Students With A View

Genocide always seems to be the most devastating and despicable act in our world. However, these horrible acts all have one thing in common: apparently no one knows what has happened until after hundreds of thousands of deaths. The Holocaust, for example, was hidden from everyone until almost all the Jews were dead. Today, in East Timor, one such genocide has happened, and still, the UN and others have failed to recognize it.

            In 1975, the former Portuguese-colonized country of East Timor gained full independence. However in December of that year, the Indonesian Government attacked East Timor with the approval of the Ford administration in the United States [http://www.gendercide.org/case_timor.html] and killed at least 100,000 people by July 1976. So not only did the U.S. and UN help start the genocide, they didn’t do anything to stop it because they were so irresponsible. By 1976, Indonesian president Suharto declared East Timor’s annexation into Indonesia. Even after this, the killing and fighting continued and according to the book The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, a third of the Timorese population had been killed because of the Indonesian independence suppressors.

            Later in 1999, East Timor was allowed a plebiscite (vote by which the people of a political unit determine autonomy or affiliation with another country [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plebiscite]) to decide whether East Timor should become independent or stay part of Indonesia. However, there was a catch. With the U.N. giving “security” responsibilities to the already ruthless Indonesian army (who had just finished killing five thousand people and left sixty thousand displaced in 1998), the Timorese had a different choice. They could be independent and die, or stay part of Indonesia and still be slowly killed off. When Indonesia found out that the Timorese voted independence (with 98% of eligible people voting and 78% voting independence [http://www.gendercide.org/case_timor.html]) they went in and started killing. By 2000, two-hundred thousand people had been killed.

            The actual genocide ended in 2000, but we, the guilty, need to clean up our mess. Instead of denying the evidence (which claimed only a few hundred died—this comes from the U.N. [http://www.gendercide.org/case_timor.html]), we need to be protecting the people fighting for freedom. Two weeks ago on February 12, 2008, President Jose Ramos-Horta of East Timor and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao of East Timor nearly escaped assassination attempts by Indonesian forces [http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/12/east.timor/index.html?iref=newssearch] (Jose Ramos won the Nobel peace prize in 1996 for helping solve the problems in East Timor). This shows that Indonesia is still trying to take over East Timor, and we need to say no. We did it for South Korea, we helped Vietnam, we need to go help East Timor. We need to protect what little hope they have. Now that Suharto is dead (he died Janurary 27 of this year), it would be prime time to head in and clean up our mess.

-          Demeter of Law

http://www.gendercide.org/case_timor.html

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plebiscite

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/12/east.timor/index.html?iref=newssearch