Below we print extracts of a statement released by Noam Chomsky on September 10, where he exposes the truth about the role of the Indonesian military.
The Indonesian military forces are commonly described as "rogue elements."
That is hardly accurate. Most prominent among them are Kopassus units sent to East Timor to carry out the actions for which they are famed, and dreaded. They have "the job of managing the militias, many observers believe," veteran Asia correspondent David Jenkins reported as the terror was mounting.
Kopassus is the "crack special forces unit" modelled on the US Green Berets that had "been training regularly with US and Australian forces until their behaviour became too much of an embarrassment for their foreign friends."
These forces are "legendary for their cruelty," observes Benedict Anderson, one of the leading Indonesia scholars. In East Timor,
Anderson continues, "Kopassus became the pioneer and exemplar for every kind of atrocity," including systematic rapes, tortures and executions, and organization of hooded gangsters.
Jenkins wrote that Kopassus officers, trained in the United States, adopted the tactics of the US Phoenix program in South Vietnam, which killed tens of thousands of peasants and much of the indigenous South Vietnamese leadership, as well as "the tactics employed by the Contras" in Nicaragua, following lessons taught by their CIA mentors that it should be unnecessary to review.
The state terrorists were "not simply going after the most radical pro-independence people but going after the moderates, the people who have influence in their community." "It's Phoenix," a well-placed source in Jakarta reported: the aim is "to terrorize everyone" -- the NGOs, the Red Cross, the UN, the journalists.
All of this was well before the referendum and the atrocities conducted in its immediate aftermath. As to these, there is good reason to heed the judgement of a high-ranking Western official in Dili.
"Make no mistake," he reported: "this is being directed from Jakarta. This is not a situation where a few gangs of rag-tag militia are out of control. As everybody here knows, it has been a military operation from start to finish."