The catholic church and the independence of East Timor

Abstract

Exploring the background behind the recent upheaval in East Timor, this article tries to place Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo and the Roman Catholic Church in their proper historical relationship with the territory's movement for independence and the population more generally. The article shows that East Timor's Catholic Church, dating from the colonial period, had a significant presence in the territory. The brutal Indonesian invasion of 1975 and the subsequent military occupation posed a great challenge to the Church and many of the clergy, who worked to defend the people of East Timor from attack. In doing so, they transformed their institution into a crucial nongovernmental entity with high international standing. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Bishop Belo in 1996 dealt a great blow to Jakarta's ambitions in East Timor. Over the years, Indonesian authorities had tried to utilize the Church to support their territorial claims to East Timor. Despite a long campaign of pressure and intimidation aimed at both the Church in East Timor as well as of the Vatican, the Indonesian regime was stymied in its efforts. The recent violent attacks orchestrated by the Indonesian military, in which the Church and its clergy were prime targets, can be seen, at least in part, as acts of revenge and an expression of the frustration and rage of an Indonesian military regime that could not accept that its campaign to subdue East Timor had failed.