Originally colonized by the Portuguese, East Timor was brutally invaded and occupied by Indonesian military forces in 1975. According to the UN, this resulted in the death of about a third of the population through massacres, starvation and disease. Subsequent events in Indonesia, however, have given rise to expectations of a fundamental change in its position on East Timor. Considering the potential for change against a backdrop of growing popular and political support for the Timorese cause, this book addresses its emergence as an issue of global importance. The authors set out to show how local, grassroots, individual, organizational and campaign initiatives have contributed to this state of affairs, in the context of an increased international-relations emphasis on ethics, international morality and human rights.

One of the most troubling but least studied features of mass political violence is why violence often recurs in the same place over long periods of time. Douglas Kammen explores this pattern in Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor, studying that region’s tragic past, focusing on the small district of Maubara. Once a small but powerful kingdom embedded in long-distance networks of trade, over the course of three centuries the people of Maubara experienced benevolent but precarious Dutch suzerainty, Portuguese colonialism punctuated by multiple uprisings and destructive campaigns of pacification, Japanese military rule, and years of brutal Indonesian occupation. In 1999 Maubara was the site of particularly severe violence before and after the UN-sponsored referendum that finally led to the restoration of East Timor’s independence. Beginning with the mystery of paired murders during East Timor’s failed decolonization in 1975 and the final flurry of state-sponsored violence in 1999, Kammen combines an archival trail and rich oral interviews to reconstruct the history of the leading families of Maubara from 1712 until 2012. Kammen illuminates how recurrent episodes of mass violence shaped alliances and enmities within Maubara as well as with supra-local actors, and how those legacies have influenced efforts to address human rights violations, post-conflict reconstruction, and the relationship between local experience and the identification with the East Timorese nation. The questions posed in Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor about recurring violence and local narratives apply to many other places besides East Timor—from the Caucasus to central Africa, and from the Balkans to China—where mass violence keeps recurring.

Momentum and the East Timor Independence Movement: The Origins of America’s Debate on East Timor examines the campaigns by people in the United States on behalf of those seeking peace for East Timor. The diplomatic work of voluntary advisors and supporters living in the United States in the early years of the movement have not been thoroughly explored until now. Through in-depth interviews with twenty activists and intellectuals involved in the East Timor movement from 1975-1999 and qualitative data analysis on information obtained from these interviews, this book explores “momentum” and “turning points” as perceptions in the minds of individual movement actors. The author takes readers through a combination of historical events that shaped social movement actors' attitudes and started a social movement momentum sequence in 1995. The East Timor All Inclusive Dialogue, the Timorization of Indonesia, the public outcries, organizational evolution, and a number of other turning points in the movement represented a series of successes that led to East Timor's independence.

A riveting firsthand account of the violence in East Timor in 1999 This is a book about a terrible spate of mass violence. It is also about a rare success in bringing such violence to an end. "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" tells the story of East Timor, a half-island that suffered genocide after Indonesia invaded in 1975, and which was again laid to waste after the population voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999. Before international forces intervened, more than half the population had been displaced and 1,500 people killed. Geoffrey Robinson, an expert in Southeast Asian history, was in East Timor with the United Nations in 1999 and provides a gripping first-person account of the violence, as well as a rigorous assessment of the politics and history behind it. Robinson debunks claims that the militias committing the violence in East Timor acted spontaneously, attributing their actions instead to the calculation of Indonesian leaders, and to a "culture of terror" within the Indonesian army. He argues that major powers—notably the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom—were complicit in the genocide of the late 1970s and the violence of 1999. At the same time, Robinson stresses that armed intervention supported by those powers in late 1999 was vital in averting a second genocide. Advocating accountability, the book chronicles the failure to bring those responsible for the violence to justice. A riveting narrative filled with personal observations, documentary evidence, and eyewitness accounts, "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" engages essential questions about political violence, international humanitarian intervention, genocide, and transitional justice.

East Timor is one of the World's most infamous ""trouble spots."" Originally colonized by the Portuguese, it was brutally invaded and occupied by the Indonesian State military forces in 1975. Over the next year, according to the UN, about one third of the population died from massacres, starvation and disease. But recent events in Indonesia have given rise to expectations that there may be a fundamental shift in the State's position on East Timor. This book considers the potential for change against a backdrop of growing popular and political support for the Timorese cause. Addressing East Timor's recent emergence as an issue of global importance, it illustrates how local, grassroots, individual, organizational and campaign initiatives have contributed to this state of affairs, in the context of the increased emphasis which is being placed on ethics, international morality and human rights in contemporary international relations.

In his view, much if not all of the horror that plagued East Timor in 1999 and in the 24 preceding years could have been avoided had countries like Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and especially the United States, not provided Indonesia with valuable political, economic, and military assistance, as well as diplomatic cover.

Consists of clippings, correspondence, photos and other documents gathered in the course of twenty years of reporting on East Timor by Australian journalist Jill Jolliffe.