The following is the first of two articles examining the death
The following is the first of two articles examining the death
tolls in East Timor in the 1970's.
By Dino Patti Djalal
LONDON (JP): There is little doubt that human casualties
during the turbulence in East Timor in the mid-1970's were
considerable. Those were violent times.
However, discussions on the casualties have been generally
within the context of propaganda. This is unfortunate, because
the subject, sensitive as it may be, is important and deserves
objective scrutiny.
Not surprisingly, casualties have been focused on by Fretilin
activists in exile and non-Timorese elements critical of
integration.
From time to time since 1976, rumors of "200,000 deaths" or
worse, "genocide" have won some ears, but by and large these
theories never gained currency.
Of late, however, John Pilger's film Death of a Nation, which
has been shown in Britain and Australia and may reach millions
more in other countries, has attempted to revive and reinterpret
the subject of deaths in Timor in a more reckless fashion than
before.
Having seen the film in London, my impression was that Pilger
was so busy looking for conspiracy and fabricating controversies
that he not only left many stones unturned but also went far
beyond typical tabloid journalism, outdoing even the most
sensational Fretilin propaganda.
To get a fair estimate of the death toll, one would need an
extensive account of the deaths in various zones of conflict
throughout East Timor at different points in time, which seems
beyond the resources of all involved, as even Fretilin can not
account for losses within its own ranks, let alone the civilian
population.
The fuss over the issue originated in 1977 in the person of
James Dunn. A former Australian consul in Dili in the 1960's,
Dunn had clear sympathy with Fretilin.
He visited a Fretilin controlled Dili in October 1975 and had
established an active working relationship with them.
Dunn claimed that he had interviewed Timorese refugees in
Portugal and that they mentioned that 50,000 to 100,000 people
had perished, but it was never established how they came up with
this figure.
In fact, many things rendered the credibility of this claim
highly at risk: the names of his sources were blacked out (which
made verification impossible); they were vulnerable to shady
promises of migration to Australia; and, somewhat embarrassingly
to Dunn, it was found out later from the Indonesian Red Cross
that these refugees had left East Timor well before the pro-
integration offensive in late 1975.
The refugees never saw 50,000-100,000 people dead; if
anything, they were simply struck by the sight of deserted
villages in places they visited and on this basis asserted that
tens of thousands had perished.
Whatever the case, months later following a Presidential
amnesty on Aug. 16, 1977, tens of thousands of Timorese came down
from the mountains: some 53,000 through Sep. 1978, 80,000 more in
late 1978, and another wave of 40,000 in early 1979, bringing the
total to 173,000.
Hence, by the end of 1979 the testimony of the refugees could
no longer be used as the basis to assess human casualties. The
exodus effectively answered what had happened to the "perished"
villages. Would Dunn be willing to reveal the names of his 1977
sources and have them cross-examined by credible authorities?
In a recent article published in the UK, Pilger referred to
Dunn's report as an "Australian parliamentary study." James Dunn
was never an MP; he worked for the parliament's library. His trip
to Portugal was neither commissioned nor funded by Parliament; it
was sponsored by left-wing organizations in Australia such as
AFCAO and Australia State University.
In 1980, the government published a census which showed that
the East Timorese population had declined since the pre-war
years.
The 1980 census recorded 555,350 East Timorese, about 69,000
less than the 1973 census figure of 624,594. If the growth rate
of 1.6 percent held up to 1975 then the population would have
been 645,000.
In reality, it is quite difficult to determine the precise
extent to which the population declined: whereas the 1980
Indonesian census was the first census ever conducted by way of
head count (by handing out identity cards), the Portuguese relied
strictly on second-hand information from Timorese liurais (tribal
kings) which were never verified.
Portugal's indirect census yielded room for exaggeration
because some liurais, eager to project size and clout, were
believed to inflate the number of tribesman.
Apart from this, the 1980 census did not account for the
remaining Fretilins in East Timor's jungles, which narrowed the
population even further.
Thus, the Indonesian government does have a case in asserting
that "the true difference will never be known". But whatever the
decline, it is certainly not an automatic indication of war-
deaths.
Other factors explain why fewer people lived in East Timor by
1980: the post-1975 migration of thousands of East Timorese to
places outside Indonesia, mainly Portugal and Australia (there
are now 15-20,000 Timorese living outside Indonesia); the
unspecified number of Timorese who had gone to other parts of
Indonesia, either to study, to find work or for other reasons;
and those who died of natural causes or criminals acts.