Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Human Rights in Canada's Foreign Policy

Abstract

Canadians talk good game on international human rights, but vast gap too often exists between rhetoric and actions. Canadian policy towards Timor, which spent 24 years under brutal Indonesian muitary occupation before finaUy achieving its independence, is case in point. Canadian governments of both major parties faued during those years to live up to their high-minded words on human rights, choosing instead complicity with Indonesian policies.1A former Portuguese colony invaded by in 1975, Timor was little known internationally until the 1990s. Its emergence global issue was perhaps best symbolized by the award of the 1996 Nobel peace prize to Timorese activists Jose Ramos Horta and Bishop Carlos Belo. Yet the Nobel prize provided no to celebrate and no new hope, wrote Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper. The winners by all accounts brave and honourable men. But they are linked to cause: the independence of He acknowledged that the Timorese had suffered injustice, that they had as much claim to independent nationhood many existing countries. But that did not negate his claim that independence was impossible for this small place in little-known part of the world, with no allies and an implacable opponent. In his view, the activists' was hopeless: neither their actions nor the award of Nobel prize could change that. Nor could the fall in 1998 of the Indonesian dictator Suharto. There were hopes (realized soon afterwards) that Suharto's successors might take less implacable line on Timor, [b]ut experts say the separatists are fooling themselves if they expect the new government in Jakarta to set the former Portuguese colony free in the near future, Gee wrote. He was similarly unmoved when Indonesia's new president conceded referendum on independence within the year. In the days leading up to the vote, Gee continued to preach the hopelessness of Timorese aspirations. Despite having been victims of quarter century of Indonesian military violence, he advised that they vote for union with Indonesia. Independence would be a leap in the dark. The independent nation of Timor would be flyspeck on the world map. Unable to stand on its own, East Timor would have to throw itself on the mercy of the international community.2 The Timorese voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence on 30 August 1999. They remain independent today.I do not mean to single out one columnist, and in any case others have analyzed media coverage of Timor's independence struggle.3 I have selected this example precisely because Gee is not one of the pro-business Indonesia lobby in the press. He often writes passionately about human rights outside Canada and he described the violence of 1999 deliberate campaign of brutality by the Indonesian army. Gee is simply among the more prolific commentators who assumed that Timor was cause.This lost cause rhetoric was more than just way of writing and talking about Timor. It was also an explanatory factor that affected policy. Indonesian rule over Timor was never inevitable. Knowing this is not matter of mere hindsight. Timorese independence from Portugal was not only plausible in 1975, but was in fact declared that year. Indonesian rule looked well entrenched afterwards, but only result of the active diplomatic, economic, and military support given the Suharto regime by its patrons in the west. Yet that was not how policymakers from Washington to Tokyo to Canberra portrayed it. To them, the of Timorese independence was hopeless and therefore it was foUy to support it. Yet if the was hopeless, it was largely because was so entrenched, thanks to overseas support for its government. The logic was circular, the prophecy self-fulfuling. Once policymakers and press pundits started to argue the lost-cause thesis, they shaped their actions accordingly. …