After more than a quarter century of struggle and brutality East Timor became an independent nation in May 2002. It has been estimated that over 100,000 people died in East Timor’s path to independence, which reached its climax between January and October of 1999. The crisis in East Timor stemmed from the question of its political status. Originally established as a colony of Portugal, East Timor was invaded and annexed by Indonesia in 1975. In subsequent years the Indonesian armed forces and pro-Indonesian militias carried out a series of brutal and systematic human rights violations. Most of the violence in 1999 was a result of a referendum regarding East Timor’s political status. The referendum was overseen by the United Nations and in spite of persistent threats towards supporters of independence the public voted resoundingly in favor of autonomy. The vote, which took place on August 30, was announced five days later and precipitated a wave of violence more brutal than any of the situation’s monitors had anticipated. By late September, when a UN-sanctioned military force arrived to restore order, more than half the population, or roughly 400,000 civilians, had been forced to leave their homes and thousands were murdered. Many civilians were subjected to torture and brought to detention camps where they were denied access to international aid and assistance. Still worse, hundreds of civilians were decapitated, disemboweled or hacked to death with machetes.
Whether the violence was the work of local militiamen, rogue elements of the Indonesian armed forces or a carefully orchestrated plan led by Indonesian officials one conclusion is clear: the violence in East Timor in 1999 represented a systematic operation undertaken against the civilian population of East Timor, specifically those who supported the movement for independence. A report commissioned by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights concludes that, “as a matter of international law, then, those acts constituted not only grave violations of human rights but also crimes against humanity.”