Challenge the Wind: East Timor Alert Network, 1987

If the trees are not strongly rooted on the soil, how can they challenge the blowing of the strong wind? – Abé Barreto Soares, “Notes of a Musafir” 75 (2009)

In 1987, the East Timor Alert Network was founded by Elaine Briere, Maureen Davies and Derek Evans. ETAN/Canada concentrated in its early years on challenging the prevailing political winds that led Canada’s government to support Indonesian rule over East Timor. ETAN’s efforts focused on public awareness-raising, letter-writing in an effort to change government policy, and public protests. Run out of Briere’s home in Ladysmith, British Columbia, ETAN had limited resources, relying primarily on a grant from the Canada Asia Working Group (CAWG) of Canadian churches. The group quickly joined a global network of East Timor solidarity groups coordinated by Carmel Budiarjo in the UK, Luisa Teotonia Pereira in Portugal, Jean Inglis in Japan, and others.

ETAN’s first newsletter, run off on Briere’s stylized-font typewriter and then copied and posted from the office of Ray Funk MP to a few hundred supporters across Canada, included a focus what ETAN called “Canadian complicity with genocide.” A conference at Carleton University in 1987 put the issue on the political agenda. Meanwhile, pressure from outside parliament began with a weekly vigil outside the Indonesian consulate in Toronto.

Images: Above – Vigil outside the Indonesian Consulate, University Avenue, Toronto (East Timor Alert Network files). Below –  protests in Vancouver BC (Elaine Briere). international solidarity groups meting in Geneva (ETAN), Timorese activist José Guterres and former Australian diplomat James Dunn during Carleton University conference on East Timor (Elaine Briere); Blockade at Pratt and Whitney military plant, Toronto (Maggie Helwig).