Kempton on Human Rights

* Murray Kempton is correct to point out Australia’s support for Indonesia’s brutal occupation of East Timor (“Every Human Rights Violator Has a Protector,” Column Left, July 13). The United States, however, plays a far more significant role than Australia in the East Timor tragedy.

President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were visiting Indonesian President Suharto during the two days preceding the Dec. 7, 1975, Indonesian invasion of the newly independent East Timor. There is little doubt that the U.S. gave Suharto the green light to invade.

More than 200,000 East Timorese--about one-third of the 1975 population--have lost their lives as a result of the invasion and ongoing occupation.

Given resource-rich Indonesia’s economic and strategic importance, successive U.S. administrations have proven very willing to support Jakarta’s annexation of East Timor, providing Indonesia with hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and military assistance since 1975.

Despite some positive steps, however, President Clinton largely continues his predecessors’ policy. Currently, the Administration is trying to reinstate International Military Education and Training funds for the Indonesian military despite Indonesia’s refusal to withdraw from East Timor as called for by numerous U.N. resolutions and continuing atrocities in the territory.

It is the United States that holds the key to ending Indonesia’s criminal occupation of East Timor. As long as Democrats and Republicans alike continue to sacrifice East Timor’s right to self-determination for corporate profits in Indonesia the occupation and the violence necessary to maintain it will continue.

MATTHEW JARDINE, Coordinator

East Timor Action Network

Los Angeles

* Kempton’s premise of human rights is inaccurate. The real questions here are whose human rights and defined by whom? There are no absolute rights, no guaranteed rights. Rights are man-made and are the result of compromise and negotiations between interest groups in our legislative body. Our Bill of Rights is just that.

Kempton is trying to impose Western Christian values, which advocate that mankind subordinate the world, control it in the name of God and exploit nature for the greater glory of God, onto a nation whose religious foundation is based on the principles of Confucius and Buddha. To be able to intelligently debate issues both parties need to be arguing from the same defined parameters. We have no more right than the Chinese do to impose morals or values on each other. You cannot legislate morality, nor can you negotiate it through a trade agreement.

BRYAN M. LARA

Alhambra