ABSTRACT
The eastern half of the island of Timor was historically a Portuguese colony, while many of the surrounding islands, including West Timor, came under Dutch control. Following the war of independence in 1945, the Dutch islands became the state of Indonesia and in 1960 East Timor was recognized by the United Nations as a nonself-governing state administered by Portugal. In 1974 the Carnation Revolution in Portugal established a new policy to release colonial holdings. The absence of a plan for the colony’s transition to independence, and resulting opportunity to seize power, led to the rapid formation of political parties in East Timor. The two major parties, UDT and Fretilin, rapidly became involved in a short civil war, which claimed the lives of several thousand. Both sides to the conflict committed human rights violations, including the massacre of unarmed detainees, although the number and severity of the Fretilin violations was significantly higher (CAVR 2006, Pt 3; Pt 8).
