In early 1999, newly appointed Indonesian President Habibie authorised a referendum on independence for East Timor. It was held under UN supervision and an overwhelming majority voted in favour. This was not well received by the conservative Indonesian military TNI, which saw this as the beginning of an Indonesian state collapse. Therefore, the TNI launched a month-long offensive in East Timor in the autumn of 1999, characterised by massive displacement, burning of infrastructure, sexual violence against women, and repeated cases of wanton murders. Consequently, some historians have described the period as a genocide. The term genocide aims to describe a concept where a perpetrator has a coordinated plan to destroy key elements of national groups, with the aim of ending the groups’ existence as a whole. Genocide is thus strongly characterised by the idea of human rights and, by extension, has a liberal underpinning. This study aims to determine whether the East Timor Crisis of 1999 can be described as a genocide; whether the description is correct if consideration is made to what constitutes a group and the intent of the perpetrator. It also aims to achieve this by using the originator of the term Raphaël Lemkin's eight societal domains in which he regards genocide to be committed and thus applies events from the East Timor Crisis within these domains to determine whether genocide has taken place. The study makes use of a qualitative, theory consuming case study methodology. It then concludes that genocide, with exceptions, occurred within every societal domain of the East Timorese society throughout the East Timor Crisis of 1999.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-121218 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Ek, Oliver |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för statsvetenskap (ST) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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