Written by Dr Michael Salla on .
[Originally published, May 2, 2006] In January 1994, I remember visiting the Jakarta office of Mr Irawan Abidin, the former Director of Foreign Information in the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I had just arrived from a two week field trip to the former Indonesian territory of East Timor researching alleged human rights abuses. I had found ample evidence of abuses through the traumatized testimonies of many East Timorese I had spoken with.
Mr Abidin assured me that systematic human rights abuses were not occurring in East Timor and that such claims were spurious accusations orchestrated by discontented Timorese expatriates who were the former ruling elite. I politely explained to him what I had been told in my fieldwork involving interviews with dozens of private citizens, but he insisted that such claims were gross exaggerations and people were basically content in East Timor. He handed me a Ministry publication to support his position and exhorted me to tell the world how content people were with Indonesian rule in East Timor.
In reading Steven Greer’s recent public statement, “Exopolitics or Xenopolitics” where he openly criticizes me as someone supporting xenophobic approaches to Exopolitics, I had a feeling of déjà vu with my earlier meeting with Mr Abidin concerning my research into alleged human rights abuses.
In his May 2 statement, Greer claims:
While
there are certainly diverse opinions regarding why any given
extraterrestrial civilization may wish to visit Earth at this time in
our history, recent public comments by Michael Salla have added a
virulent strain of fear-based xenophobia, based on the flimsiest of
documentation.
Dr Greer further states:
He
has maintained that a nefarious and injurious group of ETs have made a
secret pact with covert humans – and have a harmful agenda towards the
human race.” This, and more. The Disclosure Project has over 450
military, government and corporate insiders who have first-hand
knowledge of actual UFO/ET events and projects. We find it odd that not a
single one of these insiders can confirm the xenophobic rumors
proffered by Salla.
I accept Dr Greer’s implicit invitation to engage in a public debate with him concerning the evidence supporting the diverse motivations and activities performed by extraterrestrial visitors. I think such a debate is healthy and can lead to greater cooperation between exopolitical researchers and activists who have long been polarized into mutually antagonist camps of those exclusively viewing extraterrestrials as benign visitors helping humanity evolve, and those generally viewing extraterrestrials as committing systematic human rights abuses.
I will avoid personalizing such a debate which can only be a distraction and focus only on the arguments offered by Dr Greer and myself in discussing the substantive issues raised in his public statement and my own public research.
