it was only the conjunction between the Timorese, the political forces and the solidarity abroad that made possible what seemed impossible and what no one could have achieved on their own”. Catry’s account shows that solidarity groups were not isolated from the Timorese resistance but helped carry its message into a vital country, one of the few with a formal path into UN channels to speak on Timor-Leste.
The former Portuguese colonies in Africa were also centres of solidarity. In the next chapter, Marisa Ramos Gonçalves shares her research from Maputo, the Mozambican capital that provided a seeming safe haven for Fretilin’s exiled leadership after the invasion. Mozambique – a former Portuguese colony that gained independence in 1975, and was a keen and generous supporter of the Timorese cause throughout the liberation struggle – mixed state initiatives with popular forms of support for individuals who sought refuge in its territory. Ramos Gonçalves argues that this blend generated a more robust group of exiles destined to perform important roles after independence. Politics found its way across the ocean at the elite level, but at the same time, there were close ties at the grassroots level between Mozambicans and Timorese exiled to their fellow Portuguese-speaking state. Using oral history and new archival research, she unearths some untold stories and recasts the geography of solidarity movements in more southerly directions.
Two chapters look at Australia, though they cannot provide a full account of the world’s most diverse solidarity movement and one of the world’s largest. John Waddingham edited Timor Information Service starting even before the invasion, at a time when news from the territory was hard to come by. His chapter sketches the first decade of Timor-Leste’s presence as an issue in Australian public opinion, including but not limited to the solidarity movement. He does not indulge in romantic celebration of the solidarity movement’s success, but rather offers a series of propositions that show rises and falls, swells and troughs, in Timor-Leste’s big neighbour to the south.
Next, Kim McGrath zeroes in on “the Australian oil trail”. Australia sought oil in the Timor Sea. Solidarity movements were able to leverage this issue in Australian public opinion as the need for an oil deal with Indonesia prompted Australian governments to lead the way in pro-Indonesia policies among Western governments. Oil-seeking Australian governments, she argues, recognised Indonesia’s rule in Timor-Leste more than others, but this also saw a swelling of Australian solidarity for the Timorese people.
Maire Leadbeater provides a finely-grained history of solidarity in New Zealand from 1975 to the restoration of independence, highlighting the role of a smaller country that nevertheless was able to project power. Her account shows the role of individuals in shifting New Zealand’s position by the late 1990s into one that supported Timorese self-determination, perhaps opening the door for some of its allies to follow suit.
Kiyoko Furusawa and Akihisa Matsuno write about Japan, a country whose government was closely aligned with Suharto’s regime economically, politically and diplomatically, systematically voting against all UN resolutions in support of Timor-Leste. They tell us about the growth of a sympathetic sentiment towards the Timorese people, and offer a list of Timorese individuals who toured Japan in to speak at solidarity meetings, whether prominent actors like Mgr. Martinho da Costa Lopes, José Ramos-Horta or Roque Rodrigues or lesser-known figures. Thus they show the political and ideological breadth of the resistance and its growing representativeness. A second aspect deserves special mention: their reference to the engagement of women and their contribution to address directly the issue of gender discrimination and the role of Timorese women to underline their particular struggle. Finally, is must be noted that many Japanese activists became involved with the Timor campaign via their relations with Indonesia, and thus the links they established with their counterparts in Indonesia were crucial to draw a global picture of the solidarity movement.
The movement experienced a breakthrough after 1989 and especially after the Santa Cruz massacre in 1991. This wave of solidarity is the subject of the next group of chapters, which would contribute to the restoration of independence in Timor-Leste by 1999.
Solidarity bloomed in Asia with the Asia-Pacific Conference for East Timor (APCET), held in the Philippines in 1992 with a global participation – or at least, that was the plan. APCET organiser Gus Miclat’s chapter tells the APCET story, of five conferences and an impressive coalition that brought the issue of Timor-Leste back to Southeast Asia. APCET disrupted Indonesia’s support networks within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an important step towards making Timor-Leste’s independence possible. This “child of people’s struggle” helped to crystallise Southeast Asian human rights activism behind a single cause at a time when Asian governments were promoting a message of authoritarian government. Timor-Leste influenced global human rights. Miclat’s chapter moves beyond the national frame, seeing activism in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and beyond.
