“It may seem to the Australian public that because Australia played a fairly big role in the reconstruction, that Australia has a role to play in maintaining the East Timorese Government.

“But it is suspicious and questionable. It is difficult to analyse why Australia wants to go there. I think it is driven by concerns over Australia’s economic security, including the oil under the sea, rather than concern for the people of East Timor.

In fairness to the young writers, a great deal of suspicion was created by the hardline stance Australia was perceived by many East Timorese — and members of the Australian Left — to have taken in the negotiations over the treaty for oil and gas rights in the Timor Gap.

NOW we now what it’s like to be American — putting our troops in harm’s way on foreign soil only to be pilloried.

Young East Timorese, guests of the Sydney Writers Festival, yesterday attacked Australia’s intervention in their homeland as being motivated by greed.

The Diggers are not there to save a fledgling democracy, but — like the Americans in Iraq — for the oil, the writers said.

While most East Timorese would welcome the immediate stability the Australian forces would bring, the writers outlined considerable concerns about the intervention.

And, heaven forbid, Australia has done it to East Timor twice — the last time in 1999 after the Indonesian pillage to mark the end of its 24-year occupation of the former Portuguese colony.

The writers said they regarded Australia’s intervention as “highly suspicious”.

“The tragedy that has happened in the past month has meant a lot of suffering for the people of East Timor and reminds us all of thesuffering of 1999,” poet and broadcaster Vonia Veira said yesterday.

“It may seem to the Australian public that because Australia played a fairly big role in the reconstruction, that Australia has a role to play in maintaining the East Timorese Government.

“But it is suspicious and questionable. It is difficult to analyse why Australia wants to go there. I think it is driven by concerns over Australia’s economic security, including the oil under the sea, rather than concern for the people of East Timor.

“I am scared it is less about East Timor’s security than Australia’s security and interests.”

In fairness to the young writers, a great deal of suspicion was created by the hardline stance Australia was perceived by many East Timorese — and members of the Australian Left — to have taken in the negotiations over the treaty for oil and gas rights in the Timor Gap.

To a packed Sydney audience, Ms Veira, 23, who is well-known in her home town of Dili, read her latest work, titled Meaningless Freedom:

The sound of guns haunts us again …

Why do we kill our own people?

This is our own land Innocent children and babies Crying and screaming They hear the sound of guns shooting …

I cannot stand witnessing this all.

Musician and writer Melchior Fernandes, 23, said he had been regularly arrested by the Indonesian police for singing East Timorese liberation songs.

He said the Australian Government had other motives for the present military intervention, most probably economic.

“In the short term, the result may be peace, but Australia’s military involvement is not a long-term solution,” he said.

“This is an internal dispute between different factions of the military. Australia can’t send in troops every time there is a dispute. It will sustain instability rather than address it.”

In one of his recent works, God Down, Fernandes wrote of the desire to smell the wind of liberation and leave the smell of corpses behind:

Leave us to work together To stomp the land, hand in hand Do not make stupid public notices Do not kick the legs from under us!

Maybe George Orwell was right after all — don’t expect beggars to be grateful.