Australian-East Timorese Relations

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Australian-East Timorese Relations
Location of Australia and East Timor
AustraliaAustralia East TimorEast Timor
Australia East Timor

The states of Australia and East Timor maintain friendly relations . The diplomatic relations were taken up in 2002 after East Timor was granted independence.

history

Colonial times

The Cathedral of Dili was destroyed in World War II by Australian bombs

The contacts between Australia and East Timor go back to the colonial times of both countries.

In 1838 the British founded the settlement of Port Essington in what is now the Australian Northern Territory . The settlers faced many difficulties. In early 1839 they supplied themselves with water buffalo, Timor ponies and some English newspapers from Dili , the capital of the Portuguese Timor colony . On February 13, the British commander Sir James J. Gordon Bremer visited Dili and secured further help from the Portuguese governor Frederico Leão Cabreira (1839 to 1844) for the new settlement due to the old alliance between the two colonial powers. Port Essington was abandoned by the British in 1849.

During the Second World War , Australia sent a small military unit to what was actually a neutral Portuguese colony. Japan actually occupied Portuguese Timor and the Australians waged a guerrilla war against the Japanese from 1942 to 1945, supported by Timorese. Many Australians view this commitment with gratitude, since Australia was saved from the Japanese by the Timorese, even if only young people have found their way into Australian historiography as helpers of the Allies. In August 2009, the Catholic Joseph Sisters from Sydney started a petition demanding that East Timor be awarded the Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia . This was justified with the support of the Timorese population for Australian soldiers in the battle for Timor during the Second World War. The proposal was not implemented.

Indonesian occupation of East Timor

As a result of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution in 1974, preparations were made to give East Timor independence. The Associação Democratica para a Integração de Timor-Leste na Austrália (ADITLA) called for the Portuguese colony to be annexed to Australia, but the Australian government clearly refused. When Indonesia began to occupy regions near the border, the left-wing FRETILIN unilaterally declared East Timor to be independent. Only twelve states recognized East Timor, Portugal and Australia were not among them. In Australia people feared a "second Cuba " on their doorstep and therefore gave their larger neighbor Indonesia a free hand when it began to occupy East Timor only nine days after independence was proclaimed on December 7, 1975 . The result was a 24-year guerrilla war that killed a quarter of the population of East Timor. In October, intruding Indonesian troops had murdered five Western journalists, including three Australians, in Balibo, East Timor . The fate of the so-called Balibo Five and the Australian reporter Roger East , the sympathies from the Second World War and East Timorese refugees who had found refuge in Australia and campaigned for their land led to much support among the Australian population. Several Australian non-governmental organizations campaigned for the independence of East Timor. Nowadays there are a number of town twinning agreements between the two countries and aid projects. 10,540 Australian citizens were born in East Timor (as of 2018).

Demonstration for East Timor in Perth, Australia (September 1999)

In March 1975 a delegation from the Australian Labor Party (ALP) visited what was then Portuguese Timor to get an idea of ​​the situation. One member of the delegation was the Australian Senator Gordon McIntosh , who would become one of the main supporters of East Timorese self-determination in the years that followed. McIntosh sharply criticized the behavior of the Australian governments under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser and their charter for Indonesia, as well as the de facto recognition of Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor in 1978. With this step, Australia was alone in the world. Internationally, the area was until 2002 a "dependent territory under Portuguese administration". In 2020, an Australian court ruled that government documents, such as diplomatic news and cabinet papers about Australia's role during the Indonesian invasion, must remain secret, as disclosure could endanger Australia's security or international relations. Documents that have already become public show that Australia's interest in the oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea had a decisive influence on its actions.

In 1982 McIntosh turned to the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization. In his letter, he rejected Gough Whitlam's views on East Timor, stressing that the Australian Prime Minister had not expressed the ALP's views at the time of the Indonesian invasion. McIntosh's letter was accompanied by a petition, which all but two Labor MEPs in the Australian Parliament had signed, demanding self-determination for East Timor. The petition was instrumental in ensuring that East Timor remained on the list of territories with open decolonization processes of the United Nations' Special Committee on Decolonization. After Labour's victory in the federal elections in March 1983, the government of Bob Hawke accepted the position of its predecessors and declared the integration of East Timor in Indonesia to be irreversible, continued criticism by McIntosh.

