From the People to Multitude?

Nationalism is an imagining by the people (Anderson Reference Anderson1983), and thus the universe of nationalism could be imagined beyond the spatiality of the nation (Sidel Reference Sidel2021). Benedict Anderson's influential Imagined Communities, published in 1983, offers a powerful theoretical framework to understand the emergence of nationalism as a modern phenomenon. Later, a post-Imagined Communities thesis was proposed by Anderson and other Southeast Asianists (Anderson Reference Anderson2005; Sidel Reference Sidel2021). These scholars focus on mobilising the power of nationalism that absorbs various hopes, ideals and aspirations under the name of the nation-state, regardless of actors’ political and cultural orientations and identities. In other words, the scholarship offers detailed empirical accounts and theoretical frameworks to understand the process—rather than the origin—of nationalism. Focusing on how nationalism develops, therefore, one could understand that nationalism is not monolithic and that even anecdotal accounts of national struggles show the ambitious expansion of nationalism and subsequent contraction toward the form of the nation-state (Sidel Reference Sidel2021; Kamisuna Reference Kamisuna2023).

In Indonesia, for instance, it was not only right-wing nationalists who experienced national aspirations, as in the Netherlands, but communists and Islamic activists were equally able to recognise themselves as nationalists equipped with more fluid national visions of Indonesia. The pioneering study of this ‘expansion and contraction’ of nationalism is Benedict Anderson's earlier Java in a Time of Revolution. Anderson studied the national struggle of Indonesian youths (pemuda) during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia from 1944 to 1946. Focusing on this provocative albeit simultaneously ephemeral form of youth nationalism, his study plausibly depicts the unfinished social revolution of pemuda (politicalised youths) (Anderson Reference Anderson1972). Following Anderson's perspective, his former student John Sidel has offered a cosmopolitan paradigm for nationalist struggles in Southeast Asia, covering the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam (Sidel Reference Sidel2021). While Anderson's Imagined Communities offers a vigorous framework to understand the rise of nationalism through domestic institutional and ideological instruments (Anderson Reference Anderson1983), Sidel's comparative analysis provides a compelling framework to capture nationalist mobilisation through cosmopolitan ideologies beyond the single nation-state.

Socio-historical accounts of nationalist revolutions in Southeast Asia, therefore, have explained the more mixed and nuanced realities of ‘nationalist’ struggles against colonialism. In particular, the post-Imagined Communities thesis delineates the cosmopolitan mobilisation of nationalism that can accommodate various actors under the contemporary universal value widely shared in society. Nevertheless, the scholarship does not fully explain how and why nationalism ideologically supports the diffusion of international advocacies.

Neo-Marxist scholars present a worldview of international solidarity, or Multitude, against the idea of the people (Hardt and Negri Reference Hardt and Negri2004; Virno Reference Virno2004), hinging on the rise of ‘New Anarchism’ (Abensour Reference Abensour, Blechman and Breaugh2011[2004]; Graeber Reference Graeber2002). Here, the framework of Empire and Multitude is illuminative. Whereas traditional imperialism was a consequence of territorial expansions of powerful Western states motivated by economic nationalism (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1987), Empire is a new system of rule that does not have a ‘territorial centre of power’ or ‘fixed boundaries or barriers’ (Hardt and Negri Reference Hardt and Antonio2000, xii.). Hence, the creation of Multitude is a borderless development of networks against the expanding Empire.

Anarchist proponents of Multitude, therefore, recognise that a society is more crucial than a state in terms of shaping the international order. Peter Marshall (Reference Marshall1992: 32) considers the people as ‘citizens of the world’ rather than of the state, and it is also in this vein that defenders of anarchism like Godwin and Leo Tolstoy condemn the state and state aspirations as a form of patriotism. A prime example of this perspective is seen in the international solidarity for oppressed indigenous people in Mexico, commonly known as the Zapatista movement—a transnational movement against oppressive state rule. In this context, the notion of ‘indigenous people’ transcends the territory of the nation-state and is generalised or idealised as a common language of all oppressed people in the world (Khasnabish Reference Khasnabish2008).

Nevertheless, the scholarship on international solidarity movements, including the studies on the Zapatista movement in Mexico, tends to frame international solidarity within the context of neoliberal order in the post-Cold War context. The literature dichotomously highlights the feature of globalisation from above versus that of globalisation from below (Brecher et al. Reference Brecher, Tim and Brendan2002; Featherstone Reference Featherstone2012; Fox Reference Fox2005; Muñoz Reference Muñoz2006), albeit both ideas are underpinned by the transnational feature of neoliberalism (Paulson Reference Paulson2001). While the scholarship expands the narrowly confined nation and state–centred approach (Bauböck Reference Bauböck1994; Featherstone Reference Featherstone2012), the fundamental basis in the literature is the rise of global capitalism and the reaction from below. As such, the role of nationalism in international solidarity is often absent in the argument. In this regard, the reductionist criticism by Judith Hellman (Reference Hellman2000) on the simplification of the Zapatista movement in the global arena is illuminative of how the international solidarity movement is created and consolidated as a ‘virtual’ account of the grassroot struggle. The argument of international solidarity against global capitalism tends to neglect the nature of nationalism embedded in international solidarity movements.

