East Timor

A Portugese colony for 270 years, East Timor formed its first independent government on November 28, 1975. Nine days later, Indonesia invaded, eager to seize its vast oil resources and worried that a free East Timor would encourage separatist movements at home. Indiscriminate killings, forced resettlements, famine and bombings took 60,000 East Timorese lives in the first two months of the 1975 invasion - an operation with the prior knowledge of the USA and Australia. Over the last 20 years, Indonesia has wiped out 210,000 East Timorese. That's 1/3 of the population. Indonesian state doctors (the only physicians in East Timor) have sterilized thousands of unknowning Timorese women with injections of Depo-Provera, a birth control serum. Timorese schoolgirls have reportedly received it as treatment for ailments as mundane as headaches. The idea is to wipe out the Timorese population altogether and replace it with Indonesians. Immigrants now account for half of East Timor's population.

For more detailed information, please visit The Free East Timor Site. (As always, word to Colors magazine for print activism).