Such killings had become common occurrences since the Indonesian invasion. But this particular day of mourning would have special significance—in large part because journalists from the US and Great Britain were there to report it. 

When the mass ended, a procession began to the Santa Cruz Cemetery, about a mile away. Although Indonesian soldiers lined the streets, the mourners unfurled banners and shouted pro-independence slogans. This uncharacteristically open defiance of Indonesian authority caught the attention of those whose homes and places of work lined the procession route. Supporters joined in, and soon the crowd had swelled to thousands. 

At the cemetery, some of the crowd went to the gravesite with Sebastiao's family. Others waited outside the walls. They were the first to notice that Indonesian army trucks had blocked the road back to town, and that a column of armed soldiers was slowly making its way toward the crowd. 

Eyewitness Allan Nairn of the New Yorker reports what happened next. Without warning, and without provocation, "soldiers raised their rifles, and took aim. Then, acting in unison, they opened fire....Men and women fell, shivering, in the street, rolling from the impact of the bullets. Some were backpedalling, and tripping, their hands held up. Others simply tried to turn and run. The soldiers jumped over fallen bodies and fired at the people still upright. They chased down young boys and girls and shot them in the back." When it was over, more than 250 people had been killed and hundreds more wounded. (The soldiers also badly beat Nairn and fellow US journalist Amy Goodman.) 

Max Stahl, a British journalist whose video camera captured the horror, called it a "cold-blooded and premeditated massacre." Eyewitnesses told him that Indonesian soldiers killed many of the wounded at the military hospital in Dili; they "crushed the skulls of the wounded with large rocks, ran over them with trucks, stabbed them and administered—with doctors present—poisonous disinfecting chemicals as medicines." Stahl estimates that 50–200 of the wounded died in this way. 

When news of the Santa Cruz massacre appeared in the Western media, it sparked international outrage. The US Congress and European Parliament passed resolutions condemning Indonesia, and the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada suspended aid. Editorials favoring East Timorese self-determination appeared in newspapers throughout the West. 

Indonesia moved swiftly to stifle the criticism. It expressed official "regret" for what had happened, set up an official investigation of the incident, relieved the two top military commanders for East Timor (sending them abroad for "study") and sentenced a few low-ranking officers for ostensibly disobeying orders. It also sent its foreign minister on a tour of the US, Canada and Western Europe to repair Indonesia's damaged reputation (demonstrations plagued him wherever he went). 

But the words of two top-ranking military officials undoubtedly expressed Jakarta's real sentiments. General Try Sutrisno, the commander of the Indonesian military at the time of the massacre and now the country's vice-president, said that the East Timorese who'd gathered at the cemetery were "disrupters" who "must be crushed." He added, "Delinquents like these have to be shot, and we will shoot them." 

General Mantriri, regional commander for East Timor just after the Santa Cruz massacre, declared that the massacre was "proper" and added: "We don't regret anything." That lack of regret was clear from the sentences meted out to participants in the Santa Cruz march and to East Timorese demonstrators in Jakarta who protested the massacre. They ranged from five years to life imprisonment. 

Despite the media coverage the Santa Cruz massacre received in the West, you can still go months without hearing a word about East Timor and the people who are dying there. 

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