Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | East Timor

In 1975 Indonesian military forces (the TNI) invaded the Portuguese colony of East Timor, then under the administration of the pro-independence Fretilin Party (the Revolutionary Front for the Independent East Timor), which had just unilaterally declared independence. From the outset, the invasion was strongly resisted by the heavily out-gunned and outnumbered Fretilin armed forces. The invaders treated the local population harshly, indiscriminately killing hundreds of mostly civilian Dili residents in the first two weeks of the occupation.

The Indonesian occupation lasted twenty-four years, until the intervention of the UN authorized Interfet force in September 1999. The UN intervention followed a plebicite in which 78.5 percent of the population rejected integration with Indonesia. In the first decade of the occupation, the treatment of the population at large by the occupying forces displayed genocidal characteristics. The worst...