Timor A People Betrayed

Judul	:	Timor A People Betrayed
Penulis	:	James Dunn
Penerbit	:	The Jacaranda Press
Tahun Cetak	:	1983
Halaman	:	402
ISBN	:	0 7016 1715 2
Harga	:	Rp. 175.000
Status	:	Ada

At the time this book went into print more than seven and a half years had elapsed since the Balibo incident, which marked the first major military operation against East Timor bay Indonesia’s armed forces in spite of the catastrophe that had befallen the territory in the intervening years, and the repeated appeals of the United Nations General Assembly, Indonesia’s defiance had gone virtually unchallenged, and there was little ground for hope that the generals in Jakarta might be persuaded to make the sort of concessions that might help redress the terrible wrongs suffered by the Timorese people. Their supporters in Australia had thinned: in previcios years, encouraged by what appeared to be the Australian public’s acceptance of the status quo, certain ministers of the Fraser government, officials and sections of the press had seemed bent on unceremoniously disposing of a problem which for years had dogged the Australia-Indonesia relationship, and the national conscience. Even the Labor Party, which had vigorously taken up the cause of East Timor’s right to self-determination after the invansion of 1975, no longer had much to say about the problem. Indeed, in the bitter election campaign of February 1983, when the Opposition was searching for any weaknesses in the governmen’s performance, Australia’s cynical policy of seeking to bury the Timor problem was scarcely mentioned, despite the fact that less than twelve months earlier the ALP’s national conference had unequivocally reaffirmed the right of the Timorese to self-determination. However, the Labor victory raised hopes that the new government’s review of the problem might lead to a shift in Australia’s stand o this question, but within a few days of Mr Hawke’s victory it was clear that the new leaders in Canberra were finding it difficult to reconcile the commitment inscribed in the Labor Party’s platform with the new government’s declared aim of improving relations with Indonesia.