Thanks for sending the MIM notes and please keep sending stuff - it's interesting. question: if MIM is against the indonesian govt. and against the UN force, what does it want to happen in east timor? it seems to me that MIM is using this issue to support its anti-imperialist stance but doesn't advocate any concrete action concerning east timor.

-- student at a Midwestern University, 23 September, 1999

MIM responds:

It's a good question, and for a more complete answer than I'll give you here, I refer you to coverage of the East Timorese struggle for national liberation in past issues of MIM Notes (coverage back to July of 1995 is on the web at http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/etimor/). In short, MIM supports the people of East Timor in the armed struggle they have been waging for years against the Indonesian occupation. This armed struggle -- the evidence it offers of the people's will for national independence -- has made retaining East Timor as a colony untenable for Indonesia.

The same way this armed struggle has forced Habibie to hold a referendum, it demands that anti-imperialists here look at the conditions that have made the armed struggle necessary. This is why MIM spends so much time talking about the history of united snakes support for Indonesia -- specifically for the occupation of East Timor. This is also why we write about how the U.N. has been used repeatedly as a figleaf for imperialist concerns. Portuguese colonialism and now u.$.-backed Indonesian occupation have demonstrated that the only possibility for a peaceful East Timor is for the East Timorese people to have national self-determination.

When MIM says "national self-determination" it means the people of the nation choose their leaders, and choose the historical course their country will follow. What relations will they have with other nations and states? What form will their government and economy take? Beyond this we can talk about what paths have historically proven most effective at retaining independence for a nation. But when there is an occupying force in place, asnwering the above most basic questions is impossible. In the case of East Timor, MIM spends so much time talking about imperialism because it is based within the borders of the imperialist power that is keeping the East Timorese from answering the above questions for themselves. It's not for us in the imperialist countries to tell the East Timorese what road to take. But it is most definitely our responsibility to promote opposition to "our" government's insistence on denying them the right to choose.