The Indonesian invasion of East Timor began 7 December 1975 when the Indonesian military invaded East Timor under the pretext of anti-colonialism. The overthrow of a popular and briefly Fretilin-led government sparked a violent quarter-century occupation in which between approximately 60,000 and 100,000 East Timorese soldiers and civilians are estimated to have died.
During the first few years of the war, the Indonesian military faced heavy insurgency resistance in the mountainous interior of the island, but from 1977–1978, the military procured new advanced weaponry from the United States, Australia, and other countries, to destroy Fretilin’s framework. However, the last two decades of the century saw continuous clashes between Indonesian and East Timorese groups over the status of East Timor, until 1999, when the East Timorese voted for independence in a United Nations Mission in East Timor referendum.
- 1 Background
- 2 Invasion
- 3 Integration efforts
- 4 Foreign involvement
- 5 Notes
- 6 Bibliography
- 7 External links
East Timor owes its territorial distinctiveness from the rest of Timor, and the Indonesian archipelago as a whole, to the fact that it was colonized by the Portuguese, not the Dutch (an agreement dividing the island between the two powers was signed in 1915). Colonial rule was replaced by the Japanese during World War II, whose occupation spawned a resistance movement that resulted in the deaths of 60,000 Timorese, or 13 percent of the entire population at the time. Following the war, the Dutch East Indies secured its independence as the independent Republic of Indonesia and the Portuguese, meanwhile, re-established control over East Timor. When East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in December 1975, "it had few prior links to the rest of the archipelago. As a former Portugese colony, it lacked a shared colonial experience with other regions."
Portuguese withdrawal and civil war
According to the pre-1974 Constitution of Portugal, East Timor, known until then as Portuguese Timor, was an "overseas province", just like any of the provinces that made up continental Portugal. "Overseas provinces" also included Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe in Africa; Macao in China; and had included Goa in the Indian sub-continent until 1960.
In April 1974, the left-wing Movimento das Forças Armadas (Armed Forces Movement, MFA) within the Portuguese military mounted a coup d'état against the right-wing authoritarian Estado Novo government in Lisbon (the so-called "Carnation Revolution"), and announced their intention to rapidly withdraw from Portugal's colonial possessions (including Angola, Mozambique and Guinea, where pro-independence guerrilla movements were fighting since the 1960s).
Unlike the African colonies, East Timor did not experience a war of national liberation. However, indigenous political parties rapidly sprang up in Timor: The Timorese Democratic Union (União Democrática Timorense, UDT) was the first political association to be announced after the Carnation Revolution. UDT was originally comprised of senior administrative leaders and plantation owners, as well as native tribal leaders. These leaders had conservative origins and showed allegiance to Portugal, but never advocated integration with Indonesia. Meanwhile, Fretilin (the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor) was comprised of administrators, teachers, and other "newly recruited members of the urban elites." Fretilin quickly became more popular than UDT due to a variety of social programs it introduced to the populace. However, UDT and Fretilin entered into a coalition by January 1975 with the unified goal of self-determination. This coalition came to represent almost all of the educated sector and the vast majority of the population. APODETI (Popular Democratic Association of Timor), a third minor party, also sprang up, and its goal was integration with Indonesia. However, the party had little popular appeal.
By April 1975, internal conflicts split the UDT leadership, with Lopes da Cruz leading a faction that wanted to abandon Fretilin. Lopes da Cruz was concerned that the radical wing of Fretilin would turn East Timor into a communist front. However, these Fretilin called this accusation an Indonesian conspiracy, as the radical wing did not have a power base. On August 11, Fretilin received a letter from UDT leaders terminating the coalition.
