Indonesian strategic resettlement and development policies in East Timor

Gerlach, Christian (2023). Indonesian strategic resettlement and development policies in East Timor. In: Thomas, Martin; Curless, Gareth (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Late Colonial Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies (pp. 580-594). Oxford u.a.: Oxford University Press 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198866787.013.14

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The chapter explores relationships between ‘development’ and violence, using the example of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, 1975–1999. As a means of anti-guerrilla warfare, Indonesian forces forcibly resettled large parts of East Timor’s population to camps and villages, in combination with a policy of food denial, until the early 1980s. Many tens of thousands died as a result of this violent social engineering. At that time, such policies of starvation or of neglect in famine were no longer in use in other parts of Indonesia. But Indonesian authorities also applied to East Timor development policies pursued and structures used elsewhere in the country, bringing in tens of thousands of transmigrants from other islands, giving priority to food crops rather than cash crops, channelling considerable resources to this annexed region and improving living conditions in what remained a poor province. Many East Timorese came to work for the Indonesian state in one way or another. Relationships between ‘development’ and violence were thus close and complex. The chapter discusses how far these contradictory practices can be understood as colonial.

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