It is important to reflect on Australia’s reaction to the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia and compare it with the anger and dismay at the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine. For 16 years I listened to Gough Whitlam’s narrative of denial. Keating still boasts of his relationship with Indonesia during a period of genocide of the East Timorese by Indonesian military. Of course the LNP were just as bad as the ALP, if not worse. Foreign ministers on both sides celebrated Australia’s theft of East Timor’s gas after that genocide. In 1992 after the massacre in Dili cemetery in the year prior, LeftPress published East Timor Burning by Lachlan Hurse. The title poem is by Joseph Monsour. Of course the narrative of denial begun by Whitlam continues to this day by Albanese and Penny Wong. These days it is applied by Labor and Liberal parties to West Papua as they follow Keating’s lie that accomodating Indonesia’s murderous occupation of that country is in our best interest. – Ian Curr, 15 Nov 2022.
