By Kua Kia Soong
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim recently thanked Dr Mahathir Mohamad for “consistently supporting East Timor”.
This is not merely a slip of memory – it is historical revisionism. Those of us who stood with the East Timorese people through the darkest decades know that successive Malaysian governments, including Mahathir’s administration with Anwar as finance minister then, were anything but supporters of East Timor’s liberation struggle.
From 1975, when Indonesian troops invaded East Timor, until the referendum that finally brought independence in 1999, Kuala Lumpur’s position was clear: defend Jakarta, silence East Timor.
While more than 200,000 Timorese lives were lost, Mahathir’s government offered Indonesia diplomatic cover and actively suppressed Malaysian civil society efforts that sought to highlight the atrocities.
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The most damning episode was Apcet II, the Second Asia-Pacific Conference on East Timor, held on 9 November 1996 at the Asia Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
Organised by Malaysian NGOs to press for peace and self-determination, the conference was deemed unacceptable by the Mahathir government, which feared offending Indonesia. Threats were issued before the event. Then came the violence.
A 600-strong mob, mobilised by the youth wings of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, stormed the hotel, violently disrupting the meeting and besieging local and foreign participants. One of the ringleaders of this mob was none other than Saifuddin Nasution Ismail – today, Anwar’s home minister.
The police, arriving late, compounded the outrage: instead of stopping the thuggery, they arrested 59 conference participants – NGO activists, students, journalists – on a charge of “not dispersing”. Some were held up to six days in “perfumed dung” (the Dang Wangi Police lock-up) – filthy, overcrowded cells without proper sanitation.
It took the courage of the judiciary to set things right. On 14 November 1996, Justice KC Vohrah ruled that the detentions were unlawful and ordered that the detainees be held “not for one second longer”. It was a landmark judgment against arbitrary state power.
For those who endured the violence and incarceration, the record is indelible. Our civil suit against the police speaks not only to the illegality of our detention but also to the anguish and humiliation inflicted upon us – all because we stood in solidarity with East Timor’s right to self-determination.
And history has vindicated us. What was once condemned as “spoiling Malaysia–Indonesia relations” is today recognised as a just stand: East Timor is independent, its sovereignty acknowledged worldwide.
Mahathir and Anwar cannot rewrite their past. In 1996, while Malaysian NGOs convened the last major peace conference before East Timor’s independence, the Mahathir government tried to smash it – using mobs, arrests and intimidation. That is the historical record.
So we ask, Mr Prime Minister: who, in truth, supported East Timor when it mattered? Who sent the goons to silence voices of peace? And who went to jail for daring to speak out against injustice?
If there are people in Malaysia who can claim consistency on East Timor, they are not found in the corridors of power. They are found among the NGOs, activists, students and journalists who refused to bow to violence and repression – and who paid the price for standing on the right side of history. – Suaram
Dr Kia Kia Soong is a former MP and director of Suaram.
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