Revelations from Australian spy transcripts on the degree to which senior generals directed the violence surrounding East Timor's 1999 independence vote have failed to stir public debate.
The transcripts leaked by Australia's Defence Signals Directorate show that the then-chief security minister, General Feisal Tandjung, enlisted two other retired generals and fellow cabinet members, information minister Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah and transmigration minister A. M. Hendropriyono, to orchestrate the violence.
Within two weeks of then-president Bacharuddin Habibie promising the East Timorese a vote on their future, these men appear to have set up a parallel project to terrify East Timorese into voting against independence. When that failed, they ordered their militias to wreak havoc in the territory and force about 250,000 East Timorese to flee.
'I am not surprised if Feisal was involved. I am not surprised that Hendropriyono was involved,' said Afan Gaffar, of the politics faculty of Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Central Java.
He said General Hendropriyono was a slick man with a long background in covert and violent operations. He was allegedly involved in the deaths of about 30 civilians in South Sumatra in 1989. General Yosfiah has long been criticised overseas for his commanding role in the unit that killed five Australian journalists in Balibo, East Timor, in 1975.
The transcripts appear to support the view that then-armed forces chief general Wiranto was not involved in the campaign. As commander in chief, however, Mr Wiranto became a scapegoat and was sacked from president Abdurrahman Wahid's cabinet in February 2000.