Activism Change

East Timor Death Toll

Question:

" We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. " " Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. " In other words, those who made a big deal in regarding the number of people died are only the devil and people who were deceived by the devil. " You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ " " Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye? how will you tell your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye;’ and behold, the beam is in your own eye? " " For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you. " In other words, anyone who murder (unlawful kill) will be judged. However, can you be sure that your judgement is fair and truthful? And remember, you too will be judged according to the measure that you used to be judge. " You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ " In other words, you killed (or to be more exact, murdered / unlawful killed), you will be killed also. The question is, is a person who ordered a person to murder someone will also be judge and punish the same way as a person who murdered someone? " the law of equality is prescribed to you in cases of murder: the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the woman for the woman. But if any remission is made by the brother of the slain, then grant any reasonable demand, and compensate him with handsome gratitude, this is a concession and a Mercy from your Lord. After this whoever exceeds the limits shall be in grave penalty. " In other words, the relative of the murdered can claim the right of the execution (as in kill) for the murderer of their family member, and only they too can claim the right of forgiving the murderer of their family member. Other people have no right in regarding this matter. So… What happened in East Timor and all of those so called ‘trials’ to bring people into ‘justice’ are nothing but a propaganda to make people hate and fight each other. Are people being killed there? Yes, but a lot of people are being killed all over the world. Are people being murdered (unlawfully killed) there? Yes, but a lot of people are being murdered all over the world. Why is that East Timor and the prosecutions of the fault there suddenly become so ’special’ that many other events all over the world are ignored? Is it to uphold ‘human rights’? Or is it to violate ‘human rights’? If there’s such thing as a ‘crime against humanity’, what will humanity crime be? Will ‘humanity’ be put on trial in the future? If there’s such thing as a ‘human rights’, will ‘human rights’ be questioned of their validity in the future? Folks, there are a group of people who are toying us around using these matters. Lets NOT become TOYS for THEM. The ‘International Court’ is one of THEIR playboxes, the ‘International laws’ is one of THEIR play rules, all that THEY need are the pawns. Do you want to play THEIR ‘war game’, remember, it’s THEIRS, not OURS. And in the time being, we are still given the permission to back down on the offer to play. And the only sure way to win a war game is NOT to play.

Response:

