Australia's history with East Timor isn’t pretty but it must be told truthfully
Suggestions that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is impeding or trying to censor an official history of Australia’s East Timor peacekeeping mission are disturbing but unsurprising.
They’re disturbing because good history must have as bedrock an independence from national reputation-shaping and political interference. The line between that and propaganda is fine.
But they are not a surprise because the department, its prominent Liberal ministers – not least Alexander Downer – and successive conservative governments have all spun like blazing Catherine wheels around the facts about Australian diplomatic sycophancy towards Indonesia over the country now known as Timor-Leste before, during and after the 1999 deployment.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2019/nov/13/australias-history-with-east-timor-isnt-pretty-but-it-must-be-told-truthfully
They’re disturbing because good history must have as bedrock an independence from national reputation-shaping and political interference. The line between that and propaganda is fine.
But they are not a surprise because the department, its prominent Liberal ministers – not least Alexander Downer – and successive conservative governments have all spun like blazing Catherine wheels around the facts about Australian diplomatic sycophancy towards Indonesia over the country now known as Timor-Leste before, during and after the 1999 deployment.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2019/nov/13/australias-history-with-east-timor-isnt-pretty-but-it-must-be-told-truthfully
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