East Timor: Occupation and Resistance

This book is a collection of articles written by internationally known experts, activists and politicians. The document provides a broad and in-depth picture of the consequences of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor concentrating developments in recent years. East Timor is a small country where a regional superpower, Indonesia, has violently occupied and annexed the territory of the indigenous peoples. Nearly one-third of the East Timorese population have died as a consequence. Starvation, warfare, illness and widespread violation of basic human rights is the order of the day in East Timor. In the book this is documented, and light is shed on the genocide the Indonesian regime is committing in East Timor. The book also puts the conflict in its historical context by relating Indonesia's and East Timor's history and a number of events that have been focal in the conflict are discussed in detail: i.e. the murders of five overseas journalists in Balibo just before the invasion in 1975, the massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery outside the capital Dili in 1991, the summit in APEC in 1994, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996. Several aspects of the conflict are also discussed, such as: health and hospitals, environmental consequences, the condition of the East Timorese women, the role of the Catholic church and the armed resistance against the Indonesian occupation.