For those who enjoy playing the numbers game, I put together this little piece on the death toll of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor a while back. Here it is again, with some editing and additions. I put a + after numbers to indicate that the source gives this as a minimum (says something like "at least x", etc), and a – to indicate that the source gives the number as a maximum (says "up to x" etc.). I would of course appreciate any further sources that anyone can provide The death toll of the Indonesian invasion/occupation of East Timor is occasionally a matter of dispute in these newsgroups, so I put together some information to help readers compare the estimates of different sources. Please note that these do not all cover the same time period, etc. Some only cover the first few months of invasion. You cannot simply take the numbers without checking what is being estimated. If you have any more sources worth citing, send the references on over. The following chart can be found here: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm 27.East Timor (1975-99) Conquest by Indonesia: Compton’s: 100,000 killed in the first year [Compton's Encyclopedia Online v.2.0 (1997)] Encarta: 100,000 ditto [Microsoft Encarta '95.] D.Smith: 100,000 ditto [Unless otherwise noted, "Smith" means The State of War and Peace Atlas (1997)] War Annual 6: 100,000 killed in the first year, and another 100,000 over the next decade or so [A series of books by John Laffin. The full exact title varies from year to year, but it's usually something like The World in Conflict [year] War Annual [number]. The series so far goes 1986 (1), 1987 (2), 1989 (3), 1990 (4), 1991 (5), 1994 (6), 199? (7), 1997 (8), so it’s not strictly an annual. Each book is a very detailed description of all the fighting which has occured in the past year, worldwide, with maps and background information as well.] B&J: 1975-76: 100,000 TOTAL: 200,000 [Jacob Bercovitch and Richard Jackson, International Conflict : A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945-1995 (1997)] Eckhardt: 90,000 civ. + 10,000 mil. = 100,000 (1975-87) [William Eckhardt is one of the most quoted but elusive atrocity collectors around. I've seen his work mentioned by many authorities, but I couldn't find any of the cited journals in any of the 3 university libraries in my hometown. Finally, I found a 3-page table of his war statistics printed in World Military and Social Expenditures 1987-88 (12th ed., 1987) by Ruth Leger Sivard, which lists every war since 1700.] Dunnigan: 90,000 to 200,000 [A Quick and Dirty Guide to War (1991)] Rummel: 150,000 (1975-87) CDI: 150,000 (1975-97) [The Center for Defense Information, specifically, The Defense Monitor, "The World At War: January 1, 1998". [http://www.cdi.org/dm/issue1/index.html] The column in the chart is labeled "casualties" (which semantically should include wounded), but it’s clear in the introduction that only deaths are counted.] Chomsky (1987): 200,000 to 300,000 by 1979 [The Chomsky Reader (1987)] Our Times: 300,000 [Our Times: The Illustrated History of the 20th Century (Turner Publishing 1995)] FALINTIL (Timorese resistance group associated with FRETILIN, the most popular political party in East Timor): 200-250,000+, probably 300-350,000 http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~thirdway/files/world/timor1.html [No longer at this URL.] [....] The initial period of the invasion was one of indiscriminate massacre. Indonesia admitted that 60,000 Timorese were killed between December 1975 and November 1976. Between 1977 and 1979, Indonesia waged a fierce campaign to gain military control of the country, using high-tech counter-insurgency aircraft and armoured vehicles from the US and Britain, as well as napalm and defoliant herbicides similar to ‘agent orange’. Agriculture was completely disrupted and a severe famine ensued, accompanied by epidemics of disease. It is a conservative estimate that since the beginning of the Indonesian occupation at least 200,000 to 250,000 Timorese — a third of the pre-invasion population — have died. We believe the true figure may lie within the range of 300,000 to 350,000…. half the population. [....] Xanana Gusmao (Timorese resistance leader): 250,000 Cited by: http://www.nenepimentel.org/news/19990911_PR_easttimor.html [No longer at this URL.] [....] Since 1975 and 1976 when East Timor was forcibly annexed by Indonesia, Gusmao said some 250,000 have been killed in the strife. [....] Jose Ramos-Horta (Timorese resistance leader, winner of Nobel Peace Prize): 250,000 Cited by: http://www.caa.org.au/horizons/h20/horta.html [....] In reality, the balance of the 21 years of Indonesian rule, leaving aside the 250,000 dead, is extraordinarily negative. [....] Carmel Budiardjo (Indonesian human-rights activist): 250,000+ http://www.gn.apc.org/tapol/sp_etimor9905.htm [....] It is a bitter fact of history that