The UDT coup was a "neat operation", in which a show of force on the streets was followed by the takeover of vital infrastructure, such as radio stations, international communications systems, airport, police stations, etc. During the resulting civil war, leaders on each side "lost control over the behavior of their supporters", and while leaders of both UDT and Fretilin behaved with restraint, the uncontrollable supporters orchestrated various bloody purges and murders. UDT leaders arrested more than 80 Fretilin members, including future leader Xanana Gusmao. UDT members killed a dozen Fretilin members in four locations. The victims included a founding member of Fretilin, and a brother of its vice-president, Nicolau Lobato. Fretilin responded by appealing successfully to the Portuguese-trained East Timorese military units. UDT’s violent takeover thus provoked the three-week long civil war, pitting its fifteen hundred troops against the two thousand regular forces now led by Fretilin commanders. When the Portuguese-trained East Timorese military switched allegiance to Fretilin, it became to be known as Falintil.
By the end of August, UDT remnants were retreating toward the Indonesian border. A UDT group of nine hundred crossed into West Timor on September 24, 1975, followed by more than a thousand others, leaving Fretilin in control of East Timor for the ensuing three months. The death toll in the civil war reportedly included four hundred people in Dili and possibly sixteen hundred in the hills. In the aftermath, "numerous UDT supporters were beaten and jailed" by the Fretilin victors.
Indonesian nationalist and military hardliners, particularly leaders of the intelligence agency Kopkamtib and special operations unit, Opsus, saw the Portuguese coup as an opportunity for East Timor's annexation by Indonesia. The head of Opsus and close Indonesian President Suharto adviser, Major General Ali Murtopo, and his protege Brigadier General Benny Murdani headed military intelligence operations and spearheaded the Indonesia pro-annexation push. Indonesian domestic political factors in the mid-1970s, however, were not conducive to such expansionist intentions; the 1974–75 financial scandal surrounding petroleum producer Pertamina meant that Indonesia had to be cautious not to alarm critical foreign donors and bankers. Thus, Suharto was originally not in support of East Timor invasion.
Such considerations, however, became overshadowed by Indonesian and Western fears that victory for the left-wing Fretilin would lead to the creation of a communist state on Indonesia's border that could be used as a base for incursions by unfriendly powers into Indonesia, and a potential threat to Western submarines. It was also feared that an independent East Timor within the archipelago could inspire secessionist sentiments within Indonesian provinces. These concerns were successfully used to garner support from Western countries keen to maintain good relations with Indonesia, particularly the United States who at the time was completing its withdrawal from Indochina. The military intelligence organisations initially sought a non-military annexation strategy, intending to use APODETI as its integration vehicle. Indonesia's ruling "New Order" planned for the invasion of East Timor. There was no free expression in "New Order" Indonesia and thus no need was seen for consulting the East Timorese either.
In early September, as many as two hundred special forces troops launched incursions, which were noted by US intelligence, and in October, conventional military assaults followed. Five journalists, known as the Balibo Five, working for Australian news networks were executed by Indonesian troops in the border town of Balibo on October 16.
On 7 December 1975, Indonesian forces invaded East Timor.
Operasi Seroja (1975–1977)
Operasi Seroja (Operation Lotus) was the largest military operation ever carried out by Indonesia. Following naval bombardment of Dili, Indonesian seaborne troops landed in the city while simultaneously paratroopers descended. 641 Indonesian paratroopers jumped into Dili, where they engaged in six-hours combat with FALINTIL gunmen. By noon, Indonesian forces had taken the city at the cost of 35 Indonesian soldiers killed, while 122 FALINTIL gunmen died in the combat.
On December 10, a second invasion resulted in the capture of the second biggest town, Baucau, and on Christmas Day, around 10,000 to 15,000 troops landed at Liquisa and Maubara. By April 1976 Indonesia had some 35,000 soldiers in East Timor, with another 10,000 standing by in Indonesian West Timor. A large proportion of these troops were from Indonesia's elite commands. By the end of the year, 10,000 troops occupied Dili and another 20,000 had been deployed throughout East Timor. Massively outnumbered, FALINTIL troops fled to the mountains and continued guerrilla combat operations.
