The US backed the invasion of East Timor
Dec. 5th, 2005 06:31 pmNothing surprising here, move along... (via MeFi)
Newly declassified US documents show
that the US government knew well in advance about the invasion plans of
Indonesia into East Timor. Once in East Timor, Indonesian forces
committed a mass genocide of the local population - anywhere from 100,000 to 250,000 people, which was only 600,000 to begin with according to Wikipedia.
As the first link shows, The US government actively suppressed news
stories from getting out about the genocide. This isn't exactly news to
Those who followed the invasion, But most people are unaware of the US government's support, perhaps the number of Newspapers covering the story according to GoogleNews can go some way to explain why many are unaware of this fact.
Also see, E. Timor timeline (via BBC)