The failure to prosecute the alleged perpetrators of war crimes committed during Australia’s intervention in East Timor — and the recognition that there was an active culture of cover-up in the ADF — further strengthens the case for a proper inquiry into the intervention and its aftermath.
This week the ABC finally wrested from Defence a report from 2003 examining the “lessons learned” from the intervention, following an April Four Corners program that revealed that Australian officers had tortured East Timorese and never been prosecuted. The Lessons Learned document identified “the code of silence which permeates elite units in the ADF” and predicted — with eerie precision given what the Brereton Inquiry exposed in relation to the conduct of Australian troops in Afghanistan — “a culture in ADF Special Forces of not telling the truth in such matters”.
The culture of not telling the truth extends much more widely than the ADF in relation to the events around the intervention and Australia’s role in the establishment of Timor-Leste.
In June 1999, Defence Intelligence Organisation officer Mervyn Jenkins took his own life. Jenkins had been hounded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for sharing with US officials with whom he was liaising that the Howard government knew far more about Indonesia’s plans to mobilise East Timorese militia than it was publicly letting on (something that upset the pro-Jakarta lobby within DFAT). The mistreatment of Jenkins has never been independently investigated; documents conveniently disappeared and no one was held to account for his treatment.
Another intelligence official, Lance Collins, was harassed, raided and had his career ended by the Howard government after he questioned DIO reports and accused the DIO of turning off the intelligence link to Australian troops for 24 hours during the intervention. An investigator who cleared Collins was also harassed by the Howard government.
More famously, Witness K and Bernard Collaery were both harassed and prosecuted in relation to the revelation that Alexander Downer ordered the Australian Secret Intelligence Service to spy on the Timor-Leste cabinet to gain an advantage for Australian fossil fuel companies in negotiations over the Timor Gap. But in addition to the punitive prosecution, the Coalition government under Attorneys-General Christian Porter and Michaelia Cash successfully sought to prevent Collaery from subpoenaing documents and witnesses that would shed light on the bugging decision within the Howard government.
There’s a clear pattern here: the defence, intelligence and foreign affairs establishment, and successive Coalition governments, have actively worked to cover up embarrassing information, hostile and possibly illegal actions against another, supposedly friendly, government and war crimes including torture in East Timor and Timor-Leste. And that cover up involved harassing and persecuting anyone who exposed misconduct — even harassing those who failed to persecute the latter.
The persecution of those who expose misconduct and war crimes, of course, is not limited to the East Timor intervention: David McBride continues to be prosecuted in relation to the revelation of war crimes committed in Afghanistan by Australian forces.
Plainly DFAT, intelligence and Defence officials, not to mention John Howard and Alexander Downer, would prefer that these matters remain buried and blocked by stifling national security laws. But the continuing persecution of those who threaten to undermine the cover-up powerfully demonstrates exactly why the whole matter should be dragged into the sunlight, and those involved forced to account for their actions. Nothing short of a full judicial inquiry into the conduct and aftermath of the intervention in East Timor will do.
