East Timor's second Bishop, Basilio de Nascimento, was injured and in hiding. A powerful Indonesian Army of over 26,000 roams the land, assisted by many thousands of forced militias. They are murdering, burning, destroying, and hunting Falintil resisters and ordinary East Timorese in the hills and mountains. The remaining population, now leaderless, is terrified. No services exist, no schools, no health centres.
Humanitarian agencies are closed.
The means of livelihood, the crops, the livestock, are lost. The annihilation is almost complete - a modern example of medieval barbarism, where the towns are sacked, the land ravaged, the men murdered, and the women and children carried away into slavery.