Sir, - Tempted as I am to congratulate the Australian government on their decision to reopen the inquiry into the deaths of five western journalists (October 22nd), experience dictates that I should not. For the past 23 years, since Indonesia invaded East Timor, the relatives of the deceased journalists have known that their loved ones were killed in cold blood by the Indonesian military.
Successive Australian governments have known this and have on every occasion attempted to deflect criticism away from the regime in Jakarta with whom they share the oil resources of East Timor.
However, there is a bigger picture. When the then President of Indonesia, General Suharto, was informed that the journalists were killed we are told that he called off the covert operations fearing that there would be an outcry from Australia, Britain and New Zealand over the deaths of their citizens. He was wrong. The failure of these governments to adequately address the issue was a clear signal to Suharto that there would be little or no reaction to the full-scale invasion. As a consequence some 200,000 men, women and children were put to death by the Indonesian military.
If an inquiry is to be set up, it must be carried out by an independent commission and not by those governments who signed the death warrants of the East Timorese by their abdication of responsibility to their murdered nationals. - Yours, etc. Tom Hyland,
East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign, Dame Street, Dublin 2.