/ 26 September 1997

In the shadow of the dragon

Nelson Mandela has raised hopes for a negotiated end to the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. In the interim, the political battle continues. Peter Cronau and Matthew Brown report

The Indonesian government is using its embassies worldwide in a campaign of surveillance and intimidation against East Timorese activists and their supporters, claims Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jos Ramos-Horta.

These claims of spying and associated repercussions in East Timor, supported by human rights lawyers and confidential Australian government documents, were first revealed last month on Australias ABC Radio National.

Indonesian military intelligence staff are assigned as diplomats to Canberra, Madrid, The Hague in Holland, London, the United States, the Permanent Mission in New York and Canada, Ramos-Horta says.

These are the key places where there is an active Indonesian intelligence gathering. There is harassment not only of the East Timorese, but also of East Timor supporters Australians, Europeans and Americans. Primarily this harassment is aimed at acquiring photographic evidence of East Timorese participating in demonstrations.

The photographs are then sent to East Timor to the Indonesian military intelligence branch in Dili. The military intelligence identify the relatives of those who participate in demonstrations. They are called in for interrogation, they lose their jobs, they are constantly reprimanded and harassed by the Indonesian military and, in some instances, they end up in detention, Ramos-Horta adds.

The Indonesian embassy in Canberra, the consulates in Darwin, Sydney and Melbourne, are the most active in terms of gathering information on the pro-East Timor activities, on East Timorese activists and on Australian activists who support the East Timor struggle.

The Indonesian governments response to the claims has been stinging. Ghaffar Fadyl of the Indonesian Foreign Office in Jakarta has accused Ramos-Horta of having lost credibility in the international community. Its a pack of lies and anti-Indonesian propaganda, and nobody is going to believe it, says Fadyl.

Confirmation of these claims, however, has now been found among confidential Australian government documents. Australian diplomatic cables sent from the Australian embassy in Jakarta to Canberra in 1993 and 1994 confirm the surveillance and intelligence gathering activities of Indonesian officials.

A March 1994 cable made it clear who is doing the surveillance and what the consequences may be: Usually Indonesian embassies and defence attach offices will keep a close watch on Indonesians and particularly East Timorese youth and students abroad. They will send reports back to Jakarta on their observed or reported activities. Hence the authorities tend to build up a picture of what they may consider are anti-government activities.

The same cable stated it is very possible that a family member of someone involved in anti-government activities overseas could be treated adversely by the authorities even though that person had no direct political involvement.

The family could be visited repeatedly, put under surveillance and their mail monitored.

Ramos-Horta is not the only person making accusations. Dr George Aditjondro, a self- exiled Indonesian dissident academic working at Newcastle University, near Sydney, says he is targeted by Indonesian intelligence because of his outspokenness in criticising the illegal occupation of East Timor.

I think it is an overall policy of the Indonesian Department of Foreign Affairs which is heavily under the influence of, or infiltrated by, high-ranking officers, especially from the military intelligence agency, BIA, to put pressure on people, he says.

Aditjondro adds that the Indonesian embassies in Germany and Australia use tight control over the issuing and renewal of passports as a means of restraining their nationals.

The passport he received soon after he fled Indonesia in 1995 has expired, and since he travelled with Ramos-Horta to the US after the awarding of the Nobel Prize, the Indonesian government has refused to renew it.

Liz Biok, a member of the International Commission of Jurists and a lawyer who has worked for East Timorese asylum-seekers in Australia, says the activities of Indonesian agents are creating fear.

A lot of East Timorese in Australia fear for the well-being of their families in East Timor, especially those people who are reasonably high-profile political activists.

She says the refugees were questioned in East Timor about the activities of their relatives abroad. They say that the Indonesian intelligence came around to their houses and asked them if they were related to certain people, what they knew about those people, when they were last in contact with them.

Theyre activists in Australia, theyre people whove been active overseas, and they are people whove been written up in newspapers and seen on television.

Human rights lawyer, ex-diplomat and a former attorney general of the Australian Capital Territory, Bernard Collaery, says Indonesian consular staff are overstepping their duties and breaching the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961).

Collaery, who has represented East Timorese in the courts, says he knows of Indonesian consular staff provoking East Timorese protesters.

The Indonesian embassy is well-known for using those types of tactics to counter protesters. There have been a number of incidents in my experience that have indicated to me over the years that the Indonesian government uses its own nationals, former nationals and friends to obtain information on the activities of the East Timor relief and refugee organisations in Australia.

It would be pushing the realms of ordinary common sense to suggest that the Indonesian government does not have a well-developed antenna in our midst.

