Indonesia: East Timor

Posted on August 7, 2015 by World Peace Foundation

Introduction | Atrocities | Fatalities | Ending | Coding | Works Cited | Notes

Introduction

A former Portuguese colony, East Timor (now Timor-Leste) is located on the Eastern half of the island of Timor (the western half became a part of Indonesia immediately following independence). The 1974 revolution in Portugal signaled the end of Portuguese colonial power, and immediately thereafter in 1975, pro-independence party the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin), with the support of a majority of the former colonial Timorese army, defeated a coup attempt led by Indonesia-leaning party UDT. Indonesia began military attacks from across the border in West Timor. Fretilin unilaterally declared independence on 28 November 1975. Indonesia, citing concerns about Fretilin’s left-leaning politics, invaded on December 7, 1975.

Atrocities

The first days of the invasion were characterized by targeted executions of Fretilin leaders and their families, indiscriminate killing, rape, torture, public executions in the capital Dili and in small towns. Despite Indonesia’s superior military and naval strength of 15-20,000 troops, the Timorese army (estimated at 2,500 professional soldiers and around 7,000 trained civilians) managed to resist to the Indonesian efforts to subdue the area.

The Fretilin leadership fled to the interior with many civilians and prisoners from the parties that had collaborated with the Indonesian military (eventually conducted massacres of these prisoners). Generally, civilian populations (possibly as many as 300,000) were beyond the reach of the Indonesian military who controlled the capital and towns for most of 1976, eventually able to organize farming, basic health care and education. By this point, Fretilin decided on a strategy of semi guerrilla resistance by its armed wing Falintil, supported logistically by the civilian population in the ‘liberation zones’ established in the interior. The continued survival of Fretilin as a political and military force capable of preventing Indonesia from exercising control over the whole territory clearly reflected number of aspects of the movement’s strength and popularity as it was built up before December 1975. However, as attacks from Indonesian forces intensified and food supplies disrupted, civilian deaths from hunger, shelling and disease began to rise dramatically. Many civilians wanted to surrender but were prevented from doing so.

Indonesia launched a new military offensive, preceded by a substantial troop build-up and acquisition of new military equipment (including from US and UK). Employing aerial strafing/bombing and ground attacks, the military overpowered one Fretilin base after the other as well as systematically destroying livestock and food sources, forcing Fretilin and civilians further into the interior. With so many civilians to protect, Falintil was constrained from mounting effective counter-offensives. In late 1978, the last Fretilin stronghold at Mount Matebian fell; Fretilin changed policy and allowed civilians to surrender while Fretilin/Falintil continued its guerrilla warfare. The rest of Fretilin leaders and followers were pursued, captured and killed; by March 1979 the military operation was disbanded and the Indonesian military declared East Timor “pacified”. Between 300,000 and 400,000 displaced people came under Indonesian control between early 1977 and early 1979.

Fatalities

According to a study by the Commissao de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliacao (CAVR) and Human Rights Data Group (HRDAG), drawing on more than 8000 victim-statements, a graveyard census, and retrospective Mortality Survey of 1,396 randomly selected household, a minimum conflict-related civilian death toll for East Timor in the period 1974-1999 is 102,800 (+/-12,000).[i]

The estimate can be further broken down: (1) an estimate 18,600 total killings (+/-1000) using multiple systems estimation techniques and (ii) an estimate of 84,200 (+/- 11,000) deaths due to hunger and illness. The number of deaths attributed to “hunger or illness” rises to its highest levels during the immediate post-invasion period, 1975-1980. Whereas 1999 marked the high point for estimated killings 2,634 (+/-626). Significant for our study is not only the toll, but also its temporal concentration: CAVR/HRDAG chart an enormous spike in mortality between 1975 – 1980.[ii]

Figure 3.1

Figure from C.Q. Smith 2016, 90.

Robert Cribb a scholar who specializes on Indonesia, argues that a best estimate number (opposed to the above, which is best minimum) may place the figure for killing in East Timor between 1975 – 1980 around 50,000, although he also suggests a range of 30,000 – 80,000.[iii] Further, he argues that among the estimated 50,000 who died of malnutrition and disease wrought by the conditions of life, that a “significant portion of the rural population was shifted into strategic villages, in other words concentration camps where they could be isolated from Freitlin guerillas…”[iv] In December 1978, these camps held 268,644 or 318,921 persons in 15 different centers, under conditions that enabled the spread of disease, included forced labor, and limited food supplies.[v]

Endings

Significant incidents of killing occurred after 1980, including the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre of 271 protesting civilians. Nonetheless, we mark the decline of widespread killing and increased mortality as fits our study in 1980, given the range of data referenced above. Historical analysis suggests that the Indonesian military aimed to normalize the situation slightly earlier, in 1979.

