The idea of Indonesia taking over East Timor in and of itself was no more illogical or immoral than India’s takeover of Goa or China’s later takeover of Hong Kong and Macau.
East Timor was to all intents and purposes a part of the Indonesian archipelago, its people were pretty much identical to the Timorese Indonesians of West Timor. It was a pointless appendage of the defunct Portuguese empire and was descending into civil war and control by Marxists.
The US simply turned a blind eye to Indonesia taking over, it seemed to pretty much everyone in the world to be the logical solution.
What was not expected was the savage brutality of the Indonesians when they invaded which was utterly unnecessary and totally self defeating, something most Indonesians (who in fairness had no say in the matter at the time) would agree today.
The Indonesians certainly developed the province in a way that the Portuguese never bothered in their 300 years of colonial rule, but that counted for nothing given their appalling treatment of the Timorese which will always remain a stain on Indonesia’s record.
It is fair to say now however that Indonesia and East Timor (Timor Leste) have superb relations today and if everything is not forgotten or indeed forgiven both countries, as among the few democracies in SE Asia are moving forward together.
Before anyone starts with the Islam thing, religion was a total irrelevance in the invasion, it was a matter of territorial integrity for the Indonesians and a part of their virulent campaign against Communism, at which they were very good and supported by the US.
Like many of America’s interventions during the period of European colonial wind-down, this episode and its aftermath have been a mess. Commissions have a tendency to compare realities against imaginary ideal outcomes. If the US had not provided any sort of aid to Indonesia, would the Indonesians have seized their neighbor anyway, in the vacuum left by Portugal, from a mixture of imperialistic greed and forward defense? Would the alternative to Indonesian intervention (i.e., socialism via the Revolutionary Front for an Independent Timor inevitably easing into communist dictatorship) have worked out well for East Timor?
The article implies a non-existent direct connection between weapons sales and the invasion of East Timor.
The US and other western powers sold (not “supplied”) weapons to Indonesia. It was a part of a Cold War strategy to keep a nation that sits astride a major trade route out of Russia or China’s orbit. No one sold weapons for the sole purpose of invading E. Timor.
That Indonesia chose to invade East Timor (and a similar but non-violent takeover of Netherlands New Guinea). They did so as blatant territory grabbing without the consent or support of the populace.
However they claimed that both actions were “anti-colonialist” which undermined Western political opposition. There was also civil unrest and a Communist element competing for power in East Timor after independence from Portugal. Regardless, no other nation had either adjacent combat power or the political will to stop them.
The Indonesian political and military leaders were solely responsible for both the invasion of E. Timor and the genocidal actions over the next two decades.
Nobody covered up anything because nobody cared. Timor didn’t fit the traditional anti-colonial narrative, so it was ignored.
Realpolitik in the Cold War era is often misunderstood but the Indonesians were heavy handed in their internal politics. A Post war kind of sentiment of were all really the same indigenous people gave way to Islamism,
mistreatment of their Chinese minority merchant class ranging from weird renaming (I knew someone whose family name “Ho” became “Hadiono”
and told me of mobs committing violence)To death. Never saw the film but THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY depicts some of that strife.