We then move to Europe. Two chapters are devoted to France, one on the French solidarity movement itself, another on the crucial role of the Portuguese diaspora in France, the world’s largest Portuguese diaspora. Carlos Semedo analyzes the role of Portuguese citizens in the European country where they were most present, illustrating the punch of Portuguese organizations beyond Portugal’s borders through religious and community channels. On a smaller scale, this story can be told for other countries that hosted Portuguese diasporas, from Belgium and Canada to Sweden and the United States. Then, Bruno Kahn, another central figure in the solidarity group Agir pour Timor (Act for Timor), recounts his awakening moment for the humanitarian crisis in Timor-Leste: his encounter with Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong’s book The War Against East Timor, much like Peter Carey’s reaction to James Dunn’s book – a fine testimony of the importance of publications and the public sphere to widen one’s own perception of a major problem. Within a couple of years Kahn was one of the founders of Agir pour Timor, a grassroots association of people trying to mobilise French public opinion and move a mostly indifferent French government. The pair offer different analyses and moved in different directions, but the chapters together paint a wide-ranging portrait of the demographics and actions of solidarity work in an important European country.
Irish activist Tom Hyland’s account of the way he was introduced to Timor-Leste’s agony is that of an ordinary citizen of a Western world nation casually watching TV with friends and suddenly being taken aback by the sheer force of Max Stahl’s images of the Santa Cruz massacre. His story is that of thousands of previously uncommitted people who were driven to take action because of what they realised was happening. Hyland was a tireless campaigner for Timor-Leste after the massacre, using others to provide information but refusing to allow politicians to look away. The Irish solidarity movement skyrocketed in support and influence and managed to make Ireland the second European country, after Portugal, to stand foursquare behind Timor-Leste. Irish activists meanwhile forged links with other countries and further internationalised the movement. Hyland was welcomed in independent Timor-Leste, where he taught English to Timorese diplomats, and passed away in December 2024, mourned by friends and comrades.
Veteran activist and scholar Monika Schlicher offers an inside story from Germany’s solidarity movement, showing the role of Indonesian exiles and the way the movement was able to bridge the Indonesian-Timorese divide by advocating both for democracy in Indonesia and self-determination for Timor-Leste. Another divide that was bridged during this period was that between East and West Germany, united in 1990. The proposed sale of East German ships to Indonesia, and the fact that President Suharto’s successor B.J. Habibie was German-educated, were among the levers that solidarity activists could use to move German opinion.
The section closes with the arrival of an organised national solidarity network in the United States, which gave the solidarity movement an outpost at the centre of world power. Chris Lundry, an academic and former member of the East Timor Action Network, tells the organisation’s history. This book lacks a full account of solidarity activism before ETAN’s founding in 1992. Still, ETAN was both the US manifestation of European-style solidarity groups, and a group that shifted the solidarity movement into a new level of influence and access, with a vital central role in information as new communications technologies spread. Lundry employs the “boomerang model” created by Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) to illustrate ETAN’s importance as a pro-Timor voice in the world’s most powerful country and, along with Australia and Japan, Indonesia’s major diplomatic and economic backer.
The final section delves into diplomacy, challenges, and continuities. Peter Carey, an Oxford don deeply steeped in Indonesian history, offers a personal exploration of a historian’s dilemma and responsibility. Within the context of his academic life, he was asked to review James Dunn’s book Timor: A People Betrayed for a major periodical – the Times Literary Supplement. What might have been a trivial task turned into an extraordinary story, involving publishing the piece under a pseudonym and receiving very angry reactions from the Indonesian ambassador to London. Afterwards, “there was no turning back” – Carey became active in supporting Timor-Leste in academic circles. His story traces the obstacles and dilemmas of an historian moved by the duty to use knowledge to help.
