The Aussie media is agush with reports on the first 10 years or East Timor’s independence. As usual, no mention is made of why we took military action against Indonesia, other than the usual lip-service to the Western value of ‘freedom’. At the same time, surveys are circulated claiming to prove that Australians believe that Indonesia is a credible military threat to Australia, attempting to justify our burgeoning military budget, even to those who see the fallicy of our involvement in the Middle East.
In reality, the East Timor ‘operation’ is remarkably similar to Iraq. We’re there for oil. The only difference is that we actually get the oil this time, instead of standing by while the US takes it all.
Protest outside the Australian embassy in Dili. Photo by Charles Scheiner.
Since ‘liberating’ East Timor, Australia has proceeded to steal over 1 billion dollars worth of oil and natural gas. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a nation is entitled to a 200 nautical mile exclusion zone around their coastline. When zones overlap, a mid-point line is defined between the 2 nations. Guess where we’re sucking all our oil and natural gas from? That’s right, on Timor’s side of the line.
2 months before Timor’s independence ( declared in May 2002 ), Australia declared ( quietly, mind you ) that it was withdrawing from all internationally binding agreements and processes with regard to the settling of maritime disputes. Co-incidence?
East Timor is one of the poorest nations on the planet. At least this much is reported. Indeed, it suffered many years of looting at the hands of Indonesian occupiers. It is currently completely dependent on international aid to prevent the country from collapsing. But a statement by pro-independence campaigners in 2004 claimed that East Timor was “the largest international donor to Australia”, which is of course quite accurate. Surely the noble thing to do ( and trust me, the media claims that no-one is more noble than us in respect to Timor ) would be to let Timor have it’s own oil.
While ex-prime minister John Howard, president Jose Ramos-Horta, and retired general Gosgrove continue to slap each other’s back over a “job well done”, they can rest assured that the mainstream media will cheer them on, and never once mention the back-room deal that went along the lines of:
We’ll make you president and sing songs of freedom and democracy, and you look the other way while we steal all these bastard’s natural resources.
It’s happened before. Anyone remember Saddam?