On this date, September 4th, in 1999, the UN announced election results showing that Christian residents of East Timor had voted overwhelmingly for independence from Muslim Indonesia.  The Indonesian army responded by taking control of the country and killing at least a dozen people.

Timor is an island off the southern coast of Indonesia.  In December 1975, Indonesia invaded Timor as it declared independence from colonial Portugal.  The Roman Catholics of East Timor had received support from Communist China, while Indonesia at the time was led by the pro-Western "New Order" administration of Suharto.  Accordingly (but by today's standards, inexplicably), the U.S. administration of Gerald Ford supported Muslim Indonesia in their armed invasion and subjugation of Christian Timor.

In the two decades of living under extremely brutal dhimmitude, an estimated 250,000 East Timorese were murdered.  Following the 1999 referendum on independence, Sérgio Vieira de Mello of the UN pressured the Indonesians to grant East Timor their independence.  De Mello would eventually be murdered by jihadis in August 2003 in the Canal Hotel car bombing in Baghdad.

Section 7.2 "Unlawful Killings and Enforced Disappearances" of the Final Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconcilliation in East Timor contains an all-too-common litany of Muslim atrocities in its summary:

38. Throughout the period of occupation (1975-1999), methods and circumstances in which unlawful killings were carried out included:
• Indiscriminate shooting of unarmed groups of civilians
• Dividing groups of unarmed civilians by gender, then indiscriminate shooting of the men
• Ordering of victims to dig their own grave before execution
• Ordering of victims to line up in formation before line by line execution
• Execution of unarmed individuals by close-range shooting
• Discarding of bodies by burning, by speedy secret burials without any attempt in
identifying the victim and next of kin, by dumping into a well, lake, or ocean
• Throwing of grenades at unarmed group of civilians
• Death in custody by beating and torture
• Immediate execution after capture during military operations
• Public beheading
• Public staged or real acts of cannibalism
• Public cutting of body parts
• Public display of decapitated head, or severed limbs or body parts
• Forcing of civilian to kill another civilian under duress
• Tying to a moving vehicle to be dragged to death
• Immolation
• Tying up on a cross before execution
• Throwing down a cliff, sometimes after being wounded
• Burying of wounded victim alive
• Public execution where a married couple was stripped naked, hit on the back of the neck
into a grave
• Public fatal beating
• Parading of corpse
• Deadly assault using traditional weapons, such as machetes, spears and knives
• Death by acts of torture
• Abduction followed by disappearance, in some cases blind-folded and tied-up
• Targeted killing by militia from lists drawn up by military personnel
• Execution of detainees in detention centres, and in isolated places in the countryside,
including in lakes and from rural bridges
• Displaying of human ears and genitals to family members of the disappeared
• Rape before the killing of female victims.

Even at the late date of 1999, the U.S. administration of Bill Clinton did not support East Timor in their existential struggle, and it was up to the Australian armed forces to step in and end the murderous reign of terror by the Indonesian military and their proxy militias.  It took another three years before East Timor finally achieved independence.

Unfortunately, independence has not guaranteed peace for the East Timorese.  On February 11, 2008, there was an assassination attempt on President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão.  Ramos-Horta was shot and seriously wounded in the attempted coup, but has recovered.

Previous Days in the "Religion of Peace™":

Sept 3: Mongols vs. Mamluks
Sept 2: Richard "Lionheart" vs. Saladin
Sept 1: Beslan Massacre
Aug 29: Jihad on European Synagogues
Aug 28: Poet Laureate Baraka