Also, many students leave school early to work. He said that the students who stay in school are pressured to act as informers against their classmates who might be politically active. We asked the aid worker to outline villages that are in particular need. There were more. It was clear that there is widespread hunger in East Timor.
More recent testimony suggests that conditions have only worsened.
It is abundantly clear that the East Timorese are suffering severely from a combination of political repression and social mismanagement, and that conditions under the Indonesian regime of occupation cannot be expected to improve. We will not attempt to list all the reports of these incidents over the past year but the documentation from reliable sources is extensive. Mr Dasdores is a relative of Bella Galhos, one of three Timorese living in Canada. We are profoundly angered by his death, and afraid that terror tactics in East Timor could easily make a widespread return. The changes in Indonesia have opened up many possibilities for East Timor, but so far the new Indonesian government has remained almost as inflexible as the last.