McIntosh was again a member of a parliamentary delegation in July 1983 that visited Indonesia and, this time, East Timor. He then wrote a report that opposed the official report of the delegation headed by ALP politician Bill Morrison . The subsequent conflict was fought in public. In the Senate, McIntosh stated on September 6 that the official report had "a clear tendency to diminish the importance of fundamentally important aspects of the Timor problem" and was "not a credible representation of the views of this Parliament". As chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, McIntosh presented a report on September 8th describing human rights violations and the living conditions of the East Timorese people. The Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor were branded an “illegal act” in the report and demanded international recognition of East Timor’s self-determination. The three opposition senators who occupied half of the committee rejected the report. When Australia and Indonesia discussed their maritime border and the closure of the Timor Gap in March 1986 , McIntosh denied the negotiations their legitimacy. In the Senate he spoke of the "people in Timor who were deprived of their rights."

In 1987 McIntosh lost his Senate seat. From then on, he continued to work as an activist for the East Timorese right to self-determination. In 1988 McIntosh sent a ten-page letter to its military leader Xanana Gusmão via Australian channels of the East Timorese Resistance , in which McIntosh gave a detailed account of the history of East Timor's struggle for independence and criticized the Australian government at the time, whose motivation was to “protect Australia's economic interests to the detriment of principles who are worthy of a democratic country ”. According to the letter, everything indicates that Australian policy was determined by the Indonesian offer to jointly exploit the raw materials in the Timor Gap.

Plaque in Fort Balibo for the Australian units to the INTERFET participated

In Australia , public participation in East Timor increased sharply in the 1990s. The politicians became aware that the topic united the most diverse groups of voters: left and right, young students and old soldiers. There were solidarity rallies on a scale that had not occurred since the Vietnam War . The Australian band Midnight Oil released a cover of the East Timorese battle song Kolele Mai . The government of Prime Minister John Howard took up the issue of East Timor again. Indonesian President Habibie later stated that a letter from Howard dated December 19, 1998, in which he called for a solution to the East Timor conflict, was the final trigger for the decision to hold the independence referendum . The letter represented a complete U-turn in the Australian position. The country had so far been the only one in the world to de facto recognize the annexation of East Timor by Indonesia by establishing the sea border between Australia and occupied East Timor with the occupying power in the Timor Gap Treaty ; In favor of Australia. Now the East Timorese people were pushed for the right to self-determination. Howard followed the position of the opposition Australian Labor Party and the opinion of 90 percent of Australians who viewed their country's previous behavior as a mistake. Habibie was annoyed and found Howard's suggestion to deploy peacekeepers in East Timor to be an insult. In addition, Howard compared Indonesia with the colonial power France and their policies in their possession New Caledonia , which Habibie rejected.

After the independence referendum on August 30, 1999, Indonesian forces tried to turn the tide with one last wave of violence . On September 20, 1999, the Australian-run INTERFET landed and restored peace and order.

Independent East Timor

Symbol of the dispute: the kangaroo with the Timorese oil

East Timor came under UN administration and was given independence on May 20, 2002. Australia provided the majority of the UN security forces until the end of the UN missions in 2012, as did the International Stabilization Force , which stabilized the situation after the unrest in East Timor in 2006 .

There were conflicts between Australia and East Timor regarding the exploitation of the oil and natural gas reserves in the Timor Sea , due to the Timor Gap Treaty negotiated between Indonesia and Australia during the occupation and the subsequent demarcation of the border in the Timor Sea, which led to disputes with the independence of East Timor. First of all, the East Timorese government agreed with Australia to share resources, excluding the final demarcation, which was an advantage for Australia. After it emerged that Australia had wiretapped the East Timorese cabinet during the negotiations, East Timor declared the contracts to be invalid and sued the international arbitration tribunal in The Hague . In January 2017, the governments of Australia and East Timor announced that the previous treaty should be terminated. On March 6, 2018, the two states signed a new border treaty that postponed the agreements in favor of East Timor.

diplomacy

Anne Ruston , Australian Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific, and Taur Matan Ruak , Prime Minister of East Timor

Before the Second World War, an honorary consul represented Great Britain and Australia in Portuguese Timor. David Ross , who had been an airline representative for Qantas in Dili since April 1941 , was officially accepted as consul by the Portuguese government on December 10, 1941. It was the British response to the dispatch of a consul from Japan to Dili.

On January 26, 1946, Australia sent Charles Eaton again to Dili, a consul. The consulate was closed in 1971. Negotiations were conducted directly with the colonial power Portugal. With James Batley , a Senior Diplomatic Representative was sent to Dili in 1999 . When East Timor declared independence again on May 20, 2002, Batley became Australia's first ambassador to East Timor.

