John Rees, editor of International Socialism Journal, spoke to Carmel Budiardjo, a political prisoner after the 1965 coup which brought General Suharto to power and later the founder of the Indonesian Human Rights Campaign, TAPOL.
How did your involvement with Indonesian politics begin?
I lived in Indonesia for nearly 20 years and after Suharto came to power my husband, along with hundreds of thousands of others, was arrested.
Three years later I was arrested. I spent three years as an untried political prisoner and my husband spent 12 years as an untried political prisoner.
In what ways are the mass movement in Indonesia and the situation in East Timor related?
For the general public in Indonesia East Timor has been a side issue. It's rather like the Northern Irish situation for the British public: there is interest when there is a bomb or something happens but most of the time it is not a central concern.
A small number of devoted and committed non-governmental organizations, and some people in the student movement, are very aware of the situation in East Timor and support its right to self-determination.
The official political parties that have mushroomed since the fall of Suharto -- Megawati's party, the Muslim party led by Gus Dur, Amien Rais' party -- are not bothered about East Timor. They have to respond to the crisis in so far as it effects the jostling for power, but it is not part of their programme. None of them support self determination for East Timor.
For the political elite East Timor is something with which to beat Habibie -- he shouldn't have allowed the referendum, everything is his fault. This is rubbish -- the blame for what has happened in East Timor lies with the army. But the logic of the political elites' criticism of Habibie is that they do not want to oppose the army.
This is a paradox because the fall of Suharto has exposed the army more than ever before as a violator of human rights -- in Aceh, in West Papua, in its abduction of human rights activists.
Yet many people don't yet connect what is happening in East Timor with the army's record. Many people never really expected the East Timorese to vote against Indonesia. The vote stunned many people.
But the current crisis, and the international condemnation of the Indonesian government, has had a great deal of coverage in the press and this may now begin to change people's perceptions of what is happening.
The issue of East Timor and the mass movement may not be consciously linked, but the crisis will still effect events in Jakarta. Will the crisis, for instance, reinforce opposition to the army?
Just as the recent events in East Timor were taking place the radical elements in the pro-democracy movement were developing a campaign against the new state security law which is being debated in parliament.
The army supports this law because it would give them special powers and would allow the government to declare a state of emergency or even martial law. Pro-democracy people feel very threatened by this.
They have been demonstrating against the law, but not about East Timor. Yet the government did declare martial law in East Timor.
So these issues are running parallel. It will be interesting to see whether the campaign against this law will draw comparisons with what they are afraid will happen in Java and what has happened in East Timor these two things may become more closely linked.
Is the army's aim to intimidate other liberation movements and the mass movement in Indonesia by taking a hard line in East Timor?
Yes, this is warning to the Acehenese and the Papuans. The Indonesian political elite itself will not condemn the army.
They are out to curry favour with the army to ensure that their Presidential candidate is elected. They do not see militarism as a threat. For example, in a recent vote for the chairman of the Jakarta City Council, where Megawati supporters are a majority, the army candidate beat the Megawati supporter.
No one could understand how this happened, but now it appears that Megawati told her supporters to vote for the army candidate. She wants to keep the army on-side. They obviously don't see militarism as a problem.
Its different with the grassroots people who are developing this campaign about the security law.
They are people who are hit on the head by the army. They see army violence as a big problem. We'll have to wait a while to see how the armed forces come through this crisis. It seems as if they are in some disarray -- they've been humiliated by having to accept outside intervention in East Timor.
They will have to rethink their position. But because there is such a strong pro-military attitude among the elite it's difficult to predict how wounded the army will be.
What is your assessment of the attitude of the US and the other western powers? One former US National Security Advisor described East Timor as 'a speed-bump on the road to the great goal of stability in Indonesia'.
That kind of cynical remark is typical and probably in the minds of all those people in the corridors of power. The problem for them is that East Timor became such an international issue.
They couldn't get rid of it.
That's why Habibie had to act in the way that he did. The western powers came to realise that there could be no solution to East Timor without the Timorese people being given the right to decide.
It was too big an issue and it would have dogged Indonesia until it was resolved. And if the western powers wanted to get on with a good partnership with Indonesia, regardless of who is in power, then they had to get rid of the East Timorese issue.
It had to be resolved for everything else to go on as normal. That's what Australian Prime minister John Howard must have thought when he urged Habibie to grant the referendum -- and John Howard is from the only government which recognised Indonesia's integration of East Timor.
What do you think of the proposed UN solution? Doesn't it leave far too much power in the hands of the Indonesian army? Given the economic interests which Australia has in East Timor, isn't asking the Australian army in a bit like asking the fox to guard the hen house?
Its so amazing when the Australians have played such a bad role.
The UN made a huge blunder in handing over security for the ballot to the Indonesian forces. Governments don't seems to understand that these people are a gang of monsters -- that's why the Labour government is still selling arms to them.
It's very serious that the UN Security Council resolution does not require the removal of the Indonesian army. They still hold the same position as they held before.
The problem with the UN attitude, and that of all the other countries, is that they have gone as far as possible not to malign the Indonesian armed forces.
They will fall over backwards to say what a nice bunch of people they are.
They want to keep a good relation with the armed forces.
I just say over and over again that governments have to understand what a killer regime this is. It's the same whether Suharto is there or is not there, the Indonesian armed forces have not changed their character -- they are killers, thieves, looters, rapists.
The problem is that what we like to call the international community do not want to accept this, but no one in East Timor will want to return to their homes when the army is still there.