By Norm Dixon
Oblivious to the terrible human rights record of the Indonesian dictatorship in occupied East Timor and West Papua, in Aceh and Indonesia proper, western governments continue to sell high tech weaponry to the Indonesian military. Recent decisions by the US and European governments has added impetus to a growing worldwide campaign to put a stop the arming of the Indonesian military machine.
According to the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, the Swedish government, led by Social Democrat Göran Persson, on April 18 secretly approved the sale by arms manufacturer Bofors of naval cannons to Indonesia, in defiance of a call by the European Parliament for a total arms embargo.
The deal, worth 35 million kronor, has been in the pipeline since 1993 when a conservative government called for tenders. At the time, the Social Democratic Party (SAP) — in opposition — opposed the deal. Indonesian warships equipped with Bofors 40mm and 57mm cannons patrol East Timor to prevent Timorese leaving the island.
The Swedish government refuses to confirm or deny that approval has been given. Stockholm has been criticised by East Timor solidarity groups from many parts of the world. The East Timor-Ireland Solidarity Campaign has held demonstrations outside the Swedish embassy in Dublin.
The reported decision has enraged rank and file members of the SAP. The chair of the Social Democratic Women's League, Ingrid Segelstrom, has demanded that the government put all documents on the table. Several SAP MPs, together with politicians from the Left Party and the Greens, added their support to the call for the government to come clean.
Meanwhile, Britain has delivered the first of 24 British Aerospace Hawk ground-attack aircraft, subsidised with £1 billion of taxpayers' money. "These British aircraft", says the Center for Defense Information in Washington, "are designed to be used against guerrillas who come from and move among civilian populations and have no adequate means of response to air attack. In other words, they are there to shoot high-velocity cannon and deliver ordnance (bombs) at low levels against unprotected human beings."
Journalist John Pilger recently presented evidence that similar Hawk aircraft have attacked villages in East Timor with cannon and incendiary bombs. The deliveries have sparked an ongoing campaign in Britain to halt the exports. It has involved demonstrations and pickets, and invasions and occupations of BaE factories and shareholders' meetings.
The US East Timor Action Network (ETAN) is campaigning to extend the present ban on the export of US-made small arms to Indonesia. ETAN pointed out recently that US weapons have frequently been used against civilians in East Timor, such as armoured vehicles and military helicopters, both central to the occupation army's strategy of population control.
US-supplied armoured cars with gun turrets are routinely deployed in East Timor village squares, and US-supplied helicopters overfly Dili and the countryside. There is a squadron of helicopters in Baucau and in Dili. They are used for surveillance of villages and farmers and to ferry troops. They have bombed and strafed villages.
The State Department issued a report in March that said: "The [Indonesian] Government continued to commit serious human rights abuses. The most serious abuses included harsh repression of dissidents in East Timor, Aceh, and Irian Jaya [West Papua]. Reports of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture of those in custody by security forces increased." Nevertheless, Congress has not reversed a 1995 decision to restore military training aid that was terminated in the wake of the 1991 Dili massacre, carried out with US M-16s.
The US has now decided to sell Indonesia 28 state-of-the-art F-16 jet fighters, originally earmarked for sale to Pakistan. The Bush administration froze the sale to Pakistan because of its suspected nuclear weapons program. Indonesia will now get the jets at a bargain price even though 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of Congress openly criticise Indonesia's human rights record.
The European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT) also reports that in early April the German government agreed to export seven light tanks to Indonesia on the condition that they not be used against demonstrators. ENAAT accused Germany of hypocrisy, since the tanks "are perfectly adapted to be used for that purpose".
It pointed out that just three weeks after the agreement, the Indonesian military used tanks to crush demonstrations against increased public transport fares in the capital of South Sulawesi, Ujung Pandang. Up to 18 demonstrators were killed. Germany also supplies many of the Indonesian patrol boats that cruise off the Timorese coast.