TOWARD
A
STRUGGLE by G. FONTAINE
18
INDONESIE
9 Miomitrns 500
IRIAN
DE L'OUEST
AUSTRALIE
Only a few months after the decisive victory of the peoples of Indochina, a new breach has just been opened in the flank of imperialist domination in Southeast Asia. In fact, it is Indonesia, one of the major bastions of imperialism in the region, that has been hit by the national liberation struggle of the people of Timor. Until the open invasion of the eastern part of the island by Indonesian paratroopers on December 7 in resporse to the proclamation of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, the events in this small Portuguese colony on the fringes of the Indonesian archipelage had generated little interest in the international political arena. The backwardness and isolation of the island probably had something to do with this, as did the blackout that had been imposed by the Salazarist dictatorship. But even after April 25, 1974, and the awakening of political life on the island, Indonesia and Australia, the wo countries having the greatest interest in the future of Timor, preferred to try to achieve their aims by acting behind the scenes. Solidarity with the struggle of the people of Timor is needed in order to break this conspiracy of silence; likewise, the tasks of any solidarity movement can be derived only from an in-depth analysis of the dynamic of the social and political process underway in the coun try. The following article is intended as a first contribution in this direction. The Portuguese conquest The island of Timor was "discovered" by the Portuguese at the beginning of the sixteenth century. From that time on, the sandalwood trade, which had previously been oriented toward China, began to aftract the interest of the Portuguese. Holland soon sought to oust the Portuguese from all their Asian colonies. The struggle for control of Timor and its resources, which began in 1613, was to lost for three centuries. During this struggle the Portuguese based themselves on the Topasses (or black Portuguese), a group of mestizos who soon acquired formidable commercial and military strength. Topasses based in the port of Lifau controlled the sandalwood trade. They succeeded in winning the allegiance of most of the livrais (indigenous village chiefs) of the island and thus in assuring Portuguese domination in exchange for the maintenance of their trade privileges. Nevertheless, large portions of the island remained outside Portuguese or Dutch control. A multitude of ephemeral kingdoms were constituted, according to fluctuating alliances. Those who could organize the work and deliver the wood to the coast won a virtual monopoly on the acquisition of manufactured goods and especially on the weapons imported into the island. Trade began to decline during the eighteenth century because the wood, the main natural resource, began to run out. At the beginning of the twentieth century, colonial domination was stabilized. After a century-long border conflict with the Dutch, the Portuguese finally managed to establish administrative and military structures throughout the eastern part of the island. The Japanese occupation during the second world war left the country bled completely white. The capital, Dill, was razed. Some 40,000 Timorans were killed during the fighting, and the rest of the population was suffering from famine. During the thirty years that followed colonialism did nothing to bring Timor out of the depths of poverty and backwardness. The economic structures Portugal had been one of the pioneers of European colonial expansion, but its decline was very rapid. A prisoner of its trade links with Britain, Portugal did not experience the industrial development that the other countries of Europe went through, The large landed proprietors eclipsed the commercial bourgeoisie as a ruling class, and the paralysis of small industry prevented Portuguese colonialism from transforming itself into a modern imperialism. The major feature of this obsolescent colonialism was that it was based on forced labor and did not create an indigenous proletariat. The major instrument of exploitation, apart from direct slavery (which was still practiced until recently), was the annual tax, often payable in kind, that was imposed on all the male inhabitants of the island. Thus, the market economy only superficially penetrated the pre-capitalist structures that were dominant in Timor. The Immense majority of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture. Because of the use of both traditional techniques, especially the system of rotation of burned out land (ladang), and archaic Instruments, the productivity of labor is very low. Malnutrition is widespread and the population is constantly threatened by famine. At the beginning of the 1970s, Timor exhibited all the symptoms of underdevelopment. It exported agricultural products and imported manufactured goods. There is almost no industry on the island, It depends on a single factor for survival: the income from its foreign trade, which in 1971 was 90 percent dependent on coffee. Nevertheless, the level of exports is by far insufficient to compensate for the foreign trade deficit. Timor was a burden to the Portuguese, who always spent the least possible amount on this colony. Existing social forces The few investments undertaken, especially in equipping the port of Dili, not to mention the construction of a sumptuous international airport in Baucau, the second-largest city in the country, benefited only the coffee and copra planters and the Chinese merchants. This did not affect the Timorans. In 1973, some 40 percent of coffee production was in the hands of a single Portuguese firm; the rest was controlled by Chinese. Twenty-three of the twenty-five largest enterprises were Chinese; the other two were Portuguese. Finally, of a total of 300 stores, only one or two were owned by Timorans. All trode, both foreign and domes-
