The world watches a brutal coup

With every hour that passes, we see things happening in East Timor that we cannot believe. Bishop Carlos Belo's house, a place of refuge and succour for 24 years, where his Nobel Peace Prize certificate was framed in the reception room beneath a crucifix, has been desecrated and burned. The Red Cross building beside has been destroyed. A diocesan house across town has been torched. Swathes of houses in Dili and other towns have been devastated by flames.

Thousands of people have been trucked away in military lorries to unknown destinations. Their offence? They supported an option put to them by the Indonesian government in a ballot organised by the United Nations. Indonesia would like to portray these outrages as a knee-jerk reaction by pro-Jakarta militias against the 78.5 per cent vote for independence announced on Saturday.

But this is not the work of a mob. Anyone who has spent any time in Dili knows that. The militias' activities have been controlled and choreographed from the start. They were first created by the Indonesian army earlier this year to intimidate the people of East Timor into voting to stay with Indonesia. A few massacres were organised, at Liquica and Dili, to make the point.

When that didn't work, it used the militias to stage a brutal coup, which is now under way. As per plan, the Indonesian police and army gave the militia their head and their guns, and then stood by while their political representatives in Jakarta spoke of unruly elements. Even yesterday the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, was talking about things being "not as simple as they seemed" and the police doing their best against "unruly elements".

Gen Wiranto yesterday announced that he was sending in three extra battalions "to bring under control the two parties which are fighting there following the referendum." Two parties? There is but one party to this killing rampage. The Falantil resistance movement has remained inactive in the hills, resisting the trap waiting to be sprung if it rushes to the people's defence. If there is another party, it is the people who are being butchered and driven from their homes - in whose number we can now include Bishop Belo.

The really incredible thing is that this crime against humanity, for which the Indonesian army leaders should one day be answerable in the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, is happening in full view of the world, and with the utmost contempt for its reaction.

This is a disaster for the international community and the United Nations. With the agreement of the UN and the Portuguese and Indonesian governments, the people of East Timor were asked to take their courage in their hands and come out and vote for independence or autonomy. They were asked to put their faith in the UN process. They were encouraged by the men and women in blue, and by visiting politicians and diplomats and activists, to defy the intimidation and vote for a better future.

NOW they are being slaughtered and what is truly shocking is that no one is doing anything to help them. The UN Security Council met on Sunday and decided to send ambassadors to Jakarta. Why is unclear, as the Secretary General's personal envoy, Mr Jamsheed Marker, is already here. If they are not coming with a demand to allow an international force into East Timor, very, very quickly, they are wasting their time.

We now know that Indonesian government promises cannot be believed. Indeed, the Jakarta government may have lost control of the situation. If so, this emerging democracy of 200 million people, ruled until last year by Gen Suharto with the help of the generals, faces an enormous constitutional crisis. President Habibie, his country dependent on the International Monetary Fund and other world financial institutions, agreed last January to a popular consultation to get the diplomatic embarrassment of East Timor out of the way.

He is now being depicted by his opponents in Indonesia as the man who "lost" East Timor. His opponent for president, Megawati Sukharnoputri, is blaming him directly for the violence. He has been discredited domestically by his inability to control the generals who have pushed themselves towards the pariah status of Burma's military leadership. His government is totally discredited in the United Nations, which put its faith in Indonesian promises to provide security for the popular consultation. Indonesians would do well to reflect if Mr Suharto is still in power behind the scenes and what this means for their own programme of reformasi.

If the Indonesian government cannot impose its will on the army, where does this leave the UN Security Council? It is faced with a case for intercession at least as strong as that for Kosovo earlier this year. What is happening in East Timor is of course not ethnic cleansing but it can be described as the elimination by death and terror of a political point of view, and it is given a religious dimension which will reverberate along Indonesia's religious fault lines in that a defenceless Catholic people is being brutally repressed at the direction of a largely Muslim army.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who once said, "I am haunted by what we didn't do in Rwanda", may have to cope one day with the ghosts of East Timor. He is unlikely to get Security Council agreement for a UN force to enter East Timor without Indonesian agreement, however strong the argument that the vote of 78.5 per cent for independence is a basis for action. China, ever mindful of Tibet, is opposed to supporting any action without the agreement of the host country and the United States is not, publicly at any rate, pushing any military plan.

THE Indonesian military, which sees itself as the instrument holding the fraying archipelago of Indonesia together, probably calculated that the world would be unwilling and unable to act, that is if it is taking into account world opinion at all.

In these circumstances it may fall to the regional powers, chiefly Australia, to take action. What is happening in East Timor is a huge moral dilemma for Australia. If it stands by and does nothing, as it did in 1975 when at least there was a Cold War to provide cover for abandoning a second World War friend, it will be scarred for years. Australia will do nothing unilaterally, however. Its attitude is that intervention without Jakarta's permission would amount to an invasion of Indonesia.

Which throws the ball back to the United Nations. "There is more being decided in New York than meets the eye," said Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, yesterday. One hopes so. As Jose Ramos-Horta, Bishop Belo's partner in winning the Nobel Peace Prize, said yesterday, the credibility of the United Nations itself is now at stake.