Inside the East Timor Resistance

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University, the
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom,
and the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste. Marie.

Until 1975, East Timor was a Portuguese possession surrounded by
Indonesia, the ex–Dutch East Indies. That year, the Indonesian army
invaded East Timor and forcibly annexed it to Indonesia. Since then,
Indonesia has used brutally repressive measures to maintain control.
Although two Timorese, including a Roman Catholic bishop, won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1996, Indonesia’s neighbors—Australia, the
Philippines, and Malaysia—dare not protest Indonesian atrocities.

In his foreword, American journalist Allan Nairn provides convincing
evidence that U.S. administrations from Ford’s to Clinton’s have
supported the Suharto regime’s bloody policies in East Timor. Ford and
Kissinger regarded Suharto as a Cold War ally and gave him the green
light to invade East Timor. Daniel Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations, blocked enforcement of U.N. resolutions demanding
Indonesian withdrawal. The Carter and Reagan administrations provided
Suharto with arms to maintain his occupation, and Bush cooperated with
multinationals that saw economic opportunities in Indonesia.

Matthew Jardine’s introduction traces the history of East Timor since
the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. The Roman Catholic
Church promoted the cause of Portugal, and by the time of independence
in 1975, there were 200,000 Roman Catholics in a population of 700,000;
the rest were animists. Few were Moslems, a point that distinguishes
East Timor from Indonesia. Independence lasted nine days before
Indonesia invaded. Jardine estimates that Indonesians subsequently
killed 200,000 of the 700,000 Timorese. “Proportionally speaking,”
he writes, “East Timor is the site of one of the worst cases of
genocide of the late twentieth century.”

The rest of the book, a gripping account of resistance to the
Indonesians, includes many first-person experiences. Constвncio Pinto,
the other author, has been a leading Timorese activist. Anyone hoping to
understand one of the remaining post–Cold War hot spots should read
this book.