Indonesian Occupation Of East Timor Research Articles

Keeping the Issue Alive: TAPOL and the International Campaign for Self-Determination and Justice in East Timor

As Portugal commenced decolonization in Timor-Leste and Indonesian military prepared to invade the territory, TAPOL warned of the humanitarian tragedy that would ensue. Throughout Indonesian occupation (1975–99), TAPOL advocated for the human rights of the East Timorese. Looking at the role and activities of one key activist organization provides a new approach to analyzing the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.

The Catholic Church’s Campaign against the “Ethnic, Cultural and Religious Extinction of the Identity of the People” of East Timor: 1981–89

The Catholic Church hierarchy in occupied East Timor launched a major campaign in the early 1980s which bore directly on issues of East Timorese nationalism and national identity, arguing that Indonesian human rights abuses in the territory were leading to the extinction’ of the identity of the East Timorese people. From 1981 onward, the Timorese Church expressed concerns over the “ethnic, cultural and religious extinction of the identity of the people” of East Timor. This campaign and the international networks it mobilized stung the Indonesian administration and forced it to respond. Examining the history of the Church’s role in the constitution of politlical community in East Timor through the Portuguese and Indonesian eras, this paper details the evolution of this campaign from 1981 onward, and the way Church campaigns over Timorese cultural and religious identity contributed to the development of a national identity and reinforced claims of national self-determination.

The evolving narrative of denial: the Fraser government and the Timorese genocide, 1975–1980

ABSTRACTAs research by the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor documents, the years 1975–1980 constituted the worst period of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, during which grave human rights took place involving a high loss of life. In Australia, the government headed by Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (1975–1983) sought to present itself as a supporter of human rights and the international rule of law. It also prioritized relations with the Suharto regime, which it saw as key to its policy position in Southeast Asia. These two positions came into conflict due to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. The Fraser government therefore worked to propagate a narrative concerning East Timor which denied the seriousness of the situation, distorted the historical narrative, deflected blame from Indonesia, and depicted the Australian position as principled and realistic. This paper examines the development of this narrative as events progressed and information concerning the crisis in East Timor came to the attention of the outside world. It also examines how the Fraser government employed this narrative internationally in order to protect the Suharto regime from scrutiny.

Reflections on BDS

Reflections on BDS

ASPEK KEKERASAN SEBAGAI REFLEKSI DAN FORMATIF KONDISI SOSIAL POLITIK DI EKS-TIMOR TIMUR DALAM JAZZ PARFUM & INSIDEN KARYA SENO GUMIRA AJIDARMA

This study aims to describe (1) aspects of violence in short stories in Jazz, Parfum,dan Insiden, (2) socio-political conditions as backgrounds to the violence, (3)the possibility for the fiction to reform society. The data source was Jazz, Parfum, danInsiden by Seno Gumira Ajidarma. The data were analyzed by the content analysisemploying the descriptive qualitative technique. The data trustworthiness was assessedthrough the semantic validity. The findings show that (1) aspects of violenceinclude murder, torture, kidnap, rape, and other types of violence, (2) socio-politicalconditions as backgrounds to the violence are human right violations including theDili incident at the Santa Cruz cemetery on 12 November 1991 and the conditions ofthe occupied East Timor in general, and (3) the fiction has a role in forming readers’awareness of violent acts by government apparatus in the occupation of East Timorby the New Order government that tended to be militaristic and authoritarian. Thefiction indirectly gave contribution to the downfall of the New Order governmentand the independence of Timor Leste.Keywords: violence, East Timor, literature’s reflective role, literature’s formativerole

East Timor: A Historical Singularity

Abstract During the 24 years of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, to talk about its cultural individuality as a product of its history - focusing on what set it apart from Indonesia - was an act likely to raise suspicions of some kind of manipulation of history for political purposes. Naturally, the same suspicions could fall on anyone assuming an opposite view, that is a view that valued the connection uniting the two peoples and discarded what separated them. In this paper, we adhere more to the first perspective. Obviously, we are not driven by the desire to prove that East Timor had to be, a priori, independent; this is by no means the task of a historian. We are simply trying to explain, a posteriori, why, in the referendum of 30 August 1999, the people of East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence

Circulating Stories: East Timorese in Australia and Questions of Post‐Independence Identity

AbstractDuring the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, diasporic groups played a central role in the campaign for self‐determination. Throughout the occupation, East Timorese in Australia maintained a strong sense of long‐distance nationalism, which drove, directly or indirectly, communal and social activities. The fight to free East Timor was at the core of the exiles' collective imagination, defining them as a largely homeland‐focused community. However, in the aftermath of the independence, the role and position of the diaspora have been less clear and the exiles have struggled to redefine their relationship with their home country. Personal experiences upon return and perceptions of political, cultural, economic, and social development (or lack thereof) have led to renewed questioning of identity and belonging. This article explores the renewed questioning of identity and belonging embedded in people's ‘circulating stories’ of change, sacrifice and return.