The rise of Empire, therefore, systematically transformed global society from the unity of the people to the global Multitude. Following Negri and Hardt, Italian Marxist Paolo Virno proposes Multitude as a framework to better explain current global dynamics (Virno Reference Virno2004). In this respect, Michael Hardt's plausible analogy of the 1955 Asian–African Conference in Bandung to the 2001 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre implies a transitional counter-hegemonic spirit against the predominant world order from territorially bounded nations to a borderless network of Multitude (Gramsci Reference Gramsci and Boothman1995; Hardt Reference Hardt2002).

The anarchist Empire–Multitude perspective, however, downplays the interactions between nationalism and internationalism. While the framework could have explained the diffusion of social movements against the capitalist Empire, such an analysis would overlook the nationalistic property of international movements. In contrast, this article argues that international solidarity for human rights advocacy is largely rooted in the nationalist struggles of each nation. It is, rather, nationalism that has enabled the people to be concerned with and connected to supra-national solidarity movements. A socio-historical analysis of the East Timorese independence struggle and the subsequent international solidarity with the East Timorese offers an alternative theoretical framework of the national origins of international solidarity against the conventional Empire–Multitude perspective.

Imperialism, Empire and Historically Divided Struggles in East Timor

The 24 years of the East Timorese independent struggle lie in the historical transition from old imperialism to a new Empire. The first nationalist struggle in Portuguese Timor began with the collapse of Salazar's dictatorship in Portugal by the Carnation Revolution of 1974 (Matsuno Reference Matsuno2002), which Samuel Huntington (Reference Huntington1991) identifies as the beginning of ‘the third wave of democracy’. The fall of Salazar's Estado Novo (New State) became a critical turning point for terminating European imperialism and the subsequent transition to a global Empire.

Ironically enough, the Bandung Conference of 1955 was hosted by Indonesia symbolically imprinted the triumph of the ‘League Against Imperialism and Colonialism’ in global history (Sukarno Reference Sukarno1955: 2). Hosting comrades from Asian and African nations, Indonesia's President Sukarno called for unity of post-colonial nations in the following address:

Apparently, the international community witnessed the end of the age of imperialism and prepared to welcome the new age of the nation-state. The unity of the nations in Bandung symbolised the emancipation of the people from Western imperialism and the state-building of the nation.

Nevertheless, Indonesia under President Suharto annexed the territory of East Timor in November 1975 when the East Timorese revolutionary front Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente) declared East Timor's independence from Portugal. Against the backdrop of the emancipation of colonial nations in Africa and Asia, the voice of the East Timorese people for self-determination was wiped out by Indonesia's authoritarian regime under Cold War logic. Subsequently, the 24-year struggle created two distinct generations: the old generation of 1975 (Geração ’75) and the new generation (Geração Foun). Whereas the old leaders from Geração ’75 had fought against Indonesia's regime through internally consolidated East Timorese nationalism, youths from Geração Foun expanded their national struggle to Indonesia and beyond (Kamisuna Reference Kamisuna2020, Reference Kamisuna2023). While the struggle of Geração ’75 from the 1970s to 1980s took place between the East Timorese and Indonesian nations, by the 1990s, East Timorese youngsters began to incorporate Indonesians such that the struggle transcended the space of the conflict between East Timor and Indonesia.

A struggle that brought together East Timorese youths and Indonesian nationalists was developed, intensified and expanded under the emerging global Empire–Multitude paradigm. Socio-historical analysis of the East Timorese struggle outside of East Timor in the 1990s demonstrates how East Timorese, Indonesian and, subsequently Filipino, Malaysian and Thai nationalists were historically connected over ‘the issues of East Timor’ under the name of human rights and democracy.

At the global level, the spread of human rights advocacy in the post-Cold War global order resulted from the expansion of Empire and the response from Multitude. Indeed, the borderless expansion of human rights advocacy coupled with the promotion of democracy reflects the transition from imperialism to Empire. Whereas imperialism is “an extension of the sovereignty of the European nation-states beyond their own boundaries”, Empire holds “no territorial centre of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers” (Hardt and Negri Reference Hardt and Antonio2000: xii). Samuel Moyn's distinction between decolonisation and human rights advocacy could resonate with this transition (Moyn Reference Moyn2010). Similar to the anti-colonialism that opposed Western imperialism in the 1950s and 1960s, the notion of human rights is a powerful discourse that extended to the entire globe in the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless, Moyn explicitly distinguishes human rights movements from anticolonial struggles, highlighting 1977 as a critical junctureFootnote ³. He argues that anticolonial struggles rarely used the phrase ‘human rights’; instead, their emphasis was on ‘the self-determination of peoples’ (Moyn Reference Moyn2010: 88)Footnote ⁴.

