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 The Balibo Coronial Enquiry and Beyond 

The Balibo coronial enquiry has led to some extraordinary revelations – at least, extraordinary to those unfamiliar with the unfolding of events in 1975. This week’s incident involving retired Lieutenant General Sutiyoso, now Governor of Jakarta Raya, is a warning that the coronial report is likely to impact on the Canberra-Jakarta relationship. However, the problem is not with the coronial enquiry, but with those responsible for this atrocity and those who, in the past, took the unacceptable step of covering up this crime against humanity. 

It could well, of course, be several months before the coroner hands down her findings, and, in the light of the evidence presented to the court, the impact of the outcome could  well range well beyond the issue of the cause and manner of the deaths of those journalists who met a cruel end on that fateful day in October 1975, when I, too, was in troubled East Timor. The testimony of former Australian diplomats and intelligence officers has exposed the shamefully indifferent response of the Whitlam Government to what it knew to be an extremely serious war crime and the equally shameful failure of Fraser Coalition Government to take up the issue.  

The affair implicitly goes beyond the Balibo incident. These testimonies exposed other ugly realities that are really beyond the focus of the coronial enquiry. One is the fact that although the Whitlam government knew that Indonesia was about to commit a grave violation of the UN Charter, it did nothing to deter this crime. East Timor was not just a neighbour: its people had selflessly helped Australians during our darkest hours in 1942.. Nor can the Fraser Government escape blame. The Balibo atrocity was a grim warning of what lay ahead for the East Timorese, but our Governments couldn’t even bring themselves to protest this virtual execution of five of its journalists. Australia went on to support the annexation, not even protesting the terrible atrocities that accompanied it – the mass executions, the torture and the widespread raping of women - a terrible ordeal that claimed over 180,000 lives, memories of which lie trauma-like behind the instability, insecurity, and lacking in self-confidence still prevalent in East Timor today.  

To spare those Indonesian military commanders involved in past atrocities from exposure and recrimination surely constitutes an offence to the memory of the Balibo victims. Then there are the tens of thousands of East Timorese who were to fall victim of a brutal military culture whose full exposure is in the national interest of both countries. It is also counterproductive to the important relationship between our two nations.

Thus it is time to look beyond Balibo, to make use of the findings of the coronial inquest to take in the lessons of this tragic affair - to end the lying and the deceit. The truth may be ugly and shocking but its exposure will give both Indonesians and Australians an opportunity to start afresh, dispensing with a relationship that has for so long been embedded in opportunism, political expediency and pretentious rhetoric. To use this experience to change direction would surely be the best way to honour the memory of five journalists who lost their lives in an attempt to expose a culture of deception and lying that has continued to demean the relationship. We know the victims. Who are the killers? Speak!