Click CC for accurate subtitles. Interview with Noam Chomsky speaking about West Papua's struggle for independence, and the similarities with the experience of East Timor. TRANSCRIPT The suppression of West Papuan Independence and the atrocities carried out-we happen to be right now at the 15th anniversary of one of the massacres. The support for it-the robbery of resources, the support for it by Australia and Western Powers-has been a major scandal now for 60 years. It didn't have much to do with the Cold War. I mean the Cold War is always a pretext for everything that happened, but it would have been pretty much the same if Russia didn't exist. It [Russia] was devastated, demolished. Politics really has yet to recover in any serious way. I'm sure that West Papua, and East Timor, the other case that falls right within that, [involved] no Russians. It's being replayed over and over right now in fact. Unfortunately, what will happen to the actual populations, their culture and their society, under this very severe repression with corporate support, mining, Western support and so on: the prospects aren't very bright, but you really can't tell. Take East Timor, a close analogue. What happened there? What happened by the late 70s-it was virtual genocide. They maybe killed a quarter of the population. It looked totally hopeless. You could fit into this room the number of activists who were working on it. I could name them for you, practically, in Australia and here. It just looked hopeless. Well, it took a long time. Finally, in 1999, there was another outburst of Indonesian violence and repression. They practically destroyed the capital city. They drove 200,000 people into the hills. The US continued to support them. The national security advisor for Clinton, Sandy Berger, said it's not our affair if people carry out massacres and slaughter. We can't do anything about it. We've got to continue to support Indonesia. US military forces were carrying out joint operations with the Indonesian army after all of this happened. Finally, on September 11th., Clinton was at an international conference. There was a lot of international protest at that time. There was also rising domestic protest. Partly, it was the activist movements that had been working for decades. Partly, it was far-right Catholic groups. East Timor was Catholic and Indonesia is Muslim, so that... it's a complicated story. I can't go into the details. It was possible to get influential far-right Catholic groups to put pressure on the government. Now all of these factors combined. Clinton informed the Indonesian generals the game is over. A couple of sentences. The next day they withdrew. It could have happened for 25 years. After they withdrew, a UN peace-keeping force, Australian, entered, which was a good thing. Take a look at how that's handled in history. That's handled as a great case of humanitarian intervention. What it really was was an extraordinary scandal. For 25 years the US continued to support the crimes, atrocities, the virtual genocide. They could have stopped it in one minute. You don't have to invade anyone. You don't need sanctions. You don't need threats. Just stop supporting it, and it's over. That's what the record shows. And that's called humanitarian intervention. That's a pretty striking story about intellectual culture. Let's turn to West Papua. It could be the same. I think West Papuan resistance stands with other cases of resistance to massive terror and oppression as a symbol, an inspiring symbol of what humans can accomplish. And it may yet succeed. If the West is willing to face up to its own responsibilities and actions, it can succeed.

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