In line with the Empire–Multitude perspective, the transnational dynamics of human rights advocacy was a double-edged sword in the post-Cold War context. Some scholars have criticised the imperialist dimension of human rights advocacy that justified state inventions under the name of human rights protections, particularly by the US. Others, by contrast, appreciate the roles of human rights advocacy that serve claims of self-determination for minority groups (Aung-Thwin Reference Aung-Thwin2001–2002; Ibhawoh Reference Ibhawoh2008; Ignatieff, Reference Ignatieff2001; Webster Reference Webster2013). In particular, proponents of international human rights advocacy identify the East Timorese struggle for self-determination as a typical case of international solidarity of human rights over the issue of East Timor. David Webster (Reference Webster2013), for instance, articulates that the language of human rights was a weapon of the weak for vulnerable East Timorese people, particularly after the Santa Cruz massacre of 1991. Herman Joseph Kraft (Reference Kraft2002) further argues that APCET for East Timorese struggle resulted from NGO networks in ASEAN countries. The international solidarity among leftists indeed provided powerful political momentum to support East Timorese struggles for independence.

It was, therefore, in the post-Cold War 1990s that human rights advocacy became increasingly visible in linking together different political aspirations globally. Indeed, East Timor's right to self-determination was ignored by the world's most powerful states when Indonesia's Suharto regime invaded East Timor in the 1970s. Under Cold War logic, the US and its democratic allies had prevented the rise of communist regimes in the Asia-Pacific region. Accordingly, the US government offered de facto permission for Suharto's Indonesian regime to invade and annex East Timor as a ‘reasonable solution’ under the Cold War equilibrium (The Secretary of State Washington 21 November 1975)Footnote ⁵. The US in the 1970s, together with the Indonesian regime, believed that East Timor was “too small and too primitive to merit self-determination” (Simpson, Reference Simpson2009: 282). In contrast, international attention to the issue of East Timor in the 1990s sharply showed how the international community normatively distinguished between the right to self-determination in the 1970s and human rights advocacy in the 1990s, though the East Timorese struggle had continued over the two decades.

The transition from imperialism to Empire in which the shift from the right to self-determination to universal human rights occurred does not, however, necessarily capture the political development of human rights advocacy in the Global South. Because Western neo-Marxist scholarship explicitly distinguishes the age of Empire from that of imperialism and attributes human rights movements to the former as a transnational force, it fails to offer a more nuanced framework to understand the human rights advocacy in Asia and Africa as the continuity of struggles for self-determination, democracy and, ultimately, human rights. As a result, both neo-Marxist scholars and the proponents of liberal democracy have simply framed the rise of human rights movements in the Global South as a new historical dynamic within the Empire–Multitude struggle beyond conventional colonial borders.

To some extent, the recent development in the scholarship on the history of human rights could offer an alternative perspective to Moyn's historical understanding of human rights. Steven Jensen's critical work The Making of International Human Rights (Reference Jensen2016) re-historicises the universality of human rights, casting attention toward the decolonisation of the 1960s. He claims that “human rights were after all both absolute and timeless as well as historically defined and in constant movement” (Jensen Reference Jensen2016: 2). In a similar vein, an earlier pioneering work of Roland Burke (Reference Burke2010) examines the diplomatic development of human rights advocacy in the Global South. Tracing back to the 1955 Bandung Conference, Burke's Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights attempts to reveal a nuanced historical relation between decolonisation and human rights through “the revolutionary influence of decolonization” on human rights history (2010: 2). Likewise, Beth Simmons (Reference Simmons2009) critically analyses domestic politics concerning international human rights to unpack the nature of political developments in human rights. Indeed, recent literature on human rights history has reassessed the historical relationship between human rights and 1950s and 1960s anticolonial struggles in Asia and Africa. Nevertheless, it does not fully explain the transnational dynamics of human rights advocacy in the Global South. While the scholarship highlights the historical continuity from imperialism to Empire in the context of universal human rights, it does not adequately explain why human rights advocacy would crystalise its international solidarity in the 1990s.

This article, therefore, offers a more contextual socio-historical account of international solidarity for human rights by focusing on the transnational dynamism of nationalism that transcends time and space. Drawing from the East Timorese struggle for independence and the movement of international solidarity for East Timor, the rest of this article examines how international solidarity was achieved beyond nations. In short, the national struggle of the East Timorese was incorporated into the regional historical paradigm of the People's Power movement through the advocacy for human rights in ASEAN nations.

Nationalism Crossing Borders: From East Timor to Indonesia

East Timor's independence struggle looks like a typical case of international solidarity against human rights abuse by dictatorships. The struggle of Geração Foun was coincident with a historical trajectory toward democratisation in which East Timorese nationalist youths were able to consume the human rights narrative and use it as a powerful political weapon against Indonesia's Suharto regime. Indeed, the youth struggle benefited from the transition to international advocacy for human rights. First, international pressure compelled the Suharto regime to deal with domestic human rights issues (Fernandes Reference Fernandes2011). In response, in 1989, the Suharto regime opened East Timor's border to foreigners to show the world that the situation in East Timor was safe and stable in what became known as Keterbukaan or ‘Openness of East Timor’. The openness policy enabled a pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II to Dili, the capital of East Timor, in October 1989. Indeed, his visit to East Timor encouraged East Timorese youths to make their voices heard globally. Consequently, the youths were aware that demonstrations were the most powerful political instrument to draw international attention (Pinto and Jardine Reference Pinto and Matthew1997).