In the cities, Indonesian troops began killing East Timorese. At the start of the occupation, FRETILIN radio sent the following broadcast: "The Indonesian forces are killing indiscriminately. Women and children are being shot in the streets. We are all going to be killed.... This is an appeal for international help. Please do something to stop this invasion." One Timorese refugee told later of "rape [and] cold-blooded assassinations of women and children and Chinese shop owners". Dili's bishop at the time, Martinho da Costa Lopes, said later: "The soldiers who landed started killing everyone they could find. There were many dead bodies in the streets — all we could see were the soldiers killing, killing, killing." In one incident, a group of fifty men, women, and children – including Australian freelance reporter Roger East – were lined up on a cliff outside of Dili and shot, their bodies falling into the sea. Many such massacres took place in Dili, where onlookers were ordered to observe and count aloud as each person was executed. In addition to FRETILIN supporters, Chinese migrants were also singled out for execution; five hundred were killed in the first day alone.
Though the Indonesian military advanced into East Timor, most of the populations left the invaded towns and villages in coastal areas to the mountainous interior. FALANTIL forces, comprising 2,500 full-time regular troops from the former Portuguese colonial army, was well equipped by Portugal and "severely restricted the Indonesian army's ability to make headway." Thus, during the early months of the invasion, Indonesian control was mainly confined to major towns and villages such as Dili, Baucau, Aileu and Same.
Throughout 1976, the Indonesian military used a strategy in which troops attempted to move inland from the coastal areas to join up with troops parachuted further inland. However, this strategy was unsuccessful and the troops received stiff resistance from Falintil. For instance, it took 3,000 Indonesian troops four months to capture the town of Suai, a southern city only three kilometers from the coast. The military continued to restrict all foreigners and West Timorese from entering East Timor, and Suharto admitted in August 1976 that Fretilin "still possessed some strength here and there."
By April 1977, the Indonesian military faced a stalemate: Troops had not made ground advances for more than six months, and the invasion had attracted increasing adverse international publicity.
Encirclement, annihilation, and final cleansing (1977–1978)
In the early months of 1977, the Indonesian navy ordered missile-firing patrol-boats from the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as submarines from Germany. In February 1977, Indonesia also received thirteen OV-10 Bronco aircrafts from the Rockwell International Corporation with the aid of an official US government foreign military aid sales credit. The Bronco was ideal for the East Timor invasion, as it was specifically designed for counter-insurgency operations in difficult terrain.
By the beginning of February 1977, at least six of the 13 Broncos were operating in East Timor, and helped the Indonesian military pinpoint Fretilin positions. Along with the new weaponry, an additional 10,000 troops were sent in to begin new campaigns that would become known as the 'final solution'.
The 'final solution' campaigns involved two primary tactics: The 'encirclement and annihilation' campaign involved bombing villages and mountain areas from airplanes, causing famine and defoliation of ground cover. When surviving villagers came down to lower-lying regions to surrender, the military would simply shoot them. Other survivors were placed in resettlement camps where they were prevented from traveling or cultivating farmland. In early 1978, the entire civilian population of Arsaibai village, near the Indonesian border, was killed for supporting Fretilin after being bombarded and starved. During this period, allegations of Indonesian use of chemical weapons arose, as villagers reported maggots appearing on crops after bombing attacks. The success of the 'encirclement and annihilation' campaign led to the 'final cleansing campaign', in which children and men from resettlement camps would be forced to hold hands and march in front of Indonesian units searching for Fretilin members. When Fretilm members were found, the members would be forced to surrender or to fire on their own people. The Indonesian 'encirclement and annihilation' campaign of 1977–1978 broke the back of the main Fretilin militia and the capable Timorese President and military commander, Nicolau Lobato, was shot and killed by helicopter-borne Indonesian troops on December 31, 1978.
The 1975–1978 period from the beginning of the invasion to the largely successful conclusion of the encirclement and annihilation campaign proved to be the toughest period of the whole conflict, costing the Indonesians more than 1000 fatalities out of a total of 2000 Indonesian who died during their entire occupation.