the under-ending sufferings of the people of East Timor which have resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 people, a third of the population, were totally ignored by western governments as they fostered business ties, promoted investments and sold military equipment to a government with an appalling human rights record, which has defied ten UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions calling on it to withdraw from East Timor. [....] It was not a question of information about East Timor not being available. True, from the moment of the invasion, the territory was sealed off completely and the Indonesians even managed to prevent an envoy of the UN secretary-general from entering, under a Security Council resolution mandate, without causing a stir at the UN. Two months after the invasion, an East Timorese leader inside the country told The Age that probably 50-60,000 people had already died. By the end of the year, priests in East Timor who were asked about the accuracy of that figure, said that already 100,000 Timorese had died, out of a population of around 700,000. [....] Budiardjo is also co-author with Liem Soei Liong of _The War Against East Timor_, which gives the most detailed population figures that I have found. The following is from pp. 49-51: The Death Toll [....] The first public estimate of the death-toll came from Francisco Lopes da Cruz, a UDT leader who became deputy-governor of Indonesia’s first post-invasion administration in East Timor. He said in February 1976 that sixty thousand people had died ‘in six months of civil war’. Since estimates of the death-toll during the civil war (which in fact lasted only a couple of weeks from 11 August 1975) were between 1,500 and 3,000, the da Cruz figure meant that some 57,000 had died since the Indonesian invasion. Within days, he was forced to retract in an attempt to repair the damage caused by his statement; he claimed that he had been referring to ‘casualties’ not all of which were deaths and had also included Timorese who had taken refuge in West Timor*. *A close associate of da Cruz later told Jim Dunn that in his original statement, da Cruz had actually said ‘massacred’. Later in 1976, Indonesian Catholic church circles produced a document which reported that church visitors to East Timor had questioned local priests about the estimated 60,000 death-toll in the conviction that it must be an exaggeration, only to be told that the figure was, if anything, an under-estimation. The figure was probably more like 100,000. ‘50,000 or 80,000 people might have been killed during the war in East Timor… It was war… Then what is the big fuss?’ [ellipses in original] — Adam Malik quoted by _Sidney Morning Herald_, 5 April, 1977 The above estimates were made before the encirclement and annihilation operations got under way in mid 1977. That was the military campaign which caused the most deaths of all. Since the late 1970s, the figure most widely accepted as the death-toll is 200,000, a figure that has been confirmed by Mgr Martinhu da Costa Lopes, the former Bishop of Dili, who said recently: ‘The population of East Timor has been reduced by 200,000 since the invasion. About 60,000 were killed and about 140,000 died as a result of starvation caused by economic disruption and inability to grow food.’ (_The Irish Times_, 8 September 1983.) [....] What do official statistics show? There are good reasons to question the accuracy of population statistics produced by the Portuguese colonial administration and now by the Indonesian colonial administration. The Portuguese figures, based on a regular census, are widely believed to have been too low as the census was related to tax assessment which encourage people to evade registration. The Catholic church had its own population figures which tended to be higher than those produced by the census. An Indonesian census was held in East Timor in 1980 as part of a nationwide census, though no information is available about the conditions under which it was conducted. The Catholic church has continued to compile its own population figures but by contrast with Portuguese days, these are now far below the official figure. The following analysis compares Portuguese and Indonesian figures, for what they are worth, and incorporates church figures for purposes of comparison: Pre-1975 figures The last pre-invasion population figures: 1. The Portugues 1970 2. The Catholic church 1974 1975 projections, based on an annual growth rate of 1.7% 1. 1975 projection of the official 2. 1975 projection of the church Post-1980 figures 1980 projections of the above figures should take account of an estimated 3,000 people who died in the civil was (August 1975), and approximately 7,000 who have gone into exile since August 1975. The following projections make allowances for this decline of 10,000 people: 1. 1980 projection of the official … read more »