Second, a significant change occurred in the Indonesian socialist avenue, hinging on the rise of international human rights advocacy. During the late 1980s to early 1990s, the new generation of local NGOs emerged as more radical societal forces against Suharto's dictatorship (Uhlin Reference Uhlin1997). Indonesian student activism flourished in the early 1990s through the launching of new NGOs to promote the democratic transition. Indonesia's Legal Aid Institution (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum, LBH) became a safeguard for individual human rights from the illegality of the regime (Bourchier and Hadiz Reference Bourchier and Verdi2003). Among the leftists, the Indonesian Front for the Defence of Human Rights (Front Indonesia untuk Perlindungan Hak Asasi Manusia, INFIGHT) provided a new platform for student activists to advocate human rights protection against the Suharto regime (Aspinall Reference Aspinall2005). A student-led liberal-populist force, the Information Center and Action Network for Reformation (Pusat Informasi dan Jaringan Aksi untuk Reformasi, PIJAR), emerged as a new style of youth activism, ideologically combining the Philippines-style ‘People Power’ and historical ‘moral force’ in Indonesia from the 1970s (Aspinall Reference Aspinall2005: 128). PIJAR actively advocated for freedom of the press. Following the government bans of three major Indonesian national newspapers and magazines, Tempo, Editor, and Detik, PIJAR fiercely criticised the regime for “Indonesianisation, or Pribumisasi (Indigenisation), of the Indonesian press” by the regime (PIJAR 1994).

Although advocacy for human rights was able to link the different national struggles of the East Timorese and Indonesians, the substantial driver of this international movement lay in their nationalist claims for independence. East Timorese nationalist youths who studied at major universities in Indonesia began to accommodate Indonesian pro-democracy activists (Kamisuna Reference Kamisuna2020). Some groups of East Timorese youths at Indonesian universities established channels with Indonesian pro-democracy students and activists. One of the most prominent youth organisations, Renetil (Resistência Nacional dos Estudantes de Timor-Leste, the National Resistance of East Timorese Students), crystalised a counter-ideological discourse against Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, the Indonesiação do Conflito de Timor-Leste [Indonesianisation of Conflict in East Timor] movement. Founded in Denpasar in Indonesia in 1988, Renetil had three goals: Indonesianisation and Internationalisation of the conflict in East Timor and protection of the East Timorese from Indonesian cultural and political influence.Footnote ⁶ Renetil was an eclectic creation of East Timorese youth nationalism to pursue East Timor's independence and the leftist ideological basis of the Indonesian intellectual community.

In contrast to the leaders from Geração ’75, Renetil from Geração Foun pursued independence by incorporating Indonesian allies into their national project. Demetrio do Amaral de Carvalho, a former secretary general of Renetil, explains that Indonesianisation served as a strategy to “expand the East Timorese conflict to Jakarta”.Footnote ⁷ Renetil member Lucas da Costa, who invented the idea of Indonesiação do Conflito de Timor-Leste, tells the author that Renetil's motivation was to work with Indonesian youths in line with the common experience of suffering between East Timorese and Indonesian youths:

Some Indonesian human rights activists resonated with the struggle of the East Timorese, having communicated with East Timorese students. Indonesian human rights activist Nugroho Katjasungkana became involved in study groups at the University of Indonesia in the early 1980s. Nugroho knew about the conflict in East Timor from reading a pamphlet from Human Rights Watch. He later met with East Timorese students for the first time in Yogyakarta in 1987.Footnote ⁹ Students like Nugroho represented the new generation of NGOs in Indonesia that displayed a more advocative and radical way of defending human rights than previous pro-democracy activists (Uhlin Reference Uhlin1997). The 1990s witnessed the emergence of more active NGOs in Indonesia intent on initiating the fall of the Suharto regime.

