Contested Self-determination: Indonesia and East Timor's Battle over Borders, International Law and Ethnic Identity

Abstract

East Timor's twin experiences of colonialism established its collective identity and internally recognised rights of self-determination. Political boundaries were created through negotiated treaties between Portugal and the Netherlands, and Portuguese colonialism provided East Timor with its status as a non-self-governing territory under international law in 1960. Indonesian colonialism resulted in a discursive battle over identity as both the Indonesian government and East Timor's independence movement employed ethnocultural narratives and myths to persuade the international community of the legitimacy of their respective political claims. During debates over East Timor's political status that occurred between 1975 and 1999, Indonesia emphasised the ethnic 'kinship' between Indonesians and East Timorese. In contrast, East Timor's representatives emphasised cultural links with Portugal and Melanesia to prove its distinctiveness from Indonesia.

Socio-cultural analysis of the independent Papua Organization (OPM) and the narrative of Papua integration into Indonesia

“…Unlike Timor Leste before the 1999 referendum, Papua did not have the status of a colony that had not yet experienced decolonisation (Clark, 1980;Strating, 2014). The United Nations has accepted the Act of Free Choice as an exercise of self-determination.…”

The colonial ethnological line: Timor and the racial geography of the Malay Archipelago

“…During the Indonesian period, as Rebecca Strating observed, the ethnic association of the East Timorese with either Indonesia or Melanesia was a contested political terrain. 82 Indonesia's propaganda sought to legitimate its domination internationally by claiming 'close ethnic and cultural links between the peoples of East Timor and Indonesia'; no actual political or ethnic divide presumably existed between West (Indonesian) and East Timor peoples. 83 The East Timor resistance movement, in contrast, repudiated ethnic affiliations to Indonesia and instead emphasised Melanesian and Pacific roots for the East Timorese.…”

A New Language Policy for Indonesia

“…Having been very diverse with culture and ethnicity, at least there are 719 individual languages used actively by speakers who can be enlisted in this country (Gordon, 2014). Separatism is not a new thing such as in the Aceh region (See Chalk, 2001) and East Timor (see Strating, 2014). Although, the major cases happened with the two cases were not mainly language issues; what can be learned is that Indonesia is very prone to the cause of separatism.…”