FRETILIN clandestine movement (1980–1999)
The Fretilin militia who survived the Indonesian offensive of the late 1970s chose Xanana Gusmao as their leader. He was caught by Indonesian intelligence near Dili in 1992, and was replaced by Mau Honi, who was captured in 1993 and was in turn replaced by Nino Konis Santana. Santana was killed in an Indonesian ambush in 1998 and was replaced by Taur Matan Ruak. By the 1990s, there were only approximately less than 200 guerilla fighters who remained in the mountains and the separatist idea had largely shifted to the clandestine front in the cities. The clandestine movement, however, was largely paralyzed by continuous arrests and infiltration by Indonesian agents. The prospects of independence was very dark until the fall of Suharto in 1998 and President Habibie's sudden decision to allow a referendum in East Timor in 1999.
East Timorese casualties
In March 1976, UDT leader Lopes da Cruz reported that 60,000 Timorese had been killed during the invasion. A delegation of Indonesian relief workers agreed with this statistic. In an interview on 5 April 1977 with the Sydney Morning Herald, Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik said the number of dead was "50,000 people or perhaps 80,000". A figure of 100,000 is cited by McDonald (1980) and by Taylor. Amnesty International estimated that one third of East Timor's population, or 200,000 in total, died from military action, starvation and disease from 1975 to 1999. In 1979 the U.S. Agency for International Development estimated that 300,000 East Timorese had been moved into camps controlled by Indonesian armed forces.
In parallel to the military action, Indonesia also ran a civil administration. East Timor was given equal status to the other provinces, with an identical government structure. The province was divided into districts, sub districts, and villages along the structure of Javanse villages. By giving traditional tribal leaders positions in this new structure, Indonesia attempted to assimilate the Timorese through patronage.
Though given equal provincial status, in practice East Timor was effectively governed by the Indonesian military. The new administration built new infrastructure and raised productivity levels in commercial farming ventures. Productivity in coffee and cloves doubled , although East Timorese farmers were forced to sell their coffee at low prices to village cooperatives.
The Provisional Government of East Timor was installed in mid-December 1975, consisting of APODETI and UDT leaders. Attempts by the United Nations Secretary General's Special Representative, Vittorio Winspeare Guicciardi to visit Fretilin-held areas from Darwin, Australia were obstructed by the Indonesian military, which blockaded East Timor. On May 31, 1976, a 'People's Assembly' in Dili, selected by Indonesian intelligence, unanimously endorsed an 'Act of Integration', and on July 17, East Timor officially became the 27th province of the Republic of Indonesia. Although the United Nations had turned a blind eye to the Indonesian annexation of West Irian some years previously, the occupation of East Timor remained a public issue in many nations, Portugal in particular, and the UN never recognised either the regime installed by the Indonesians or the subsequent annexation.
The Indonesian government presented its annexation of East Timor as a matter of anticolonial unity. A 1977 booklet from the Indonesian Department of Foreign Affairs, entitled Decolonization in East Timor, paid tribute to the "sacred right of self-determination" and recognized APODETI as the true representatives of the East Timorese majority. It claimed that FRETILIN's popularity was the result of a "policy of threats, blackmail and terror". Later, Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas reiterated this position in his 2006 memoir The Pebble in the Shoe: The Diplomatic Struggle for East Timor. The island's original division into east and west, Indonesia argued after the invasion, was "the result of colonial oppression" enforced by the Portuguese and Dutch imperial powers. Thus, according to the Indonesian government, its annexation of the 27th province was merely another step in the unification of the archipelago which had begun in the 1940s.
There was little resistance from the international community to Indonesia's invasion, which undertaken at the height of the Cold War during which the officially neutral New Order administration of Indonesia was seen by Western countries as key to their interests in South East Asia.
A year earlier, in December 1974, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had been asked by an Indonesian government representative whether or not the US would approve the invasion. In March 1975, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia David Newsom, recommended a "policy of silence" on the issue and was supported by Kissinger. On October 8, 1975, a member of the United States National Security Council, Philip Habib, told meeting participants that "It looks like the Indonesians have begun the attack on Timor." Kissinger's response to Habib was, "I'm assuming you're really going to keep your mouth shut on this subject."