The mass killing by the Indonesian Armed Forces in 1991, the Santa Cruz massacre, caused the deaths of at least 250 youths and revealed the human rights abuses of Indonesia's military toward East Timorese youths for the first time in the international media. The impact of the massacre significantly spurred international human rights advocacy for the people of East Timor. Immediately afterwards, the US government expressed concerns about the human rights situation in East Timor.Footnote ¹⁰ The Japanese government also condemned the massacre in the strongest terms at the Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo.Footnote ¹¹ In a parliamentary address in Dili on 26 November 1991, Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans criticised the savage violence of the Indonesian Armed Forces toward East Timorese youths, saying that “[w]hat happened on 12 November in Dili was brutal and unconscionable”.Footnote ¹² Following these diplomatic condemnations, Amnesty International published a report on the Indonesian government's response to the Santa Cruz massacre in February 1992. The report alleges that the government investigation was “fatally flawed and that its findings are unacceptable”.Footnote ¹³

Likewise, the tragedy in Dili significantly impacted Indonesian human rights. Prominent Indonesian human rights group LBH issued a special report on the ‘Dili Investigation’ (YLBHI 1992). An interview with an Indonesian human rights activist reveals a more powerful and even historical impact of the Dili incident on the Indonesian struggle for human rights. Prominent Indonesian human rights activist and member of the People's Power–style NGO PIJAR Rachland Nashidik describes the transnational dimension of suffering between East Timor and Indonesia in terms of their struggle for human rights protection:

The struggle of the East Timorese offered “a new path for communicating with the international community” for Indonesian human rights activists (Kamisuna Reference Kamisuna2020: 87).

The development of human rights advocacy at the international level and the local tragedy in Dili created a contemporality between East Timorese and Indonesians, enabling them to express their suffering collectively to the international community. Fortunately, transnational social movements came to the forefront of global politics during the period, including the rise of labour internationalism and international solidarity for human rights (Waterman Reference Waterman1989). The suffering of youths was situated within the growing tendency of international solidarity for universal human rights protection. In Indonesian society, as well as throughout the international community during the 1990s, universal human rights became a strong political instrument for pro-democracy activists to fight against dictatorships. Hence, East Timorese youths who were politically active in Indonesia gained strong support from pro-democracy and human rights activists there.

The international response to the Santa Cruz massacre reflected the interdependent relation between the Empire and Multitude, as the idea of human rights advocacy here is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, human rights advocacy consolidated international solidarity for the people of East Timor. On the other hand, it did so because human rights advocacy was an instrumental ideology of Empire in the post-Cold War 1990s. Indonesian pro-democracy activists together with East Timorese were able to take advantage of this unique property of human rights in claiming democratic and nationalist liberations simultaneously.

After the Santa Cruz massacre, prominent leftist groups in Indonesia began to approach ‘the issue of East Timor’ more directly and explicitly. The Indonesian leftist radical front, the People's Democratic Union (Partai Rakyat Demokratik, PRD), and its student wing, the Indonesian Student Solidarity for Democracy (Solidaritas Mahasiswa Indonesia untuk Demokrasi, SMID), were the leftist anti-regime organisations that sympathised with East Timorese suffering and incorporated the East Timorese struggle into their pro-democracy and anti-militarism agendas. The PRD was launched in May 1994 to encompass the multiple political agendas of the NGOs and student activists, including labour and peasant issues (Tempo 1994). The rise of the PRD historically underpinned the revival of the Left in Indonesia from 1996 to 2001, over the course of the Suharto regime's collapse. The Suharto regime labelled the PRD a ‘communist wing’ and later made it illegal (Suhelmi Reference Suhelmi2006: 156). Indeed, the PRD was also engaged in an international campaign with the Australian Trotskyist organisation, Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET), though the impact on international union organisations was relatively limited due to the latter organisation's radicalism (Ford Reference Ford2003: 82).

The PRD's student front, the SMID, was established earlier in 1991. Members of the SMID were highly influenced by the democratic movements in South Korea and Latin America from the 1980s to the 90s and held a strong socialist orientation against the authoritarian rule of the Suharto regime.Footnote ¹⁵ The SMID initially launched labour movements to protect workers’ rights from the Suharto regime. In 1994, members of the SMID established the Indonesian Centre for Labour Struggle (Pusat Perjuangan Buruh Indonesia, PPBI) and organised high-profile labour strikes between 1994 and 1996, against which the regime reacted vehemently.

After 1994, however, the SMID shifted its ideological orientation and methods from a labour-focused approach to a mass movement based on legal and political methods. The development of alternative legal organisations such as the LBH in Indonesia against the regime's illegal actions influenced the shift in the SMID's strategy.Footnote ¹⁶ New legal organisations focusing on human rights protections had been newly established without the regime's prevention, and the legal aids for imprisoned activists by NGOs became more active than in previous decades.Footnote ¹⁷ Indeed, the PRD was established at the LBH's office on 2 May 1994 (Tempo 1994). The PRD and SMID, therefore, became able to incorporate multiple social agendas, such as freedom of the press, peasants’ rights and, eventually, East Timorese self-determination. Hence, the later PRD's movement focused on networking with various social actors, ranging from peasants to labourers (Kamisuna Reference Kamisuna2020; Törnquist Reference Törnquist2000). The issue of East Timorese self-determination became one of the significant agendas of the PRD (Wilson 2010).

One of the key roles of the PRD and SMID was the functional networking of different societal actors encompassing various NGO groups and activists. Through this activity, anarchists perhaps saw a glimpse of Multitude in the PRD's struggle. Indeed, Hardt and Negri explain Multitude as an alternative that challenges Empire within Empire's hegemonic network. Like Empire, Multitude is an ‘open and expansive network’:

The ‘multiplicity’ of Multitude links different kinds of social uprisings beyond national borders. As a result, the solidarity of nationalists beyond state borders can be interpreted as a form of Multitude against Empire.

