Abstract
Portugal abandoned its former colony, with its largely Roman Catholic population, in 1975, when it was occupied by Indonesia and claimed as the province of Timor Timur. The UN did not recognize Indonesian sovereignty over the territory. An independence movement, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN), maintained a guerrilla resistance to the Indonesian government which resulted in large-scale casualties and alleged atrocities. On 24 July 1998 Indonesia announced a withdrawal of troops from East Timor and an amnesty for some political prisoners, although no indication was given of how many of the estimated 12,000 troops and police would pull out. On 5 Aug. Indonesia and Portugal reached agreement on the outlines of an autonomy plan which would give the Timorese the right to self-government except in foreign affairs and defence.
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Carey, P. and Bentley, G. C. (eds.) East Timor at the Crossroads: the Forging of a Nation London, 1995
Kohen, Arnold S., From the Place of the Dead: Bishop Belo and the Struggle for East Timor. Lion, Oxford, 2000
Rowland, Ian, Timor [Bibliography]. Oxford and Santa Barbara (CA), 1992
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© 2002 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Turner, B. (2002). East Timor. In: Turner, B. (eds) The Statesman’s Yearbook. The Statesman’s Yearbook. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230271319_156
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230271319_156
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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