WHEN UN SECRETARY General Kofi Anan recently visited East Timor he was treated to a feast served in a restaurant that now stands on the ruins of a burnt-out house. A few months ago none of these restaurants existed In fact six months after the Indonesian military and their militia’s torched and burned Dili, the town is acquiring the facilities and feel of an Asian resort. Just east of Dili UN personnel pack the beaches on their weekends off. On these beaches hundreds of dead bodies were washed up after the bloody Indonesian invasion of 1975.
As quickly as the troops moved in so did the “entrepreneurs”, chasing the wallets of UN staff whose salaries start at US$50,000. When they are not working to “rebuild” East Timor these “humanitarians” and “peacekeepers” live in $200-a-night hotels and spend their nights partying on a multi storey cruise ship. Sipping lattes and eating fresh bagels by the beachside, they take 10 minute helicopter joy flights which cost a hundred times more (Aus$500) than the average Timorese worker gets paid for a day’s work! While the wealthy party, East Timor finds itself on the world’s list of poorest nations. It now has a per capita income equal to the most impoverished of African states. Hunger and unemployment are rampant. In urban areas such as Bacau and Dili unemployment is as high as 95%. Those lucky enough to have a job get paid between $3 and $7 a day. World Vision pays most of it’s Timorese workers $3 a day. Even an Australian high school student on work experience earns more. Conditions for East Tmorese workers are appalling. The only job an East Timorese worker can get in the urban area is work for the UN or other international aid agencies.
All UN warehouse workers are casual day labourers. They are required to turn up at allocated times each morning to find out whether or not they have work for the day. Those seeking a day’s work have to spend money travelling to the warehouses with no guarantee that they will be hired for the day. Those workers who are hired often don’t get paid for weeks and months, if they get paid at all. It is not uncommon for such workers to receive payment in rice rather than money. Workers at a warehouse in Villa Verde went on strike because they were receiving Rp20,000 per day but had to spend up to Rp7,000 for travel and at least Rp10,000 for a meal, leaving them with only Rp2000-3000 in take home pay. These same workers have also reported that the warehouse chief, a foreign aid worker, was beating up workers who turned up late. These workers are working in unsafe conditions, and in the rice warehouses they aren’t supplied with any of the necessary protective gear like masks, gloves or boots.
A World Bank-led consortium has pledged to pump US$520 million into the country over the next three years. Yet it is the international NGOs and UN agencies who have been receiving all available aid money. As soon as the troops “secured” the country these organisations moved in – some with no funding to speak of and nothing more than an office to their name – and started competing for the aid dollars. Now the 30 or so aid agencies have divided the country between themselves, servicing different districts and ignoring the needs of the people or the knowledge of the local and longerestablished NGOs. The only input that the majority of Timorese have in the rebuilding of their country is as wage labourers.
How the pledged reconstruction money will be used will be largely decided by UNTAET, the World bank, the IMF and the Asian Development bank in “consultation” with the East Timorese.
But all planned expenditure has to be approved at a conference of all the donor countries. It is not even clear what level of input or control any newly formed Timorese government will have in the budgetary process. As the coordinator of Apheda (the aid agency of the ACTU) put it; “[The Timorese] have no idea what is going on…They have seen their country destroyed and now it is being run outside of their control, outside their wishes…” As an independent report noted, rather than ending the chain of misery and giving the Timorese real independence it is clear that the UN lead mission of peace keepers and aid organisations will become “a new chain which will tie the East Timorese to external dependence in perpetuity.”
Little wonder that the Timorese are cynical and increasingly resentful of the UN presence. Commenting about the lack of health services by the NGOs and the UN in his region, one indigenous leader said: “Here there is no luxurious house, bar to drink beer, discotheque, how can humanitarian workers want to stay here?”
Increasing anger has resulted in a growing number of strikes and demonstrations forcing the UN to step up its security. Hundreds of job seekers have demonstrated over the past few months, while an official inter-governmental report notes that as “a result of economic sluggishness, the mood of East Timor’s urban youth continues to be worrisome”. Yet far from being “worrisome” this increasing hostility to the UN presence expressed through strikes and protests should be seen as an encouraging step forward in the struggle for a truly independent East Timor. What the bosses’ papers refer to as “mob violence” are actually signs of the East Timorese beginning to take matters into their own hands rather than relying on the UN.
From the very beginning of the postreferendum violence, Workers Power has consistently said that the East Timorese people cannot rely on the UN to save them: “The UN’s track record of betrayal…proves that it is an instrument of imperialist oppression and not a means of national liberation…their military occupation of the country will strengthen imperialism’s hand in the region…It is only the self activity of the East Timorese people themselves which can achieve real self-determination.” (Workers Power Pamphlet, October 1999)
This is why we said “No to peacekeepers” and why we still say “UN out”. The pledged US$520 million in aid money from the same imperialist powers who aided and abetted the 25 year occupation should be deemed as reparations and be placed immediately under East Timorese control with no strings attached. The Timorese should decide how this money is to be spent, not the “donor” nations. The UN, World Bank, the IMF and the imperialist countries behind them have only one real agenda. That is to ensure that East Timor remains economically and politically tied to and dependent on them. This means organising the country, its government and its institutions to benefit imperialism.
Against this trend the East Timorese must act now to set up their own institutions of reconstruction, starting with people’s militias and councils of action, and leading to the convening of a revolutionary constituent assembly. A plan for nationalisation of all vital commodities and resources must be drawn up together with a plan for massive rebuilding of public works and infrastructure, food production and employment.