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Indonesia Territorial Continuity: Irian Jaya and East Timor
A connection between the Sukarno and Suharto eras was
the
ambition to build a unitary state whose territories would
extend
"from Sabang [an island northwest of Sumatra, also known
as Pulau
We] to Merauke [a town in southeastern Irian Jaya]."
Although
territorial claims against Malaysia were dropped in 1966,
the
western half of the island of New Guinea and East Timor,
formerly
Portuguese Timor, were incorporated into the republic.
This
expansion, however, stirred international criticism,
particularly
from Australia.
West New Guinea, as Irian Jaya was then known, had been
brought
under Indonesian administration on May 1, 1963 following a
ceasefive between Indonesian and Dutch forces and a
seven-months UN
administration of the former Dutch colony. A plebiscite to
determine the final political status of the territory was
promised
by 1969. But local resistance to Indonesian rule, in part
the
result of abuses by government officials, led to the
organization
of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) headed by local leaders
and
prominent exiles such as Nicholas Jouwe, a Papuan who had
been vice
chairman of the Dutch-sponsored New Guinea Council.
Indonesian
forces carried out pacification of local areas, especially
in the
central highland region where resistance was particularly
stubborn.
Although Sukarno had asserted that a plebiscite was
unnecessary, acceding to international pressure, he agreed
to hold
it. The Act of Free Choice provisions, however, had not
defined
precisely how a plebiscite would be implemented. Rather
than
working from the principle of one man-one vote, Indonesian
authorities initiated a consensus-building process that
supposedly
was more in conformity with local traditions. During the
summer of
1969, local councils were strongly pressured to approve
unanimously
incorporation into Indonesia. The UN General Assembly
approved the
outcome of the plebiscite in November, and West Irian (or
Irian
Barat), renamed Irian Jaya, became Indonesia's
twenty-sixth
province. But resistance to Indonesian rule by the OPM,
which
advocated the unification of Irian Jaya and the
neighboring state
of Papua New Guinea, continued. Border incidents were
frequent as
small bands of OPM guerrillas sought sanctuary on Papua
New Guinea
territory.
East Timor and the small enclave of Oecusse on the
north coast
of the island of Timor were poor and neglected corners of
Portugal's overseas empire when officers of Portugal's
Armed Forces
Movement, led by General António de Spínola, seized power
in Lisbon
in April 1974. Convinced that his country's continued
occupation of
overseas territories, especially in Africa, was
excessively costly
and ultimately futile, Spínola initiated a hasty
"decolonization"
process. In Portuguese Timor, local political groups
responded: the
Timor Democratic Union (UDT) favored a continued
association with
Lisbon, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East
Timor
(Fretilin--see Glossary),
demanded full independence, and
the
Popular Democratic Association of Timor (Apodeti) favored
integration with Indonesia.
Although Indonesia's minister of foreign affairs, Adam
Malik,
assured Portugal's foreign minister on his visit to
Jakarta that
Indonesia would adhere to the principle of
self-determination for
all peoples, attitudes had apparently changed by the
summer of
1974. Fretilin's leftist rhetoric was disquieting, and
Jakarta
began actively supporting Fretilin's opponent, Apodeti.
Fears grew
that an independent East Timor under Fretilin could become
a
beachhead for communist subversion. At a meeting between
Suharto
and Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam in September
1974, the
latter acknowledged that it might be best for East Timor
to join
Indonesia but that the Australian public would not stand
for the
use of force. This acknowledgment seemed to open the way
for a more
forward policy. External factors relating to the communist
subversion theme were the conquest of South Vietnam by
communist
North Vietnam in May 1975 and the possibility of a Chinese
takeover
of the Portuguese colony of Macao.
Fretilin had become the dominant political force inside
East
Timor by mid-1975, and its troops seized the bulk of the
colonial
armory as the Portuguese hastened to disengage themselves
from the
territory. An abortive coup d'état by UDT supporters on
August 10,
1975, led to a civil war between Fretilin and an
anticommunist
coalition of UDT and Apodeti. Fretilin occupied most of
the
territory by September, causing Jakarta to give the UDT
and Apodeti
clandestine military support. On November 25, 1975,
Fretilin
proclaimed the Democratic Republic of East Timor. Jakarta
responded
immediately. On December 7, Indonesian "volunteer" forces
landed at
Dili, the capital, and Baukau. By April 1976, there were
an
estimated 30,000 to 35,000 Indonesian troops in the
territory. On
July 15, 1976, East Timor was made Indonesia's
twenty-seventh
province: Timor Timur.
Indonesian troops carried out a harsh campaign of
pacification
that inflicted grave suffering on local populations.
Through the
late 1970s and 1980s, accounts of military repression,
mass
starvation, and disease focused international attention on
Indonesia as a major violator of human rights. An
undetermined
number--from 100,000 to 250,000--of East Timor's
approximately
650,000 inhabitants died as a result of the armed
occupation.
However, by the mid-1980s, most of the armed members of
Fretilin
had been defeated, and in 1989 the province was declared
open to
free domestic and foreign travel
(see National Defense and Internal Security
, ch. 5).
Data as of November 1992
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