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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
For centuries a backwater of Portuguese colonialism at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, East Timor should have won its independence on 28 November 1975 when the majority FRETILIN party declared independence. Days later, ahead of a Portuguese withdrawal, Indonesian forces advancing from Indonesian West Timor invaded and occupied the half-island nation. Declassified documents reveal that, fearful of the emergence of a “Southeast Asian Cuba,” the US Ford Administration abetted the invasion, just as the US emerged as the largest arms supplier to the pro-Western government of General Suharto. Nevertheless, the United Nations never recognized the illegal Indonesian invasion and FRETILIN and supporters, including East Timor's former colonial overlord, Portugal, waged a successful diplomatic struggle to re-engage the decolonization/independence question.
1. The vexed question of reconciliation and national unity versus justice is addressed from a comparative international perspective in Reyko Huang and Geoffrey C. Gunn, “Reconciliation as State-building in East Timor,” Lusotopie, Médias, pouvoir et identitiés, Bourdeaux: Sciences Po/Paris: Editions Karthala, 2004, pp.19-38.
2. Joseph Nevins, “The Making of ‘Ground Zero’ in East Timor in 1999: An Analysis of International Complicity in Indonesia's Crimes,” Asian Survey, vol. XLII, no 4, July/August 2002, p. 633. Nevins has expanded upon this argument in his A Not-So-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor, Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2005, pp.66-67.
3. Geoffrey C. Gunn, Timor Loro Sae: 500 years, Macau: Livros do Oriente, 1999, p.237.
4. Saito Shizuo, Watashi no gunseiki: Indoneshia dokuritsu zenya [My memories of military administration The eve of Indonesian independence] Tokyo: Jawa Gunseiki kankokai, 1977, pp. 10-16. As Japan's Ambassador to the UN during the initial UN vote on the invasion, Saito proudly recalled that he “vigorously lobbied in favor of Indonesia's invasion as a legitimate action.” Saito was also a military administrator in Indonesia during the Japanese occupation and a postwar Ambassador to Jakarta (1964-66).
5. Paulo Gorjão, “Japan's Foreign Policy and East Timor,” Asian Survey, vol.XLII, no. 5 September/October, 2002, pp.754-771.
6. Nevins, “The Making of Ground Zero,” p. 633.
7. Geoffrey C. Gunn with Jefferson Lee, A Critical View of Western Journalism and Scholarship in East Timor, Manila: Journal of Contemporary Asia Press, 1994, p. 191.
8. Geoffrey C. Gunn, New World Hegemony in the Malay World, Trenton: N.J.: Red Sea Press, 2000, xvi.
9. Dow Jones, 12 September 1999 “Japan not studying change in aid toward Indonesia.”
10. Japan's official position on political and economic support for Indonesia and its position on East Timor can be tracked in the “Diplomatic bluebook,” a summary analysis of the Tokyo government's official position as expressed by Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. <http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/index.html>
11. Nevins, “The Making of Ground Zero,” p. 624.
12. The context of the military-militia violence surrounding the historic UN referendum of 30 August 1999 is explained in Richard Tanter, Mark Selden and Stephen R. Shalom, Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. The question of ultimate responsibility for the violence of 1999 is explored in Richard Tanter, Desmond Ball and Gerry van Klinken, Masters of Terror: Indonesia's Military and Violence in East Timor, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
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