Response:

[re E Timor]

        I notice today’s SMH has a related gas/oil article:         2002/03/26: Sydney Herald: Timor gas billions all at sea         http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/03/26/txt1017089535182.html <fwiw -het — "My God, what have we done?" -Captain Robert Lewis (Enola Gay logbook) Terror War Links: http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/terror_war/twartl.html H.E. Taylor  http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – [It's been quite a while since I posted this. Note that these numbers are for the invasion and occupation, 1975 on, not the more independence vote and subsequent massacres etc. I haven't checked any of the links to see if they're still valid. I would still be interested in any more data anyone could provide me with.--DC] The death toll of the Indonesian invasion/occupation of East Timor is occasionally a matter of dispute in these newsgroups, so I put together some information to help readers compare the estimates of different sources. Please not that these do not all cover the same time period, etc. Some only cover the first few months of invasion. You cannot simply take the numbers without checking what is being estimated. If you have any more sources worth citing, send the references on over. The following chart can be found here: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm 27.East Timor (1975-99) Conquest by Indonesia: Compton’s: 100,000 killed in the first year [Compton's Encyclopedia Online v.2.0 (1997)] Encarta: 100,000 ditto [Microsoft Encarta '95.] D.Smith: 100,000 ditto [Unless otherwise noted, "Smith" means The State of War and Peace Atlas (1997)] War Annual 6: 100,000 killed in the first year, and another 100,000 over the next decade or so [A series of books by John Laffin. The full exact title varies from year to year, but it's usually something like The World in Conflict [year] War Annual [number]. The series so far goes 1986 (1), 1987 (2), 1989 (3), 1990 (4), 1991 (5), 1994 (6), 199? (7), 1997 (8), so it’s not strictly an annual. Each book is a very detailed description of all the fighting which has occured in the past year, worldwide, with maps and background information as well.] B&J: 1975-76: 100,000 TOTAL: 200,000 [Jacob Bercovitch and Richard Jackson, International Conflict : A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945-1995 (1997)] Eckhardt: 90,000 civ. + 10,000 mil. = 100,000 (1975-87) [William Eckhardt is one of the most quoted but elusive atrocity collectors around. I've seen his work mentioned by many authorities, but I couldn't find any of the cited journals in any of the 3 university libraries in my hometown. Finally, I found a 3-page table of his war statistics printed in World Military and Social Expenditures 1987-88 (12th ed., 1987) by Ruth Leger Sivard, which lists every war since 1700.] Dunnigan: 90,000 to 200,000 [A Quick and Dirty Guide to War (1991)] Rummel: 150,000 (1975-87) CDI: 150,000 (1975-97) [The Center for Defense Information, specifically, The Defense Monitor, "The World At War: January 1, 1998". [http://www.cdi.org/dm/issue1/index.html] The column in the chart is labeled "casualties" (which semantically should include wounded), but it’s clear in the introduction that only deaths are counted.] Chomsky (1987): 200,000 to 300,000 by 1979 [The Chomsky Reader (1987)] Our Times: 300,000 [Our Times: The Illustrated History of the 20th Century (Turner Publishing 1995)] FALINTIL (Timorese resistance group associated with FRETILIN, the most popular political party in East Timor): 300,000 to 350,000 http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~thirdway/files/world/timor1.html [....] The initial period of the invasion was one of indiscriminate massacre. Indonesia admitted that 60,000 Timorese were killed between December 1975 and November 1976. Between 1977 and 1979, Indonesia waged a fierce campaign to gain military control of the country, using high-tech counter-insurgency aircraft and armoured vehicles from the US and Britain, as well as napalm and defoliant herbicides similar to ‘agent orange’. Agriculture was completely disrupted and a severe famine ensued, accompanied by epidemics of disease. It is a conservative estimate that since the beginning of the Indonesian occupation at least 200,000 to 250,000 Timorese — a third of the pre-invasion population — have died. We believe the true figure may lie within the range of 300,000 to 350,000…. half the population. [....] Xanana Gusmao (Timorese resistance leader): 250,000 Cited by: http://www.nenepimentel.org/news/19990911_PR_easttimor.html [....] Since 1975 and 1976 when East Timor was forcibly annexed by Indonesia, Gusmao said some 250,000 have been killed in the strife. [....] Carmel Budiardjo (Indonesian human-rights activist): 250,000 http://www.gn.apc.org/tapol/sp_etimor9905.htm [....] It is a bitter fact of history that the under-ending