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Tortured girl
Young women are routinely abducted and tortured by militias.
 


Images of Torture
(Clicking the headline above will download the images in a zipped file)

These gruesome photographs of torture victims were smuggled out of East Timor in late 1997 by human-rights workers. They depict the apparent torture and murder of five women.

One woman shown in this series was apparently arrested for appearing at a rally for Nobel Peace Prize-winners José Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo. The soldiers hold her hand-lettered sign over her body which reads "Hidup hadia Nobel" (Bahasa Indonesian for "Long live the Nobel award"). The soldiers have also written anti-independence slogans on her body.

WARNING: These photographs are extremely disturbing. Children should not view them.

Witness to a Massacre
Allan Nairn was in East Timor on assignment for The New Yorker in 1991; a battalion of Indonesian soldiers opened fire on a crowd of East Timorese peaceably assembled in a cemetery for a pro-independence rally. Nairn recounted the events of that day, which claimed an estimated 271 lives, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1992.
 
1991, running from the massacre
Victims after the Santa Cruz massacre in 1991.
Photos courtesy of East Timor Action Network
















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This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.

© 2007 The Foundation for National Progress

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