And Ain't I a Women: Women of East Timor

Women of East Timor

"In 20 years, an untold number of women went through the horror in the Indonesian prisons all over East Timor. Many of us died of starvation and exhaustion in the mountains; others died, cremated by the napalm bombs; others were shot in the battlefield; others languished in military controlled prisons until raped and executed. Many of us carry on our bodies the scars of the interminable days and nights of prison."

These words begin the message from the women of the East Timorese resistance to the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

The Indonesian government is beginning to talk about autonomy, even independence, for East Timor, when "the time is right". But the women of East Timor cannot wait for a more "suitable" time; their situation is desperate.

As the killings and beatings continue in this tiny country, so do the atrocities against women specifically — rape; forced sterilisation, often without the women's knowledge; torture; and sex slavery to service the soldiers of the Indonesian regime.

Simon de Faux, a Victorian nurse who volunteered to go to East Timor, reported on his return two years ago that he had treated the victims of rape, including women whose vaginas were torn from being repeatedly raped.

According to testimony by an East Timorese woman, Odilia Victor, who was refused political asylum in Australia in 1996, women are forced to marry Indonesian soldiers in East Timor, then they and their children are abandoned when the soldiers leave.

The former president Suharto backed a "planned parenthood" program in Dili (for which he won a United Nations population prize), which forcibly sterilised an estimated 75,000 East Timorese women between 1985-90.

Miranda Sissons, author of From One Day to Another: Violations of Women's Reproductive and Sexual Rights in East Timor, says that fear of covert sterilisation by tubal ligation is one of the main reasons that East Timorese women are reluctant to use Indonesian medical facilities.

Women who are politically active in East Timor, or whose family members are, are often targeted for "special treatment" by the military.

However, the problems the women of East Timor face are not just those of physical violence. Women are systematically discriminated against. Sissons says that almost two-thirds of East Timorese women of child-bearing age have no schooling, compared to 15.2% for Indonesia overall.

The East Timorese women's statement to the Beijing conference ends: "Dear friends, in the freedom you live in the free world, in the peace of your families, in the dignity of your work in small and big cities, don't forget East Timor, don't forget the East Timorese women, their plight, their struggle and the struggle of the people."

Four years have passed since that plea was made. The need to end the occupation of East Timor is immediate and great. Even one more day of Indonesian rule will bring extra suffering. Indonesian troops must withdraw, their vigilantes must be disarmed, the occupation must end.

The people of East Timor have said repeatedly that they want independence. We demand that the Australian government supports nothing less than the East Timorese people's full right to independence now.

By Margaret Allum

From GLW issue 347