Sleeping hegemons: Third-party intervention following territorial integrity transgressions

It is not clear why some territorial transgressions lead to intervention by the international community and others do not. As most territorial transgressions lead to a reaction from the international community but a few, however, do not, this study examines the main determinants for non-intervention by capable members of the international community, following violation of the territorial integrity norm by a deviant state. This article focuses on which characteristics of the norm-transgressing state, the conflict, and the state capable of enforcing the norm affect the occurrence of non-intervention. This comparative study examines six major alleged transgressions of the territorial integrity norm — the occupation of Tibet, the Suez crisis, the 1967 six-day war, the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara, and the 1989 Gulf crisis — using a multi-methodological approach based on qualitative methods, most notably fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Analysis reveals that the absence of high security costs to the hegemon in combination with (a) strategically important security relations between the transgressor and the hegemon or (b) absence of military and economic vulnerability are generally necessary and sufficient for non-intervention.

Violence, Resistance, and Reconciliation: A Mimetic Analysis of East Timorese Storytelling

Violence, Resistance, and Reconciliation:A Mimetic Analysis of East Timorese Storytelling Joel Hodge (bio) I will explore some aspects of violence and group reconciliation by analyzing events in a border town called Suai, between East and West Timor, in 1999, with the help of the insights of René Girard. To shed light on the nature of state-sanctioned violence and the process of reconciliation and remembrance, I will draw on existing sources that have documented the events in Suai in 1999, particularly focusing on one witness's recollections of what occurred after the massacre that took place there. This essay will argue that the massacre in Suai shows the systematic nature of the violence perpetrated by the state during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, and that the group reconciliation after the massacre shows how the Timorese came to terms with the systematic violence perpetrated against them. In particular, it will posit that the awareness of the victim was important for group reconciliation and truth-telling within the context of the Christian faith of the East Timorese. The essay cannot give an exhaustive analysis of all aspects of 1999 but will give a Girardian perspective that may help us to understand some elements of how storytelling based on recognition of the victim informs reconciliation and disrupts the violent imagination of the state. [End Page 71] Mimetic Theory and "A Different Story" As is well known, through literary and anthropological analysis, Girard has proposed that humans are uniquely structured by their imitated or mimetic desire, that is, that humans desire according to the desire of another. 1 Humans are brought into relationship by shared desires that form human identity. However, when common objects of desire are fought over, mimetic desire is distorted into rivalry and conflict. The accumulation of these conflicts results in cultural breakdown. According to Girard, these rivalries are resolved in the unification of desire that occurs in scapegoating a victim; for example, Oedipus is identified as a scapegoat for the plague occurring in Thebes. This scapegoating produces a newfound cultural unity and order built on the lie of unanimous violence that the victim is guilty. To perpetuate this cultural order, Girard says that sacrificial rituals emerge to imitate the original scapegoating violence, and myths develop to render the violence as legitimate. In his analysis of ancient and modern literature and culture, Girard found that the scapegoating that lay at the heart of human culture was discussed in a different way by the Bible than as seen in comparable myths. Girard argues that the victim's role in culture and myth is steadily exposed by the Hebrews and is definitively revealed in Christ, who is killed as victim and is claimed to reveal God as his forgiveness exposes the distorted cycle of desire and violence. James Alison has this to say about the implications of Girard's analysis: Girard's thought is, above all, shown in the reading of texts. Anyone who has read any of his books, whether on myths or the Bible, Shakespeare, Proust or Dostoyevsky, Freud, Levi-Strauss or Nietzsche, cannot but see that what Girard does is read texts. Most of those who attempt to learn from his thought do likewise. Again, it is not just that there is an idea, and that the idea needs texts in order to show itself. I think that there is a more profound point here about the nature of truth-seeking: the idea can only be made present as the undoing of the various forms of sacrificial cover-up to which our texts and stories are prone. The idea just is the gradual, and contingent, undoing of lies. There is no "idea" without the contemporary putting of it into practice as a detection of sacrificial structure and the learning to tell a different story. 2 Girard is concerned with the uncovering of the victim and the consequences of mimetic desire in human culture. This uncovering can only occur as it is put into practice in people's lives in order to tell "a different story." Therefore, the unmasking of the victim and distorted desire is not solely an academic [End Page 72] exercise in which the object is...

