The following is the second of two articles examining death

The following is the second of two articles examining death
tolls of 1970's East Timor war.

By Dino Patti Djalal

LONDON (JP): As an observer, I do not pretend to know the
numbers involved in war casualties. I am more concerned, however,
about determining who is actually to blame for the deaths.

This is important because some anti-integration activist tend
to cite numbers of war deaths and liberally point the finger to
pro-integration forces. This is not possible in a situation where
guns were pointed in both directions.

War-related deaths which occurred in East Timor in the mid
1970's resulted from violence in and out of combat. We know that
the combat fatalities happened during the Fretilin offensive,
during the movement towards integration.

However, there is no objective reason to blame pro-integration
forces for all these deaths. During the latter half of 1975, it
was the Fretilins who had overwhelming firepower in what was
essentially a one-sided civil war, having armed themselves with
27,000 weapons left behind by Tropas, with an estimated 50-100
bullets each.

It was the Fretilins who decisively outgunned their foes,
inflicting deaths and destruction in an almost unrivaled way.

In fact, if one were to break down the 1980 census regionally,
some of the most significant population dip occurred precisely in
areas where the Fretilins were documented to have committed mass
killings or areas controlled by them.

Just to cite a few examples: in Ailieu, the population was cut
down from 39,986 (1974) to 16,990 (1979); during the same time,
Suai's population declined from 42,119 to 30,039; in Manufahi,
the decline was from 39,000 to 30,000.

The non-combat deaths relate to disease and malnutrition or
starvation. During the war, malaria, dysentry and tuberculosis
had reached endemic proportion, a combined result of massive
dislocation of Timorese into jungle and swamp areas on the one
hand, and the near absence of medical care, on the other.

Disease spread like wildfire among the nomadic bands where
everything--including food and living space--was shared.
Concomitantly, food crops became severely limited: in what was
already subsistence agriculture, farms were left behind, harvests
were missed, and barely anything edible was found in the jungle.

Disease and starvation, of course, does not choose sides
politically, nor can it be blamed on any one group. In fact, even
before the turbulence began, the Portuguese had warned as early
as 1974 that there were signs of hunger in the area.

The scale of disease and starvation related deaths is not
known, and in fact have not received much attention -- perhaps
because they are not seen by anti-integration activists as
dramatic enough.

However, many East Timorese would vouch for the fact that in
certain zones of conflict the number of those who died from
disease/starvation were greater than from bullet wounds.

Arsenio Horta, the brother of Ramos Horta who was detained by
Fretilin leaders and traveled with them during the war, testified
that "some 20,000 had died of starvation in Fretilin controlled
areas." Although there is no way to confirm this, his comment
does reveal that the scale of the problem was quite serious.

It is instructive to note that the thousands of Timorese who
came down from the mountains in 1978-79 generally suffered from
severe cases of malnutrition and deadly disease. In many
instances, international relief workers recorded malaria as the
main cause of death among them.

Additionally, many East Timorese would also verify that after
the fall of Dili, there were vendetta-related deaths committed by
East Timorese whose family, relatives or friends were murdered by
the Fretilins.

Every man and woman murdered by the Fretilins left behind
vengeful sons. It is impossible to determine its scale, but this
type of deaths ought to be figured in war-death assessment,
especially considering the culture of violence and the culture of
vengeance was still quite strong in East Timor's society at that
time.

By illustrating the effects of vengeance above, I don't seek
to deny that there were casualties resulting from the pro-
integration offensive and certain military clashes subsequent to
integration.

However, it is clear, that the number constitutes a far
smaller share of the whole population dip between 1975-1980 than
what the anti-integrationists would claim -- more so if one
considers the considerable losses also suffered by the pro-
integration forces.

The Indonesian government maintains in ball-park terms that
"war-related deaths numbered around 5,000 with another 25,000
victims of malnutrition".

Recently, there was yet another charge of "genocide". In the
documentary Death of a Nation, John Pilger asserted that "at
least one-third" of East Timor's population had been killed, and
he even went so far as claiming that this was "proportionally
worse than what Pol pot had done in Cambodia".

It is not hard to find from whom Pilger took his cue: James
Dunn.

