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Comparative Genocide
Scholars can learn many things about genocide from making comparisons across time and space. Broadly, two strategies exist: examining known instances of genocide (or of mass atrocity that possess some characteristics of genocide) to search for commonalities, or examining a broader spectrum of cases to consider why genocide (or mass atrocity) arose in some instances and not in others.
Much of the work considered in the case-specific case studies contributes implicitly to the comparative genocide project – although, for some scholars, the project of comparing traumatic events like genocide risks reducing intense human experiences to mere data points. As such, not all case-specific work is meant to be comparative, although it may nonetheless contribute to our broader understanding of genocide.
Conversely, when comparative research successfully identifies factors that are present in all (or most) cases, including in a single case where it may not appear prominent and might easily be otherwise overlooked, can help us to understand even one specific genocide.
East Timor
Welcome to the Yale East Timor Project, since 2000 a component of the Genocide Studies Program.
Indonesia’s military dictatorship invaded the small territory of East Timor (then Portuguese Timor) in December 1975. Up to a fifth of the East Timorese population perished during Indonesia’s 24-year occupation (1975-1999), a similar proportion to the Cambodians who died under the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot (1975-1979). As Indonesian forces finally left the territory in 1999, they massacred over a thousand civilians and burned down eighty percent of the buildings in the country.
In the left sidebar you will find research products of the Yale East Timor Project.
UN-sponsored Truth Commission Verdict on East Timor: “Extermination as a Crime Against Humanity”