TIMOR tic, was dominated by the Chinese community, which numbered 10,000 people politically linked to Taiwan. As for the Timoran working class, it existed only in an embryonic form. It is composed mainly of chauffeurs, dockers, and workers in construction and light industries (processing and wrapping of coffee. In spite of its weakness, however, the working class was to play an important role after April 25, 1974, as was the urban petty bourgeoisie (odministrative employees, teachen, unemployed high-school groduates). Education and the national movement After first basing itself on the troditional chiefs (the livrais) during the early part of the century, Portuguese colonialism. later created a new elite to respond to its need for administrative and military subalterns and to propagate colonial values. Religious colleges were opened to train "letrados" who for the most part came from the families of the livrais and were thus better able to defend the Portuguese order. It was only in the 1960s that the Portuguese colonialists, having drawn the lessons of the abortive revolt led in 1959 by Indonesian soldiers who had taken refuge in Timor after the crushing of the independent republic of South Molucca, began to revise their policy. This revolt, which triggered a deep response from the Timoran population, occurred at the time when the new liberation movements were launching the struggle in the African colonies of Mozambique, Angola, and GuineaBissau and Cape Verde. The Portuguese then tried to create a new neocolonial elite and soon opened a number of primary schools, a high school, a technical school in Dili, and a seminary in Dare. This new and relatively broad-scale education, even though its aim was to inculcate the youth of Timor with "love of Portugal, " and even though it completely excluded the culture and language of Timor, nevertheless had profound repercussions. Those who graduated from the secondary schools and who were not among the few dozen youth who were allowed to continue their studies in Lisbon during recent years most often found themselves unemployed or else found very poorly paid jobs that were totally unrelated to their qualifications. Thus, the groundwork was laid for the discontent on which the development of the nationalist movement was to be based. The cadres of this movement were often students who had gone to Lisbon and acquired a political consciousness in the course of the crisis of the Portuguese fascist regime and in contact with the partisans of the African liberation movements. When these youth returned to their country, they had no difficulty drawing the balance-sheet of four centuries of Portuguese colonialism as of April 25, 1974: Average per capita annual income at the time stood at 1,000 escudos, that is, about US$42, probably the low20 est figure for all of Southeast Asia. In spite of the progress of the educational system, 90 percent of the population remained illiterate. Tuberculosis and malaria were constant plagues and the infant mortality rate was estimated at 50 percent (in the absence of any statistics from the World Health Organization, which had been refused entry into the country). The health service had a total of twenty physicians (twelve of whom lived in Dili, the capital) for a population of 650, 000, Finally, there was no communications network apart from the few miles of roads that had been built in and around Dili. The coup and the creation of the UDT There was no noticeable shakeup in the administration of Timor after the April 25 coup in Lisbon. The new Portuguese government was not much concerned with East Timor. The agents of the secret police (the DGS) were recalled to Portugal and political parties were granted the right to organize, but there was no explosion comparable to the one that quickly shook Portugal. No clandestine nationalist movement emerged immediately. That was the price that was paid for the extreme backwardness of the country and it almost total isolation from the outside world. The Timor government remained in office for several months; Magiolo Gouveia remained chief of police and Costa Mouzinho remained mayor of Dili; the representative of the colony to the formerly fascist parliament in Lisbon was not changed. Nevertheless, the whole Portuguese administrative elite became "democratic" over night. It soon formed the União Democrática de Timor (UDT - Democratic Union of Timor), of which Costa Mouzinho became vice-president and Lopez do Cruz, a veteran of the African wars, president. The UDT immediately won the support of a good part of the functionaries and village chiefs, for these people owed their privileges and power solely to the Portuguese presence. Likewise, the UDT rapidly gathered the support of the owners of the coffee plantations and the entire Chinese commercial bourgeoisie. The political program of the UDT was clear: for the "accelerated promotion, under the Portuguese flag, of the cultural, social, economic, and political development" of the island and "self-deterination for the Timoran people, oriented toward a federation with Portugal as an intermediary stage to achieve independence. " This fit in perfectly with the neocolonialist plans of Spínola. In spite of its openly reactionary policy, the UDT registered some success at first. It owed this success to the passivity of the Timoran masses, a result of their age-old oppression, and to its many links of support within the state apparatus. But this domination was soon challenged by the development of the nationalist movement.