sufferings of the people of East Timor which have resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 people, a third of the population, were totally ignored by western governments as they fostered business ties, promoted investments and sold military equipment to a government with an appalling human rights record, which has defied ten UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions calling on it to withdraw from East Timor. [....] It was not a question of information about East Timor not being available. True, from the moment of the invasion, the territory was sealed off completely and the Indonesians even managed to prevent an envoy of the UN secretary-general from entering, under a Security Council resolution mandate, without causing a stir at the UN. Two months after the invasion, an East Timorese leader inside the country told The Age that probably 50-60,000 people had already died. By the end of the year, priests in East Timor who were asked about the accuracy of that figure, said that already 100,000 Timorese had died, out of a population of around 700,000. [....] Budiadjo is also co-author with Liem Soei Liong of _The War Against East Timor_, which gives the most detailed population figures that I have found. The following is from pp. 49-51: The Death Toll [....] The first public estimate of the death-toll came from Francisco Lopes da Cruz, a UDT leader who became deputy-governor of Indonesia’s first post-invasion administration in East Timor. He said in February 1976 that sixty thousand people had died ‘in six months of civil war’. Since estimates of the death-toll during the civil war (which in fact lasted only a couple of weeks from 11 August 1975) were between 1,500 and 3,000, the da Cruz figure meant that some 57,000 had died since the Indonesian invasion. Within days, he was forced to retract in an attempt to repair the damage caused by his statement; he claimed that he had been referring to ‘casualties’ not all of which were deaths and had also included Timorese who had taken refuge in West Timor*. *A close associate of da Cruz later told Jim Dunn that in his original statement, da Cruz had actually said ‘massacred’. Later in 1976, Indonesian Catholic church circles produced a document which reported that church visitors to East Timor had questioned local priests about the estimated 60,000 death-toll in the conviction that it must be an exaggeration, only to be told that the figure was, if anything, an under-estimation. The figure was probably more like 100,000. ‘50,000 or 80,000 people might have been killed during the war in East Timor… It was war… Then what is the big fuss?’ [ellipses in original] — Adam Malik quoted by _Sidney Morning Herald_, 5 April, 1977 The above estimates were made before the encirclement and annihilation operations got under way in mid 1977. That was the military campaign which caused the most deaths of all. Since the late 1970s, the figure most widely accepted as the death-toll is 200,000, a figure that has been confirmed by Mgr Martinhu da Costa Lopes, the former Bishop of Dili, who said recently: ‘The population of East Timor has been reduced by 200,000 since the invasion. About 60,000 were killed and about 140,000 died as a result of starvation caused by economic disruption and inability to grow food.’ (_The Irish Times_, 8 September 1983.) [....] What do official statistics show? There are good reasons to question the accuracy of population statistics produced by the Portuguese colonial administration and now by the Indonesian colonial administration. The Portuguese figures, based on a regular census, are widely believed to have been too low as the census was related to tax assessment which encourage people to evade registration. The Catholic church had its own population figures which tended to be higher than those produced by the census. An Indonesian census was held in East Timor in 1980 as part of a nationwide census, though no information is available about the conditions under which it was conducted. The Catholic church has continued to compile its own population figures but by contrast with Portuguese days, these are now far below the official figure. The following analysis compares Portuguese and Indonesian figures, for what they are worth, and incorporates church figures for purposes of comparison: Pre-1975 figures The last pre-invasion population figures: 1. The Portugues 1970 census: 609,477 2. The Catholic church 1974 figure: 688,711 1975 projections, based on an annual growth rate of 1.7% 1. 1975 projection of the official census: 663,000 2. 1975 projection of the church figure: 700,000 Post-1980 figures 1980 projections of the above figures should take account of an estimated 3,000 people who died in the civil was (August 1975), and approximately 7,000 who have gone into exile since August 1975. The following projections make allowances for this decline of 10,000 people: 1.