On the day before the invasion, U.S. President Gerald R. Ford and U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger met with Indonesian president Suharto. The United States had suffered a devastating setback in Vietnam, leaving Indonesia as the most important ally in the region. The US national interest "had to be on the side of Indonesia," Ford concluded. According to declassified documents released by the National Security Archive (NSA) in December 2001, they gave a green light for the invasion. In response to Suharto saying "We want your understanding if it was deemed necessary to take rapid or drastic action [in East Timor]." Ford replied, "We will understand and not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have." Kissinger similarly agreed, though he had fears that the use of US-made arms in the invasion would be exposed to public scrutiny, talking of their desire to "influence the reaction in America" so that "there would be less chance of people talking in an unauthorised way." The US also hoped the invasion would be relatively swift and not involve protracted resistance. "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly," Kissinger said to Suharto.
The US also played a crucial role in supplying weapons to Indonesia. A week after the invasion of East Timor the National Security Council prepared a detailed analysis of the Indonesian military units involved and the U.S. equipment they used. The analysis revealed that virtually all of the military equipment used in the invasion was U.S. supplied: U.S.-supplied destroyer escorts shelled East Timor as the attack unfolded; Indonesian marines disembarked from U.S.-supplied landing craft; U.S.-supplied C-47 and C-130 aircraft dropped Indonesian paratroops and strafed Dili with .50 caliber machine guns; while the 17th and 18th Airborne brigades which led the assault on the Timorese capital were "totally U.S. MAP supported," and their jump masters U.S. trained. While the US government claimed to have suspended military assistance from December 1975 to June 1976, military aid was actually above what the US Department of State proposed and the US Congress continued to increase it, nearly doubling it. The US also made four new offers of arms, including supplies and parts for 16 OV-10 Broncos  which, according to Cornell University Professor Benedict Anderson, are "specially designed for counter-insurgency actions against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons and wholly useless for defending Indonesia against a foreign enemy", adding that the policy continued under the Carter administration. In total, the United States furnished over $250,000,000 of military assistance to Indonesia between 1975 and 1979.
Testifying before the US Congress, the Deputy Legal Advisor of the US State Department, George Aldrich said the Indonesians "were armed roughly 90 percent with our equipment. ... we really did not know very much. Maybe we did not want to know very much but I gather that for a time we did not know." Indonesia was never informed of the supposed US "aid suspension". David T. Kenney, Country Officer for Indonesia in the US State Department, also testified before Congress that one purpose for the arms was "to keep that area [Timor] peaceful."
In September 2000 the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade released previously secret files that showed that comments by the Whitlam Labor government may have encouraged the Suharto regime to invade East Timor. Despite the unpopularity of the events in East Timor within some segments of the Australian public, the Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments allegedly co-operated with the Indonesian military and President Suharto to obscure details about conditions in East Timor and to preserve Indonesian control of the region. There was some disquiet towards policy with the Australian public, because of the deaths of the Australian journalists and arguably also because the actions of the Timorese people in supporting Australian forces during the Battle of Timor in World War II were well-remembered. Protests took place in Australia against the occupation, and some Australian nationals participated in the resistance movement.
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On December 12, 1975, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution according to which, "having heard the statements of the representatives of Portugal, as the Administering Power, concerning developments in Portuguese Timor...deplores the military intervention of the armed forces of Indonesia in Portuguese Timor and calls upon the Government of Indonesia to withdraw without delay its armed forces from the Territory...and recommends that the Security Council take urgent action to protect the territorial integrity of Portuguese Timor and the inalienable right of its people to self-determination".
On December 22, 1975, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 384 which deplored Indonesia's actions and regretted that Portugal had not lived up to its duties as the administering power. The Resolution called upon all nations and parties to respect East Timor's territorial integrity and right to self-determination. It also urged the United Nations Secretary-General to send one of his representatives to assess the situation and decided that the Council would remain seized of the situation.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the US ambassador to the UN at the time, wrote in his autobiography that "the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook [with regard to the invasion of East Timor]. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success."  Later, Moynihan admitted that as US ambassador to the UN, he had defended a "shameless" Cold War policy toward East Timor.
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