The birth of FRETILIN The traditions of anticolonialist struggle ih Timor go back to 1912, when the Portuguese finally succeeded in bringing the entire eastern part of the island under control. The last act of this conquest was the crushing of the revolt led by a tribal chief named Don Boaventura. He succeeded in uniting all the tribes against the Portuguese and in driving them from the interior of the country for a time. For two years the insurgents waged a movement of armed resistance in the Manu-Fahi district in the southwest of the island and even managed to extend the fighting to the streets of Dili itself. But the movement, led by the livrais, was finally crushed at the cost of 5,000 dead. During the second world war, when Japanese troops and Australian commandos fought merciless battles for control of the island, a pro-Japanese nationalist movement arose among the Timorans. But racist anti-white demagogy soon lost its effects in face of the reality of the plunder inflicted on the country by Japanese imperialism. Finally, even though the Indonesian military refugees who initiated the 1959 revolt considered the aim of the revolt to be the creation in Timor of a base of subversion against the Sukarno regime, the revolt seems, to have won a real response among the Timoran people. But in spite of these traditions, there was no clandestime nationalist organization on the eve of April 25, 1974. Nevertheless, some time before, a small nucleus of Timoran youth who had some education had gotten together to discuss nationalism and the future of the contry. Among these youth were Nicolau Lobato and José Ramos Horta, In 1970 the latter had been sent into exile in Mozambique for reeducation. Working as a journalist and cameraman covering the war, he quickly assimilated the precious lessons of the struggle led by FRELIMO. In 1974, during a trip to Darwin, Australia, Horta issued some blustering declarations to an Australian journalist, thinking that they would never be printed. But the joumalist quickly published them in the Northern Territory News. The colonial administration then gave Horta the choice of prison or exile. His bags were packed in preparation for moving to Darwin when the coup came in Lisbon. The first strike in the history of Timor broke out immediately after April 25. It was launched in Dili by the employees of the colonial administration. José Ramos Horto and his comrades aided the organization of the movement by forming the Defense of Labor Committee. The strike, which spread throughout the city, soon triumphed; the salaries of the low-ranking employees were raised to 25 escudos a day in Dili and 20 escudos in the rest of the island. It was a 50 percent increase. But the Defense of Labor Committee, which had so quickly achieved great success among the embryo of the working class in Dili, nevertheless soon disappeared. In fact, its major leaders threw themselves into the construction of a new party, the Social Democratic
Horta Association of Timor (AST), and devoted all their forces to it. One popular figure, Xavier de Amaral, a graduate of the Jesuit seminary of Macao, became the president of the party. A product of the first conjunction of the nationalist aspirations of the Timoran youth and the awakening of the urban workers movement, the AST had no real homogeneity. Bourgeois nationalist and Christian reformist currents, and even some revolutionary elements, were involved in its formation. The movement paid the price for the decadeslong international isolation of Timor and for the absence of any cultural or political life proper to the island itself. The Chinese and Indochinese revolutions had not stimulated any echo in Timor. And the most powerful communist movement in capitalist Asia until 1965, the Indonesian Communist party, had never sent any cadres to Timor, even though the island. is on. Indonesia's doorstep. Thus, the militants of the ASDT sought points of reference in Australia to some extent but mainly in the liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies in Africa. After April 25, Lisbon newspapers, which began analyzing these struggles, were avidly read in Timor, as were the works of Amilcar Cabral that were occasionally brought back by Timoran soldiers returning from Africa. During the summer of 1974 some students returning from Lisbon who had been affected by these ideas exerted a deep influence on the AST leadership. The ASDT, which had already won a broad audience among the workers in the major cities (Dill and Baucau), already had about a thousand members. But its influence in the countryside remained very weak and unstable compared with that of the UDT. Under the pressure of elements recently returned from Portugal and profoundly influenced by the success of the African liberation move-
21
