Timor Leste to join ASEAN 2

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Sorry, I changed the tittle because... I don't have enough material to focus on PNG. Thus, I will be focusing more on Timor Leste and ASEAN.

Dear Timor Leste,

7th December 1975, we remember your family members who died 36 years ago at the hands of the Indonesia military troops. On behalf of Indonesian people, I deeply apologize for the tragedy. The Indonesian government should admit its crime by not only submitting to the court’s ruling but also by apologizing to the family members of those who lost their lives in the massacre. The confession is really important to help both parties to sincerely forgive what had happened and move forward.

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Why, they ask, are the Indonesians invading us?
Why, they ask, if the Indonesians believe that Fretilin is communist, do they not send a delegation to Dili to find out?
Why, they ask, are the Australians not helping us? When the Japanese invaded, they did help us.
Why, they ask, are the Portuguese not helping us? We’re still a Portuguese colony.
Who, they ask, will pay for the terrible damage to our homes?
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“We will continue to work hard to help realize Timor Leste’s vision to be a member of ASEAN,”
(Indonesia Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told his Timor Leste counterpart José Luis Guterres on Tuesday that Indonesia would continue with its support for Timor Leste’s bid to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) despite Indonesia no longer holding the chair of the 10-nation group.) Source :[link]

=> FRETILIN

The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Portuguese: Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente or FReTiLIn) is a leftist political party in East Timor. Source:[link]

=> East Timorese casualties

In March 1976, UDT leader Lopes da Cruz reported that 60,000 Timorese had been killed during the invasion.[52] A delegation of Indonesian relief workers agreed with this statistic.[53] In an interview on 5 April 1977 with the Sydney Morning Herald, Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik said the number of dead was "50,000 people or perhaps 80,000".[33] A figure of 100,000 is cited by McDonald (1980) and by Taylor. Amnesty International estimated that one third of East Timor's population, or 200,000 in total, died from military action, starvation and disease from 1975 to 1999. In 1979 the U.S. Agency for International Development estimated that 300,000 East Timorese had been moved into camps controlled by Indonesian armed forces.[54]
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=> US approved 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor

Document 1, dated July 5 1975, is the record of a discussion between Ford and Suharto held at Camp David in the United States. The two leaders met just two months after the final US defeat in Vietnam, discussing their joint interests in suppressing political and ideological ferment in South East Asia. Suharto sought increased US military and intelligence assistance. He also bluntly declared that there was no alternative to incorporating East Timor, and labelled the Timorese political groups calling for independence as “Communist-influenced”.
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=> US Policy of Silence and Military Assistance for The Invasion

A year earlier, in December 1974, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had been asked by an Indonesian government representative whether or not the US would approve the invasion.[62] In March 1975, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia David Newsom, recommended a "policy of silence" on the issue and was supported by Kissinger.[63] On 8 October 1975, a member of the United States National Security Council, Philip Habib, told meeting participants that "It looks like the Indonesians have begun the attack on Timor." Kissinger's response to Habib was, "I'm assuming you're really going to keep your mouth shut on this subject."[64]

The US also played a crucial role in supplying weapons to Indonesia.[65] A week after the invasion of East Timor the National Security Council prepared a detailed analysis of the Indonesian military units involved and the U.S. equipment they used. The analysis revealed that virtually all of the military equipment used in the invasion was U.S. supplied: U.S.-supplied destroyer escorts shelled East Timor as the attack unfolded; Indonesian marines disembarked from U.S.-supplied landing craft; U.S.-supplied C-47 and C-130 aircraft dropped Indonesian paratroops and strafed Dili with .50 caliber machine guns; while the 17th and 18th Airborne brigades which led the assault on the Timorese capital were "totally U.S. MAP supported," and their jump masters U.S. trained.[68] While the US government claimed to have suspended military assistance from December 1975 to June 1976, military aid was actually above what the US Department of State proposed and the US Congress continued to increase it, nearly doubling it.[67] The US also made four new offers of arms, including supplies and parts for 16 OV-10 Broncos,[67] which, according to Cornell University Professor Benedict Anderson, are "specially designed for counter-insurgency actions against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons and wholly useless for defending Indonesia against a foreign enemy." The policy continued under the Carter administration. In total, the United States furnished over $250,000,000 of military assistance to Indonesia between 1975 and 1979.[69]

Testifying before the US Congress, the Deputy Legal Advisor of the US State Department, George Aldrich said the Indonesians "were armed roughly 90 percent with our equipment. ... we really did not know very much. Maybe we did not want to know very much but I gather that for a time we did not know." Indonesia was never informed of the supposed US "aid suspension". David T. Kenney, Country Officer for Indonesia in the US State Department, also testified before Congress that one purpose for the arms was "to keep that area [Timor] peaceful."[70]

The UN's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR) stated in the "Responsibility" chapter of its final report that U.S. "political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation" of East Timor between 1975 and 1999. The report (p. 92) also stated that "U.S. supplied weaponry was crucial to Indonesia's capacity to intensify military operations from 1977 in its massive campaigns to destroy the Resistance in which aircraft supplied by the United States played a crucial role."[71][72]
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=> Australia let Indonesia invade East Timor in 1975

Australia knew in advance of the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor and stood by for three days while Jakarta's troops prepared for the attack, secret documents released yesterday by the government revealed. Memos, cables and letters sent and received by Australia's foreign department between 1974 and 1976 confirmed that Australia gave tacit approval to Jakarta to annex the former Portuguese colony.

Australia was the only western nation to recognise Indonesia's rule over East Timor.
Source :[link]

Timor Leste OC design by
Hetalia belongs to Himaruya Hidekaz
Indonesia aph and Malaysia aph based on Himaruya's sketch. ([link])