This is a gripping and powerful saga rooted in the horrible atrocities and deprivation endured by the East Timorese following Indonesia's invasion in 1975. Indonesian security forces ruled ruthlessly until 1999, causing nearly 200,000 conflict-related deaths, imprisoning and torturing thousands more, while raping and plundering with abandon. A generation of East Timorese grew up where the rule of law was a distant rumor and human rights were routinely violated. Joseph Nevins briefly recapitulates this history, focusing on international complicity in these crimes against humanity, but mostly dwells on the troubling failure to secure justice.
Finally, in 1999, President B.J. Habibie, successor to the deposed and disgraced President Suharto, surprisingly agreed to allow the East Timorese to choose between autonomy and independence in a U.N. administered referendum. Nevins recounts the hopes and horrors of 1999 when Indonesian backed militias engaged in widespread violence and intimidation in an ill-fated bid to quell pro-independence forces.
He argues convincingly that this orchestrated violence, and the bloody retribution that ensued after East Timorese chose independence could have been avoided had the United Nations acted on explicit and repeated warnings. By agreeing to let the Indonesians take responsibility for security in the runup to the elections, the U.N. naively consigned the East Timorese to the goodwill of occupiers who had a long and sanguinary record of brutality. Jose Ramos Horta, a Nobel laureate and currently foreign minister, remarked at the time that it was akin to putting the Khmer Rouge in charge of election security in Cambodia.