BARON ments, the ASDT met in a general assembly on September 12, 1974, and decided to abandon construction of a European-style political party and to transform itself Into a Revolutionary Front for the Independence of East Timor (FRETILIN). Its program explained: "It is called a front because it calls for the unity of all Timoran patriots. ... East Timor is a colony today, and as a colony the immediate and sole objective is the struggle for national independence and the liberation of the people. It is revolutionary because it seeks to modify, transform, and revolutionize the structures that have been inherited from 500 years of colonialism. . . . Independence is the only road toward the real progress and development of the people of East Timor." In addition, it called for "the active prevention of neocolonialism" against the Spinolist project. From its origin, FRETILIN experienced spectacular growth. Its first public meeting in Dili, held September. 20, 1974, drew 20,000 people. After one month it claimed 80,000 member. The reasons for this success must be sought in the concrete work undertaken by the cadres of the front: the struggle against illiteracy, the promotion of the Timoran language and Timoran culture, the creation of health brigades, and finally, the aid to peasants in the formation of agricultural cooperatives. FRETILIN's action & the relationship of forces At the end of 1974 some officers of the Portuguese MFA arrived in Timor and presented a program of "cultural dynamization" and a plan for gradual decolonization that included the establishment of a coalition government in the image of the one that hod been tried in Angola. In December the FRETILIN rejected the establishment of the government council, arguing that too many of the expected members had collaborated with the old Salazarist administration; but it intervened energetically in the "dynamization" teams. On June 21, 1975, a FRETILIN-LDT-Portuguese government was Formed. The UDT drew the lessons of the failure of the Spinolist project in Portugal itself and of the first contacts between the Australian and Indonesian governments; it more clearly affirmed the objective of independence. The FRETILIN hoped to be able to rely on the Portuguese representative to assure that the process of decolonization would be followed through to the end and to avoid international isolation. Each of the parties concerned - the two Timoran formafions and Portugal - held one-third of the seats in the coalition government. But behind this apparent unity, the confrontation between the organizations continued. In fact, the influence of FRETILIN continued to grow, and it recruited some former members of the UDT. Its leaders continued their campaigns. In December 1974 22
FRETIL/N had published is platform in Portuguese and
Tetum (the major local language); it set up two central schools for teaching literacy, modeled after the "conscientização" of the Brazilian Paolo Freirei, many other schools were set up in the villages with the aid of FRETILIN cadres. Finally, the first production cooperafives were established in the Bazaar Tete region. Taking advantage of its audience in the secondary schools, FRETILIN stimulated the creation of the UNETIM (National Students Union of Timor), which was charged with accelerating the process of "the decolonization of culture." During this entire time, the UDT proved incapable of engaging in any popular action. One of the elements of its social base began to disintegrate. Many Chinese merchants were preparing to leave the island, most of them hoping to be able to settle in Australia. The UDT was thus led to advocate a program of "promotion of Timoran compradors. " This continuous degradation of the relationship of forces was probably one of the essential factors that led the UDT to change its policy once again. It seemed to have gained a good deal of international support: An apparently fruitful visit had been organized in Indonesia. During a conference held in Macao in mid-June (in the absence of FRETILIN), the Portuguese government reneged on its promise of independence. Lemos Pires, the MFA governor, then threw his support to the UDT openly, and important contacts were made with foreign investors. On August 11 the UDT launched a coup. The leadership of FRETILIN withdrew to the hills surrounding Dili, it tried some last contacts with the Portuguese to try to bring back the coalition government; then it issued a call to the Timoran forces in the Portuguese army. The reality of the relationship of forces was then revealed. The very great majority of these troops rallied to the nationalist movement, and in a few days the members of the UDT were arrested or driven across the Indonesian border. The changes begun in East Timor accelerated with the failure of the UDT coup, and the policy of FRETILIN radicalized again. The Portuguese administration left the island definitively. A symbolic detail of what colonialism had meant: The last doctor left the island with the Portuguese. The FRETILIN forces experienced important growth, and the elements of a new adminisfration began to take shape: committees including cadres of the front, the army, and representatives of UNETIM, the feminist organization OPTM (Organização Popular de Mulheres de Timor — Popular Organizafion of Women of Timor), and the workers associations. Makeshift medical centers were set up in the villages. Experiments in collective work were developed in agriculture. Doctor José Goncalves took over direction of the economy; new land was cleared and the construction of cooperatives enabled a part of the population of Dili to leave the capital to aid in food production. Since the Chinese wholesale merchants had left, FRETILIN began to organize trade and to coin money.
