The terror campaign by pro-Indonesian armed groups before, during, and after East Timor's independence referendum in 1999 was a blatant challenge to the international community as many of the acts of murder, political intimidation, destruction, and mass deportation took place before the eyes of the world. Yet still the ultimate responsibility has been denied and obscured. Masters of Terror provides an authoritative analysis and documentation of the brutal operations carried out by the Indonesian army and its East Timorese allies. The authors carefully assemble detailed accounts of the actions of the major Indonesian officers and East Timorese militia commanders accused of gross human rights violations. This indispensable work explores a horrific frontal attack on democracy and calls for the establishment of an international tribunal for crimes against humanity in East Timor.

The terror campaign by pro-Indonesian armed groups before, during, and after East Timor's independence referendum in 1999 was a blatant challenge to the international community as many of the acts of murder, political intimidation, destruction, and mass deportation took place before the eyes of the world. Yet still the ultimate responsibility has been denied and obscured. Masters of Terror provides an authoritative analysis and documentation of the brutal operations carried out by the Indonesian army and its East Timorese allies. The authors carefully assemble detailed accounts of the actions of the major Indonesian officers and East Timorese militia commanders accused of gross human rights violations. This indispensable work explores a horrific frontal attack on democracy and calls for the establishment of an international tribunal for crimes against humanity in East Timor.

East Timor is at last, and at terrible human cost, firmly on the road to independence. The significance of its passage to freedom-for its people, for Asia, and for the world-is manifold. This volume offers a comprehensive overview of East Timor's travail and its triumph in its international context. East Timor's independence constitutes one of the final and most poignant moments in a long and bitter history of European colonization and decolonization. For the people of East Timor, independence from Portugal in 1975 was only the beginning of a new struggle against Indonesian invaders a struggle that took the lives of 200,000 East Timorese and one that is by no means over. The case of East Timor, both during and after the Cold War, provides a litmus test for issues of international responsibility, posing questions of double standards in unusually clear-cut form. It reveals the active support by the United States and other powers for the military forces of Indonesia throughout the years of that nation's invasion and repression of East Timor, until 1998 when the collapse of the Indonesian dictatorship ushered in a new phase in the East Timorese struggle. Contributions by: Peter Bartu, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Geoffrey C. Gunn, Peter Hayes, Wade Huntley, Gerry Van Klinken, Helene Van Klinken, Arnold S. Kohen, Allan Nairn, Sarah Niner, Constancio Pinto, Geoffrey Robinson, Joao Mariano Saldanha, Charles Scheiner, Mark Selden, Stephen R. Shalom, and Richard Tanter."