… read more »

Response:

[It's been quite a while since I posted this. Note that these numbers are for the invasion and occupation, 1975 on, not the more independence vote and subsequent massacres etc. I haven't checked any of the links to see if they're still valid. I would still be interested in any more data anyone could provide me with.--DC] The death toll of the Indonesian invasion/occupation of East Timor is occasionally a matter of dispute in these newsgroups, so I put together some information to help readers compare the estimates of different sources. Please not that these do not all cover the same time period, etc. Some only cover the first few months of invasion. You cannot simply take the numbers without checking what is being estimated. If you have any more sources worth citing, send the references on over. The following chart can be found here: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm 27.East Timor (1975-99) Conquest by Indonesia: Compton’s: 100,000 killed in the first year [Compton's Encyclopedia Online v.2.0 (1997)] Encarta: 100,000 ditto [Microsoft Encarta '95.] D.Smith: 100,000 ditto [Unless otherwise noted, "Smith" means The State of War and Peace Atlas (1997)] War Annual 6: 100,000 killed in the first year, and another 100,000 over the next decade or so [A series of books by John Laffin. The full exact title varies from year to year, but it's usually something like The World in Conflict [year] War Annual [number]. The series so far goes 1986 (1), 1987 (2), 1989 (3), 1990 (4), 1991 (5), 1994 (6), 199? (7), 1997 (8), so it’s not strictly an annual. Each book is a very detailed description of all the fighting which has occured in the past year, worldwide, with maps and background information as well.] B&J: 1975-76: 100,000 TOTAL: 200,000 [Jacob Bercovitch and Richard Jackson, International Conflict : A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945-1995 (1997)] Eckhardt: 90,000 civ. + 10,000 mil. = 100,000 (1975-87) [William Eckhardt is one of the most quoted but elusive atrocity collectors around. I've seen his work mentioned by many authorities, but I couldn't find any of the cited journals in any of the 3 university libraries in my hometown. Finally, I found a 3-page table of his war statistics printed in World Military and Social Expenditures 1987-88 (12th ed., 1987) by Ruth Leger Sivard, which lists every war since 1700.] Dunnigan: 90,000 to 200,000 [A Quick and Dirty Guide to War (1991)] Rummel: 150,000 (1975-87) CDI: 150,000 (1975-97) [The Center for Defense Information, specifically, The Defense Monitor, "The World At War: January 1, 1998". [http://www.cdi.org/dm/issue1/index.html] The column in the chart is labeled "casualties" (which semantically should include wounded), but it’s clear in the introduction that only deaths are counted.] Chomsky (1987): 200,000 to 300,000 by 1979 [The Chomsky Reader (1987)] Our Times: 300,000 [Our Times: The Illustrated History of the 20th Century (Turner Publishing 1995)] FALINTIL (Timorese resistance group associated with FRETILIN, the most popular political party in East Timor): 300,000 to 350,000 http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~thirdway/files/world/timor1.html [....] The initial period of the invasion was one of indiscriminate massacre. Indonesia admitted that 60,000 Timorese were killed between December 1975 and November 1976. Between 1977 and 1979, Indonesia waged a fierce campaign to gain military control of the country, using high-tech counter-insurgency aircraft and armoured vehicles from the US and Britain, as well as napalm and defoliant herbicides similar to ‘agent orange’. Agriculture was completely disrupted and a severe famine ensued, accompanied by epidemics of disease. It is a conservative estimate that since the beginning of the Indonesian occupation at least 200,000 to 250,000 Timorese — a third of the pre-invasion population — have died. We believe the true figure may lie within the range of 300,000 to 350,000…. half the population. [....] Xanana Gusmao (Timorese resistance leader): 250,000 Cited by: http://www.nenepimentel.org/news/19990911_PR_easttimor.html [....] Since 1975 and 1976 when East Timor was forcibly annexed by Indonesia, Gusmao said some 250,000 have been killed in the strife. [....] Carmel Budiardjo (Indonesian human-rights activist): 250,000 http://www.gn.apc.org/tapol/sp_etimor9905.htm [....] It is a bitter fact of history that the under-ending sufferings of the people of East Timor which have resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 people, a third of the population, were totally ignored by western governments as they fostered business ties, promoted investments and sold military equipment to a government with an appalling human rights record, which has defied ten UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions calling on it to withdraw from East Timor. [....] It was not a question of information about East Timor not being available. True, from the moment of the invasion, the territory was sealed off completely and the Indonesians even managed to prevent an envoy of the UN secretary-general from entering, under a Security Council resolution