A United Nations report leaked to the Australian and reported in its January 19 edition found that under Indonesia’s brutal occupation of East Timor between 1975 and 1999 some 183,000 East Timorese people were killed. Public beheadings, genital torture, burying victims alive, burning victims, rape and sexual slavery were all carried out by the Indonesian armed forces, along with the use of napalm. The report documented 8500 cases of torture and found that the Indonesian security forces employed a conscious policy of starving East Timorese civilians. Those responsible for the murder and violence have not been brought to justice. The Australian government — which under both Labor and the Coalition supported the Indonesian occupation for more than two decades — is currently escalating its ties with the Indonesian military, including the elite Kopassus force, which was behind much of the violence in East Timor.

From Green Left Weekly, January 25, 2006.
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