Poster of the Week

East Timor An Act Of Genocide
Carolyn C. King; East Timor Human Rights Committee
Offset, January 1981
Syracuse, New York

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week commemorates a massacre that took place 19 years ago this week in East Timor by Indonesian paramilitary forces. Although our featured poster was produced ten years before this specific massacre, it represents the decades of genocide that took place in East Timor during 25 years of Indonesian occupation.

On November 12th 1991, Indonesian troops opened fire on unarmed civilians, primarily young people, who were staging a peaceful demonstration in Dili, East Timor’s capital and largest city—271 were killed, 381 were wounded and another 270 people “disappeared.” The day started as a memorial procession and independence demonstration through the Santa Cruz Cemetery, and international journalists were present. Two American journalists, Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn, were beaten when they tried to intervene between the military and the civilians, but survived.

The massacre, known either as the Santa Cruz Massacre or the Dili Massacre fueled the movement to restore independence to East Timor, which finally occurred in 2002, however the troops and officials responsible for the attack have yet to come to justice.

Countless East Timorese were murdered since Indonesia invaded the island in 1975…with full U.S. approval. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with Indonesian President Suharto on the day before the invasion and reportedly gave their approval for the invasion. During the Indonesian occupation, more than 200,000 East Timorese were killed out of a population of less than 700,000.

For more information:

http://www1.ci.uc.pt/timor/stc2.htm

www.democracynow.org has many features on the Dili Massacre.