As Indonesia poses on the world stage as an honest broker prepared to negotiate East Timor's future, `rent a crowd' tactics and intimidation are being deployed to offset pro-independence influence on an EU troika visit to the illegally occupied territory this weekend.
A source in Dili, the capital, said yesterday that pro-Indonesian people - mostly government workers and their families - were being brought from the countryside for demonstrations today and tomorrow to counteract ongoing protests in favour of a self-determination referendum.
The regime expects about 20,000 to come out, but the source said it was more likely to be about 5,000. Bishop Ximines Carlos Belo, Dili's Nobel peace prize laureat, was said to be "really very concerned" about the potential for clashes between the groups.
The bishop said this week after talks with President B.J. Habibie, that the regime was willing to gradually reduce troop levels in East Timor and to grant a measure of autonomy to the former Portuguese colony. Separatists reject the package, saying to accept "special status" within Indonesia would mean international acceptance of Indonesia's cruel and illegal 23-year occupation.
Yesterday hundreds of Timorese, mostly Dili university students, held a peaceful protest in Dili to commemorate the death of a youth killed last week by an Indonesian soldier. Plans to hold a bigger demonstration at the governor's seaside residence to demand an independence referendum were cancelled after a priest persuaded demonstrators that a planned rival pro-Indonesian rally would mean trouble. A soldier was yesterday indicted for the killing of the youth on Tuesday.
The four-day EU troika visit by EU ambassadors from Britain, Austria, and the Netherlands starts tomorrow. Postponed from earlier this month because of Indonesia's political crisis, it has "taken a bit of achieving", a spokesman for the outgoing British EU presidency said yesterday. Meanwhile, activists in Sydney reported that self-determination supporters feared for their lives as the Indonesian army armed pro-integrationists. Mr Joao Carrascalao, president of the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) - a once pro-integrationist party of the landed class whose mind was changed by experience - yesterday called for international pressure on Mr Habibie to protect Timorese people.
Saying that Indonesia was talking about autonomy and simultaneously running a hard-line integrationist agenda, he asked: "Who is in charge? Is President Habibie really the leader of Indonesia, or is he some lame duck front man for the murderous beasts of the army?"
Mr Tom Hyland, co-ordinator of the Ireland East Timor Solidarity Campaign, said yesterday that in the territory's apparent endgame "the Timorese are being left out of the equation. It is up to Ireland not to champion the cause of the aggressor but to champion the cause of the victim". Editorial comment: page 15; IMF deal: Business This Week