Habibie, the Deep State and UN plebiscite in East Timor

One week after the Santa Cruz incident on November 12, 1991, the issue of East Timor exploded in Europe. Hundreds of protesters were killed. Video footage smuggled in from Dili dominated the world media. That same night I phoned East Timorese resistance representative José Ramos-Horta, then in Strasbourg, to offer my condolences. A few days later an anonymous Indonesian appeared on television protesting the atrocities. A rarity in the world media. He was George Junus Aditjondro. Since then, we have been in frequent contact, meeting in Portugal, Amsterdam, and Jakarta. He was also a frequent guest on our broadcasts on Radio Nederland.

George Junus Aditjondro is a scholar-cum-activist who has traveled extensively across the archipelago. His writings explore the conditions of the struggle in East Timor, environmental issues in Java, the oppression of the population in Papua and the corruption of the power elite in Jakarta. From Ramelau, Kedung Ombo, and Papua to the president’s chain of corruption and business, he describes the arbitrariness of the authorities who do not want to respect the rights of citizens. He raises the issue of “corruption” in the broadest sense: the corruption of power. That is: the abuses of the state apparatus since the military occupation (New Order against Timor-Leste), the abuses of environmental sustainability that threaten the lives of the people, the abuses of the rights of local people (Java, Papua), and the abuses of financial resources. The point is: it strikes at the arbitrariness of the state.

In the same spirit, the following article aims to explore the character of the Indonesian occupation regime in the colony called the “27th Province of East Timor” by noting developments during the presidency of B.J. Habibie following the resignation of President Soeharto – and the UN Referendum in East Timor in August 1999. 1)

London, April 1998

A month before President Soeharto resigned, Vice President B.J. Habibie attended the Second Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem) Summit in London with a number of ICMI (Indonesian Muslim Scholars Association) leaders. At that time, the New Order rulers were wary of the power struggle among ABRI (Indonesian Armed Forces, now called TNI) high-ranking officers during the 1990s, among others around the Tim-Tim issue. Soeharto felt the need to strengthen his legitimacy by courting Islamic politicians. Since the 1970s, long after the 1965-1966 genocide, the New Order no longer worried about mass resistance. His 1989 expletive Gebuk (Smash)! (1989), addressed to Benny Moerdani upon his return from Belgrade, signaled Soeharto’s obsession with his former riding apparatus, which was to keep the ABRI elite from interfering with his power. At the same time, ICMI was talking about ABRI and its leadership under the code: “the apparatus”.

In London, in April 1998, one of ICMI’s leaders, Adi Sasono, was present as a staff member of the vice president. I had known Adi since the 1980s among INGI (International Non-Govenmental Organization on Indonesia) activists – Adnan Buyung Nasution, Mulya Lubis, Hakim Garuda Nusantara, Gus Dur – when they gathered in Bussum, the Netherlands. Later Adi Sasono became one of the Habibie Trio. Meeting in the hallway of the hotel, he spontaneously greeted “Hi Tos, congratulations! Tim-Tim, beres deh (East Timor issue, it’s done!”). I was stunned. What was “done” or “settled”?

Why did he say that in such a promising tone? Soeharto was still in power at the time. Recent developments show that Foreign Minister Ali Alatas and Timorese Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo tried to persuade the president to consider the option of special autonomy, but Soeharto refused. Once, while in a helicopter after inaugurating the statue of Jesus Christus Rei in Dili, Bishop Belo asked for an audience in Jakarta. Soeharto replied with a blank smile. Alatas deflected questions about special autonomy by describing the “one-sided” attitude of East Timor’s supporters. “Well, they want to have the cake and eat it, too, he?” He accused them of demanding only for their own interests: autonomy now, independence later. Despite global pressure, Soeharto remained stubborn.

Soeharto, a Governor General

Soeharto was the longest-serving ruler since the archipelago became a state unit under Governor General J.C. Van Heutsz (1905-1910). Similar to the Dutch rulers, Soeharto was ambitious, demanding controlled security with the powers of a gouverneur general who possessed exorbitante rechten (extraordinary rights) and demanded Rust en Orde (Order and tranquility). The power of the state became a measure of its prestige. Acknowledging the right to special autonomy for East Timor – or Aceh, Papua – was not in his dictionary.

