James Dunn (diplomat)

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James Stanley "Jim" Dunn (born January 6, 1928 in Bundaberg , Queensland , Australia ; † January 31, 2020 in Canberra , Australia) was an Australian civil servant, diplomat and human rights activist.

Career

At the end of World War II , Dunn served in the army. He spent two years with the occupation forces in Japan , the first six months of which with a unit stationed on the outskirts of the devastated Hiroshima . He later belonged to the Allied guards at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo . One night he stopped a car whose driver didn't know the password. At gunpoint, Dunn asked him to get out of the car. It was Crown Prince Akihito . After completing military service, Dunn graduated from Melbourne University . He received degrees with honors in Political Science and Russian . He graduated from the Australian National University with a degree in Asian studies with a focus on Indonesian language , politics and history .

As an officer in the Defense Ministry's secret service, Dunn was entrusted with developments in Indonesia and therefore also dealt with the colony of Portuguese Timor , now known as East Timor . In late 1961, Dunn moved to the Department of External Affairs and was appointed Australian consul in Portuguese Timor's capital, Dili . Here one day he was asked by a Portuguese colonel whether Australia would support a coup against the Portuguese dictatorship . Canberra refused, but this colonel was to play a leading role in the 1974 Carnation Revolution . Dunn held the office of consul from 1962 to the end of 1964. After that he was first the official responsible for Western Europe in the Foreign Ministry, then he was sent as a diplomat to Paris and Moscow . He also spent some time in Yugoslavia , Hungary , Czechoslovakia and Poland . In 1969, Dunn was conference secretary of the Five Power Meeting on Defense in Canberra. In 1970 Dunn was appointed director of the Foreign Affairs Group of Parliament's Legislative Research Service and was briefly transferred to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as an expert on intelligence missions. For the government of Gough Whitlam he was supposed to investigate the situation in Timor in 1974 after the Portuguese dictatorship of the Estado Novo had collapsed. In 1975 he led another mission of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid to investigate the situation. He also pointed out that few East Timorese wanted their country to join Indonesia and that the majority wanted an independent state instead. The Whitlam government preferred the first route for East Timor, much to the displeasure of Dunn and those Australians who remembered the East Timorese support for the Australian soldiers at the Battle of Timor in World War II.

In 1977 his report was published on war crimes and crimes against humanity by the armed forces of Indonesia , which invaded the neighboring country in 1975 after East Timor declared independence from colonial Portugal . The report received international attention. As a result, he also appeared as a witness before the United States Congress . The United Nations, the European Parliament , Japan , the Vatican , the International Red Cross and others also used Dunn's information about the incidents in East Timor. The Australian embassies of the countries Dunn visited were ordered by their government to discredit him and to dismiss his reports as "grossly exaggerated" which were "based on hearsay and second-hand reports" and which could not have been substantiated by further investigation.

Dunn accused the Indonesians of using American weapons during the invasion and accused Australian politics of reacting inappropriately to the situation in the neighboring country.

In 1986 Dunn stopped working for Parliament and now dealt primarily with international human rights, in particular with congresses on the subject and international missions in West Africa and Latin America . In the same year he was co-president of the second world congress on human rights in Dakar ( Senegal ). Dunn became a member of the Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'Homme and was co- founder of the Human Rights Council of Australia with Mark Oliphant . Dunn became its first president.

The situation in East Timor, occupied by Indonesia, prompted Dunn to contact numerous officials and committees in Portugal, the European Union , the European Parliament, the British Parliament and the governments of Norway , Sweden , Denmark , Finland , the Netherlands and Japan. As early as 1977 he had spoken in favor of self-determination for the East Timorese before the fourth committee of the UN General Assembly . He repeated these visits several times. Dunn has given seminars on the subject at Yale University , the University of Oxford and McGill University in Montreal . In 1995 he was a Coventry Peace Lecturer and a keynote speaker at the Timor Conference in Dublin . In 1999, Dunn was a UN observer of the independence rally in East Timor . He stayed in Dili until the evacuation in September because of the wave of violence by the Indonesians after the referendum . He later returned after the pacification by the INTERFET and became Dunn advisor to the United Nations Mission in East Timor and INTERFET as well as for later UN missions in East Timor. In 2001 he was appointed as an expert on crimes against humanity in East Timor by the United Nations and began to give courses in diplomacy in Dili to help set up an East Timorese foreign service .

Dunn also wrote on general international relations for several years, first for a year for the Australian Bulletin , then occasionally for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, and for 13 years as a weekly foreign policy columnist for the Illawarra Mercury .

family

James Dunn had four sons with his wife, Wendy. He himself had five siblings.

Awards

In 1999 Dunn received the Human Rights Award of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA) and in 2001 the Order of Australia for his "service to humanity, as an advocate for the rights of the East Timorese." In May 2002 he was appointed Portuguese Grand Officer of the Order of Infante Dom Henrique honored. In 2009 Dunn was awarded East Timor's highest honor, the Medal des Ordem de Timor-Leste .

Publications

  • Timor: A People Betrayed , Canberra 1983; revised and updated version 1996.
  • The Balibo Incident in Perspective , document published by the British Parliament's human rights group, London 1995.
  • East Timor: A Rough Passage to Independence , Sydney 2003, ISBN 1920681035 .

Contributing Author was James Dunn on:

  • East Timor at the Crossroads , Cassels, London, 1995.
  • Genocide in the Twentieth Century , Garland Press, New York, 1995.
  • The Widening Circle of Genocide , Transaction Press, New Brunswick, USA, 1994.
  • Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions , Uni of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, 1993.

Dunn also wrote studies on the conflicts in the Falkland Islands , in the former Yugoslavia and on positions on the Armenian and Kurdish peoples.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Clinton Fernandes: James Dunn - CV , Australia-East Timor Association, January 31, 2020 , accessed February 1, 2020.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Sydney Morning Herald: Campaigner for East Timor during Indonesian occupation , February 14, 2020 , accessed February 14, 2020.
  3. ↑ a b James Dunn AM: Submission No 73: Inquiry into Australia's Relationship with Timor-Leste , Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade, Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee, 2013.
  4. ^ Clinton Fernandes: Australian inquiry into East Timor relations ignores local experience , In: The Conversation, June 4, 2013 , accessed December 14, 2016.
  5. ↑ The Canberra Times: Timor 'not problem' for US, Indonesia , April 12, 1977 , accessed December 14, 2016.
  6. ↑ Jonathan Green: Indonesia blamed for E. Timor deaths , In: The Canberra Times, October 15, 1979 , accessed December 14, 2016.
  7. ↑ Australian Government: DUNN, James Stanley - Member of the Order of Australia , accessed on 14 December 2016th
  8. ↑ Jornal da República: DECRETO PRESIDENTE 25/2009, August 30, 2009, accessed on January 31, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Dunn, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dunn, James Stanley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian diplomat, human rights activist and East Timor activist
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Bundaberg , Queensland , Australia
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 2020
Place of death Canberra , Australia