LYCOS RETRIEVER 
East Timor: Indonesian Timor
built 123 days ago
Some journalists had even commented that this crisis had entered a total state of chaos and that the paramilitaries in East Timor were out of control. However, the Indonesian-backed paramilitaries were not out of control because they were controlled and supported by the Indonesian military. And, according to the Observer, the crisis had been well-planned for almost a year. The Indonesian military could easily tell the paramilitaries to stop and the international community, especially those who supported and backed the Indonesian regime were easily able to exert pressure on Jakarta to stop this violence, yet they were slow to do so.
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A standard propaganda line out of Jakarta—often repeated by the western media—is that the fighting in East Timor represents a "civil war." In fact, there had been a very brief civil war before the Indonesians invaded. For the last 25 years... it has been as much a civil war as the Nazi conquests in Europe.
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[One] militia in East Timor, Besi Mara Rutih, was said to be responsible for massacring dozens of people in a church in Liquica in April. The report stated that the group "claimed by early February [1999] to have a membership of 2890 and was going on joint patrols with Battalion 143 of the Indonesian army." A week after the church massacre, this militia attacked the convoy of Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Belo. The Human Rights Watch report stated that "Eyewitness accounts from both attacks indicate that troops from the Liquica district and Maubara sub district commands were present at the time of the militia attacks and far from trying to prevent violence provided active support to their operations."
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The democratic struggle in East Timor and Indonesia has been deeply affected by religious change in both societies. Catholic conversion in East Timor became, among other things, a means of refuge and resistance against Indonesian rule. For many Indonesian Muslims, the Islamic revival lent moral weight to the demand for democratization, human rights, and the rule of law. For others, a minority, the revival became a tool with which to leverage a conservative defense of the political status quo. In covering Indonesia, the media would do well to capture—and convey to the world—this complex play of religious forces. In East Timor, the whole world was watching, and it made a difference.
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Indonesian rule in East Timor was often marked by extreme violence and brutality, such as the Dili massacre and the Liquiçá Church Massacre. In addition, subsistence agriculture, food, and medical supplies were deliberately obstructed, resulting in heavy excess mortality. From 1975 until 1993, attacks on civilian populations were only nominally reported in the Western press. Death tolls reported during the occupation varied from 60,000 to 200,000 . A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a lower range of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974-1999, namely, approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness. Since each data source used under-reports actual deaths, this is considered a minimum. Amnesty International estimated deaths at 200,000 .
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The final and most bitter irony of the East Timor tragedy is that the violence has had a corrosive impact on Indonesia’s own fragile efforts at democratic reform. The failure in East Timor only stiffened the military’s anti-democratic resolve. Startled by U.N. calls for investigations of human-rights abuses, key generals in the military concluded in late 1999 that further democratization would only lead to human-rights prosecutions. The ascent of military hard-liners has ... put new wind in the sails of anti-democratic Muslims. Having backed Suharto in 1998, these conservatives had been discredited in the eyes of most Indonesians.
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Indonesian Timor