Dili – A UN-sanctioned panel investigating human rights violations during Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor found that as many as 183,000 people were killed, disappeared, starved or died of illnesses linked to the conflict, an adviser said.
East Timor President Xanana Gusmao presented the team's 2,500-page Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission report to parliament late last year, but it has not yet been made public.
Investigators found that at least 102,800 people were killed or disappeared – 70% of them at the hands of Indonesian security forces or their militia - from 1975 to 1999, said Pat Walsh, an adviser to the commission.
At least 84,200 others died from "excess" hunger and illnesses linked to the conflict, Walsh said in an e-mail to news organizations seen Saturday.
Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and ruled it with an iron fist until 1999, when a UN-organized plebiscite resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence.
In a final act of vengeance, withdrawing Indonesian troops and their militia auxiliaries destroyed much of the country's infrastructure and killed at least 1,500 people.
Previous estimates of the number of people who died during Indonesia's rule have generally hovered around 200,000 – or a third of East Timor's population. "The figure of 183,000 is (the commission's) upper-bound estimate of total conflict-related mortality," Walsh wrote.
International experts who assisted in the research say the findings are based on triple survey statistical methods.
The team determined mortality rates for periods before and during Indonesia's occupation – needed for the sake of comparison – by taking testimonies from 8,000 people affected by the violence. It also conducted a random survey of 1,400 households to learn how family members had died in recent decades.
The team then collected names and dates of birth and death from 319,000 graves at all the public cemeteries in East Timor, to help come up with a total mortality estimate, international experts said.