Massacre: The Story of East Timor

An excerpt from Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn’s award-winning documentary on the Santa Cruz massacre, in which the Indonesian military gunned down more than 270 Timorese, and the history of Indonesian and US involvement in East Timor.
EAST TIMORESE MAN 1: I lost one sister and two brothers.
EAST TIMORESE WOMAN: It was ten days before I was to give birth. The army was shooting people, and they would die at our feet, but you couldn’t stop to help them.
EAST TIMORESE MAN 1: I know families that were totally wiped out.
EAST TIMORESE MAN 2: Two American newsmen badly beaten: Mr. Allan Nairn and Miss Amy Goodman.
AMY GOODMAN: The Indonesian army converged in two places.
ALLAN NAIRN: Hundreds and hundreds of troops coming straight at the Timorese.
AMY GOODMAN: When they came, they opened fire on the people.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: We pride ourselves, and I think properly so, in standing up for human rights.
RICHARD BOUCHER: Military assistance programs expose the trainees to democratic ideas and humanitarian standards.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I’m very concerned about what’s happened in East Timor. We have ignored it so far in ways that I think are unconscionable.
AMY GOODMAN: Massacre: The Story of East Timor. I’m Amy Goodman.
JAMES BAKER: Big countries with powerful military machines should not be permitted to invade, occupy and brutalize their peaceful neighbors.
AMY GOODMAN: With these words, former Secretary of State James Baker explained why the United States was going to war against Iraq. Yet, 16 years earlier, another big country, Indonesia, invaded a much smaller one, East Timor, with the support of the United States. What followed was one of the greatest genocides of the 20th century. It is estimated that up to one-third of the Timorese population has been killed through a policy of army massacre and enforced starvation. Many of those who are left have been imprisoned and tortured by a military armed and trained by the United States.
East Timor, a quiet farming nation on a mountainous island about 300 miles north of Australia, had been a Portuguese colony until 1974, when there was a democratic revolution in Portugal and the new government decided to disband its empire. Neighboring Indonesia, a military dictatorship more than 200 times East Timor’s size, began attacking Timor in an effort to prevent the island nation from completing its move toward independence. On December 7, 1975, Indonesia launched a full invasion. Timorese shortwave radio, monitored by reporters in Australia, was heard putting out desperate calls for help.
TIMORESE SHORTWAVE RADIO: A lot of people are being killed—I repeat—indiscriminately. More than a thousand troops have been there.
AMY GOODMAN: The night before the invasion, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Ford were in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, toasting General Suharto, the Indonesian ruler.
PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Our relationship involves a common concern for the right of every nation to pursue its destiny on its own independent and sovereign course. On behalf of Mrs. Ford and myself, I raise my glass and propose a toast.
AMY GOODMAN: Joao Carrascalao, the brother of the former governor of East Timor and himself a political leader now in exile, was working for the Indonesians at the time.
JOAO CARRASCALAO: I arrived at Jakarta one hour before President Ford and Henry Kissinger landed in Jakarta. And on the same night, I was informed by Colonel Suyanto—he was a top officer in the Jakarta administration—that America had given the green light for Indonesia to invade Timor.
AMY GOODMAN: The United States, Suharto’s main backer, supplied 90% of Indonesia’s arms. The story of East Timor is a story few know about, except those who have lived through it. Six foreign journalists who were there as Indonesia attacked were executed by the Indonesian military. Australian TV correspondent, Greg Shackleton sent this report the night before the frontier town where he was visiting was seized by the Indonesian troops.
GREG SHACKLETON: Why, they ask, are the Indonesians invading us? Why, they ask, if the Indonesians believe that Fretilin is communist, do they not send a delegation to Dili to find out? Why, they ask, are the Australians not helping us? When the Japanese invaded, they did help us. Why, they ask, are the Portuguese not helping us? We’re still a Portuguese colony. Who, they ask, will pay for the terrible damage to our homes?
My main answer was that Australia would not send forces here. That’s impossible. However, I said, we could ask that Australia raise this fighting at the United Nations. That was possible. At that, the second in charge rose to his feet, exclaimed, “Camerado journalist!,” shook my hand, the rest shook my hand, and we were applauded, because we are Australians. That’s all they want: for the United Nations to care about what is happening here.
AMY GOODMAN: The following day, Indonesian troops moved in and executed Shackleton and his crew. Though the government of Australia ended up siding with Indonesia, the U.N. Security Council denounced the invasion of East Timor and passed two resolutions like those later passed against Iraq, calling on Indonesia to withdraw its troops without delay, but United States lobbying prevented any U.N. action, and as Indonesia began to execute the Timorese en masse, Washington doubled its military aid.
