What Happens in East Timor Stays in East Timor

Human Rights Abuses Committed by the Indonesian Military in 1999

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