No people on earth has seen a greater portion of its population perish under tyranny since the nightmare of the European Holocaust. Despite world outrage over these events, and despite the United Nations resolutions calling for immediate Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor, the occupation, and the cruel abuses of human rights attendant upon it, continue to this day. For more than twenty years East Timor has now lived under a brutal military occupation. Arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial executions are everyday occurrences, as are programs of compulsory relocation, confinement in concentration camps, and systematic starvation.
Political opposition is punished by detention, torture and death.
Contact with the outside world has been severely restricted, and were it not for the courage of the several foreign journalists who witnessed the event, even the appalling massacre of more than two hundred peaceful Timorese demonstrators at a Dili cemetery in 1991 would have gone unrecorded and unprotected. The unfolding human disaster in East Timor has been possible only because Indonesia has been able to conceal its deeds from the eyes of the world. The United States and other governments, as strategic allies, investment partners and suppliers of weapons to Indonesia, share a measure of responsibility for the tragic situation in East Timor. Ninety percent of the weapons used in the invasion of East Timor were supplied by the United States, which continues to be a major provider of arms and military aid to Indonesia. These governments hold the power to speed an end to the suffering in Timor.