In the absence of any Portuguese representative, the sovereignty of the Lisbon government was-nevertheless guaranted by FRETILIN. The Portuguese flag continued to fly over the administrative buildings. During this whole period, in fact, FRETILIN still hoped to avoid international isolation and kept affirming its will to cooperate with the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), asking that Australia and Portugal guarantee the island's accession to independence. On November 28, as invasion plans were underway in Djakarta, FRETILIN finally declared independence and founded the Democratic Republic of East Timor. Francisco Xavier do Amarale became its first president. Nicolau Lobato became prime minister and José Samos Horta minister of foreign affairs. On December 7 the massive Indonesian invasion began. The Indonesian invasion & the international stakes Ever since the first successes of FRETILIN, Indonesia had been engaging in a violent campaign in the name of anticommunism. Diakarta had long since coveted the resources of East Timor, many of which are still unexploited. Above all, the realization of independence for the eastern part of the island was considered a serious threat. It could stimulate liberation movements among many populations of the Indonesian archipelago (especially in New Guinea and the Moluccan Islands). Finally, the Democratic Republic of Timor could serve as a refuge for a number of organizations struggling against the Suharto regime and could foster a mass uprising on the western part of the island. In Djakarta's view, decolonization meant assimilation of East Timor by Indonesia. As long ago as February-March 1975 there had been question of sending in an Indonesian expeditionary force. But the Djakarta govemment and the army general staff seem to have been divided over what policy to follow. In fact, the invasion of the Democratic Republic is laden with disadvantages. On the island itself, the intervention troops could become mired in an unending guerrilla war. These troops are ill-prepared for their task. The army that crushed the Indonesian workers movement in 1965 was a policy army, accustomed to being stationed in the cities and living off corruption; but this army had never succeeded in completely pacifying the entire archipelago. Indonesia's international situation is also delicate. The scandal of the nationalized oil company, Petramina, the urgent search for new foreign investment, the new rise of the defense campaign for the political prisoners who are still languishing in Suharto's prisons, the initial reactions of the Australian workers movement -all these factors made a massive and direct intervention by the central Javanese power little desirable. General Murtupo, chief of the "East Timor acquisition project, "consequently sought to act from inside the contryAt first, the main instrument used by Indonesia in East Timor was the APODETI (Democratic and Popular Association of Timor), a puppet movement advocating annexation by Indonesia. It published a newspaper in Indonesian, which is less widely spoken in Timor than Portuguese. Lacking any social base in the country, APODETI was never able to play any important role. In face of the failure of APODET, jakarta thought about the UDT; then, after the failure of the UDT's coup, it fostered the creation of a bloc of four organizations: APODETI. two inactive grouplets, Kata and Trabalista, and the UDT (or at least what remained of the UDT; some of its leaders were in prison in Dill and others had fled to Australia). They founded the MRAC (Revolutionary Anticommunist Movement). Indonesia helped them to undertake military incursions into East Timor. With no success. Because of the abortive character of these attempts to gain control of the country quietly, the considerable development of FRETILIN, and the radical course of FRETILIN's policy, Djakarta opted for the invasion. The world context permitted this. Ford, who stopped off in the Indonesian capital on his way home from China just before the invasion, reaffirmed the strategic importance of this region of the world for the United States. Since the preparations for the invasion were well known, Ford's speech amounted to a stamp of approval for the counterrevolutionary invasion. Portugal, of course, protested the violation of its "sovereignty. " But it neither wanted nor was able to do any more than that. The government had clearly indicated that it would not support FRETILIN in any event. Since
23
TIMOR September 1974, on the occasion of a meeting between Suharto and then Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, Australia had implicitly recognized that the Indonesian claims were well-founded. The proximity of the island to Australia and the oil interests involved resulted in "regional stability" being valued above all else, in spite of the desire of the Australian government not to support the military enterprise officially. These considerations hod already been at work when the UDT attempted its coup in August 1975. In fact, the special services and several international consortiums had impelled the UDT to break the coalition with FRETILIN. The political crisis that broke out in Australia in November and December 1975 weakened FRETILIN's positions still further. The ouster of the Labor government was to draw the attention of the population to the new election campaign and considerably weaken the intensity of the solidarity movement. The coming to power of the Liberal party was also not without consequences. The substance of the policies of the two formations, the Labor party and the Liberal party, were not different, but the previous government had been more susceptible to the pressure of the workers movement and to the divisions