Deliverance: The inside story of East Timor's fight for freedom

(Paperback)

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For a few weeks in late 1999, the world watched appalled by the destruction of the small land of East Timor, and the murder of many of its brave people, at the hands of Indonesia's military and a thuggish militia force. The terrible wave of violence led to the intervention of an international military force, the UN's biggest experiment in nation building and the birth of the world's newest country. How did East Timor's tragic passage to independence come about Who was responsible for a systematic campaign of crimes against humanity And why did it happen Those questions have lingered in the aftermath of Indonesia's bloody retreat from East Timor after a brutal 24-year occupation. In this journalistic investigation, authors Don Greenlees and Robert Garran, eyewitnesses to East Timor's struggle for independence, answer those questions in a compelling and readable account that takes us inside the corridors of power. Based on dozens of rare interviews with key actors in Jakarta, Washington, Canberra, Lisbon and New York and hundreds of pages of secret documents, the authors, journalists for "The Australian" paint a startling picture of President B.J. Habibie's bold decision to give the East Timorese a referendum, the covert military campaign to stop independence becoming a reality, the twists and turns of international diplomacy, the tragic and sadly predictable end of Indonesian rule and the international effort to build a new nation from the ashes. But "Deliverance" is not just the story of East Timor's independence, it is a timely warning over the future of Indonesia as the world's third biggest democracy, as it battles to put to rest a history of autocratic military rule and extinguish the fires of separatism in Aceh and Papua.

Author Bio

Don Greenlees is the award-winning correspondent for the Australian in Jakarta. From 1998, he covered the downfall of the Suharto regime and Indonesia's faltering steps to democracy. Greenlees has been a journalist for more than 20 years working extensively in newspapers and television in Australia and abroad. In 2001, he won a Walkley award for reporting in Indonesia. Robert Garran has written about political and economic issues for 18 years in several of Australia's leading newspapers. As the Australian's foreign affairs and defence writer from 1998 to 2001 he covered the Australian and international response to the East Timor crisis. He has written for the Australian and the Melbourne Age, 'Australian Financial Review and the London Economist.