verging_on_random

The Balibo Five

May 9, 2007 on 10:32 pm | In Uncategorized |

It’s 32 years since five Australian journalists were killed in East Timor. The story that they were ‘killed in crossfire’ was always hard to swallow. On the balance of probabilities they were killed deliberately by the Indonesian military or by people associated with them.

I suppose I can sympathise with some of the men’s family in their persistent demands that somebody, somehow, uncover ‘the truth’ about what happened. I can sympathise with their determination but I don’t agree with it. I simply don’t see the point of such a crusade when it can never have a satisfactory ending. Without getting all Pontius Pilate about “Truth? What is truth?”, it’s obvious that getting the facts about what happened would be exceptionally difficult even if an inquiry had the full co-operation of all parties concerned. Without that co-operation, the task is impossible.

Even if this current coronial inquiry makes a finding that the men were probably killed by Indonesian soldiers, what purpose will have been served? The prevailing mentailty seems to be that once the truth is known, some named person or persons can be blamed … for not preventing the deaths, or not doing something about them when they happened, or covering up the truth, or something … it’s never really been clear what people expect to achieve.

We’ve known for years that the Whitlam Government was aware of Indonesia’s intenton to occupy East Timor and condoned the action. The Fraser Government did not change this policy significantly. Of course nobody wanted five reporters to get killed during the exercise but in the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld, “Stuff happens”.

The first foreign policy responsibility of any Australian government is to try to maintain a constructive relationship with Indonesia. The task is made incredibly hard by the fact that most of the population have never grasped how much our security depends on the goodwill of the Indonesians - much more so than theirs depends ours. Even with the benefit of hindsight, and assuming that Whitlam and his ministers knew the five deaths had been deliberate, it’s hard to know what they were supposed to have done about it. Declared war? Sure they could have issued all sorts of stiff protests but they wouldn’t have achieved a thing and they risked triggering a wave of anti-Indonesian sentiment in Australia that could have spiralled out of control.

I have this nagging feeling that the endless demands to find out what happened to the Balibo Five is just a cover. I think that there are powerful people and institutions in Australia who believe the decision to support Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor was wrong - morally wrong, not politically wrong, althouth they’d probably argue that too - and they’re pissed off because nobody’s ever been punished for it. They’re the same people who have backed Jose Ramos-Horta to the presidency despite his repeated “No, let this cup pass from me” protestations that might be sincere but to me smack just a tiny bit of calculated self-promotion.

So I feel sorry for a weeping widow … but I think the inquiry into her husband’s death is a proxy for a campaign against the foreign policies of the Whitlam and Fraser Governments with regard to Indonesia, a campaign that’s been going on for more than 30 years. I suspect the people behind that campaign aren’t a million miles removed from the ones agitating for Free Papua, and Free Aceh, and Free anywhere else they can go stirring up their Christian converts to rebel against their evil Muslim rulers.

The Balibo Five were the victims of a crime a long time ago. Nobody is now going to be held accountable for it and it’s time to accept that and mourn the dead with dignity. They should not be used as a device to stir the considerable pot of anti-Indonesian sentiment that’s never far from the surface of Australian populism.