Indonesia and East Timor yesterday held the first meeting of a truth commission as part of a joint attempt to leave behind the bloodshed and rancor of the 24 years they were bound together.
Indonesian troops invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor on Dec. 7, 1975 and then-president Suharto officially annexed it as the country's 27th province on July 17, 1976.
An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 East Timorese died in the early years of the Indonesian occupation, many from starvation or disease, as a guerrilla war raged against Jakarta.
Jakarta's harsh rule came under the international spotlight when troops fired randomly into a pro-democracy rally in Dili's Santa Cruz cemetery, killing at least 100 on Nov. 12, 1991. In the face of continuing international scrutiny, East Timor increasingly became a thorn in Indonesia's side and Jakarta's stance began to soften following the downfall of Suharto on May 21, 1998. The government of his successor B.J. Habibie on Jan. 27, 1999 made a surprise announcement that Jakarta was willing to let East Timor have independence if a broad autonomy offer it had made was rejected.
The UN accordingly began preparations for a self-determination ballot in East Timor which was finally held on Aug. 30.
The run-up to the vote was marked by violence from pro-Jakarta militias. The announcement of the result, with 78.5 percent choosing independence rather than autonomy, triggered an orgy of killing and destruction by the militias.
A UN report in 2000 said Indonesian army personnel had recruited and armed the militias with the intention of swaying the vote. It said troops in some cases were themselves directly involved in intimidation and terror attacks before and after the vote.
The UN says some 1,400 East Timorese were killed before and after the ballot and whole towns were razed. As world outrage grew in the face of Indonesia's failure to stop the killings, a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping force, composed mostly of Australians, arrived in Dili on Sept. 20 and began gradually to reestablish order. Indonesia's top legislature agreed in October 1999 to relinquish East Timor and the UN began to administer the territory until its independence on May 20, 2002.
Faced with international pressure to bring to justice those responsible for the violence, and to deflect demands for an international rights tribunal, president Megawati Sukarnoputri established a human rights court in August 2001.
The court began its first trial on March 14, 2002 and issued its last verdict in August of the following year. All but one of the 18 military and police officers and officials who appeared before it were acquitted, prompting an international outcry.
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