On 7 December 1975, Indonesian forces invaded East Timor.
Operasi Seroja (1975–1977) , Indonesian commander of Operasi Seroja Operasi Seroja (Operation Lotus) was the largest military operation ever carried out by Indonesia. Following a naval bombardment of Dili, Indonesian seaborne troops landed in the city while simultaneously paratroopers descended. 641 Indonesian paratroopers jumped into Dili, where they engaged in six-hours combat with FALINTIL forces. According to author Joseph Nevins, Indonesian warships shelled their own advancing troops and Indonesian transport aircraft dropped some of their paratroopers on top of the retreating FALINTIL forces and suffered accordingly. By noon, Indonesian forces had taken the city at the cost of 35 Indonesian soldiers killed, while 122 FALINTIL soldiers died in the combat. On 10 December, a second invasion resulted in the capture of the second biggest town,
Baucau, and on Christmas Day, around 10,000 to 15,000 troops landed at
Liquisa and
Maubara. By April 1976 Indonesia had some 35,000 soldiers in East Timor, with another 10,000 standing by in Indonesian West Timor. A large proportion of these troops were from Indonesia's elite commands. By the end of the year, 10,000 troops occupied Dili and another 20,000 had been deployed throughout East Timor. Massively outnumbered, FALINTIL troops fled to the mountains and continued
guerrilla combat operations. suggested that the number of East Timorese killed in the first two years of the occupation was "50,000 people or perhaps 80,000". At the start of the occupation, FRETILIN radio sent the following broadcast: "The Indonesian forces are killing indiscriminately. Women and children are being shot in the streets. We are all going to be killed.... This is an appeal for international help. Please do something to stop this invasion." One Timorese refugee told later of "rape [and] cold-blooded assassinations of women and children and
Chinese shop owners". Dili's bishop at the time,
Martinho da Costa Lopes, said later: "The soldiers who landed started killing everyone they could find. There were many dead bodies in the streets – all we could see were the soldiers killing, killing, killing." In one incident, a group of fifty men, women, and children – including Australian freelance reporter
Roger East – were lined up on a cliff outside of Dili and shot, their bodies falling into the sea. Many such
massacres took place in Dili, where onlookers were ordered to observe and count aloud as each person was executed. In addition to FRETILIN supporters, Chinese migrants were also singled out for execution; five hundred were killed in the first day alone.
Stalemate Though the Indonesian military advanced into East Timor, most of the populations left the invaded towns and villages in coastal areas for the mountainous interior. FALINTIL forces, comprising 2,500 full-time regular troops from the former Portuguese colonial army, were well equipped by Portugal and "severely restricted the Indonesian army's ability to make headway." Thus, during the early months of the invasion, Indonesian control was mainly confined to major towns and villages such as Dili, Baucau,
Aileu and
Same. Throughout 1976, the Indonesian military used a strategy in which troops attempted to move inland from the coastal areas to join up with troops parachuted further inland. This strategy was unsuccessful and the troops received stiff resistance from Falintil. For instance, it took 3,000 Indonesian troops four months to capture the town of
Suai, a southern city only three kilometres from the coast. The military continued to restrict all foreigners and West Timorese from entering East Timor, and Suharto admitted in August 1976 that Fretilin "still possessed some strength here and there." By April 1977, the Indonesian military faced a stalemate: Troops had not made ground advances for more than six months, and the invasion had attracted increasing adverse international publicity.
Encirclement, annihilation, and final cleansing (1977–1978) In the early months of 1977, the Indonesian navy ordered missile-firing patrol-boats from the United States, Australia, the
Netherlands, South Korea, and
Taiwan, as well as submarines from West Germany. In February 1977, Indonesia also received thirteen
OV-10 Bronco aircraft from the
Rockwell International Corporation with the aid of an official
US government foreign military aid sales credit. The Bronco was ideal for the East Timor invasion, as it was specifically designed for counter-insurgency operations in difficult terrain. By the beginning of February 1977, at least six of the 13 Broncos were operating in East Timor, and helped the Indonesian military pinpoint Fretilin positions. Along with the new weaponry, an additional 10,000 troops were sent in to begin new campaigns that would become known as the 'final solution'. The 'final solution' campaigns involved two primary tactics: The 'encirclement and annihilation' campaign involved bombing villages and mountain areas from aeroplanes, causing famine and defoliation of ground cover. When surviving villagers came down to lower-lying regions to surrender, the military would simply shoot them. Other survivors were placed in resettlement camps where they were prevented from travelling or cultivating farmland. In early 1978, the entire civilian population of Arsaibai village, near the Indonesian border, was killed for supporting Fretilin after being bombarded and starved. During this period, allegations of Indonesian use of
chemical weapons arose, as villagers reported maggots appearing on crops after bombing attacks. The Indonesian 'encirclement and annihilation' campaign of 1977–1978 broke the back of the main Fretilin militia and the capable Timorese President and military commander,
Nicolau Lobato, was shot and killed by helicopter-borne Indonesian troops on 31 December 1978. The 1975–1978 period, from the beginning of the invasion to the largely successful conclusion of the encirclement and annihilation campaign, proved to be the toughest period of the entire conflict, costing the Indonesians more than 1,000 fatalities out of the total of 2,000 who died during the entire occupation.
FRETILIN clandestine movement (1980–1999) The Fretilin militia who survived the Indonesian offensive of the late 1970s chose Xanana Gusmão as their leader. He was caught by Indonesian intelligence near Dili in 1992 and was succeeded by Mau Honi, who was captured in 1993 and in turn, succeeded by
Nino Konis Santana. Upon Santana's death in an Indonesian ambush in 1998, his successor was
Taur Matan Ruak. By the 1990s, there were fewer than approximately 200 guerilla fighters remaining in the mountains (this lacks citation, it aligns with the common Indonesian view at the time, though Timorese would state a vast amount of the population was actually discreetly involved in the clandestine movement, as ratified in the protest vote for independence), and the
separatist idea had largely shifted to the clandestine front in the cities. The clandestine movement was largely paralysed by continuous arrests and infiltration by Indonesian agents. The prospect of independence was very dark until the
fall of Suharto in 1998 and President Habibie's sudden decision to allow a referendum in East Timor in 1999.
East Timorese casualties In March 1976, UDT leader Lopes da Cruz reported that 60,000 Timorese had been killed during the invasion. A delegation of Indonesian relief workers agreed with this statistic. In an interview on 5 April 1977 with the
Sydney Morning Herald, Indonesian Foreign Minister
Adam Malik said the number of dead was "50,000 people or perhaps 80,000". A figure of 100,000 is cited by McDonald (1980) and by Taylor. Amnesty International estimated that one third of East Timor's population, or 200,000 in total, died from military action, starvation and disease from 1975 to 1999. In 1979 the US Agency for International Development estimated that 300,000 East Timorese had been moved into camps controlled by Indonesian armed forces. The UN's
Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR) estimated the number of deaths during the occupation from famine and violence to be between 90,800 and 202,600 including between 17,600 and 19,600 violent deaths or disappearances, out of a 1999 population of approximately 823,386. The truth commission held Indonesian forces responsible for about 70% of the violent killings. ==Integration efforts==