Coding

We coded this ending as planned through a process of normalization.

Postscript

After many years of isolation from foreign visitors, a visit from then President Suharto “opened up” East Timor in 1988. The resistance re-mobilized and public acts of pro-independence (including during a visit by Pope John Paul II in 1989) internationalized the issue.

With the fall of Indonesian President Suharto after 31 years, the new Indonesian president B.J. Habibie allowed a referendum on East Timor’s status to take place in 1999. The ballot was marked intimidation and violence by Timorese militia widely believed to be organized by the Indonesian military, with estimated fatalities at least 2,000 deaths, the internal displacement of about 200,000 people and the destruction of 60-80% of private and public infrastructure. The violence ended as Indonesia’s new civilian leadership leveraged moderating control over the military—under considerable international pressure from allies the US and Australia, and from a UN mission on the ground—to end further repression and enable independence to move forward. An Australian peacekeeping force was subsequently sent to help stabilize the situation.

Works Cited

Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation (CAVR). 2005. “Conflict-Related Deaths in Timor-Leste 1974 – 1999” The Findings of the CAVR Report Chega!” Available at http://www.cavr-timorleste.org/updateFiles/english/CONFLICT-RELATED%20DEATHS.pdf

Cribb, Robert. 2001. “How Many Deaths?: Problems in Statistics of Massacre in Indonesia (1965 -1966) and East Timor (1975 – 1980), in Violence in Indonesia. ed ingrid Wessell and Georgia Wimhofer. Germany: Abera Verlag Markus Voss, 82 – 98,

Kiernan, Ben. 2003. “The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The death tolls in Cambodia, 1975 – 1979, and East Timor, 1975 – 1980” Critical Asian Studies 35:4, 585-597.

Smith, Claire Q. 2016. “Indonesia: Two similar civil wars, two different endings” in ed. Conley-Zilkic, Bridget. How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, The Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Klinken, Gerry .2012. “Death by deprivation in East Timor, 1975 – 1980” at http://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2012/04/17/death-by-deprivation-in-east-timor-1975-1980/ Accessed May 27, 2015.

Notes

[i] CAVR The report further notes that while the report includes 1975 conflict-related data, that data from this period “was not concise enough to make an explicit estimate about the civil war death toll” (2).

[ii] Van Klinken, 2012.

[iii] Cribb 2001, 94; and Kiernan 2003.

[iv] Cribb 2001, 89.

[v] Cribb, 89-90.

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Korea: The Korean War

Posted on August 7, 2015 by World Peace Foundation

Introduction | Atrocities | Fatalities | Ending | Coding | Works Cited | Notes

Introduction

During World War II, the United States (U.S.) and the Soviet Union (USSR) agreed to divide the Japanese colony of the Korean peninsula into two parts along the 38th parallel north circle of latitude, with the North controlled by the USSR and the South by the U.S. In 1948, Kim Il-sung was designated the premier of North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK), while the South (the Republic of Korea, or ROK) elected Syngman Rhee as its president. Both nations used force and mass killing to control their populations’ suspected political leanings, with the North targeting South Korean sympathizers as “rightists” and the South similarly targeting “leftists” and “communists”. Kim Il-sung, believing the South to be weak, eventually persuaded the USSR and the newly communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) to support an attempted invasion.

While the question of which side made the first move at the 38th parallel remains unresolved, North Korea invaded the South on June 25th, 1950, using its Soviet-supplied armament to easily route the lightly armed South Korean Army. Citing concerns of a potential global spread of Communism, the U.S. requested and received the approval of the UN Security Council (during a Soviet boycott) to militarily intervene. U.S. General MacArthur was appointed the head of the collective UN Command forces charged with the defense of South Korea, the majority of which were South Korean and American but which included a significant number of troops from the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Thailand, Canada, Turkey, and Australia, among others.

Despite resistance, UN Command forces eventually controlled South Korea and crossed the 38th parallel to invade North Korean territory, triggering Chinese military intervention as they approached the Sino-Korean border. While UN Command forces were then repelled by the Chinese to the 38th parallel, serious logistical problems caused the Chinese offensive to fail to push beyond this limit. Despite repeated attempts by both sides, the front stayed at the 38th parallel from 1951 to 1953 until the war ended in an armistice between the UN Command forces, the Chinese and the North Korean Army. The Armistice Agreement formalized a ceasefire and the division of the Korean peninsula, effectively ending the war on July 27, 1953.