More than his Dutch predecessors, Soeharto succeeded in instilling the doctrine of territorial unity in his apparatus – the ABRI (Indonesia Armed Forces, now TNI). Although he was indecisive about how to invade East Timor, once he ordered invasion on Dec. 7, 1975, at the urging of Benny Moerdani and the green light of US President Gerard Ford and Foreign Minister Henry Kissinger, and annexed it in 1976, he was stone-headed. Like Napoleon and Hitler for Europe, Soeharto’s regime seemed to dream of national unity by manipulating the concept of “Wawasan Nusantara (Archipelagic Concept)” as proclaimed in the Law of the Sea, to include East Timor. Hence, since the 1970s, we have known the phrase “NKRI Harga Mati” (Unitary State or Death) which in practice became ABRI’s political doctrine.

With the door firmly closed to any solution on East Timor in 1998, Adi Sasono’s enthusiasm became an enigma. Half a year later, Habibie proposed a UN referendum.

The Deep State

Unfortunately, the full story behind it is not widely known. Understandably, though, the Habibie Trio had to struggle at the state elite level in the midst of a year-long transition before Indonesia’s general election. East Timor in 1997-1998 was hit by protest riots that flared up since the fence-jumping actions of Timorese activists in a number of foreign embassies in Jakarta since 1995. The Habibie trio was unconnected to developments on the ground. They were far away from pro-Timor actions at home and abroad.

For this home ‘sector’, the media in the 1990s had to turn to human rights activist Mrs. Ade Rostina Sitompul, fellow NGO activists, PRD, Pijar, Solidamor, Yayasan Hak, journalists, and media at home and abroad. In Europe, however, the pro-Timor movement began much earlier in 1975. This movement was pioneered by Swedish sociologist Olle Tornquist and Ambonese exile Hendrik Amarhorseja in Stockholm, Sweden; then Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong from Tapol in London, Yvette Lawson and Hasjrul Junaid from Kommittee Indonesie in Amsterdam, and Indonesian exiles Kusni Sulang and Umar Said in Paris. And George Junus Aditjondro returned from the United States in 1992. Timorese exiled leaders and former political prisoners and Indonesian student activists played important roles. Since 1993-94, with the APCET meeting in Manila José Ramos-Horta, Jose Amorim Dias, Paulino “Mouk Moruk” Gama, Indro Tjahjono, Rachland Nashidik, Tri Agus Siswowihardjo, Yeni Rosa Damayanti, Roy Pakpahan, Agus Lennon, Radziku, Helmy Fauzi, Max Lane, and Asian activists-solidarity actions in Europe were connected to those in Indonesia.

Trio Habibie is far from all that. In the run-up to the Reformasi, they “played” in the official state zone that was safe, but unpopular with activist networks. They were inside the state at a time when the state apparatus, being the target of protest and transition, was at a crucial juncture. As a transition body, the regime was “guarded” from within. To borrow from Turkish politics, this is what is called the Deep State, the formal and informal elements within state institutions, including the generals, with their clients, who were monitoring the actions of the official authorities. The spectrum includes the Green, Islam-oriented groups such as Feisal Tanjung, Prabowo, and the Merah-Putih (Red and White nationalist) group, including Benny Moerdani’s intelligence elements BAIS. Hence, American observer Jeffrey Winter, in the early hours of late May 1998, warned that Soeharto on May 22, 1998, was “not actually stepping down, but stepping aside.”

Perhaps, because they were at the center of the state elite but active outside the military elite, Trio Habibie was able to “sound” because it carried the image of building democracy. At least, for a while. But in the eyes of activists, they were scorned because they inherited the tainted image of the New Order. After all, didn’t Habibie during two decades (1978-1998) help dictator Soeharto? They were considered “Soeharto’s proteges” who replaced the Soeharto regime. Remember the picture of Habibie as a troubled Emperor Napoleon, plastered in a very large size on the wall of Kedai Tempo in Utan Kayu, Jakarta, a rendezvous place for journalists and activists at that time?

The Habibie Trio

There is confusion, indeed, when the state appeared to be “just changing its clothes”. On the one hand, they are old people, on the other hand, they are on the verge of a new era. In an anthropological and historical sense, they are like children in the middle of rites de passage. Recall the role of youth in the turbulent 1940s, the period of the independence struggle later known as the Pemoeda (Youth) Revolution. Soerjono, a Pesindo activist, for example, who joined the movement from Blitar to Surabaya with revolutionary fervor (later exiled in Amsterdam), ensured that without the spirit of youth, there would be no the heroic day of “November 10, 1945”. Here, in the late 1990s, what was “young” was not the figures, but the elan and the spirit: a new spirit ahead of three decades of dictatorship.

