Timor-Leste (officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste) comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor and Oecussi-Ambeno, an exclave on the north-western side of the island, entirely bounded by Indonesian West Timor. The nation‟s borders were defined by its past as a colony of Portugal from the 16th century.
Figure 5 A map of Timor-Leste showing its 13 districts.
A disorderly end to Portuguese colonisation resulted from an effective abandonment of Timor by the Portuguese in 1975. Two major political parties emerged at this time: Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente), a socialist and nationalist party that had established strong support in rural areas, and UDT (União Democrática Timorense), the party of the traditional elites who originally sought to remain a part of Portugal (Dunn, 1983). Following efforts by Fretilin to seize power in the Oecusse enclave in June, in August 1975 UDT attempted a coup in an effort to frustrate increasing support for Fretilin (ibid). Tens of Fretilin leaders were arrested and dozens killed, resulting in a 3 week conflict between UDT cadres and Fretilin commanded Timorese troops of the Portuguese army. By the end of September UDT was defeated and thousands fled to West Timor, leaving Fretilin in control. Total casualties in the
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conflict were in the low thousands (Turner, 1992), and the first cases of persons missing in conflict and disappearances of those arrested by Fretilin and held in official prisons date from this period.
On November 28 1975 Fretilin made a unilateral declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (Jolliffe, 1978) that was recognised by a handful of other nations but not by the important local players of Indonesia, Portugal or Australia. Indonesia responded by having UDT and other party leaders sign a declaration calling for integration with Indonesia. Indonesian forces invaded on 7 December 1975, bombarding the capital Dili, and fighting street battles with fighters of Falintil (Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste), Fretilin‟s armed wing. By the end of the year there were 30,000 Indonesian troops in the country, and Fretilin / Falintil had fled to the hills from where they conducted guerrilla operations. Indonesia formalised its control, installing a provisional Government, followed by an „act of integration‟ in which Timor-Leste became the 27th province of the Republic of Indonesia. Whilst at this time Fretilin controlled much of the territory, over the next two years the use of aircraft and defoliants broke the back of the resistance, notably an Indonesian campaign of „encirclement and annihilation‟ in 1977 - 78 (Schwarz, 1994; CAVR, 2005: 3.12). Hundreds of thousands of civilians were forced into camps where they risked starvation, to deprive the fighters of logistical support (Taylor, 1991). During this time many of those Timorese who actively supported Fretilin were living in remote hill areas to escape Indonesian forces and Fretilin was forcing the population to move away from lowland areas controlled by the Indonesians. The Indonesian campaign dispersed families and led to many deaths from illness and hunger: many of those missing from this time died in this way rather than through direct military action. During this period there are also a significant number of cases of young children, particularly those of Falintil fighters, being taken by military personnel and other Indonesian officials and adopted into their families. Armed resistance continued over the next two decades but at a much reduced level. By the 1990s only a few hundred fighters remained, and the struggle for independence had become a clandestine movement based largely in urban areas. Throughout this period however the movement was targeted by Indonesian security forces, with regular arrests and disappearances from detention occurring (e.g. ETHRC, 1998). The Santa Cruz massacre, where several hundred were killed at a funeral at a Dili church in 1991 (CAVR, 2006) is one example: the bodies of those who died were taken away by the security forces, and the families have no knowledge of what happened to their loved ones.
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Suharto was forced from power in Indonesia in 1998 and in May 1999, following strong international pressure, Indonesia and Portugal announced a vote by the people of Timor-Leste, to be supervised by the UN, to choose between autonomy within Indonesia or independence. Whilst the referendum itself, on 30 August 1999, was generally calm, chaos erupted when the result, 78.5% in favour of independence, was reported (BBC, 1999). Pro-Indonesian militias began attacking people in Dili and massacres were reported around the country, including the infamous church massacres in Liquiça and Suai, each resulting in the death of up to 200 people (OHCHR, 2000). In the latter case 26 bodies were recovered and identified from a gravesite over the border in West Timor, but it is assumed that many more than this died but they remain missing. Some 300,000, around 30% of the population, were forced into camps in West Timor and around 75% of the population displaced. The violence was ended by the arrival of an Australian led international peace-keeping force on 20 September. A total of around 1,400 people are estimated to have been killed in the violence, and some 200 bodies recovered and identified: the remainder remain missing.19
The Missing in Timor-Leste thus derive from three very distinct periods of violence: the internal conflict between Timorese political parties in 1975, the Indonesian invasion and occupation (and resistance to it) from 1975 to 1999, and the spasm of violence inspired by the Indonesian military both before and after the referendum of 1999. The circumstances in which people went missing during the conflict of the Indonesian occupation are such that the total number missing remains unclear. The CAVR (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor Leste, see Section 4.3.3) has estimated that between 1975 and 1999, some 18,600 were killed, and more than 100,000 died of hunger and illness, above the peacetime baseline, with many of these deaths occurring between 1975 and 1979 (CAVR, 2005: 7.2). The Missing will be found in both categories. A total of 835 disappearances were reported to CAVR during its data collection, and these are shown as a function of time in Figure 6. Whilst these are likely to represent only a small fraction of disappearances during the conflict, they show the pattern over time, with peaks in the first 10 years of the occupation and another in 1999.
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Figure 6 Number of acts of disappearance reported to CAVR (Silva and Ball, 2006) However, these data exclude all those missing as a result of death through illness or hunger after separation from family members, which is likely to far outnumber disappearances following arrest: one study suggests in excess of 160,000 deaths from hunger and illness over the entire period of conflict (Figure 7, Silva and Ball, 2006).
Figure 7 Estimated total number of deaths due to hunger and illness in Timor-Leste: data from CAVR Retrospective Mortality Survey. (Silva and Ball, 2006; the shaded line shows
the margin of error, and the straight line an extrapolation from death rates in 1972-4.) An estimate made by cross-referencing the ICRC list of the Missing (see Section 7.1) used as a sampling frame for this study with other sources suggest that tens of thousands are missing. As such, the missing phenomenon represents one of the principal continuing impacts of the years of conflict for the nation as a whole.
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Several victims‟ groups have been initiated in Timor-Leste for victims of the 1999 violence, with an emphasis on the wives and mothers of the Missing and the dead. These groups serve to bring women together for support and to advocate for their needs. A group in Bobonaro district has small premises from where women run a business selling used clothes, providing both livelihood and a place where women can gather on a daily basis. In Dili, the 12 November Committee represents the families of those, mostly young men, missing from the Santa Cruz massacre of 1991. This group has good connection to political leaders and has sufficient resources to support a volunteer staff. They have led efforts to exhume the bodies of the Missing, with the first victims of the Santa Cruz massacre recovered and identified in 2009 (Blau and Fondebrider, 2010).