Towards a Researcher-Advocacy Model for Asylum Seekers: A Pilot Study Amongst East Timorese Living in Australia

During the 24-year Indonesian occupation of East Timor, widespread human rights abuses led to the flight of political dissidents to neighboring countries. We report a pilot study assessing a ‘Researcher– Advocacy’ model among East Timorese asylum seekers residing in Australia. The aim was to combine elements of advocacy, quantitative and qualitative research, and strategic assistance in a program of engagement with this marginalized group. Thirty-three consecutive asylum-seeker clients attending a newly formed clinic participated in the study, representing a quarter of the known population of asylum seekers from East Timor living in Sydney at the time. High levels of trauma including torture and other human rights abuses were recorded. Respondents also reported a wide range of resettlement and adaptational difficulties, particularly relating to their uncertain residency status. Eighty percent met criteria for one or more psychiatric disorder. The wider benefits of the study included the extension of services to a group that previously had shown a reluctance to seek assistance for traumatic stress, the engagement of the exile community as a whole, and building the capacity to respond both in Australia and in East Timor to the humanitarian emergency of 1999. Scientific limitations of the model included the labor-intensive nature of the program, the small and selective sample recruited and incomplete data collection.

Towards a Researcher–Advocacy Model for Asylum Seekers: A Pilot Study Amongst East Timorese Living in Australia

During the 24-year Indonesian occupation of East Timor, widespread human rights abuses led to the flight of political dissidents to neighboring countries. We report a pilot study assessing a ‘Researcher– Advocacy’ model among East Timorese asylum seekers residing in Australia. The aim was to combine elements of advocacy, quantitative and qualitative research, and strategic assistance in a program of engagement with this marginalized group. Thirty-three consecutive asylum-seeker clients attending a newly formed clinic participated in the study, representing a quarter of the known population of asylum seekers from East Timor living in Sydney at the time. High levels of trauma including torture and other human rights abuses were recorded. Respondents also reported a wide range of resettlement and adaptational difficulties, particularly relating to their uncertain residency status. Eighty percent met criteria for one or more psychiatric disorder. The wider benefits of the study included the extension of services to a group that previously had shown a reluctance to seek assistance for traumatic stress, the engagement of the exile community as a whole, and building the capacity to respond both in Australia and in East Timor to the humanitarian emergency of 1999. Scientific limitations of the model included the labor-intensive nature of the program, the small and selective sample recruited and incomplete data collection.

Corporate Hegemony

The study asks whether the news coverage accorded the near-genocide in East Timor by the Globe and Mail( G&M) followed the predictions of the ‘propaganda model’ (PM) of media operations laid out and applied by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.The research asks whether the G&M's news coverage of the near-genocide in East Timor and of Canada's ‘aiding and abetting’ of ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ in occupied East Timor was hegemonic or ideologically serviceable given Canada's (geo)political-economic interests in Indonesia throughout the invasion and occupation periods. Did the news coverage provide a political and historical benchmark by which to inform the Canadian public (or not) and influence (or not) Canadian government policy on Indonesia and East Timor?

Peace through Nonviolent Action: The East Timorese Resistance Movement's Strategy for Engagement

The transition from violent struggle against the Indonesian occupation of East Timor to nonviolent resistance increased the chances of victory for the independence movement. This movement conforms to the theory of the efficacy of nonviolent political action. Aware of the difficulties facing their movement, East Timorese resistance leaders emphasised the need to advance their nonviolence strategy through links with concerned international groups. Links between the resistance movement in East Timor and the pro-democracy movement in Indonesia were also beneficial for the cause of East Timor's independence.

East Timor, twenty years after: Resistir e Vencer (to resist is to win)

Indonesia has occupied East Timor for the past twenty years. In spite of continuous military actions, and the death or displacement of one‐third of its population, East Timor has not been conquered. During the course of the struggle, the East Timorese have developed a distinct sense of nationality and adopted the major vernacular language, Tétun, for communication. More than ninety per cent of the population are Roman Catholics, and the Church has become the moral fortress of the oppressed. A change of leadership in Indonesia could trigger off great upheavals and give the East Timorese another chance at independence.

Funu—Liberation War—Continues in East Timor

East Timor, northwest of Australia on the eastern half of the island of Timor, became independent on 28 November 1975 after a brief civil war following the voluntary withdrawal of Portugal as a colonial power. A government led by the nationalistic and “populist Catholic” Frente Revolucionaria de Timor-Leste Independente (FRETILIN—Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) came to power at that time, but Indonesian troops subsequently invaded and occupied East Timor. Indonesia now refers to East Timor and a territory similarly invaded and occupied, West Papua, as its provinces.