The above allusion is important to understand the efforts that led President B.J. Habibie to propose a United Nations plebiscite for East Timor in late February 1999. The three of the trio were Ginanjar Kartasasmita, Dewi Fortuna Anwar, and Adi Sasono. Ginanjar, then Minister of Energy and Mines in Habibie’s cabinet, was the trigger. Returning from a conference in Geneva, Ginanjar complained about the international community’s reticence towards Indonesia due to the East Timor issue. Alatas, the foreign minister and one most familiar with the issue formulated it brilliantly: there is “a pebble in our shoe” (kerikil di sepatu Indonesia). Accurate, but euphemistic: the pebble has actually become a rock in front of the nation. Abroad, people prefer to call it the Achilles heel of the regime.

Ginanjar’s input became an important consideration for Habibie just half a year away before the latter became president. Meanwhile, Dewi took part in the stage, became a presidential advisor on foreign affairs, served the media, and secretly met with the official representative of the East Timor independence movement CNRM, José Ramos-Horta, and several activists abroad. Meanwhile, Adi Sasono played quietly. After May 1998, the East Timor issue became hot potatoes that had to be resolved in order to overcome the monetary crisis and make Habibie’s presidency a success. And, it had to be immediate. This made Foreign Minister Alatas, in Jakarta, and Indonesian Permanent Representative to the UN Wisnumurti, upon landing in New York, surprised when they heard that Habibie had formally requested a United Nations referendum (plebiscite).

Key generals such as Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Feisal Tanjung and Military Commander Wiranto agreed to a poll solution. They were confident that the pro-integration group would win. Only one – Zacky Anwar Makarim – predicted defeat or a narrow victory. From these Deep State bushes, the Kopassus team – Zacky Anwar Makarim, Garnadi, Gleny Kahuripan, Adam Damiri, Tony Suratman, Yayat Sudrajat, and Nur Moeis – prepared a Plan B, later known as the “Garnadi Document”. Because of the dimness of the situation, it seems, Adi Sasono was reluctant to tell the full story, but hinted by emphasizing the importance of the “aparat” (apparatus i.e. ABRI) leaving the land of East Timor. “Because democracy,” he said, “is the right of the people.”

On the other hand, Habibie, who from the beginning of his presidency had been threatened by Lt. General Prabowo Subianto’s coup, wanted to move quickly. Therefore, Trio Habibie felt the need to prepare the Special Autonomy option beforehand. They knew the idea would be rejected by Soeharto, but with political calculation, they had to organize the momentum to escort Habibie in securing the rights of the East Timorese.

Icons of a colonized nation

If the year 1998 was a crucial one for Indonesia, 1999 turned out to be the year of anxiety – a decisive one, that is, for East Timor. Ginanjar’s signal – there was a world “pebble” because of East Timor “pebble” at our shoe – got serious attention. In a state of uncertainty, in mid-December 1998, a letter came from Australian Prime Minister John Howard proposing East Timor be given time for special autonomy before opting for a permanent status – similar to the solution France had for its colony in the Pacific, the New Caledonia. President Habibie was surprised. He felt offended. If Alatas once argued that the special autonomy idea was fraudulent, Habibie interpreted Howard’s proposal as a “colonial policy”.

Instead of being welcomed by Jakarta, Howard’s slings and arrows sparked anger. As a result, Habibie’s proposal for a UN poll was actually provoked by frustration when the Australian PM’s proposal was considered to equate Indonesia and France as colonizers.

For East Timorese resistance, Habibie’s proposal was precisely what East Timor needed. The United Nations referendum opened the door to restoring the right to self-determination. Meanwhile, Habibie’s referendum motive was to reject the implicit idea that Indonesia was the colonizer of East Timor. For Habibie Trio, as a state political actor, the motive did not matter. It was part of a tactical momentum.

