For the few of us who reported East Timor long before it was finally declared news, the “disclosures” last weekend that Washington had trained Indonesia’s death squads are bizarre.

It had been a long night of waiting for the Indonesian troop convoy to pass. Two of us then crossed the border into East Timor clandestinely, through a forest of dead, petrified trees that appeared as silhouetted needles around which skeins of fine white sand drifted, like mist. As the sun rose, there stood the surreal crosses.

What is the “international community” really doing in East Timor? After their arrival almost two weeks ago, Australian troops have secured only the capital, Dili, and a few towns.

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, recently described his government’s actions over East Timor last year as “wholly honourable and decent”.

Last month Prime Minister Paul Keating launched a “trade and cultural promotion” with Indonesia. Surrounded by businessmen and representatives of the arts, Keating made an extraordinary speech that was praised in the Australian press for its “maturity”.

It was the public, not politicians, who forced the Australian government to end the betrayal of East Timor.

Ten years ago, I filmed secretly in East Timor, a small country in south-east Asia whose brutal occupation was largely unknown to the outside world.

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how the terrible history of East Timor is repeating itself in nearby West Papua, another stolen resource-rich province of Indonesia, whose notorious army is again colluding with the West.

In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger says the death of General Suharto, the former dictator of Indonesia, is an opportunity to review the role of this “model” for high crimes in the modern era – from Indonesia, to Chile, to Vietnam – and the powerful friends who ensured he would never suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein.