What Happens in East Timor Stays in East Timor

Between the Beijing Olympics, Russia's impromptu invasion of Georgia, and the Zimbabwean presidential crisis, it's easy for lesser-known countries to fall through the cracks of mainstream media. The tiny island nation of East Timor, located just north of Australia in the Asian-Pacific, is one such example.

Sharing an island with its much larger and far better known neighbor Indonesia, East Timor was the site of rampant (and largely ignored) human rights abuses in 1999 - abuses funded and largely orchestrated by the Indonesian military.

Evidence linking the Indonesian military to the widespread violence and atrocities of that year was recently concluded in an independent report by the Indonesian-East Timorese Truth Commission.

What You Probably Didn't Know

Prior to its 1749 partition by the Dutch, the island of Timor served as a Portuguese trading post dating back to early 1640s. When the Portuguese decolonized their half of the island - what is now East Timor - in 1975, Indonesia promptly seized the opportunity to expand its territory.

Under the pretext of combating the spread of communism, East Timor was illegally incorporated into Indonesia as its 27^th province. Its annexation was neither recognized by the UN nor accepted by the East Timorese people.

The little island resisted Indonesian occupation for the next twenty-seven years, during which time numerous cases of rape, illegal detention, disappearances, torture, and outright massacres took place. In 1975 alone, the year the Indonesian army invaded, there were some estimated 200,000 East Timorese casualties. The worst of the atrocities, however, were committed in 1999 according to a new independent report.

Crimes Against Humanity

The bulk of the human rights violations alleged against the Indonesian military by the Truth Commission's report took place during its withdrawal from East Timor in 1999. Throughout that year, in an effort to forestall retreat, the Indonesian military financed and coordinated pro-Indonesian militia groups throughout East Timor in a campaign of violence and oppression. These militias "carried out murders, rapes, torture and forced deportations which amounted to a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population." (Williamson, 2008)

The report, as yet unreleased to the public, also accuses UN peacekeepers of complicity in the violence, claiming they allowed pro-Indonesian militias to be rearmed amidst the escalating violence.

Here and Now

Although diplomatic relations between East Timor and Indonesia have normalized somewhat since 1999, the Truth Commission's report has reopened nine-year-old wounds. At present the report is scheduled to be released to the two governments' presidents next week. Public disclosure of the Commission's findings is unlikely to occur in the immediate future.

Formal reparations or apologies to the East Timorese are not expected. The Indonesian government still insists that the "sporadic violence" (Belo, 2008) of 1999 was carried out by a handful of rogue individuals, not its own military personnel. Their reaction to the full report is expected to be tepid at best.

Sources

Belo, Tito. U.N. urges East Timor not to drop violence probe. Reuters. 7 August, 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSJAK298771

East Timor Revisited. The National Security Archive. 6 December, 2001. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/

Williamson, Lucy. Indonesia funded 'E Timor abuse.' BBC News. 10 July, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7499620.stm