Abstract:

Shot mostly undercover, DEATH OF A NATION disclosed that Indonesia had wiped out a third of the population of East Timor. On Decmeber 7, 1975, Indonesia secretly--but with the complicity of the Western powers--invaded the small nation of East Timor. Two Australian television crews attempting to document the invasion were murdered. In 1993, with the Indonesian army still occupying the country, John Pilger and his crew, including director David Munro, slipped into East Timor and made this film. In the intervening 18 years, an estimated 200,000 East Timorese had been slaughtered. The C.I.A. has described it as one of the worst mass-murders in the 20th century.