Canberra, 2 December 1975
O.CH295719 SECRET AUSTEO PRIORITY
Portuguese Timor
We were glad to see from paragraph 5 of your JA33941 that you emphasized to Sunarso and Tjan the importance Australia attached to the need to determine the future of Portuguese Timor through an expression of the wishes of the people themselves. We hope that the Indonesians will maintain their repeated public commitments to self-determination for Portuguese Timor [despite the changes in the situation in Portuguese Timor] which may occur.2 We should also like you to make the point to the Indonesians as suitable opportunities occur that their interests and ours would seem to be served by trying to avoid bloodshed on both sides as much as possible. We have in mind the observation of Tjan and Sunarso reported in paragraph 3 of your JA3394,3 which seemed to accept too easily that bloodshed will be fairly widespread.At the same time, we appreciate that part ofTjan’s purpose is no doubt to hurry us along towards removing Australian observers from Portuguese Timor whose presence might prove a liability for the Indonesians as their operations develop.4
[NAA: Al0463, 801/13/11/1, xvi]
- 1 1 December. This cablegram communicated Tjan’s advice that the Indonesian Foreign Ministry was considering establishing some form oflocal government in Dill which would demand integration with Indonesia or, alternatively, that the Foreign Ministry was considering some other act of self-determination by the people of Portuguese Timor. It reported that the Embassy in Jakarta had emphasised to Sunarso and Tjan the importance which the Australian Government placed ‘on the need to determine the territory’s future through an expression of the wishes of the people themselves, the majority of whom were probably not connected with any of the five parties’
- 2 Words in square brackets indicate an addition, advised in a later message, to the text as originally transmitted.
- 3 Paragraph 3 reported that Sunarso and Tjan had stressed the necessity that all Australians leave Portuguese Timor urgently, in view of Tjan’s characterisation of the conflict there as a ‘tribal war’ and his expectation of further indiscriminate killings on both sides
- 4 Cablegram JA3398 (2 December) reported an observation made by Moerdani on 1 December to the effect that ‘there was hostility to Australians, especially ACFOA and media representatives and to a certain extent towards the Red Cross on the part of UDT. Any foreigners in Dili would run the danger of being lumped together as pro-Fretilin by UDT forces’. On 3 December Peacock confirmed that, in view of ‘clear indications’ that the scale of fighting in the territory would increase, fourteen Australians and two Swiss had been evacuated by charter aircraft from Dili to Atauro and most were expected to return to Australia that same day. It was thought that only three Australians remained on the mainland of Portuguese Timor: freelance journalist Roger East, who had declined the offer of evacuation, and a married couple on a plantation at the eastern end of the island (the Sydells).