Women are the ones smuggling messages in and out - women in Dili are the link between the capital and the rest of the world. It took the Santa Cruz massacre for the Indonesians to realise how important women are for supplying food, looking after health, passing on information. Exposto says that young Timorese children and the unborn are seen as soft targets by the Indonesians. Many children are now brought up in orphanages, unknown and unnecessary before 1975, but now a product of 20 years' deliberate and systematic break-up of the East Timorese population.
Whole villages are without fathers - and known as widows' villages.
Others have been destroyed completely, their people shifted to resettlement camps on infertile land, where they can no longer be self-sufficient. Forced Birth Control Future generations of Timorese are also threatened by the lack of adequate health care for pregnant women, forced abortions and sterilisation. Because women are so malnourished and lack in medication, they have difficulty in bearing children. Timorese women who do become pregnant are reluctant to be cared for by Indonesian doctors. Witnessing the forbearance of women who've suffered in this way must also strengthen young people's resolve.