mandate, without causing a stir at the UN. Two months after the invasion, an East Timorese leader inside the country told The Age that probably 50-60,000 people had already died. By the end of the year, priests in East Timor who were asked about the accuracy of that figure, said that already 100,000 Timorese had died, out of a population of around 700,000. [....] Budiadjo is also co-author with Liem Soei Liong of _The War Against East Timor_, which gives the most detailed population figures that I have found. The following is from pp. 49-51: The Death Toll [....] The first public estimate of the death-toll came from Francisco Lopes da Cruz, a UDT leader who became deputy-governor of Indonesia’s first post-invasion administration in East Timor. He said in February 1976 that sixty thousand people had died ‘in six months of civil war’. Since estimates of the death-toll during the civil war (which in fact lasted only a couple of weeks from 11 August 1975) were between 1,500 and 3,000, the da Cruz figure meant that some 57,000 had died since the Indonesian invasion. Within days, he was forced to retract in an attempt to repair the damage caused by his statement; he claimed that he had been referring to ‘casualties’ not all of which were deaths and had also included Timorese who had taken refuge in West Timor*. *A close associate of da Cruz later told Jim Dunn that in his original statement, da Cruz had actually said ‘massacred’. Later in 1976, Indonesian Catholic church circles produced a document which reported that church visitors to East Timor had questioned local priests about the estimated 60,000 death-toll in the conviction that it must be an exaggeration, only to be told that the figure was, if anything, an under-estimation. The figure was probably more like 100,000. ‘50,000 or 80,000 people might have been killed during the war in East Timor… It was war… Then what is the big fuss?’ [ellipses in original] — Adam Malik quoted by _Sidney Morning Herald_, 5 April, 1977 The above estimates were made before the encirclement and annihilation operations got under way in mid 1977. That was the military campaign which caused the most deaths of all. Since the late 1970s, the figure most widely accepted as the death-toll is 200,000, a figure that has been confirmed by Mgr Martinhu da Costa Lopes, the former Bishop of Dili, who said recently: ‘The population of East Timor has been reduced by 200,000 since the invasion. About 60,000 were killed and about 140,000 died as a result of starvation caused by economic disruption and inability to grow food.’ (_The Irish Times_, 8 September 1983.) [....] What do official statistics show? There are good reasons to question the accuracy of population statistics produced by the Portuguese colonial administration and now by the Indonesian colonial administration. The Portuguese figures, based on a regular census, are widely believed to have been too low as the census was related to tax assessment which encourage people to evade registration. The Catholic church had its own population figures which tended to be higher than those produced by the census. An Indonesian census was held in East Timor in 1980 as part of a nationwide census, though no information is available about the conditions under which it was conducted. The Catholic church has continued to compile its own population figures but by contrast with Portuguese days, these are now far below the official figure. The following analysis compares Portuguese and Indonesian figures, for what they are worth, and incorporates church figures for purposes of comparison: Pre-1975 figures The last pre-invasion population figures: 1. The Portugues 1970 census: 609,477 2. The Catholic church 1974 figure: 688,711 1975 projections, based on an annual growth rate of 1.7% 1. 1975 projection of the official census: 663,000 2. 1975 projection of the church figure: 700,000 Post-1980 figures 1980 projections of the above figures should take account of an estimated 3,000 people who died in the civil was (August 1975), and approximately 7,000 who have gone into exile since August 1975. The following projections make allowances for this decline of 10,000 people: 1. 1980 projection of the official census: 713,000 2. 1980 projection of the church figure: 754,000 Compare these with: 1. 1980 Indonesian census result for East Timor: 555,000 2. The Catholic church estimate, published in: 425,000 UN Document A/AC.109/715, 13 August 1982 A straight comparison between the official Indonesian and Portuguese figures produces a decline of 158,000. Using the 1980 church figures as the basis for comparison, the decline is anything between 199,000 and 329,000. [Remember that since population is normally increasing, the decline would be lower than the actual … read more »

Response:

Filed under: Human Rights

Related Posts

• Numnut Politicians
• 5 Britons to be freed from Guantanamo Bay
• Bush Blows It Again
• Occupation authorities bar travel of human rights activist
• The atrocities committed by the Israelis in Jenin
• Dull
• WTB: Operator's Manual for NIKON F2 Photomic Camera
• San Francisco - clubs
• Iraq Forcing Children to Join Military
• Jake! i lost my thread