Atrocities

The killing of civilians during the Korean War are attributable to a wide variety of situations, actors, and intentions. Based on existing analyses of Korean War atrocities, these methods are best categorized into the following groupings[i]:

  • Civilians deaths caused by North or South Korean state-directed executions for the purposes of internal control, typically because state troops or officials believed the civilians to be enemy collaborators and/or failed to adequately support their state.
  • Civilian deaths that occurred during perpetrators’ combat operations (including bombings) by Chinese, South Korean, North Korean, and American troops, typically due to troops’ negligence of civilian life during the pursuit of their operations and indiscriminate bombing campaigns.
  • State-sponsored inter-village reprisal killings by civilians.
  • Killings of American and ROK prisoners of war by North Korean forces.

Each of these kinds of killings possessed their own unique dynamic that interacted with other kinds of civilian killing and the repeated ebb and flow of the front line between DPRK-allied and ROK-allied forces.

Excessive, lethal force and mass crackdown by the state in response to any political opposition characterized the pre-war and wartime patterns in both the North and South. Civilian executions in the interest of maintaining state control had already begun prior to the formal initiation of the Korean War, with the South Korean state killing tens of thousands of civilian protestors because of alleged communist sympathies during the Jeju Uprising (April 1948 – May 1949) and associated events of political dissatisfaction like the violently repressed Yso-SunCheon Rebellion.[ii] In an event now known as the Bodo League Massacre, South Korean President Syngman Rhee ordered the deaths of supposed Communist sympathisers as the North Koreans invaded.[iii] The execution of these suspected traitors occurred throughout the conflict as the ROK regained control of areas that it had been previously unable to purge of prisoners, or located ROK refugees who had been unable to escape cities while they were controlled by the DPRK and were therefore branded as collaborators.[iv] Similarly, as the DPRK invaded they engaged in class cleansing, particularly targeting ROK intelligentsia, bourgeoisie, and all those associated with the ROK government, including family members of anyone associated with any of those categories.[v] Civilians were also polarized, attacking each other after being liberated based on their perceived and real affiliations with and deliberate support of the North or South.[vi]

Armed forces were frequently responsible for civilian deaths, either through apparent disregard or deliberate targeting due to policies to treat civilians fleeing areas of combat operations like combatants (in response to alleged DPRK infiltration tactics). The infamous No Gun Ri Massacre of July 1950 allegedly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians,[vii] with troops sometimes opening fire at advancing refugees, as dictated by explicit U.S. policies, outlined in a memo from U.S. Ambassador to Korea John J. Muccio.[viii] Roughly 200 similar incidents of crossfire-related and targeted refugee killings were entered onto the investigatory docket of the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission, including repeated indiscriminate bombings and use of napalm in civilian-occupied areas by American forces.[ix] Transport infrastructure was also typically destroyed by troops during periods of retreat despite the possibility that such actions would either directly harm civilians using the infrastructure at the time, or that these actions would strand civilians in an active combat zone.[x] Stranded refugees would then become vulnerable to targeting by the ROK government for their supposed collaboration with the enemy, and under accusation of being “infiltrators.”[xi]

Prisoners of war were also subjected to deadly conditions during the War. DPRK troops executed POWs after their surrender and used death marches to ensure POWs were either killed or moved beyond the rescue of their advancing allies.[xii] While POW camps run by all sides seem to have struggled with basic problems of hygiene, resources, and preexisting problems like poor health education and general poor health, conditions in DPRK and PRC camps seem to have been particularly egregious, with numerous former American POWs reporting a lack of access to food and medical care, as well as suffering torture and medical experimentation.[xiii]

Fatalities

1948 – 1951: Rough minimal estimate of 1.75 million people, including pre-war period, civilians killed during the war and POWs killed while in captivity.

For the pre-war period, we found estimates that between 15,000-30,000 civilians were killed during the 1948 Jeju Uprising[xv] and 1,092 during repression of the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion.[xvi] While statistical claims for civilians killed during the conflict vary, there is consensus that at least 1 million civilian deaths occurred over the course of the War (1950 – 1953), with the phrase “probably exceeded 2 million” also a common, if imprecise, refrain.[xvii] Estimates of civilian fatalities include, for instance, a range of 500,000 to 1,000,000, with several sources suggesting the higher number may be more accurate.[xviii]

Additionally, estimates of POWs killed in captivity include 2,700 American POWs (roughly 40 percent of US POWs)[xix] An unknown number of South Korean POWs also died, with 13,836 missing South Korean soldiers known to be killed, 19,409 soldiers of unknown status, unknown percentage of both statistics died in North Korea, as it includes those who were missing but died in combat and POWs who were not allowed to leave, were pressed into the North Korean Army or chose to remain in North Korea.

