Truth in East Timor exposes the United Nations again by MC5 Recently exposed in MIM Notes #248 for historically aiding the Pakistan-side Afghan refugees but not the Iran-side Afghan refugees because of a lack of U.$. political support, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) now stands exposed as a political cover for U.$. imperialism in East Timor. Documents published December 6th at the George Washington University National Security Archive clearly show that President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave the green light for Indonesia's annexation of East Timor--in persyn to General Suharto in Indonesia. In contrast, the United Nations allowed the United $tates to hide by passing General Assembly and Security Council resolutions against the annexation of the province by Indonesia. What needed to happen was a global isolation of U.$. imperialism, and a global force sent to blockade U.$. weapons shipments. Of course, to even name such a thing is to point to the future demise of U.$. imperialism at the hands of a proletarian-led United Nations or its equivalent. The released documents show why such a UN has to be proletarian-led. Kissinger stated openly that he was working to improve the investment climate. The imperialists do not give a hoot about elections unless their lackeys win through intimidation and superior Yankee funding. Thus when it came to choosing between democracy on the one hand and investment climate on the other, Kissinger quickly opted for supporting an anti- communist investment climate in Indonesia and East Timor. Instead of addressing the overall source of the problems in East Timor, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) made the limited admission that the "Western powers" sold Indonesia the counter-insurgency weapons it used to carry out genocide -- without ever using the word "genocide," instead preferring to speak of "widespread human rights abuses." Then the UNHCR provided a further false image of the Indonesian regime as having been isolated since "apart from Australia, no major Western country gave de jure recognition to Indonesia's July 1976 annexation."(1) The December 6th publication of declassified documents at George Washington University shows that the people internationally have to see beneath the laws, rhetoric and resolutions of U.$. imperialism or fail to solve widespread problems -- including most of the refugee problems in the world. There is no way that the Suharto regime could have survived till 1998 or even 1978 without U.$. military aid. Yet this understanding is completely absent from the UNHCR description of the situation in East Timor or the rest of the world where there is always a handful of scum like Suharto ready to massacre his own people and other peoples with the aid of Yankee weapons, money and training. According to the UNHCR, 250,000 East Timor people found themselves displaced within East Timor in the events of 1999 and another 290,000 went to West Timor. That is a total of 75% of East Timor's population being displaced as refugees. The ex- Yankee lackeys destroyed East Timor before departing. Now an already poor country faces disease, hunger and homelessness. Without sufficient military backing, the UNHCR tried to bring back some refugees from West Timor but it admitted that the attempt caused some of Uncle Sam's reactionary wasteproducts organized as pro- Indonesia militias to rape and kill pro- independence people of East Timor. This again shows why People's War is necessary. Naive or consciously evil people are responsible for the deaths of pro-independence East Timor people. The sort of illusion spread by the United Nations is very similar to the illusions spread by "democratic" activists of the united $tates and other imperialist countries. Throughout 2000 the Indonesian militias disgruntled by the independence referendum continued to rape and kill refugees in West Timor and prevented them from returning to East Timor. The UNHCR admitted that repatriation of refugees came to a standstill in April, 2000 on account of these ex-Yankee lackeys. Next, militias killed 3 UNHCR staff members in September, 2000 and the UNHCR had to withdraw.(2) MIM feels badly for the UNHCR staff so killed, for they were used as pawns to cover for U.$. imperialism. The more problems U.$. imperialism creates globally, the more jobs for UNHCR staff appear. In fact, it is policy now for the UNHCR to side with U.$. military forces in creating refugee camps. In ex-Yugoslavia, the UNHCR served refugees in camps set up by NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and in Iraq, the UNHCR operates under U.$. military auspices.(3) Far from being neutral, the UNHCR helps refugees only in the way allowed by U.$. imperialism. That is one reason why some refugees suffer much more than others. Australia and Portugal have offered donations to create a new East Timor defense force to deal with militias that the Indonesian government says have been disbanded. Yet it is the United $tates that should be mopping up the pro-independence militias it created, but Uncle Sam does not undertake this task and is politically incapable of it. We cannot be sure that the United $tates is not still supporting these militias. Raging about "terrorism," it is U.$. imperialism that creates terrorism and it is the United Nations that lets U.$. imperialism off the hook for it. If George W. Bush were serious about ending states that harbor terrorists, he would dissolve the U.$. government. Then Kissinger and Ford would go on trial for terrorist crimes against the world's people. The United Nations needs to move in this direction and cease its complicity. Notes: 1. UNHCR, The State of the World's Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 236-7. 2. http://www.unhcr.ch 3. UNHCR, The State of the World's Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 238-9.