Sydney – Indonesian authorities conspired with East Timorese militiamen to permit the systematic rape of women and the keeping of sex slaves, the Australian wife of independence leader Xanana Gusmao said Thursday.

Kirsty Sword-Gusmao met her husband only once during a five-year courtship while he sat in a Jakarta prison cell serving a 20-year sentence for his leadership of an East Timorese pro-independence guerilla force.

She gave birth to the couple's first child, Alexandre, six weeks ago. Sword-Gusmao said the rape of East Timorese women by Indonesian troops and their local henchman had been a brutal fact of life for the 25 years Jakarta ruled the territory, but that it had escalated dramatically following last year's independence referendum on August 30.

After the results were announced, revealing that more than three-quarters of East Timorese voters favoured secession from Indonesia, pro-Jakarta militias armed by the Indonesian military embarked upon a bloody rampage.

Sword-Gusmao cited the case of Juliana Dos Santos, who on September 6 last year was kidnapped from her church and raped after watching her captor murder her brother. Dos Santos, aged 14 at the time, is still being held hostage as a sex slave, Sword-Gusmao said.

She said it was impossible to know how many women had been raped or were being held as sex slaves because humanitarian agencies had limited access to women living in militia-run refugee camps in Indonesian-controlled West Timor. There was also a deep social stigma associated with being raped, she said.

Sword-Gusmao added she was sure that if Indonesian authorities had not lent their support to militiamen the number of rapes would have been significantly lower. "It's very clear that there is a degree of collusion between the Indonesian authorities and the militias responsible for holding these women," she said.

"Otherwise these militias would have been arrested and brought to justice long ago because they're committing gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity and they wouldn't be able to get away with that unless they have the blessing of the Indonesian authorities."

"The needs in East Timor across the board are just so great that there are so many competing priorities that maybe this one has just faded into the background a little," she said. Sword-Gusmao will unveil a memorial in Sydney in honour of East Timorese rape victims Friday.