Since the 1991 Santa Cruz incident, the Indonesian public, following the global public, has begun to smell the disgrace of ‘Tim-Tim’ (East Timor). Historian Ong Hok Ham in The Jakarta Post described the New Order as a Dutch East Indies regime. Ben Anderson, whom I met in Estoril, Portugal (1993), pointed out: “(The situation of) Tim-Tim is exactly like the Dutch (colonial war) of 1945-1949.” Militarily, the resistance “could have been wiped out” by ABRI, just as the Indonesian guerillas were wiped out by the Dutch, but this military option would have been a dead end. So was the detention of Xanana Gusmão in Cipinang (1992): it had the same effect as Sukarno’s detention in Yogyakarta and Parapat (1949). Therefore, Soeharto-ABRI, analogous to the Dutch-KNIL, for its own sake, had to release the colonized “icons of the nation” to find a political solution.

Just as the Aceh and Papua conflicts were tainted by waves of violence against civilians, the East Timor solution was tainted by disgrace. Agents of the Deep State – including Transmigration Minister Hendropriyono who deported thousands of Timorese to Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province – have been playing Plan B since the UN poll results on September 4 announced a pro-independence victory (79%). They launched violent and genocidal actions by deploying hundreds of militias as proxies. The result was the loss of 1400 lives, the deportation of 200,000 people to NTT, and the looting of the property of local officials. 2) In Dili on September 5, 1999, our residential house with the Solidamor group on Rue de Carvalho was burned down, so we fled. For the people of East Timor, fleeing is common. “Running away and fleeing has been our tradition since Indonesia entered (this country),” complained a family in Dili.

That’s where the fatal limitations of Trio Habibie’s role, including Habibie himself, are revealed. Again, outsiders were blamed. The reason: the violence occurred because UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan accelerated the announcement of the poll results. In fact, as Commander-in-Chief, President Habibie only ordered on September 20 to control the situation. Too little too late, that is. Thus, he invited Australian troops when blood was already flowing. Aib (disgrace) has already happened.

As a result, when inheriting Soeharto’s New Order dictatorship, Habibie, tragically, could not prevent the abuses of the ABRI and its militia. However, at the same time, it must be noted that he greatly contributed to democratic values by restoring the rights of the Timorese people, releasing Indonesian political prisoners and holding general elections in Indonesia (1999).

According to the ABRI, the violence in East Timor was the result of a “civil war” between the pro-integration and pro-independence groups. This is hypocritical, as it ignores the Opsus (Special Operation) aggression and interventions under Ali Moertopo and Benny Moerdani since 1974 that strengthened pro-Indonesia groups against the Fretilin. In the run-up to the referendum, preventing a “civil war” was ABRI-chief Wiranto’s mission. José Ramos-Horta, whom I met in Geneva, responded: “General Wiranto is like Jack the Ripper (19th-century British criminal) pretending to reconcile the women he raped”.

Luckily for Wiranto and his friends, they have been “saved” from international tribunals. In February 2003 the United Nations Special Panel of Serious Crimes Unit (SCU) charged them with three types of Crimes against Humanity: persecution, mass murder, and deportation. But when Timor-Leste’s Attorney General Longuinhos Monteiro asked the SCU to detain Wiranto (May 2004), President Xanana Gusmão canceled the detention. The irony is that this strategic-diplomatic decision had saved them just two years after Timor-Leste restored independence (20 May 2002) amidst the threat of thousands of militias and the presence of Indonesian troops in Indonesia’s NTT province – a potentially dangerous new neighbor.

As a result, the Indonesian ad-hoc Human Rights Court Komnas-HAM had to drop the charges against the high-ranking ABRI officers (2003). And, with Xanana’s intervention and embrace in welcoming Wiranto to Jakarta (2004), both countries now bestowed impunity on those responsible and perpetrators of the September 1999 violence.

Four years later, in August 2008, at Timor-Leste’s initiative, the new nation and the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono agreed to bury “everything once and for all”. Not only the April-September 1999 violence, but also the 24 years of war crimes and occupation, were “resolved” with just two scratches of signatures on the CTF (Timor-Leste-Indonesia Joint Commission of Truth and Friendship) agreement in Denpasar (2008). 3)

Thus, under a geopolitical curse, the new David and Goliath friendship was paid for with complete mutual impunity. Not a single officer or militia – except Eurico Guterres – was punished. Nor were those who had behaved violently on both ABRI’s and Fretilin’s sides. In the ABRI ranks, they were even promoted despite their official status as SCU defendants.