In 2003, Jorge da Conceição Teme became East Timor's first ambassador to Canberra . East Timor also has consulates general in Darwin and Sydney and honorary consulates in Melbourne , Malvern , Hobart , Perth and Brisbane .

economy

Australia's importance in East Timor's foreign trade data has declined over the years since East Timor's independence in 2002. In 2011 it was only in third place among the countries of origin of East Timorese imports, behind Indonesia and Singapore . In 2018, Australia was only in 9th place with imports to East Timor totaling 10,971,000 US dollars. The goods included motor vehicles, devices for carrier power or for a digital system, broken rice, cement, vehicle parts and accessories, antennas and air reflectors, medical and scientific apparatus, household and sanitary ware, brackets and fittings for construction and prefabricated houses.

When it comes to the movement of goods from East Timor abroad, Australia ranks 8th, with a value of goods of 822,000 US dollars. The share of coffee was 798,005 US dollars (7th place). Re-exports to Australia had a value of 5,924,000 US dollars (second place).

East Timor is the third largest posting of seasonal workers in the Australian seasonal worker program.

In 2014/15 15,600 Australians traveled to East Timor.

Development Assistance

Australia is the largest provider of development aid for East Timor. Over 550 East Timorese have studied in Australia with the Australia Award Scholarship and more than 450 with the help of the New Colombo Plan (as of 2017).

Documentaries

  • James Kesteven / Amanda King : The Shadow Over East Timor (1990).
  • Fabio Cavadini / Amanda King: Time to Draw the Line (2017)

literature

Web links

Commons : Australian-East Timorese Relations  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Borneo Bulletin: Business opportunities aplenty in Timor-Leste , June 10, 2017 , accessed on June 14, 2017.
  2. ↑ Kisho Tsuchiya: Indigenization of the Pacific War in Timor Island: A Multi-language Study of its Contexts and Impact , p. 6 , Journal War & Society, Vol. 38, No. February 1, 2018.
  3. ^ Petition calls for an award for Timor-Leste. In: Wikinews. November 6, 2009.
  4. ↑ Eureka Street: Timor Diggers' guerrilla war , April 24, 2010 , accessed April 24, 2020.
  5. ^ ETAN: List of East Timor Support and Solidarity Groups Worldwide , accessed January 24, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b President of East Timors : PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC RECEIVES CREDENTIAL LETTERS FROM FOUR NEW AMBASSADORS , February 22, 2018 , accessed on February 25, 2018.
  7. ↑ a b c d The Biographical Dictionary of Australian Senate: McINTOSH, Gordon Douglas (1925–), Senator for Western Australia, 1974–87 (Australian Labor Party) , accessed March 13, 2019.
  8. ↑ Christopher Daase, Stefan Engert, Michel-André Horelt, Judith Renner, Renate Strassner: Apology and Reconciliation in International Relations: The Importance of Being Sorry , p. 261, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Resolution 3485 of the United Nations General Assembly .
  10. ↑ The Guardian: Timor-Leste: court upholds Australian government refusal to release documents on Indonesia's invasion , July 3, 2020 , accessed July 4, 2020.
  11. ^ A b Government of East Timor: Governo expressa condolências pela morte de Gordon McIntosh , accessed March 1, 2019.
  12. ^ A b John Braithwaite, Hilary Charlesworth, Adérito Soares : Networked Governance of Freedom and Tyranny: Peace in Timor-Leste , pp. 106-107 , ANU press 2012.
  13. ↑ Monika Schlicher, Maria Tschanz: Die Kraft der Musik: Resistance and Poetry , in the magazine Südostasien, December 8, 2019 , accessed on December 11, 2019.
  14. ↑ Braithwaite, Charlesworth, Soares 2012, p. 93.
  15. ↑ ABC: Howard pushed me on E Timor referendum: Habibie , November 15, 2008 , accessed August 2, 2019.
  16. ↑ Timor Gap Treaty of 1989
  17. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald Australia's unscrupulous pursuit of East Timor's oil needs to stop , January 11, 2017 , accessed January 20, 2017.
  18. ↑ La'o Hamutuk: Information about Treaties between Australia and Timor-Leste Goodbye CMATS, welcome Maritime Boundaries , accessed March 18, 2018.
  19. ↑ Materials on East Timor during World War II , 2008 (Japanese, English)
  20. ↑ Steven Farram: Eaton and White in Portuguese Timor: The first two Australian consuls, 1946–1950 (PDF; 388 kB), accessed on September 21, 2013.
  21. ↑ Australian Foreign Office: Mr James Batley ( Memento July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  22. ^ Government of East Timor: Embaixadas de Timor-Leste , accessed on July 6, 2016.
  23. ↑ a b Direcção-Geral de Estatística: External Trade Statistics Annual Reports 2018 , accessed on April 17, 2019.
  24. ↑ a b Department of Foreign Affairs: Ambassador to Timor-Leste , January 4, 2018 , accessed January 6, 2018.