Word: fretilin
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Dates: during 1975-1975
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...groups had been struggling for post-Independence power in East Timor for six months. In August the Timorese Democratic Union (U.D.T.), a right-wing group favoring Portuguese federation, fought its way to power in Dili, only to be driven out by the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin), a leftist group that advocated immediate and total independence. Amid what some Western witnesses described as "bloody carnage," which included children being bashed to death against the trunks of trees, Fretilin troops forced the Portuguese colonial governor and his aides to flee to an island 20 miles offshore...
Armed and trained by left-leaning sympathizers in the Portuguese army, Fretilin troops drove their rivals in the U.D.T. and other groups right up to the Indonesian border. Alarmed, the Jakarta regime offered sanctuary to some 40,000 Timorese fleeing the fighting. The Indonesians also began rearming the battered troops of the U.D.T. and its allies, including the pro-Indonesian Timorese Popular Democratic Association (APODETI), for a counteroffensive. Fretilin forces, described by an Australian reporter as "looking like a Dad's army of hippies," had set the stage for last week's showdown in November, when, already...