Newcastle holds People's Inquiry
By Geoff Payne
NEWCASTLE "Madre, they will kill us." These words have stayed with Sister Carmel Hanson, even since she returned from East Timor last year. She feels that her assurances to people there that the United Nations would protect them after the vote for independence reflected her own, and that of many other foreigners' failure to understand the real situation of the East Timorese.
Hanson, a Josephite sister, gave evidence to the People's Inquiry into Australian governments' complicity in 25 years of genocide in East Timor, held here on February 26.
Representatives of Opus, the Newcastle University student newspaper; the Hunter Christian Institute; the Hunter Peace and Justice Network; Christians for Peace; and Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor made up a panel to hear submissions on the extent of East Timor's tragedy. Thirty-five people attended the hearing.
Neville Cunningham, a retired seafarer, was involved in the Communist Party of Australia's determined efforts to maintain a radio link with East Timorese liberation fighters after the 1975 Indonesian takeover. Cunningham told of how the Australian Federal Police eventually tracked the radio signal and closed the station down.
Warren Kemlo, another former CPA member, spoke about his experiences in East Timor in 1975 and how the Australian Labor Party refused to take up East Timor's cause.
Jackie Coleman, recently returned from Dili, spoke of the need for justice for the survivors of the terror. She argued that the governments and corporations which benefited from the occupation were morally obliged to pay reparations to East Timor to help it recover. She said that this would lay the basis for real reconciliation.
Reconciliation starts with the Australian government allowing those East Timorese refugees who want to stay in Australia the right and means to do so, according to John de Santos, who fled to Australia from East Timor in the 1980s.
Steve O'Brien, a UN electoral officer during the independence referendum, said that, based on his experiences working in post-civil war Nicaragua, lasting reconciliation required at least one year of peace for each year of war. The Australian government's debt to East Timor, incurred by 24 years of complicity in the war, could not be wiped out in six months, he said.
John Giles, from Christians for Peace, reported his group's support for a proposal from Newcastle University to offer two scholarships to East Timorese students. He said the government should waive the $3000 student visa fee.