Stop the Howard Government’s oil grab in East Timor!

Dear friends,

Attached below is a statement from the Democratic Socialist Party
denouncing the Australian government's attempt to steal the oil
resources that rightfully belong to the people of East Timor. We ask you
to publicise this issue and send your protests to Australian Minister
for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, and the UN administration in
Dili.

In solidarity,

John Percy
National Secretary
Democratic Socialist Party
Australia
intl@dsp.org.au

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Stop the Howard Government’s oil grab in East Timor!

In August, 1975, as the Suharto dictatorship was preparing to invade
East Timor, Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, sent a
cable to Canberra urging compliance with Indonesia’s plans to annex East
Timor. He wrote:

“It would seem to me that this Department [of Minerals and Energy] might
well have an interest in closing the present gap in the agreed sea
border and this could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia
than with Portugal; or independent Portuguese Timor. I know I am
recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand but that is what
national interest and foreign policy is all about …”

What followed was 25 years of Australian government complicity in an
illegal and brutal military occupation of East Timor by Suharto’s
military. More than 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives to famine,
war and slaughter. Tens of thousands more suffered torture, rape and
other forms of terror. All throughout this period, Australian
governments – both Labour and Liberal – led Suharto’s backers in
defending and recognising the invasion and occupation.

This policy helped Canberra to squeeze a good deal for itself out of the
Suharto government on the Timor Gap Treaty that gave Canberra
exploration and taxation rights over oil and gas resources which
rightfully belonged to East Timor. In 1989 all the world witnessed
Australian Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans and the Suharto dictatorship’s
Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, raise champagne glasses to the treaty as
they flew over the killing fields of East Timor. Canberra received this
concession from Jakarta in return for its morally and politically
bankrupt support for Jakarta’s invasion of East Timor.

The Australian government secured a treaty that established a Zone of
Cooperation between Australia and Indonesia. Australia and Indonesia
were to jointly manage resources exploration in this area and share
taxation imposed on companies working in the region. But under the UN
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), none of this area falls into
Australian territorial waters. UNCLOS determines that in the Timor Gap
situation, the seabed boundary should be a equidistant median line
between Australia and East Timor. If this were applied, the whole of the
current Zone of Cooperation would fall in East Timorese territory. Most
of the current oil exploration is inside the Zone of Cooperation.

Now that the East Timorese people have driven out Suharto’s military and
are on the way to independence, the treaty is now recognised as a
document with no validity, if it ever any had such legality in the first
place. Negotiations have begun between Canberra and Dili (UNTAET cabinet
ministers Mari Alkatiri and Peter Galbraith) on a new treaty between
East Timor and Australia.

And the Howard government still wants its blood money from the Timorese
peoples’ oil! Canberra wants the East Timorese to accept the Zone of
Cooperation as it currently stands, with Canberra getting a 50% share of
royalties from the area.

Australia has no legitimate rights over these resources. Indeed,
Canberra bears a moral debt to the East Timorese for 25 years of
complicity in the destruction and terrorisation of their country.

The Democratic Socialist Party calls on the Australian government to:

* unconditionally recognise a seabed boundary equidistant between East
Timor and Australia, as it already does in relation to ocean resources
above the seabed

* immediately declare to UNTAET and the Timorese that if the Timorese
people decide, for whatever reason, they wish to keep the Zone of
Cooperation, Australia will require no royalties. This is part
compensation for the damage done by 25 years of complicity in Suharto’s
war against the East Timorese people

* immediately announce a commitment to hand over to an independent East
Timor all royalties already collected from the Zone of Cooperation

Don’t let Howard get away with squeezing the East Timorese people again.
Start campaigning now by writing to Foreign Minister Downer in Canberra.
Join Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) and help
build pressure on Canberra.

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Send to:

Alexander Downer
Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600.
Fax: 02 6273 7500
minister.downer@dfat.gov.au

United Nations Administration for East Timor (UNTAET)
P.O. BOX 2436
DARWIN, NT 0801
AUSTRALIA
Fax: 08-89422198
Email: pwgalb@yahoo.com

Send copies of messages to:
Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET)
P.O. Box 458,
Broadway 2007
Fax: 02-96901381
asiet@asiet.org.au

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