within the Labor party that began to appear on the question of Timor. FRETILIN was not without international support, but it was of little immediate effectiveness. Mozambique was the first state to recognize FRETILIN as the "authentic representative" of the people of Timor, in September 1975. Since then, the nationalist movement had hod some success among the so-called nonaligned countries. After the invasion was launched, the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, North Korea, and the USSR declared their support to FRETILIN. For its part, the members of ASEAN clearly ranged themselves on the side of Djakarta. The conflict in Timor took on a new dimension. It began to draw new political lines in the Far East for the first time since April 1975, when U.S. Imperialism was defeated in Indochina. But the distance of Timor, the ease with which Indonesia can organize a naval blockade, and the difficulties created by the Australian government complicate the organization of effective support, not to mention the policies of the Soviet and Chinese leaderships. In this context, the UN resolution voted in December condemning Djakarta's action and asking for the withdrawal of Indonesion troops is of little consequence. Toward a long struggle? It would nonetheless be false to conclude that the defeat of FRETILIN is near. The first balance-sheet that can be drawn from the ongoing actions shows this. To be sure, Dili and Baucau, the two major cities, were conquered by Suharto's forces in several hours. But FRETILIN seems to have maintained active networks there. The FRETILIN troops withdrew and are now active in the surrounding hills. A good part of the coast of certain populated areas remains under FRETILIN's control. The ability of the Indonesian troops to use 24 some of the major communications links is not even assured. Djakarta's losses in men have been heavy (they are numbered at least in the hundreds and perhaps even in the thousands). The expeditionary force has had to be heavily reinforced. It started at 2, 000, but there are nearly 10,000 troops today. And there is little chance that this will suffice. FRETILIN has demonstrated the reality of its mass base. The nature of the terrain and the extreme scarcity of paths of communication are favorable to the organization of a guerrilla war that cannot be easily rooted out. Two-thirds of the territory appears to be under FRETILIN control today. It is therefore likely that the fighting will develop into a protracted struggle. For FRETILIN, this poses the problem of the present limits of its program. On several occasions it has already had to rodicalize its action in order to assure itself popular support against the UDT. If has had to abandon its hopes — or illusions? - in the support For decolonization it expected to receive from Australia and Portugal. FRETILIN knows that it has to rely above all on its own struggle and that ou side aid will be belated and limited. In this battle, it will find itself facing a twofold problem: that of social reforms, agrarian and urban, much deeper than those undertaken up to now, and that of the regional extension of the struggle. The situation in West Timor, a former Dutch colony today under the heel of the Diakarta dictatorship, which in large part serves as the base of operations for the Indonesian invasion, cannot be ignored, FRETILIN's capacity to resist the invasion victoriously and in a lasting manner may in the end depend on the extension of the struggle. Its present program has consciously avoided responding to this question. But if the evolution of the present situation assigns new tasks to FRETILIN which it is not yet prepared to assume, it lends a heavy responsibility to the international workeis movement. The importance of the solidarity movement is strikingly manifest in Australia. The traditions developed during the solidarity struggles with the Indochinese peoples have been awakened on this occasion. Common action has been waged by many trade unions, student associations, support movements, religious groups, and political organizations of the left and far left. Demonstrations, occupations of Indonesian offices, and concrete solidarity actions are not all that has been done. Boycott movements have also been launched, the most important after December 7. The Waterside Workers Union (dockers) of Sydney has called for a boycott of all Indonesia-bound ships; the government workers of the plane factories, who manufacture the Sabre aircraft, have forbidden the sending of the military equipment they produce to Djakarta. Several flights of the Indonesian airlines company have been blocked by the transport union in Sydney. The Meat Industries Employees Union organized the boycott of meat shipments to Indonesia. Although these actions have not permitted a total boycott, they have nevertheless been very important; above all, they point to the road that must be followed. The struggle of the people of Timor requires active international solidarity. January 30, 1976
SOLIDARITY WITH
THE STRUGGLE
OF THE FRETILIN!
Timor, Portuguese colony in the Indonesian archipelago, was no longer but a vestige of a colonial order that had fallen into obsolescence. After 450 years of colonial domination, the 650,000 inhabitants of this eastern part of the island owned by Portugal were living in poverty and illiteracy, most of them still engaged in subsistence agriculture. April 25, 1974, marked the end of a colonial era, but did not lay down any outlines for the future. The accelerated emergence of political parties was as sudden as the collapse of the colonial system. Each of these new political parties found a base of support among the social classes and groups that composed colonial society. The Democratic Union of