by Tim Eaton
Aug. 26, 1999

Since their homeland was invaded in 1975, the women of East Timor have felt the brunt of some of the Indonesian military's most egregious human-rights violations: They have been raped in the presence of family members, forced to marry Indonesian soldiers, subjected to torture by electric shock, sexually abused, and forcibly sterilized.

East Timorese women have been forced to bear much of the load of what many believe is an Indonesian government plan to eliminate the East Timorese culture.

Limiting population growth has been a policy that applied to all of Indonesia's provinces, but there is evidence that the Indonesian government used it selectively in East Timor. After the Indonesian military killed an estimated 100,000 East Timorese during the first year of its 1975 invasion, the government continued to pare down the population by limiting the reproductive rights of women in the territory.

However, evidence -- including eyewitness reports -- indicates that the government has targeted the indigenous Timorese in particular. If true (there is not yet enough evidence to be certain), that fact would constitute a breach of the international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which prohibits intentional limitation of births within a specific national, ethnic, religious, or racial group.

The reproductive oppression in East Timor is criticized in a report published by the East Timor Human Rights Centre in Australia. The report examines the sexual and reproductive violations suffered by East Timorese women. It divides the history of such violations into two phases.

The first phase began from the time of the Indonesian invasion and extended through the mid-1980s. The report alleges that Indonesian soldiers raped and impregnated East Timorese women and girls, mutilated pregnant women, and covertly sterilized them. The second phase, which extended to the late 1990s, saw further covert sterilization and coerced contraception of East Timorese women through the World Bank-funded population control program, Programa Keluarga Berencana (commonly known as the KB program). Given the opportunity to comment, the World Bank did not return calls to the MoJo Wire.

A favorite recruitment tactic for the KB program is referred to as a "safari." Reports exist of safaris in which the police and military forcibly or deceptively recruit women into KB and insert IUDs and Norplant contraceptives without offering the women sufficient information about the contraceptives' purpose, care, or removal.

Miranda Sissons, author of the East Timor Human Rights Centre's report, writes, "Strong tactics, including military recruitment, are used to sign up eligible women, and the contraceptive measures chosen are often long-lasting and irreversible. Women who are recruited via safaris often receive little or no information on the contraceptive methods they receive, and lack any means of follow-up care."

Western nations have routinely ignored the plight of the East Timorese women. In fact, President Suharto received a United Nations award in June 1990 for his "family planning" program. "The UN should be ashamed for giving that criminal one of the highest awards of their organization without investigating the process and implementation [of the KB program]," said Maria Soares, an East Timorese woman living in Australia.

Despite the fact that the KB program is no longer officially funded by the Indonesian government, many human-rights activists, including Soares, suspect that the program continues in East Timor, especially in smaller communities. Not only does such a program violate a number of UN declarations on human rights, it often also violates the women's religious freedoms. East Timor is 91 percent Catholic, and many women oppose contraception on religious grounds.

"Their goal is to reduce the population of East Timor," said Soares. "It's an example of genocide [that has been] practiced over 24 years."

One technique used by Indonesian "health workers" (who are often accompanied by military personnel) is administering hormonal contraceptives under the guise that the women are receiving vaccinations. "These women were injected without being told. They were told it was vitamins or antimalaria [drugs]," says Soares.

According to Sissons, teenage girls -- usually Timorese -- would often receive these "vaccinations" at school in the presence of Indonesian soldiers. Sissons reports that "the doors were locked to prevent escape."

Anita Simone (not her real name) is an East Timorese woman who confirmed reports that the injections were given on days when Indonesian girls did not attend school, but their Timorese peers did. "They were targeting East Timorese girls," she said. "And the military was at the school controlling it."

Sissons also documented several cases of women who entered Indonesian health clinics in East Timor for emergency or routine surgeries, like caesarian section births or appendectomies, only to realize later that they were unable to conceive -- victims of tubal ligations. "I believe they were very much destroying the sense of being a woman and a Timorese," said Simone. "Not being able to reproduce and have child -- it's ... destroying the Timorese family."

According to Sissons, Indonesia's KB program (as well as its more covert sterilization practices) was in blatant violation of international standards set in United Nation's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Fourth World Conference on Women. The standards outlined at these conferences demanded women's rights to informed family planning, adequate maternal and reproductive health services, and the right to reproduce freely.

The most common contraceptive used in East Timor is the injectable form of Depo-Provera, which is a long-term hormonal contraceptive that prevents the user's ovaries from producing mature eggs for about three months. The drug has been approved in the US by the FDA, but it has significant side effects, including blood clots, irregular menstruation, depression, and shock. If Depo-Provera is administered to pregnant women, or if a woman happens to become pregnant while taking the drug, the fetus and mother may experience life-threatening complications. And according to the Physician's Desk Reference, the drug must be administered only during the first five days of a normal menstrual cycle. In East Timor, such details are largely, if not entirely, disregarded.

"In Timor, women have had still births, miscarriages as a result of [Depo-Provera injections], and some women became sterile because of it," Soares said. "The main point is -- no information. The people are not informed of the policies."

Reports of covert sterilization and contraception have made many East Timorese women extremely fearful of Indonesian health clinics and schools, and much less likely to receive the health care and education they need. "Most of the Timorese will not use the public hospital. There are cases where [other women] got there, and they end up dying," said Simone.