Darwin, in the north of Australia 600km south of East Timor, is the nearest city to East Timor outside Indonesia. Although far from the heart of international diplomacy, Darwin is not some forgotten backwater on the southern shore of the Timor Sea. It has a substantial East Timorese community of some 3 000.

For many Indonesians living there the prospect of trade is said to be the attraction, but the Indonesian consul, Widodo Surono, is no businessman, his background is as a senior Indonesian military officer.

Responding to Ramos-Hortas claims, a representative for the Indonesian consulate in Darwin, Wisnu Mahendra, says that the Darwin missions job is simply to improve relations between the Northern Territory, Australia, and Indonesia.

Darwin resident for 15 years, Jos Gusmo, a representative of the East Timorese resistance and a close relative of resistance leader Xanana Gusmo, says the intelligence collection by the consulate is well-known.

The activity of the Indonesian consulate in Darwin is mainly spying activities, or intelligence activities, but in very sophisticated ways, he says. So they try to set up a network throughout the community even by paying some members of the Timorese community to perform as their sources of information.

Gusmo says his photograph has been seen on the wall of the military intelligence centre in Dili, along with several other Darwin residents.

East Timorese community representatives in Darwin say the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is aware of the activities of the Indonesian consulate, but does not appear to have intervened.

We wonder what is the main reason behind the ASIOs coming to have talks with us, says Maria (not her real name). She says the ASIO officers ask about any threats from Indonesians in Australia, but also about leaders in East Timor and Portugal, about demonstrations, and divisions in the community, and they usually want names.

Retired US colonel John Haseman spent 10 years at the US embassy in Jakarta as a foreign military area officer. In his role as the embassys defence attach from 1990 to 1994 he made 13 trips to East Timor.

My observation of the Indonesian military intelligence system is that it is very effective in domestic affairs. It is tasked to keep track of dissident movements, insurgent movements, anything that threatens internal stability and national security from within. It is quite good at that.

Former defence analyst and a former Australian consul to Portuguese Timor, James Dunn, disagrees. I think that intelligence organisations in undemocratic countries are often not very efficient, simply because they are inclined to tell their masters what their masters want to hear.

Haseman believes that the foreign intelligence collecting of the Indonesians cannot be as high priority as the internal control of the domestic population.

Dunn sees a wider role being played by these agencies. I think Indonesian intelligence is immensely important in the political process in Indonesia. Indeed it is a very important weapon in maintaining rule of the new order, the order baru.

Surveillance of East Timorese and their supporters in Australia seems likely to increase as the stakes get higher, and some of the information gathered by Indonesian intelligence may be provided by the ASIO under provisions of a new treaty.

Under the Petroleum Act of 1990, Australia and Indonesia agreed on how to exploit the oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea, and agreed they shall exchange information on likely threats to, or security incidents relating to, exploration for and exploitation of petroleum resources of Area A. This section seems to be aimed at terrorists, but Collaery argues that broad wording will catch up with many East Timorese.

Its not legitimate for there to be an exchange of information about those who peacefully and lawfully protest. And it is illegitimate for there to be an exchange of information about any ongoing activities of those migr or expatriate groups, Collaery says.

It implies that they [East Timorese] are terrorists. We have seen over the years how the security apparatus responds to likely threats. It is not an insurgency; it is not a terrorist campaign; it is not a guerrilla campaign; these are people in an occupied state fighting for their freedom.

The Australian military is preparing for action in the Timor Sea. The 1997/98 Australian Defence Budget Estimates show that there are several military exercises planned for the area. Exercise Night Komodo aims to develop inter-operability with Indonesia special forces in a jungle environment.

Dunn is disgusted that a military exercise involving Australian troops co-operating with those of Indonesia could be named after Komodo, the dragon. In 1974 and 1975, Operation Komodo was the covert campaign of propaganda, subversion and incursion by Indonesias military to take over the then Portuguese territory of East Timor.

It would have a special meaning for Indonesian soldiers and East Timorese, because it was a case of a creeping military act of aggression against a neighbouring territory, says Dunn. I think it is appalling; I think it is really totally inappropriate.

Ramos-Horta has called on Western governments to make efforts to halt the spying and intimidation activities of the Indonesian diplomats.

This intelligence gathering is very destabilising, very disturbing, he says. Because you must remember that those [exiled] East Timorese, hundreds of them, have been victims of torture. When they see Indonesian diplomats, Indonesian agents, spread around the country taking photographs, they are very terrified, and many of them get very disturbed.

Peter Cronau is a Sydney-based researcher. Matthew Brown is a producer with ABC Radio Nationals Background Briefing