Ford and East Timor
* What: The eastern half of a small Asian island, the nation of East Timor, once a Portuguese colony, is surrounded on three land and sea borders by Indonesia and a fourth sea border not far from Australia. Given its independence, Indonesia's military immediately invaded in 1975, occupying East Timor and carrying out genocide until forced out by worldwide political pressure and Indonesia's own political turmoil in 1999. Today, East Timor is independent, but still recovering from three decades of brutal repression.
* US President Gerald Ford not only refused to condemn the invasion. He quietly recognized Indonesia's conquest and continued shipping arms to Indonesia that were used in the killings. Ford and Kissinger were both informed of the invasion in advance by Indonesian dictator Suharto during a state visit to the country. Far from objecting to it, Ford instead asked (successfully) that Suharto delay the invasion by two days so he and Kissinger could leave the country and not publicly appear to endorse the attack.
* The Body Count: 90,000 to 300,000 deaths. Most estimates are 200,000 Timorese, about one third of the population, killed by war, famine, and disease. The killings were carried out by Indonesia's military or caused by concentration camps and deliberate starvation tactics making Timorese vulnerable to disease.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* Indonesian dictator Suharto ordered the invasion, conquest, and genocide. This was not the first time Suharto had much blood on his hands. He came to power in one of the most brutal coups in modern times. In 1965 he overthrew his predecessor, Sukarno. A major general commanding both the Indonesian military and Muslim and Buddhist paramilitary groups, Suharto (with the CIA's aid) ordered the mass killing of between half a million to one million rivals in the army, Communists, and other leftists and dissidents, especially many Acehnese, Christians in Nusa Tengara, and Chinese-Indonesians in Kalimantan.
* Indonesia's military carried out all of the killings in East Timor, nearly all civilians, as well as rapes, torture, and forcible relocation that caused mass starvation. Together with Suharto, most of the blame rightly falls on them.
* Pro-Indonesian militias in East Timor carried out many killings during the transition to independence in the 1990s and 2000s.
* Australia's government under Malcolm Fraser was the only nation to recognize the conquest of East Timor. When Australian activists tried to broadcast news of the genocide to the outside world, Australian government officials jammed transmission of the signal, even tracking down and arresting other activists who received and passed along news reports. Australian prime ministers as late as the 1990s repeated the defense of Indonesian conquest and genocide first used by Fraser, that the conquest of East Timor was done to prevent Communism.
* To the credit of many Australians, its citizens did play a leading role in condemning the last wave of violence in the 1990s, contributing to Timorese independence. Australia's unions refused to ship arms going to pro-Indonesian militias, and other protesters kept the issue of East Timor in the world spotlight. Australia's government under Prime Minister John Howard also took the lead in a UN peacekeeping force to East Timor following mass killings by pro-Indonesian militias.
* Jimmy Carter's administration, despite some debate and back and forth actions, did finally approve continuing to sell American weapons to Indonesia, and also covered up Ford's actions approving the invasion.
* Bill Clinton's administration sent support to pro-Indonesian militias only a year before independence. But Clinton and his advisers did halt their support and also strongly condemned Indonesian government human rights violations, both in East Timor and elsewhere.
* The British government provided military training, over one million pounds, and advisers to Indonesia's military.
* The American media ignored this genocide. Today only a small fraction of Americans have ever heard of East Timor. Anarchist activist Noam Chomsky probably did more than any other person worldwide to tell the story of the Timorese genocide, and did so repeatedly to pointedly illustrate how the US media ignores atrocities when they are committed by US allies.
* East Timor is yet another illustration of Kissinger's indifference and incompetence. It was Kissinger who advised Ford on his course of action: do nothing but carefully hide the fact that you are doing nothing.
* Ford and Kissinger's rationale was that they wanted to maintain Indonesia as a close ally and a bulwark against Communism. Again, this shows poor planning and ideological blindness on both men's part. Indonesia was not in even the most remote danger of turning Communist. Suharto had massacred perhaps a million Communists, leftists, and assorted dissidents back in 1965, in the bloodiest democide against its own citizens of any Asian nation in recent times, except China. Neither was there any chance East Timor could turn Communist. The leading Timorese party, FRETILIN, was Catholic populist. There were never any Timorese political parties with a Communist presence.
* The chance of Suharto or the Indonesian dictatorship turning away from the US was also fairly unlikely. They certainly were not about to turn to the Soviet Union or China for weapons. Possibly they might turn further instead to the British, or the French. In the short term, the only losers on the US side might be US arms dealers. Strategically, the US would only risk having one of its close allies be allies to Indonesia in addition to the US.
* What could, or should, American military forces have done? Likely not much, since the American public would not favor sending US troops so soon after the huge failure of the US-Vietnam War. US troops also would be facing the large and experienced Indonesian army, fighting very close to its home territory.
* But there were many diplomatic solutions open. At the very least, do not publicly sanction the invasion and hide evidence. Cut off shipments of weapons. Condemn the invasion publicly. Send or at least offer humanitarian aid. Allow East Timor refugees into the United States.
* All these measures, taken together, could have at least somewhat reduced the human toll. But in the end, both Ford and Carter decided the goodwill of a dictatorship was worth more than saving tens of thousands, perhaps more, Asian lives. Those lives were sacrificed in the name of fighting a supposed Communist threat that did not exist in either East Timor or Indonesia.
* Suharto did eventually get overthrown by an Indonesian public fed up with enormous cronyism, government corruption, human rights abuses, and lack of democracy. Suharto's family stole from Indonesia more than $15 billion (yes, billion) during his rule. By some estimates the theft may have been as high as $35 billion. Most other leaders in Suharto's New Order were equally corrupt. In the mid 1990s, an economic collapse led to massive public protests. These forced Suharto out by 1998 and brought democracy in. Suharto was placed under house arrest for embezzlement of over half a billion in foreign aid, but avoided prosecution because of his declining health and the presence of many of his former appointees still in office. He finally died from heart failure while several of his family served prison terms for corruption and murder.
* A series of further atrocities in East Timor the 1990s brought increasing world outrage, leading finally to the nation's independence. It is almost certainly hoping too much that protests by an American government back in the mid 1970s would lead immediately to Indonesian democracy and an independent East Timor. But it is likely earlier American protests and support for dissidents and minorities against one of the most corrupt and brutal dictators in the world would have led to a new era dawning on these islands a few years sooner. Timorese independence would also have followed sooner, and thus a lower body count.
* Gerald Ford today is unfortunately remembered for the silliest of reasons, comedy routines by Chevy Chase showing Ford as clumsy. (Ford had actually been a gifted athlete in his youth.) The second item Ford is most remembered for is his pardon of Nixon for the Watergate Scandal and other high crimes. Ford defended his pardon as needed to heal the country. It did not, since the public was nearly unanimous in condemning Nixon for his crimes. The pardon further sent the message that public officials are above the law. Ford's indifference to genocide deserves to be remembered as at least among the two worse things he did as president.