Journalist Allan Nairn and I returned to East Timor for a historic event. A special delegation from the United Nations and Portugal was due to visit East Timor. The Timorese hoped the visit would finally lead to U.N. action and enforcement of the Security Council resolutions calling on Indonesia to withdraw from East Timor.
ALLAN NAIRN: We were told in place after place that the army had been holding neighborhood and village meetings to warn the Timorese that if they tried to speak to the U.N. Portuguese delegation, they and their families would be killed. And Bishop Belo, the bishop of East Timor, told us that the threat was: ‘We will kill your family to the seventh generation.’
AMY GOODMAN: But despite the threats and a dramatic increase in disappearances, torture and deaths, Timorese had prepared to speak out. They had met in secret, making banners and petitions for the delegation. When the army tried to hunt them down, many had gone into hiding and sought refuge inside churches. But under pressure from the United States, the visit of the delegation had been called off. Three days later, with the world’s spotlight removed, the army stormed the Moteal, Dili’s main Catholic church, and killed a young man named Sebastiao Gomes, who had taken refuge there.
And then came the morning of November 12. The two-week commemoration of Sebastiao’s funeral. A memorial mass and procession were planned to lay flowers on Sebastiao’s grave. After the mass was held at the Moteal, people, young and old, came out into the street, and in a land where public speech and assembly had been forbidden over a decade, they started chanting. The Timorese then held up banners drawn on bed sheets. They had been prepared for the delegation that never came. The banners called on Indonesia to leave East Timor and said things like “Why the Indonesian army shoot our church?” The Timorese were facing a gauntlet of troops that stretched the length of Dili. It was the boldest act of public protest occupied Timor had ever seen.
ALLAN NAIRN: More and more Timorese joined the procession. They came from huts and schools and offices along the way. And there was this building feeling of exhilaration, as well as fear, among the Timorese. And when they reached the cemetery, the crowd had swelled to maybe 5,000 people. Some went inside to lay flowers on Sebastiao’s grave. Most of the crowd was still outside, and then suddenly, someone looked up, and we saw that marching up along the same route that the Timorese had come came a long column of Indonesian troops, dressed in brown, holding M-16s in front of them, marching in a very slow, deliberate fashion; hundreds and hundreds of troops, coming straight at the Timorese.
AMY GOODMAN: Allan suggested we walk to the front of the crowd between the soldiers and the Timorese, because although we knew that the army had committed many massacres, we hoped that we, as a foreign journalists, could serve as a shield for the Timorese. Standing with headphones on and microphone and camera out in full view, we went and stood in the middle of the road, looking straight at the approaching troops. Behind us, the crowd was hushed as some Timorese tried to turn away, but they were hemmed in by cemetery walls.
ALLAN NAIRN: The soldiers marched straight up to us. They never broke their stride. We were enveloped by the troops, and when they got a few yards past us, within a dozen yards of the Timorese, they raised their rifles to their shoulders all at once, and they opened fire. The Timorese, in an instant, were down, just torn apart by the bullets. The street was covered with bodies covered with blood. And the soldiers just kept on coming. They poured in, one rank after another. They leaped over the bodies of those who were down. They were aiming and shooting people in the back. I could see their limbs being torn, their bodies exploding. There was blood spurting out into the air. The pop of the bullets, everywhere. And it was very organized, very systematic. The soldiers did not stop. They just kept on shooting until no one was left standing.
AMY GOODMAN: A group of soldiers grabbed my microphone and threw me to the ground, kicking and punching me. At that point, Allan threw himself on top of me, protecting me from further injury. The soldiers then used their rifle butts like baseball bats, beating Allan until they fractured his skull. As we sat on the ground, Allan, covered in blood, a group of soldiers lined up and pointed their M-16s at our heads. They had stripped us of all of our equipment. We just kept shouting, “We’re from America!” In the end, they decided not to execute us.
ALLAN NAIRN: The soldiers beat us, but we actually had received privileged treatment. We were still alive. They kept on firing into the Timorese. We were able to get onto a passing civilian truck, went into hiding, but the Timorese, who had been with us there on the cemetery road, most of them were dead.
AMY GOODMAN: Inside the cemetery walls, Max Stahl, a filmmaker on assignment with Yorkshire TV, had had his video camera running.
MAX STAHL: The soldiers began at that point to encircle the entire cemetery. I saw the soldiers as they gradually moved towards the middle, picking out people who were wounded or taking refuge between the tombstones, and when they got to them, they beat them and assembled them in the back of the cemetery. People were stripped to their waists. They had their thumbs tied behind their backs, and they were made to look at the ground. And if they looked up, they were immediately beaten, usually with a rifle butt.
