THEMCGILL TRIBUNE Published by the Students' Society of M cG ill University
Volume 6, issue 8
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Tuesday, October 28, 1986
I n d e p e n d e n c e
by Jennifer Henderson "Don't feel embarrassed if you have never heard of East Timor," José RamosHorta told a small audience at McGill on Tuesday. The small island 360 miles north of Australia is ignored by the Canadian government and the media. Yet East Timor is the site of one of the most violent conflicts in the world today. It is estimated that 200,000 East Timorese have perished from Indonesian persecu tion during ten years of brutal military occupation. "Indonesia has not the slightest claim" to the territory, asserted Horta, who is the Fretilin (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) representative to the UN. East Timor developed into a distinct entity from Indonesian-controlled West Timor, formerly Dutch Timor, during 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule. It was to achieve independence by 1978, but this objective was cut short by the December 1975 invasion by Indonesian troops. East Timor had been in the midst of a month-long civil war. A coalition of proIndonesian forces jointly formed a provi sional government after Fretilin had declared an independent "Democratic Republic of East Timor." According to Horta, local elections the same year had revealed that Fretilin held 60 per cent of the popular support. In donesia felt threatened by a potentially progressive nation on its borders and "decided to invade only after knowing the election results." "From then on,” he said, "they set in motion their military machine."
Canada is the third largest investor in Indonesia. The government's continuing silence over East Timor is evidence that trade relations take precedence over all other considerations. While Canadian foreign policy calls for the withdrawal of occupying forces from Afghanistan and Cambodia, Canada has voted against every UN resolution calling for withdrawal from East Timor.
Even worse — the East Timorese are starving to death in their own land. East Timor now has the highest infant mor tality rate in the world: 211 out of every thousand babies die before they reach their first birthday, according to Washington's Population Reference Bureau. And all food aid destined for East Timor is funnelled through sticky military channels. One tragic famine described by Horta occurred when thousands of peasants were displaced by Indonesian forces in order to isolate them from contact with Fretilin. Official foreign observers were unkowningly kept away from the site of mass starvation, Horta said.
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Despite a low overall voter turnout, last Wednesday's referenda and Arts Representative to Council election pro duced some decisive results. An over whelming majority, 710 to 387, voted against joining the Regroupement des Associations Étudiantes Universitaires (RAEU), the Quebec student federation. "I hope the votes were intelligent votes," sajd Carlene Gardener, Clubs Rep. to Council and Co-Chair of the "No" Committee. "Ours was a low key campaign," she continued, "We wanted students to realize the importance of the Quebec student movement." Gardner said, "There are good arguments for joining a student federation. However, the way the groups now stand, there is nothing to be gained by joining RAEU or ANEQ." According to Studsoc Vice-President External, Ian Brodie, the referendum fail ed because the "Yes" committee didn't run a high profile campaign. "We did not want to run a campaign on RAEU's record," he said. "I thought that students would recognize the need to belong to a student federation. Frankly, I don't know why the vote was so overwhelmingly against it." Brodie feels that "McGill does not have sufficient clout to ac complish anything on its own." On the future of external affairs he said, "I plan ned on spending the next six months set-
Horta spoke of the hypocrisy of UN member states who voted in favour of adopting a resolution calling for Indone sian withdrawal from East Timor, while simultaneously supplying weapons to In donesia.
But the population was bombed out of the countryside by Indonesian troops and herded into resettlement camps. "Today 150 to 200 camps make up most of the population," Horta said. Residents cannot move beyond a 5 km radius of these camps. "The East Timorese cannot travel in their own land."
But forced migration is only part of the "well thought-out strategy of genocide to render people a minority in their own land," he explained. East Timor is an of ficial Indonesian transmigration zone. This means that Indonesia literally ships the citizens of its crowded central Since 1975, at least one-third of all liv islands to what it calls its "under ing East Timorese have been killed in populated territories," such as East what has been called "the worst act of Timor and West Papua, "in order to genocide since the Jewish holocaust." create a more loyal population."
by Jennifer Mori
is afraid to go into the mountains," Hor ta said. He estimated the number of guerilla forces at 3,000 and said they are armed with weapons left behind by the Portuguese.
Before the invasion, 80 per cent of East Timorese lived in remote mountain villages on subsistence agriculture. "I grew up in the mountains," Horta told the audience, "and never did I see hunger. There was enough land and fer tile soil. They grew everything."
