Sir, - A word to commend your increasingly thorough coverage of the emergence of democracy in the vast archipelago of Indonesia, and also in Aceh, East Timor and West Papua (Irian Jaya) - which will hopefully find themselves in charge of their own affairs in the not too distant future.
The international community should be cautious as East Timor moves towards a referendum on whether or not autonomy (as opposed to independence) is acceptable to its people. Even though there will be some kind of international supervision in the country on August 8th, this does not guarantee anything. Despite a United Nations presence, West Papuans found themselves in 1969 on the receiving end of intimidation and violence as Suharto's Indonesia engineered a fraudulent process of "consultation" - the so-called "Act of Free Choice", whereby just 1,025 hand-picked elders were corralled into voting for integration with Indonesia. Thirty years later, the international community and the UN still haven't accepted that what occurred in West Papua was indeed what AFP reporter Brian May termed a "United Nations fiasco".
The recent massacres in East Timor, the ongoing pro-integration intimidation, the reports of voter "re-education" camps, the use of the word "consultation" by Jakarta officials (the same methods and the same word used for West Papua's would-be referendum in 1969) are just some of the reasons why eagle-eyed vigilance will continue to be needed in mediating news from Indonesia and its colonies. - Yours, etc., Mark Doris,
Coote Street, Portlaoise, Co Laois.