Ending

While it is difficult to say for certain, the vast majority of non-POW civilian deaths seem to have occurred during 1950 and 1951, prior to the military stalemate that began in July 1951. While government executions by North or South Korea may have occurred beyond this point, and POWs continued to die until they were repatriated in 1953, there are no other incidents recorded in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s docket within the timespan of the Korean War after 1951, and examinations of general histories seem to produce similar results. However, we do know that scholars have “estimates that about 45 percent of the deaths and battle wounds during the war occurred after the armistice negotiations began,” estimating 425,000 combatant deaths in the later half of the war.[xiv] Given that this portion of the conflict was isolated to an already flattened area of Korea, and given an absence of historical evidence, the degree to which this portion of the conflict impacted civilians remains uncertain. It should also be noted that Stephan Courtois’s The Black Book of Communism alleges that 100,000 deaths occurred in North Korean purges immediately following the War, but the North’s secretiveness makes uncovering additional information difficult to impossible.

Coding

We code this case as ending through strategic shift, as the conflict ground to a stalemate. It involved both domestic and international actors. We also note that there were multiple civilian victim groups.

Works Cited

Baik, Tae-Ung. 2012. “A War Crimes against an Ally’s Civilians: The No Gun Ri Massacre.” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy 15:2, 455 – 505.

Cumings, Bruce . 2011. The Korean War: A History. Modern Library.

De Haan, Phil. 2002. “50 Years And Counting: The Impact of the Korean War on the People of the Peninsula,” Available at: http://www.calvin.edu/news/2001-02/korea.htm Accessed July 2, 2016.

Deane, Hugh. 1999. The Korean War: 1945-1953. China Books and Periodicals.

Goldstein, Donald M. and Harry James Maihafer. 2000. The Korean War: The Story and Photographs. Potomac Books.

Halliday and Cumings, Unknown War, 1988

Hee-Kyung, Suh. 2010. “Atrocities Before and During the Korean War: Mass Civilian Killings by South Korean and U.S. Forces,” Critical Asian Studies 42(4): 553-588.

Kim, Dong Choon. 2004. “Forgotten war, forgotten massacres—the Korean War (1950-1953) as licensed mass killings”, Journal of Genocide Research 6(4): 523-544.

Lee, Steven Hugh. 2013. The Korean War. Routledge.

Lewis, Adrian R. 2007. The American Culture of War: The History of U.S. Military Force from World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Routledge.

Mikaberidze, Alexander. 2013. “Atrocities during the Korean War,” Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes: An Encylopedia ABC-CLIO: 376-377.

Millett, Allan R. 2014. “Korean War,” Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/322419/Korean-War>, last updated August 8, 2014. Accessed May 28, 2015.

The National Committee for Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Incident. 2003. “Final Report.” Available at: http://www.jeju43.go.kr/english/sub05.html.

Tirman, John . 2012. The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars. Oxford University Press.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 2009. “Truth and Reconciliation: Activities of the Part Three Years.” Republic of Korea. Available at: http://www.jinsil.go.kr/pdf/%EC%98%81%EB%AC%B8%EB%B0%B1%EC%84%9C_20MS%ED%8C%8C%EC%9D%BC_0205.pdf

U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Korean War Atrocities. 1954. “Korean War Atrocities: Report of the Committee on Government Operations”, January 7. Available at: https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/KW-atrocities-Report.pdf Accessed January 3, 2017.

Wiest, Andrew, Mary Kathryn Barbier, Glenn Robins. 2009. America and the Vietnam War: Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation. Routledge.

Notes

[i] Kim 2004; Tirman 2012; and Hee-Kyung 2010.

[ii] Hee-Kyung 2010.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Kim 2004, 536.

[v] Mikaberidze 2013.

[vi] Cumings 2011, 236.

[vii] Baik 2012, 463 – 465.

[viii] Tirman 2012, 293.

[ix] Deane1999, 149-151.

[x] De Haan 2002.

[xi] Kim 2004, 536.

[xii] U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Korean War Atrocities 1954.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Lee 2013.

[xv] The National Committee for Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Incident 2003.

[xvi] Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Korea 2009, 40.

[xvii] Goldstein and Maihafer 2000; Halliday and Cumings 1988.

[xviii] Millett 2014; Lewis 2007, 144.

[xix] Wiest, Barbier, and Robins 2009.

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