R e s u lt s ting the federation in shape. Now I have nothing to do." All questions pertaining to the Daily Publications Society remain undecided as voter turnout did not reach quorum; since all students pay $2.85 per semester to DPS, a 15 per cent quorum is required to make a referendum effective. Of those who voted, 728 to 533 voted down the fee increase, 619 to 474 rejected the inflation/deflation mechanism, 588 to 338 turned down the suspension of the "staff veto," and 597 to 189 rejected the reduction of student reps to the Board. "I'm disappointed that the fee increase didn't go through," said Joe Heath, D ai ly News Editor. "I was looking forward to having a paper every day. The D a ily gets one of the lowest fees per capita of any Canadian student newspaper and publishes the most often. If the fee in crease had gone through, McGill would have had a daily paper by January," he added. Concerning DPS constitutional amendments, Heath was pleased that they were rejected. "W e were blackmailed by Students' Society in the spring to put them to referendum." Arnold Cohen, DPS student rep, ex plained that the DPS referenda questions were part of the lease agreement the D a ily signed in the spring. "Students' Society perceived that students were discontented with the way the D a ily was
"I'm not going to waste my time with the Canadian foreign office," Horta said. He repeatedly called Canadian officials "hypocritical," "naive" and "ignorant." Although the "puppet Governor" of East Timor is East Timorese, the lower echelon — the entire civil sector — is dominated by non-East Timorese, accor ding to Horta. "There are 30,000 In donesian civil servants permanently set tled," he said. Horta quoted the Governor as saying that 40 per cent of the budget is lost in corruption. "The few Indonesian generals who are not corrupt are in jail," he added, giving the example of a former ASEAN Secretary General sentenced to ten years in jail for signing a petition condemning the Indonesian occupation.
Marc Simmons, another DPS student rep, said, "The lease agreement follow ed a confrontational year between the D a ily and Students' Society; there was hysteria on both sides. It was blackmail in the sense that the lease was condi tional upon running the referendum but I think Studsoc was trying to make the D a ily more responsible." The WUSC referendum question on whether to sponsor two student refugees to study at McGill was a success; 1004 to 288 voted in its favour. Patrice Brodeur, WUSC President, told the Tribune, "I'm pleased that there were almost four times as many yes as no votes. There is no doubt that McGill students thought the referendum was something good and worthwhile." McGill will welcome its first student refugees next September when the fee increase will take effect. In the ASUS election, J. Peter Nixon was elected Arts Representative to Coun cil over Dave Bate, 290 to 167. "I fee! very confident about doing a good job on Council," Nixon said. Nixon would like to see a "student initiated referen dum" clause added to the Students' Society constitution. He also wants to see Council initiative for University pro blems such as class overcrowding. "I’d like to see a philosophical change in Council," he said. "Council has not seen itself as an organization that fights for student interests. It needs to take an active stand on student issues.
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"They will tell you Indonesia has done much for East Timor,” he said, "but it is unacceptable to tell us that a road built by Indonesia for the circulation of their tanks denies us our right to in dependence. If (Indonesians) have money to spend, they should spend it on the 30 million Indonesians living below the poverty line."
Horta, who'was one of the founders of Fretilin, dismissed Indonesian Foreign Minister Dr. Adam Malik as a "profes sional double-crosser" and his campaign to portray Fretilin as a communist organization as "a pack of lies." Defending Fretilin's aims, he said, "We would willingly join ASEAN and the South Pacific Forum. We profess non-alignment and neutrality in major power conflicts. We will never interfere in Indonesian internal affairs."
Fretilin is not the only option, Horta said. "No one holds the monopoly on truth. But one thing is certain: the entire population is against Indonesia because entire families have been liquidated. Why not allow people to decide for themselves?"
The countryside of East Timor is either controlled by Fretilin forces or remains a no man's land because "the civil service
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by Michèle Dupuis McGill's Board of Governors (BoG) unanimously affirmed its year-old policy of total divestment from South Africa at its meeting on Monday October 20. Donald MacSween, Chairman of BoG's Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR), reported that since last year, McGill has divested approximately 35 per cent of its holdings in South Africa. Guy Thompson, Co-chair of Student Society's South Africa committee (SAC), told the Tribune that he "had problems" with BoG's estimate of the level of in vestment. According to his figures, divestment is approximately at a 20 per cent level. BoG calculates its percentages of divestment based on the "book value" or purchase price of the stock while SAC uses the current market price of the stock in question. With some stocks having ' been purchased up to 30 and 40 years ago, BoG's estimates may be wildly in accurate. "But neither set of figures is really ac curate," said Thompson. Although it would usually take ap proximately two to five years to divest, Chairman of the Board Hugh Hallward stated that "I think the understanding is that in a year or a year and a half from now divestment should be complete." MacSween reported to BoG that one reason that divestment takes so much time is because of endowments to McGill which often contain stocks. However, MacSween noted that within
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the divestment policy there is a mechanism for the automatic sale of those stocks as they are transferred to McGill. Although SAC Co-chair Thompson noted that McGill's speed toward divest ment was "slower than ideal," it had made "real progress" and is moving faster than other universities pursuing the same policies. Vice Principal of Finance Armour told BoG that it was "difficult to say whether there is profit or loss from divestment," that is, from selling the shares from cor porations and financial institutions with holdings in South Africa. According to Armour, gains or losses depend on the market price at the time. However, Ar mour also noted that a study in the United States showed that there tended to be "a slight loss" from divestment. Governor John Haliward queried BoG about possible courses of action through which BoG could be more effective toward South Africa's racist regime. In response, Principal David Johnston cited Queen's University's program whereby 904 is garnered from each stu dent to send two Black South African students per year to Queen's on scholar ship. At 2:30 pm, just prior to the BoG meeting, approximately 200 people gathered outside the F. Cyril James building to urge the Governors to reaf firm McGill's divestment policy. "It was good, the energy was high," said demonstration organizer, Guy Thompson, of the boisterious and chan ting crowd.