The Santa Cruz Massacre, November 12, 1991

On November 12, 1991, Indonesian troops fired upon a peaceful memorial procession to a cemetery in Dili, East Timor that had turned into a pro-independence demonstration. More than 271 East Timorese were killed that day at the Santa Cruz cemetery or in hospitals soon after. An equal number were disappeared and are believed dead. This massacre, unlike many others which occurred during the course of Indonesia's U.S.-backed occupation, was filmed and photographed by international journalists. Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn, two U.S. reporters, were beaten during the massacre.

The Santa Cruz Massacre sparked the international solidarity movement for East Timor, including the founding of the East Timor Action Network, and was the catalyst for congressional action to stem the flow of U.S. weapons and other military assistance for Indonesia’s brutal security forces. Ali Alatas, former foreign minister of Indonesia, called the massacre a "turning point," which set in motion the events leading to East Timor's coming independence.

The people of East Timor now have their freedom and are an independent nation, but they have yet to see justice for decades human rights crimes inflicted on their people and country by the Indonesian military.

Casualties of the November 12, 1991 Massacre at Santa Cruz Cemetery in Dili, East Timor

The attached lists were compiled by the Portuguese solidarity group "A Paz e Possivel em Timor-Leste" (Peace is Possible in East Timor). It was published in leading Portuguese newspapers in November, 1992.

Jose Ramos-Horta described how the data was obtained:
"... has been compiled by 12 teams of East Timorese students, school teachers, priests, nuns, nurses, paramedics, hospital staff, workers a the morgues, totaling 72 researchers, working round the clock for three months, interviewing household members in each "bairro," immediately after 12 November 1991.

The preliminary report reached Lisbon in February and was handed over to two specialist groups in Portugal that have been investigating human rights abuses in East Timor for more than 10 years. A copy was channeled to Amnesty International for independent verification.
It took six months for mass of the detailed information sent from East Timor to be processed and analyzed. The researchers took extreme care in double-checking each piece of information."