The transnational solidarity between East Timorese and Indonesian youths, however, had clear nationalist origins that became united as an integrated movement for democracy in Indonesia and the independence of East Timor. In other words, the East Timorese–Indonesian solidarity was strongly consolidated only because youths from the two different nations were able to imagine a shared political space beyond national spaces.Footnote ¹⁸ SMID founder Wilson projects Indonesia's own national struggle against Dutch colonialism onto the East Timorese struggle for independence from Indonesia:

A letter sent by the imprisoned Wilson to his East Timorese comrade Puto (Naldo Rei) is further illuminative of how Wilson projected the Indonesian pemuda onto the East Timorese juventude (youths) struggleFootnote ²⁰:

Encountering the East Timorese struggle enabled young Indonesian nationalists to revisit their own nationalist struggle. Hence, East Timorese and Indonesian youths were able to share the spirit of the 1945 Constitution that stipulated the form of the Indonesian nation upon its independence from Dutch colonial rule. Referring to the Preamble to the 1945 Constitution that “whereas independence is the inalienable right of all nations, therefore, all colonialism must be abolished in this world as it is not in conformity with humanity and justice”,Footnote ²¹ East Timorese and Indonesian youth nationalists claimed the illegality of the Suharto regime based on its obvious violation of the inalienable rights of the East Timorese to self-determination.Footnote ²² The spirit of the 1945 Constitution was eventually shared among Indonesian intellectuals. Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya, a Catholic religious leader and former member of Solidamor (Solidaritas untuk Penyelesaian Damai Timor-Leste, Solidarity for East Timor Peace Settlement), wrote a letter to his former schoolmate President Habibie (Rudy) after succeeding Suharto as president. His letter clearly supported East Timor's right to self-determination with reference to the 1945 Constitution:

While human rights advocacy had been a powerful driver for expanding the East Timorese struggle, it was rather the history of nationalism that substantially enabled Indonesians to form inter-national solidarity for East Timorese nationalists.

From a broader perspective, however, the phenomenon of cross-border nationalism between the East Timorese and Indonesians is part of a larger historical trajectory of international solidarity for nationalists in Southeast Asia over the two last two decades of the twentieth century. In the long run, human rights advocacy for the East Timorese struggle in Southeast Asia can be seen as a nationalist journey beyond the original times and spaces of said advocacy.

International Solidarity of Nationalists for East Timor

The recent history of pro-democracy movements in Asia highlights the nationalist perspective on transnational human rights advocacy. The international political climate has changed since the mid-1980s after the international community witnessed the triumph of ‘People Power’ in February 1986 against the Marcos dictatorship, which led to nationwide democratisation in the Philippines (Thompson Reference Thompson1996). This bottom-up popular insurgency was fuelled by a strong moral force of civil society, especially youths and students, that eventually overthrew the dictatorship. Furthermore, this moral force proved to be remarkably contagious in spreading across Asia. In June of the following year, South Korea witnessed a popular uprising. The People Power diffused to Myanmar (popular uprising in March 1988), China (student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989), Bangladesh and Nepal (protests against the dictatorships), Thailand (bloody protest in ‘Black May’ of 1992) and finally Indonesia's ‘People Power Revolution’ of 1998 that overthrew Suharto's New Order regime (Katsiaficas Reference Katsiaficas2013). Following the triumph of the liberal democratic order after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the last decade of the twentieth century further witnessed the emergence of People's Power against state control at the global level.

The 1991 tragedy in Dili rhetorically placed ‘the issue of East Timor’ within the historical cases of the humanitarian crisis in the post-Cold War period, including Rwanda, Kosovo, Iraq and the West Bank (Weiss Reference Weiss, Piper and Uhlin2004). Western media further juxtaposed the East Timorese youth struggle with the unfinished struggles of nationalist youths on a global level. The Economist titled the tragedy in Dili ‘From Tiananmen to Timor’, explicitly associating the East Timorese youth struggle with the uprising in China's Tiananmen Square.Footnote ²³ The news article criticises the reaction of foreign governments to the massacre in East Timor in comparison with that toward Tiananmen in China. In a similar vein, The Washington Post called the tragedy in Dili ‘Indonesia's Tiananmen’.Footnote ²⁴

After the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, ‘the issue of East Timor’ became pivotal among Southeast Asian pro-democracy and human rights activists. As the liberal discourse encouraged ‘the people’ to be united against the dictatorship in the Philippines, the self-determination of East Timor against Suharto's authoritarian rule became a primary concern for human rights activists and leftist intellectuals in Southeast Asia during the 1990s. The East Timorese–Indonesian youth alliance was expanded to other countries, resonating with the historical struggle of the people against the rule of the authoritarian state. In particular, People's Power–style movements against incumbent governments in Southeast Asia echoed the East Timorese struggle against Indonesia's Suharto regime; these movements linked the East Timorese struggle to their own historical undertakings toward emancipation from the oppressive regimes. From the middle of the 1990s, pro-democracy activists and human rights defenders in ASEAN countries raised the issue of East Timor as an urgent political agenda for the ASEAN community.