AMY GOODMAN: Max Stahl was filming near a crypt in the middle of the cemetery. Some of the wounded and those too scared to run were huddled inside praying. As Stahl filmed, he buried his videocassettes in a fresh grave. Then he was arrested by the troops.
MAX STAHL: Whilst I was being interrogated, I observed these trucks driving by with more people in them. These people were clearly in a kind of paralysis of fear. They were not able to move. Some of them, at least in the cemetery and, indeed, even in the trucks, when I saw them going by, were barely breathing. And people were that terrified. It’s quite often difficult to tell if they’re dead or alive.
AMY GOODMAN: After nine hours in custody, Stahl went back to the cemetery under cover of night, dug up his videocassettes and had them smuggled out of the country. Allan Nairn and I had managed to leave East Timor a few hours after the massacre. From a hospital on Guam, we reported what had happened to dozens of newspapers, radio and television outlets around the world.
PACIFICA REPORT: From Washington, this is the Pacifica report for Tuesday, November 12, 1991. A massacre in East Timor. Among those injured were two journalists, including a news editor of Pacifica station WBAI in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: They beat me and dragged me over and started slamming me with rifle butts, and kicks and punches, and then Allan jumped on top of me, and they beat him very badly. But that was the least of what they did. They opened fire on the people, and these were truly defenseless—
MONTAGE OF WORLD NEWS FOOTAGE: When Indonesian troops opened fire on a crowd—This is CBC Radio—The massacre of a hundred unarmed Timorese by the Indonesian military—Photographs of the bloody massacre during the fight for freedom—This is the CBS Evening News.

Former Indonesian Dictator, U.S. Ally & Mass Murderer, Suharto, 86, Dies

Democracy Now! special – an in-depth look at Suharto’s brutal thirty-year reign and the role of the United States in shoring him up. Suharto rose to power in 1965, killing up to a million Indonesians. Hundreds of thousands of more people died during the U.S.-supported Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor. Tens of thousands also died in West Papua and Aceh. On Sunday, Cameron Hume, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, said “Though there may be some controversy over his legacy, President Suharto was a historic figure who left a lasting imprint on Indonesia and the region of Southeast Asia.”
AMY GOODMAN: Suharto is dead. Indonesia’s brutal dictator rose to power in 1965, killing up to a million Indonesians. But despite presiding over some of the region’s worst human rights abuses, Suharto was never brought to justice and was able to live in peaceful retirement. He died in a hospital on Sunday after suffering multiple organ failure. He was eighty-six years old. On Monday, he was buried in the city of Solo in central Java in a state funeral with full military honors.
Human Rights Watch said Suharto had “gotten away with murder–another dictator who’s lived out his life in luxury and escaped justice.”
In addition to the million Indonesians killed during Suharto’s rise to power, hundreds of thousands of more people died during Indonesia’s 1975 invasion and quarter-of-a-century occupation of East Timor. Tens of thousands also died in the separatist regions of West Papua and Aceh.
Suharto was finally swept from power in a 1998 pro-democracy uprising. In addition to rampant human rights abuses, Suharto’s regime was also characterized by rampant corruption and nepotism. Indonesia was regularly ranked as one of the world’s most corrupt countries, as Suharto’s family and inner circle amassed enormous wealth. Transparency International, the anti-corruption group, has estimated Suharto amassed a personal fortune of between $15 billion and $35 billion.
Following his death on Sunday, the US ambassador to Indonesia, Cameron Hume, hailed Suharto in a statement. He said, “President Suharto led Indonesia for over thirty years, a period during which Indonesia achieved remarkable economic and social development… Though there may be some controversy over his legacy, President Suharto was a historic figure who left a lasting imprint on Indonesia and the region of Southeast Asia”—again, the words of the US ambassador to Indonesia.
Today, we look at Suharto’s brutal thirty-year reign and the role of the United States in shoring him up. We’re joined by three people.
Brad Simpson is the director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. He’s assistant professor of US history and foreign relations at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. His forthcoming book is called Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968. Brad joins us from Baltimore, Maryland.
On the telephone from Indonesia, we’re joined by Allan Nairn, an award-winning investigative journalist who’s reported from Indonesia for years. He runs the web blog News and Comment.
And we’re also joined on the telephone from Jakarta by Galuh Wandita, longtime human rights activist in Indonesia. She is the Jakarta director of International Center for Transitional Justice and was the deputy director of East Timor Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now!, and we’re going to go first to Galuh Wandita in Jakarta. Your reaction and the reaction on the ground of the death of Suharto?
GALUH WANDITA: Well, Amy, there is an outpouring of grief that you can see on the film footage on the TV of people sort of feeling sad and coming out. But a lot of this is also orchestrated by those who have the most to gain from sort of this continuing impunity for Suharto. So it is very strange, actually, to watch the news now and sitting here in Jakarta.
AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, you were in Indonesia when the announcement came of Suharto’s death. What were you hearing? What were people saying where you were?
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, among the people in the poor compounds where I was, I guess the reaction was summed up by one woman who works in the market. She sells vegetables and cakes in one of the traditional markets. And she said, “Oh, Suharto, he died of overeating. He ate too much money. He ate so much that there wasn’t enough left for anybody else to eat.” People didn’t care, or they said good riddance. That seems to be the reaction among the poor.
But among those who made money off of Suharto, there seems to be some sadness. There also seems to be some sadness for the US ambassador. That quote you read defending Suharto, that’s the same argument that was used to defend Stalin. They said, oh, he killed a lot of people, but he developed the country economically. So if you buy that logic, the US should have been defending Stalin, as well.
In fact, if you compare Indonesia this day to Malaysia, a neighboring country which started out at the same economic level, after Suharto and the army got done with Indonesia, wages in Indonesia are about a sixth of what they are in Malaysia. There was growth in the sense—in Indonesia, in the sense of multinationals like Exxon coming in and taking the gas. People were coming in and taking the gold, new mines coming in and taking out their minerals, creating an export platform for Nike, etc. But in terms of lives of the poor—hunger, life expectancy, health, nutrition—people in Malaysia ended up doing much better, because there they took away power from the army, they put restrictions on the multinationals, and they had a different form of development. So the idea that Suharto’s mass murders were somehow balanced by economic progress he gave to the people is just factually incorrect, and it’s not surprising that poor people don’t seem bothered by his passing.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Brad Simpson in Baltimore, you’ve been accumulating numerous documents about the relationship between successive US administrations and the thirty-year reign of Suharto. As Suharto is buried with full military honors today, yesterday the lower third, the title on the CNN story about Suharto, said, “Smiling general dies.” Your reaction?
BRAD SIMPSON: Well, I think the reaction can be summed up by the editorial that was in the Wall Street Journal today and the statements of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia, former ambassador Richard Woolcott and numerous other apologists for Suharto’s crimes. And I think that the headline might be “Let the apologetics begin.” And already Suharto’s defenders are claiming that the rivers of blood, the mountains of corpses that he left behind in East Timor, in Aceh, in West Papua, all across Indonesia, have to be balanced against the fiction of Indonesia’s growth and development during his thirty-two years in power.
But the apologetics began immediately upon Suharto’s ascendance to power in 1966. And the succession of US administrations, both Democratic and Republican, continued with those apologetics, even as they became aware, as they were from the very first moments, of Suharto’s murderous reign, his rampant corruption, his brutal crushing of dissent. And from the Lyndon Johnson administration in 1966 straight on through the Nixon, the Ford, the Carter, the Reagan, the Bush and the Clinton administration, the apologetics never stopped.
And over the course of thirty-two years, in surveying tens of thousands of documents that we have declassified concerning US relations with Suharto, I’ve yet to come across a single moment in this three-decades-long relationship when any high-ranking US official ever prioritized democracy or human rights over political stability, the rights of multinational corporations and the friendly relations that the United States had with Suharto as somehow counterbalancing his atrocious criminal and brutal legacy.
AMY GOODMAN: Galuh Wandita in Indonesia, in Jakarta, what do you think is most important for Americans to understand about Suharto?
GALUH WANDITA: I think—I mean, I think at this moment, because of the—this [inaudible] to now, I think the reformation agenda has gone backwards, and a lot of the information about the truth, what happened during his regime, is actually to become known or to be acknowledged by the public in Indonesia, the general public in Indonesia, and also by the Indonesian government, obviously. So I think that what I would like to say to the American public is that, you know, it might be very baffling to see what’s happening now with this—all this sort of apologizing and adoration for Suharto, but really the jury is still not out. The truth hasn’t come out yet, and we mustn’t forget the cost, I think, that both Allan and Brad have spoken about, the cost of the thirty years of corruption and crimes, really. We’re still living in the consequences of what happened during Suharto regime. But in Indonesia, that connection is still not made yet, and that is part of our struggle now, to look at the crimes of the past and actually to find—to speak to the public about how his actions actually led to all these crimes.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re speaking to Galuh Wandita, the Jakarta director of the International Center for Transitional Justice; Brad Simpson, with us from Baltimore, a professor at University of Maryland; and we’re joined by Allan Nairn, just out of Jakarta, still in the region, investigative journalist. When we come back, we’re going to play an excerpt of the documentary Massacre: The Story of East Timor, goes back through the relationship of the United States with Suharto through East Timor, and we’ll come back to our guests. Stay with us.