There were broad fields in which solidarity with Timor-Leste flourished. Michael Leach – himself a keen musician and academic – examines the “music of solidarity”, noting that it ranges from popular songs composed by local artists, to high-profile ones by famous international names like U2, to recognised composers like Martin Wesley-Smith or Luís Represas and his Trovante band. He explores the relations established between music and musicians, and the national and worldwide networks of solidarity, underlying the weight that popular forms of communication had on the impact of the political message.
David Webster urges us to look to “out of the way places” and see quieter solidarity in less-known locations. His chapter argues of the importance of early solidarity groups in the United States and Canada before 1991, a story that can only be told because those groups’ papers were archived and are now available to historians. He then looks at activism in Brazil and Malaysia that was isolated from the international movement but still played a role in shifting opinion. Which other solidarity stories are left untold?
Pedro Pinto Leite, a jurist who commutes between Portugal and the Netherlands, is one of the founders of IPJET – the International Platform of Jurists for East Timor. The large experience IPJET gained in its years devoted to the cause of Timor-Leste has been used to enlarge the scope of this NGO, which ranks among the most persuasive in keeping alive the flame of another self-determination issue – that of Western Sahara, a case that bears strong similarities with the one of Timor-Leste, but is longing in the corridors of the UN. Here, too, is a solidarity movement legacy.
Jo-Ansie van Wyk examines the crucial role of Nelson Mandela, the first president of post-apartheid South Africa and a global voice for human rights with enormous stature. During his state visit to Jakarta in 1997, Mandela asked to see Xanana Gusmão, the resistance leader then imprisoned in Cipinang gaol. This most unusual request was grudgingly agreed, and Xanana delivered to dinner. Mandela argued his civil society mobilisation would not allow him to return home without paying his utmost respects to a national liberation hero like himself, and bestowed upon Gusmão the recognition of his outstanding status as Timorese hero without whom no stable and lasting solution to the vexed issue could be attained. Following on from that meeting, Mandela engaged the formal diplomacy of the Republic of South Africa in close collaboration with the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the search for a negotiated solution – a critical move that strengthened Annan’s hand.
Finally, Charlie Scheiner (one of ETAN’s founders) brings us the case of La’o Hamutuk (Walk Together), an NGO created in 2000 after the end of the Indonesian occupation, by international and Timorese activists together. It has established itself as a powerful, critical voice monitoring the development of the new nation and the fundamental options it has made from independence. Blending a deep-felt commitment to the aspirations of a fair and decent democratic polity with relentless in-depth analysis of main current policies – including those pertaining to the impact of the exploitation of fossil fuels that contribute enormously to the available financial resources – La’o Hamutuk is an authoritative voice capable of engaging public opinion in key debates on the future of independent Timor-Leste. In some ways, it carries forward the mantle of solidarity activism.
Coda
The chronology and the anatomy of the resistance as a social entity rather than a structured organisation explains the manifestation of different points of view and the espousal of diverse solutions. Solidarity movements operated within diverse and shifting Timorese resistance contexts.
At first, Fretilin tended to hegemonise the resistance, and for many years adopted a sectarian attitude of requiring to be considered as “the sole legitimate representative of the Timorese people” and engaging in the “construction of an avant-garde Marxist-Leninist party” with serious consequences for the ways in which solidarity activists presented their case. Later, the Timorese Catholic Church emerged as a key element expressing outrage for the occupation and its rosary of calamities, and a network of Christian activism was developed in many countries with profound impact in the public perception of the “Timor issue”. The final convergence of a diverse spectrum of political and ideological sectors in CNRT (April 1998, just one year before the 5 May 1999 agreement) is testimony to the pluralistic nature of modern day Timorese nationalism and identity.
This book does not focus on one single stream of opinion, but aims at portraying, albeit only in the form of a sample, the diversity of the solidarity movement and its activists.