Genocidal hands

Indonesia’s secret war against Fretilin (1974-1978), followed by East Timor’s status as a militarized area and a closed province until 1989, has placed ABRI there as a hegemonic social class of power. For the first time in history, the Indonesian state apparatus became the ruling social class. Ernst Utrecht in 1970 called Indonesia, under the New Order, ruled by a military caste. In fact: throughout the 1990s East Timor has become a hot issue that divided the ABRI military elite. Ben Anderson satirized this by pointing out the need for the slogan “Free Indonesia from (the issue of) Tim-Tim”.

The exclusive role of ABRI’s oligarchy as a military caste was as true in East Timor during the 1970s-1990s as it was in Jakarta. Throughout the 24-year occupation, ABRI – and only the ABRI elite – controlled the geopolitics and infrastructure of East Timor. Only they knew and controlled the political conditions, economic-financial resources (PT Denok coffee under Benny Moerdani), political geography, local clientelist structures, and networks that enabled them to recruit local elites and militias. All elements of the bureaucracy involved in organizing the UN poll, from the President, the Habibie Trio, a number of ministries (Foreign Affairs, Law and Human Rights, Transmigration) officials at the center to local governments and sub-district heads – the whole structures were dominated by, or had to cooperate with the ABRI local elite. All of this allowed the military elite to synchronize in secret to run riots during the polls. Not surprisingly, fake money to finance militias, too, could freely circulate. The military caste was entrenched in Dili, not Jakarta.

The only force that disturbed and could disrupt ABRI’s caste during the polls was the presence of hundreds of representatives of the UN agency UNAMET, the media and a number of foreign NGOs. According to UNAMET political advisor Geoffrey Robinson, this “caught the military authorities by surprise”, unprepared. 4)

In other words, without the eyes of the world, persecution and genocide – face-to-face genocide in the style of 1965-1966 – could have been widespread.

Bitterly, these acts and potential violence were witnessed and allowed to happen by the government team as liaison officers tasked with monitoring the conduct of the polls. I saw them attending the press conference, touring the city and resting in bungalows on Makassar Beach. Strangely, they – i.e. Marzuki Darusman, Dino Patti Djalal, Timbul Silaen, Benyamin Mangkudilaga, and others – had returned to Jakarta before September 4, just two days before the scorched-earth violent actions began, which they could have reported to prevent. So, too, did journalists from Jakarta’s mainstream media. One Jakarta Post journalist claimed “we were called by Cilangkap and ordered to go home.” Benyamin Mangkudilaga, one of those officials, confirmed this when I met him: “What the hell, we were asked to go home by Cilangkap anyway.” 5)

All this confirms the very existence of a Deep State operation directly from the ABRI headquarters in Cilangkap. There were at least two chains of command at work: the official command (Wiranto, Adam Damiri to local units) and the interdepartmental network under the Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Feisal Tanjung. However, on the ground, there was a Kopassus unit under Lt. Col. Tony Suratman, whom foreign diplomats called “the most security threatening” man. It was the field commanders in that chain who mobilized the violent actions of the pro-integration militias from the April raid on the Carrascalao family home in Dili to the scorched earth, mass deportation, and looting in September 1999. They turned East Timor, so to speak, into Year Zero.

The Deep State has thus practiced the doctrine of “NKRI Harga Mati” (Unitary State or Death) into a kind of runaway nationalism by using the genocidal hands of the pro-integration militias. The history of Timor-Leste’s independence is a deeply bitter, but valuable lesson for the public as well as the Republic of Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

Note

1 This article is partly derived and updated from my note “Trio Habibie dan Tim-Tim”, https://indoprogress.com/2016/09/trio-habibie-tim-tim/

2 Aboeprijadi Santoso. “East Timor: Army’s Plot and Human Tragedy”, accessed at http://aboeprijadi.com/2020/10/east-timor-armys-plot-and-a-human-tragedy/

3.  Aboeprijadi Santoso. “CTF report: Burying some inconvenient truths”, accessed at http://aboeprijadi.com/2020/10/ctf-report-burying-some-inconvenient-truth/ Originally published in The Jakarta Post, July 22, 2008.

4 Aboeprijadi Santoso. “What of truth commission for East Timor?”, accessed at https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/east-timor/bibliography/what-truth-commission-east-timor. Originally published in The Jakarta Post, January 10, 2005.

5 Aboeprijadi Santoso. “Timor-Leste 1999 or, how to sell lies”, accessed at https://www.etan.org/et2007/may/05/01tl 1999.htm Originally published in The Jakarta Post, May 1, 2007.