| Do It !!!! | East Timor action alert and legislative update
by John M. Miller, Oct 26, 1998
U.S. Congress Supports East Timor's Self-Determination Your Calls Do Make a Difference What you can do TODAY to support East Timor: Urge the PRESIDENT and the STATE DEPARTMENT to support self-determination for East Timor Call or write President Clinton and the State Department. Tell them to:
Fax: 202-456-2461; email The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC 20500
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: 202-647-5291
Assistant Secretary of State for E. Asian and Pacific Affairs Stanley Roth Urge your REPRESENTATIVE to end U.S. military training to Indonesia Write or phone your member of the House of Representatives; tell him or her to:
From October 22 through the end of 1998, members of Congress will mostly be in their home districts. (They may be back in Washington in mid-November.) This is the perfect time to schedule meetings -- before or after elections. Make East Timor a campaign issue! Write to Rep. _________, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington DC 20515. For a current list of Congressional e-mail addresses, office and fax numbers, try http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/. ETAN's website contains the text of legislation and the current co-sponsors, and additional background info. BACKGROUND & UPDATEThanks to your efforts, Congress took a number of important steps to pressure Indonesia during its recent session. With your help, we can build on these victories and turn administration policy to explicitly support self-determination for Indonesian-occupied East Timor.Recent events in East Timor show that continued pressure is needed. Soon after Indonesia grandly announced major troop withdrawals, thousands of fresh troops arrived and reports of human rights violations increased. In October, East Timor's governor said he would fire any East Timorese civil servants who refused to pledge their support for Indonesian rule. In response to these attempts at intimidation, the East Timorese have organized a series of mass demonstrations in the territory, calling for self-determination. In recent actions, Congress voted to maintain the ban on IMET military training aid and the use of U.S.-supplied weapons in East Timor. Congress has also demanded a full accounting of all overseas military training programs and banned the training of military units with known human rights violators. Efforts to ban all military training for Indonesia continue. With your support, Reps. Chris Smith and Lane Evans' new "International Military Training Transparency and Accountability Act" may be acted upon in this Congress. The bill would make clear that when a country is barred from receiving one type of military training , then it cannot receive any similar training. On July 10, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling on President Clinton to "work actively to support an internationally supervised referendum on self-determination." Such a referendum would allow the East Timorese to determine their own political status. In October, the entire Congress went on record in support of East Timor's self-determination. It passed language from the House resolution on a referendum (H.Con.Res. 258) in the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1998. It states "that the current economic and political changes in Indonesia offer a rare opportunity for the Government of Indonesia to take bold and innovative steps to deal with the East Timor issue" and supports "an internationally supervised referendum to determine a comprehensive settlement of the political status of East Timor." Please pressure President Clinton to heed congressional directives to actively support East Timor's self-determination. On December 7, 1975 Indonesia brutally invaded East Timor. By the early 1980s, the subsequent occupation had claimed the lives of more than 200,000 East Timorese, at least one-third of the population. For over two decades the United States has supported this horrific war on East Timor. Last May, the Indonesian pro-democracy movement accomplished what once seemed impossible: it forced President Suharto to resign in disgrace. But Suharto's replacement, B.J. Habibie, is not much of an improvement. He will not lead Indonesia away from military domination, or accept self-determination for East Timor, without ongoing international pressure. ** See our website, if you have questions. Please forward the results of your contacts to ETAN's Washington office.
Lynn Fredriksson, Washington Representative
John M. Miller, Media & Outreach Coordinator Send a blank e-mail message to find out how to learn more about East Timor on the Internet.
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