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Volume 86 – No. 1

Britain in the Aftermath of the Indonesian Invasion of Timor, 1977: The Fiction of Neutrality and the Reality of Silent Help

front page of ‘The Bulletin’, September 20, 1975, Dili. First row: Nicolau Lobato, Xavier do Amaral, Alarico Fernandes. second row: Rosa Bonaparte, Abel Larisina (Half hidden), Helio Pina, Inacio Fonseca and Goinxet Bonaparte

Anna Costa
University of Hong Kong, China

Keywords: aid, British Foreign Policy, decolonization, Dunn Report, Timor-Leste

DOI: 10.5509/2013861095

  • English Abstract
  • Chinese Abstract

 

This article fills a gap in the literature of international involvement in the aftermath of the Indonesian invasion of Timor-Leste by providing detailed documentary analysis of British conduct and motives. A substantial amount of scholarship has covered the role played by the United States and Australia during and after the Indonesian invasion of 1975. The lack of scholarly work specific to the role played by Britain during the first years of the Indonesian-Timorese conflict is regrettable as it represents a missing piece in the mosaic of international liability for one of the major massacres committed in the twentieth century. This omission has allowed the official British government version to survive, in which the country plays the role of an honest but ultimately unsuccessful broker working for a diplomatic solution between Indonesia and Portugal that would ensure the right to self-determination for Timor. The existing literature only offers a cursory challenge to this idea of British neutrality. The current article examines the details of British complicity by focusing on three main areas: the handling of the Dunn Report, which was effectively translated into a campaign to rescue Indonesia’s reputation both Timor Archives, building the archival records of Falintil, the Timorese Resistance Army domestically and internationally; the policy of aid to Jakarta, where economic and geo-strategic interests trumped considerations of ethics and international legality; and finally British abstention at the UN, advertised as the epitome of neutrality but actually representing a choice of support for Suharto’s regime.

1977年印度尼西亞入侵帝汶島之後英國中立的假象與默許的實質

通過對英國的行為和動機的詳細文獻分析,本文填補了有關印度尼西亞入侵帝汶島後國際參與方面文獻的欠缺。目前已有大量文獻涉及美國和澳大利亞在印度尼西亞1975年入侵帝汶島後所扮演的角色,但尚未有關於英國在印尼-帝汶衝突之後的一年裏所扮演的角色的研究。 印尼-帝汶衝突是二十世紀發生的主要大屠殺事件之一,而在影響該事件的國際責任的馬賽克拼圖裏, 這是被遺漏的一塊。有關文獻中的這一欠缺導致英國政府官方說法的持續流行,即英國是一位誠摯卻功虧一簣的中間人, 在印度尼西亞和葡萄牙之間斡旋力圖尋求外交解決途徑以確保帝汶島的自主權。現有文獻對英國中立的說法僅提供了粗淺的挑戰。本文就以下三個方面攷察了英國作為合謀者的細節。其一,英國將鄧恩報告成功地轉化為一個挽救印度尼西亞國際國內名譽的運動。其二,在英國對雅加達的援助政策中經濟和地緣政治利益凌駕於道德倫理和國際合法性之上。其三,英國在聯合國的棄權雖被稱為是中立的典型例證,但這一選擇實際上卻是對蘇哈托政權的一種支持。

Translated from English by Xin Huang

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