Slaughtering
For Territorial Intergiy
By
Scott Burchill
The Age
28 May, 2003
Delivering the 25th annual Menzies lecture last October, AustralianForeign
Minister Alexander Downer declared that "bit by bit, leaders of
governments that suppress human rights are being made to feel uncomfortable,
however much they bluster and hide behind sovereignty arguments".
He praised NATO's 1999 bombing
campaign against Yugoslavia, suggesting "it was not until NATO
stepped in to fill the void that a successful humanitarian intervention
was undertaken that stemmed the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo".
Given these comments, how
should we view Downer's claim this week that renewed assaults by the
Indonesian military (TNI) against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) cannot
be stopped by outside intervention because Aceh "is part of Indonesia,
and the Indonesians are going to have to sort out these problems themselves"?
Why should the world respect state sovereignty in South-East Asia but
not in the Balkans?
History rarely presents ideal
comparisons, but the contrasting fortunes of the Kosovo Liberation Army
and the Free Aceh Movement are striking.
Facing persecution and ethnic
cleansing from troops loyal to Belgrade, a Muslim separatist movement
in southern Yugoslavia (with al-Qaeda links) persuaded the world's most
powerful military alliance (NATO) to bomb Serbia until it surrendered
its political authority in Kosovo. NATO forces and a UN occupation government
were then installed to work with the KLA in seeking to keep the peace
between Serbs and Albanians in the province.
In northern Sumatra, a Muslim
separatist movement (without al-Qaeda links), which has already seen
more than 10,000 of its nationals killed since 1976 in a struggle with
forces loyal to Jakarta, now faces an escalating military assault and
the prospect of 200,000 people being cleansed from the province. Appeals
to the West and the UN for assistance and protection are met with either
indifference or outright hostility.
"The violence perpetrated
by the separatist movement is absolutely unacceptable," declared
Downer, who couldn't muster the same admonition for the more violent
TNI.
Defence Minister Robert Hill,
whose military forces breached Iraq's territorial integrity in recent
weeks, said: "Indonesia's got the perfect right to maintain its
internal integrity and we regret those who are in armed revolt."
Hill is determined to re-establish closer ties between the Australian
Defence Force and Kopassus, Jakarta's special forces with a history
of state terrorism and links to Islamic extremist groups such as Laskar
Jihad.
How can Canberra's diametrically
opposite responses to the KLA and the GAM be explained?
Like his predecessors, Downer
seems to have a greater attachment to Indonesia's territorial integrity
than many Indonesian citizens, especially those who live in provinces
such as Aceh and West Papua. He seems convinced that the detachment
of the republic's eastern and western-most provinces from Jakarta's
rule will trigger centrifugal forces across the archipelago. There is
no reason to believe this is likely.
He also seems convinced that
secession will inevitably lead to horrendous violence. This is possible.
However, those who warn of bloody consequences if Indonesia fragments
must answer a prior question: how many Indonesian lives are worth the
preservation of its existing political boundaries?
There are few reasons to
believe Indonesia's territorial boundaries are more immutable that those
of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany or Israel.
It is therefore naive of Australia's strategic planners to base their
projections on either wishful thinking or unfounded worst-case scenarios.
A more realistic approach
is to bank on inevitable change and seek to influence developments in
a favourable direction. The alternative policy betrays our wider duty
to humanity.
Let's recall the Government's
belated humanitarian arguments for breaching Iraq's sovereignty recently,
and John Howard's warning that "the cost of (doing) nothing is
potentially much greater than the cost of doing something". In
Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan, apparently, but not in Indonesia.
Despite the illegitimacy
of its imperial mission, the boundaries carved out by Dutch colonialists
are now sacrosanct, at least in the eyes of Indonesia's southern neighbour.
Another human catastrophe
beckons. As President Megawati Soekarnoputri shores up her nationalist
credentials in the lead-up to next year's election, the Indonesian military
is free to perform its traditional role of internal repression safe
in the knowledge that the West will again avert its eyes from a slaughter.
Clearly it's not just repressive
governments who "bluster and hide behind sovereignty arguments".
(Scott Burchill lectures
in international relations at Deakin University)