In Pilger's film, Dunn commented that prior to the civil war,
"East Timor had a population of 698,000 and it was just growing
at 2 percent per annum. That means that today East Timor ought to
be 980,000 or more, close to a million, assuming it did not grow
any faster.

The Timorese population, if you look at the recent Indonesian
census, is at the most 650,000. It is incredible. It is worse
than Cambodia."

It appears that two decades later, Dunn still could not resist
the temptation of playing a clever number trick. By placing the
pre-war figure at 698,000 Dunn was contradicting and inflating
his previous figure of 650,000 (in his own article on East Timor
written in 1978).

By placing the present population at "650,000 at best", Dunn
is excessively deflating the 1992 population figure of over
755,000 in East Timor.

In any case, Dunn's calculation, which was the sole basis of
Pilger's allegation, suffered from erroneous methodology.

Dunn was speaking as if there had ever been one million people
in East Timor and that this then declined to 650,000, whereas it
is perfectly clear that East Timor's population never had a
chance to grow to one million people at any point in time.

One million was simply the projected figure for uninterrupted
population growth in East Timor over 18 years, based on 1975
population figure. But we know that the turbulence in the mid
1970's significantly dented this projection to the extent that,
for reasons explained above, by 1980 there were only 555.000
Timorese in the province.

Hence, by 1980 it became plainly clear that it was no longer
possible for East Timor's population to multiply to one million
today. To reach one million in 1993, the population would have to
grow by 80 percent since 1980, or an annual average of 6.6
percent.

We know this is not possible under any circumstances.

It would only make sense, therefore, to compare the present
population figure with the known, actual 1980 figure, as opposed
to comparing it with the absolute projection of one million. One
would then find that East Timor's population, far from declining,
has actually grown 35 percent between 1980-1992, or an average of
about three percent annually.

Even if one were to discount the small number of non-Timorese
migrants (around several thousands) in the province, one would
still find that indigenous growth was significantly larger
compared with the pre-war growth of 1.6 percent.

If "genocide" has no factual basis, why do some persist in
saying it?

The fact that few circles are listening is a measure of the
active work of the anti-integration network abroad. Their
strategy is based on a simple public relations textbook basics:
if you spread a message by as many sympathizers as possible and
have it repeated over and over again, someone out there will hear
you, and a few will even believe it.

Whereas Indonesia's East Timor diplomacy concentrated on
government-to-government channels and important multilateral
forum such as the UNGA, the anti-integration network is being
actively supported by the media and NGOs which have much greater
"broadcasting power."

Today, some of these NGOs have become important players in the
international scene.

There is also an answer why the term "genocide" was
deliberately picked out. By the late 1970's, the world had become
quite sensitized to the genocidal practice of Pol Pot in
Cambodia, and much of the verdict against Pol Pot rested on such
notoriety.

The Fretilins had hoped to catch this same wind. By that time,
the Fretilin were in desperation for political and diplomatic
support: votes in the UN had dwindled, Fretilin's military
activity in East Timor was defeated when Nicolau Lobato was shot
in a government raid, and the integration process was fast
consolidating itself.

Against this background, the term "genocide" was invented as
no more a rhetorical bait than the rumor of "concentration camps"
in East Timor, which turned out completely wrong.

Several conclusion can be drawn from the above. First, because
war casualties tend to be spoken up by anti-integration elements,
the subject matter has been excessively used as part of public
relations offensive, at the expense of an objective and fairly
reasonable estimates of human losses.

Not surprisingly, exaggerated versions of war casualties in
East Timor have come exclusively from dubious sources, using
erroneous methods of comparing population counts. In fact, it is
quite remarkable that the figure of James Dunn, a well-known
sympathizers of the Fretilins, has come up again and again in
this "debate".

Secondly, judging from census results, it appears that
certifiable human losses did occur between 1975-1980, though not
necessarily throughout this period. However, rising population
records subsequent to 1980 indicate the absence of extraordinary
deaths.

Within the 1975-1980 population dip, only a portion can be
regarded as war-related deaths, and from this a smaller segment
as combat-related deaths, and from this even a smaller share
attributable to the pro-integration forces.

The writer is an Indonesian political scientist currently
residing in London, UK

30