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[[Category:International Political Figures]]
[[Category:International Political Figures]]
Suharto was a close ally of the United States during the [[Cold War]]. As a result, he became a bête noire of the far left, who compared his crimes to those of Cambodia's [[Pol Pot]]--though relative to population size and percent killed, Pol Pot's were at least 50 times worse.<ref>http://www.fair.org/extra/9809/suharto.html</ref> In the wake of US defeat in the [[Vietnam War]], President Ford saw Indonesia as a vital American ally in Asia needed to preserve America's waning influence in that part of the world.
==Genocide in East Timor==
In 1975, Ford and Secretary of State [[Kissinger]] met with Suharto in Jakarta--as fate would have it, on the very day Indonesia decided to invade the tiny island of East Timor. East Timor was in the midst of a low-level civil war that led to thousands of deaths and to a military takeover by a de facto Socialist dictatorship headed by the left-wing FRETILIN Party. FRETILIN had waged a violent insurgency in East Timor to seize power and to force out Portuguese and later Indonesian "colonialists." Widely perceived as Communist by the outside world, FRETILIN was feared in Washington and financed by Moscow. Before FRETILIN could set up a stable government, Indonesia began preparing for non-violent solutions to the perceived problem of Timorese independence. Indonesian leaders feared that allowing Timorese independence would inspire secessionist movements that could bring about the collapse of Indonesia.
Although FRETILIN was given one last chance to avoid war, it rejected it for the sake of martyrdom. In an attempt to negotiate a settlement to the dispute over East Timor's future, the Portuguese Decolonization Commission convened a conference in June 1975 in Macau. Indonesia believed it could work with the Association for the Integration of Timor into Indonesia, a Timorese political party, to negotiate with FRETILIN. FRETILIN refused to attend the meeting on the grounds that it would never talk with them. José Manuel Ramos-Horta, the current President of East Timor and a FRETILIN leader, expressed regret for the failure to attend the meeting in his 1987 memoirs.
Many note in retrospect that FRETILIN only sought independence for East Timor, and that the civil war was provoked by a failed coup by right-wing militarists, and not by FRETILIN. Had FRETILIN been able to set up a stable government, some say, East Timor might have made a transition to democracy. FRETILIN supporters would likely have been horrified had they negotiated with a party explicitly committed to the integration of East Timor into Indonesia under any circumstances, much less with a gun up against their head. Others note that FRETILIN gained power by force and used the military to enforce its edicts, and that 40,000 Timorese fled their homes to escape them.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref> FRETILIN overwhelmingly won free elections held after the Indonesian withdrawal.
But Ford and Kissinger believed that the Communists could not be allowed to make any further advances in the post-Vietnam War era, as they had in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, and the Middle East. The Congress had sold out UNITA, Lon Nol, Brazil, Saigon, Phnom Penh, and Vientiane, Kissinger reasoned; the US needed all the friends it could get. If Indonesia was a blood-soaked friend, well, one should not look a gift horse in the mouth.
Kissinger and Ford gave Suharto a green-light to invade East Timor.<ref>http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/#doc4</ref> Ford was unambiguous: “We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have.” A Truth Commission revealed that the subsequent 24 year occupation would cause at least 18,600 violent killings and 75-183,000 deaths from hunger and illness.<ref>http://www.ictj.org/en/news/features/846.html</ref> A low estimate of the East Timorese population in 1975 was 700,000. Although censuses, especially in underdeveloped countries, are always undercounts; many leftists used this (faulty) statistic to exaggerate the scope of the crime. In reality, if East Timor's population had only been 700,000; then it's population would have been far, far higher after the atrocities took place than it was before.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref> The overall population is thus believed to have been over one million when the killings began, with at least 10% of the population being killed.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref>
==References==
==References==
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