Declassified British Documents Reveal Support for Indonesian Invasion & Occupation

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB174/indexuk.htm

Declassified British Documents Reveal U.K. Support for Indonesian Invasion and Occupation of East Timor,
Recognition of Denial of Self-Determination, 1975-1976

Introduction

On December 24, 1975, British Ambassador John A. Ford told Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in a secret telegram that Indonesian invading forces in Dili, East Timor had gone "on a rampage of looting and killing." "If asked to comment on any stories of atrocities," Ford advised the FCO in this still partly withheld telegram, "I suggest we say that we have no information."

A week later, Ford told Indonesian Foreign Ministry officials that on "the Timor business," Her Majesty's Government (HMG) "had tried to do our best for Indonesia in the UN." "Indonesia should. help her friends" in return, Ford requested, by helping to take "the wind out of the sails of those who wanted to trumpet atrocity stories." Britain's effective, low-key assistance to Indonesia in the wake of its invasion of East Timor "paid off
handsomely," government officials recalled, by keeping East Timor out of British headlines and enabling the British government to support East Timor's right - in principle - to self-determination while maintaining cordial relations with the Suharto regime as it waged a brutal war against the former Portuguese colony.

As documents posted here demonstrate, the British role in Indonesia's 1975 invasion and occupation of East Timor was of critical importance. Even while it acknowledged that the Timorese were being denied their right to
self-determination, the British Government was tacitly supporting Indonesia's efforts to incorporate East Timor. At the end of the Vietnam War, British post-colonial interests put it in the position both of seeking closer relations with the Suharto regime and of avoiding outright support for a denial of self-determination that might hold damaging implications for Britain with regards to the Falklands Islands and Belize, both still British colonies.

Today, as East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) releases its final report on human rights violations committed in East Timor between 1974 and 1999, British researchers are releasing some of the documents they provided to assist the work of the Commission. These documents provide the first detailed account of British policymaking in the months leading up to and following Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.

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