In this line, a series of international social solidarity movements among youths in the Asia-Pacific region provided powerful ideological instruments for social change and calls to end dictatorships. In 1993, for instance, NGOs from the Asia-Pacific region came together in Bangkok to make a declaration on human rights to the United Nations General Assembly (Coalition for Peace and Development 1993). In 1994, the Conference of the Asia-Pacific Coalition for East Timor (APCET) was, for the first time, held in Manila in the Philippines. Through APCET, Southeast Asian comrades were united in support of the East Timorese cause. The first conference proceeding stated the following:

The international solidarity for East Timor was, however, intercepted by the state authority as ‘People's Power’ movements faced oppression by authoritarian regimes. The Indonesian government exerted economic and diplomatic pressure on the Philippine government (Inbaraj Reference Inbaraj1995). Considering bilateral relations with Jakarta, Filipino President Fidel Ramos banned the entry of foreign participants to the conference for the sake of the Philippines’ ‘national interest’ (Scharfe Reference Scharfe1994: 1). Would-be foreign participants included Japanese Catholic Nobuo SomaFootnote ²⁶ and Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, both of whom were later placed on a blacklist by the government (Inbaraj Reference Inbaraj1995). The international network of students and leftist intellectuals who supported the self-determination of the East Timorese promptly responded to the government's decision. APCET's press release on 20 May Reference APCET1994 condemned it, saying that “Indonesia has succeeded in invading the Philippines—not in military terms as it did in East Timor in 1975—but in foreign policies and diplomatic work” (Scharfe Reference Scharfe1994, 1).

The response of the Philippines’ Ramos administration toward Suharto's pressure fuelled the spirit of the People's Power movement by tracing it back to the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship in the 1980s, articulating that “Ramos was worse than Marcos” (Scharfe Reference Scharfe1994: 4). A personal account of APCET by a Canadian attendee at the conference, Sharon Scharfe, explains the growing mood of Filipino solidarity for the East Timorese:

Such criticism of the Philippine government eventually allowed foreign participants to attend the conference. Over 500 attended, including over 130 accredited delegates from East Timor support groups. The coalition aimed to consolidate APCET (Indonesia Solidarity Action 1994: 4). Having more than 200 delegates from all over the world, the APCET in Manila aimed to “bring the East Timor issue right to its own backyard and more specifically, Southeast Asia” (APCET Secretariat Reference APCET1994). In an official statement, Filipino solidarity groups within and outside of the Philippines further condemned the Ramos administration for prioritising “national interest over human rights and self-determination” (Scharfe Reference Scharfe1994: 3).

Indeed, people in the Philippines were motivated to hold the solidarity conference for the East Timorese in Manila because of their shared histories of struggle for freedom and democracy. Historically, the Philippines is “home to dynamic civil society” as the nation had struggled for freedom and democracy against the Marcos dictatorship and finally achieved democracy in the previous decade (Miclat Reference Miclat1995: 11). Placing aspirations for civil society at the heart of the Philippines, a report on the conference articulates the following:

The report equally highlights the importance of South–South solidarity for freedom and democracy:

APCET, therefore, stands as a civil-society version of the Bandung conference in articulating the transnational claims of the people for freedom and democracy.

Nevertheless, the universal claim of human rights and democracy is embedded in the national aspirations of each country. Indonesian human rights activist Rachland Nashidik spoke at the conference, saying that “[w]e are here in this conference because we cannot refuse to see that East Timor is part of the democratic and human rights struggle in Indonesia” (Indonesia Solidarity Action 1994: 4). Nashidik also remembered his nation's own history of struggle against Dutch colonialism in the 1940s:

Nashidik further claims that the foundation of Indonesian nationalism resonated with the struggle of East Timor, referring to the Indonesia's 1945 Constitution:

Here, the Indonesian activist evoked the collective memory of the struggle of nationalists against their own state. Narratives of human rights, democracy and self-determination came to the forefront of the nationalists’ historical struggle in linking the East Timorese struggle to gain emancipation from state rule to the historical struggles of Indonesia, the Philippines and other ASEAN nations. The 1990s’ predominant narrative of universal human rights accelerated the struggle of East Timorese and Indonesian youths in articulating their rights to democracy and independence.

Filipino nationalists also echoed the sentiments of the East Timorese struggle. Filipino Senator Wigberto Tañada, son of Filipino national hero Lorenzo ‘Ka Tanny’ Martinez Tañada, made an eloquent speech titled ‘The tragedy of East Timor is our own tragedy’. Lorenzo Tañada was one of the most recognised nationalist figures in Philippine history and a strong defender of democracy and justice.Footnote ²⁷ The son of the great nationalist spoke out in APCET as a powerful human rights advocate, referring to the Philippines’ own struggle for human rights:

Tañada further associates the struggle of East Timor with the history of Indonesia and the Philippines:

Here, the national histories of struggle in East Timor, Indonesia and the Philippines were rhetorically aligned using the language of the universal right to self-determination. At the APCET, East Timorese terus (suffering) was shared within the collective memories of nationalist struggles against imperialism. A former chief justice in the Philippines, Marcelo Fernan, further acknowledged human rights and the right to self-determination of the East Timorese (ETAN 1994b). Liberal intellectuals in the post-People Power Philippines espoused the international solidarity of Filipinos with the East Timorese.

For those who fought in the anti-Marcos struggle in the 1980s, “APCET was a reunion” (Scharfe Reference Scharfe1994: 4). By uniting a wide range of progressive activists including young student activists, APCET was able to “relive a little of the excitement of 1986” in which the People's Power overthrew the Marcos’ dictatorship (Scharfe Reference Scharfe1994: 4). Hence, the Times newspaper reports that the APCET conference in Manila was “a full-fledged democracy since Marcos's 1986 overthrow” (Burton Reference Burton1994). The East Timorese struggle transcended the territory of Indonesia and enabled a revitalisation of People's Power for Filipinos. The historical trajectory of People's Power from the EDSA revolution in the Philippines to the unfinished revolution in Tiananmen in China was crystalised, again in the Philippines, over the issue of East Timorese sovereignty and nationalism.

The revival wave of the People's Power was further expanded to other ASEAN nations. The second APCET conference was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 9 November 1996. Similar to the case in Indonesia, prominent human rights advocacy was developed during the 1990s in Malaysia, including Tenaganita (Woman Power), the medical relief agency MERCY Malaysia and the National Consciousness Movement (Aliran Kesedaran Negara, Alian) (Weiss Reference Weiss, Piper and Uhlin2004). Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram, Voice of the Malaysian People) was the most advocative human rights group, and hosted APCETⅡ in Kuala Lumpur. While Malaysian leftist groups sympathised with the issue of East Timor given their historical and political proximity to Indonesia, Suaram had its own personal ties with the East Timorese youth struggle; for instance, Malaysian activist Kamal Ahmad Bamadhaj was killed in the Santa Cruz massacre, and Malaysian economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram was known as a close friend of East Timorese independence leader Jose Ramos Horta. For leftists in Malaysia, the issue of East Timor became particularly significant after the youth group of the governing Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN) coalition attempted to disrupt APCETⅡ.

Similar to the first APCET, APCETⅡ faced opposition from the government. The Malaysian Mahathir regime echoed Jakarta in the name of “larger interests of ASEAN” (Inbaraj Reference Inbaraj1995: 137). The Malaysian government attempted to prevent APCETⅡ by deporting a Filipino organiser of the first APCET, Renato Constantino Jr. Furthermore, over 100 participants both from Malaysia and outside were arrested (Lane Reference Lane1996). Aliran's magazine, Aliran Monthly, reported the “crackdown in APCET Ⅱ”, criticising the government's attitude and the violent action of the youth wing of the ruling party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), toward the conference (Aliran 1996: 4). The crackdown in Malaysia was salient in the Malaysian pro-democracy community. The quality of Malaysian democracy was questioned upon ‘the issue of East Timor’. Aliran Monthly stated the following:

More importantly, Malaysian youths saw a historical link to their own national struggle in the 1970s. Aliran Monthly went on to criticise the attitude of Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's attitude toward the crackdown:

Hence, Malaysian human rights advocates held “moral responsibility—to highlight the East Timor issue in Kuala Lumpur” (Aliran 1996: 6), and, thus, thought that NGOs should “discuss East Timor on Malaysian soil” (Aliran 1996: 25). While the international solidarity of Malaysian human rights groups for the East Timorese struggle functionally used the discourse of democracy and human rights protection, they expressed sympathy for the East Timorese based on their nationalist Bumiputera perspective.

The wave of international solidarity for the East Timorese was eventually consolidated in Bangkok, Thailand, where the third and most successful APCET conference was held on 6 March 1998. After the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis hit authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia, APCETⅢ successfully accommodated various actors—not only human rights activists but academics and parliamentarians—as defenders of peace and human rights without major interruptions by the Thai government. The International Symposium on Peaceful Settlement for East Timor (PEACESET) was also held in Bangkok on 2 and 3 March. The Bangkok Post describes the entire conference as a “significant achievement” for Asia-Pacific human rights advocates (Ashayagachat Reference Ashayagachat1998). The closing statement at APCETⅢ clearly recognises the suffering of the people beyond the national borders:

Overall, the international solidarity for the East Timorese struggle was achieved through a transnational network of human rights advocates. Nevertheless, the solidarity beyond nations held a strong nationalist sentiment in mobilising the People's Power against the state's oppression. Over the issue of East Timor, Southeast Asian nationalists were able to find international solidarity by linking the East Timorese independence struggle to their own national and historical struggles for emancipation.