The Indonesian forces are killing indiscriminately. Women and children are being shot in the streets. We are all going to be killed. I repeat, we are all going to be killed....This is an appeal for international help. Please do something to stop this invasion.

FRETILIN radio broadcast from Dili 
in the early hours of December 7, 1975 

The total may be 50,000, but what does this mean if compared with 600,000 people who want to join Indonesia? Then what is the big fuss? It is possible that they may have been killed by Australians and not us. Who knows? It was war.

Indonesia's foreign minister, Adam Malik, 
referring to the number of East Timorese killed 
in the first fifteen months of the “civil war” 

ABRI soldiers began to rampage through the town. According to the former Catholic bishop of Dili, "The soldiers who landed started killing everyone they could find. There were many dead bodies in the streets—all we could see were the soldiers killing, killing, killing." 

Eloise, an East Timorese living in Dili, awoke to the sounds of invading troops. She describes the atrocities that followed: 

On 7 December we woke and heard this big noise of planes and saw parachutes and planes covering the light—it became dark because of them, so many. Then there were shots and we went inside and kept listening to more and more shooting. In the afternoon some Timorese came and told us everyone must come to surrender at headquarters.... 

Once we got there they divided us: the women and children and old men to one side, and on the other young boys [and men].... 

Then an Indonesian screams an order and we hear machine guns running through the men. We see the boys and men dying right there. Some see their husbands die. We look at each other stunned. We think they are going to kill us next. All of us just turn and pick up the children and babies and run screaming, wild, everywhere.... 

[Later] my sister went to look for her husband and son. On her way she met a friend crying who told her, “Don't bother going there. I have just seen my cousin being eaten by a dog. They are all dead. Only the dogs are alive there.

At midday [on December 7] they take six of us [men] to work at the harbour....[where] we have to pick up...dead bodies....There were a lot of iron pipes on the wharf and we must tie the dead bodies on to them with parachute rope and throw them into the sea.... 

[Chinese Timorese from a Dili suburb] came in groups of two or three or four, stood on the wharf and were shot. One group after the other coming and coming, killed and thrown in the sea. Two were couples, one with young children who went with relatives. The other couple were elderly, and the rest were men.... 

Next they bring the ten [men who had been working with us]....The Indonesians tell them to stand in line and face the sea and then they are shot with a machine gun. Four people in that first sixteen of us...were father and son, but the Indonesians didn't know this. There on the wharf they kill the father, and the son must tie and throw his father into the sea. Then they kill the other son and his father is one of the six of us who must tie and throw his body.

The ABRI troops also started looking for "girls." Olinda, a young Chinese Timorese woman reported what her uncle had seen: 

After they landed in Dili the Indonesians....asked everywhere, “Where are the single girls? I want to marry,” and this kind of thing. An uncle spoke Bahasa Indonesia [the official Indonesian language], for trade with West Timor. They forced him to go with them to interpret. He came back and told how the Indonesians were raping Timorese women.

Many East Timorese fled to the mountains to avoid the oncoming troops. One of them, a woman called Edhina, described the situation: 

We were very frightened and ran to the bush....There were 40,000 of us, the fighters said. I had never seen so many people together.... 

The Javanese kept attacking and dropping bombs and we were like animals running from one place to the other carrying our children, going this way and that way. We slept anywhere, in the rain, in the mud, even near the dead animals. The bombs would come and we would stand up and run again. On the way we ate anything growing, anything we could find. In the daytime we went into caves or under rocks to hide. We could come out at night to sleep in the open air and cook, make a hole and light a little fire without smoke, only coals. 

People and animals ran, pushed to the insides of the mountains where there was no water. In the beginning we could carry food but after a while we couldn't carry that and carry our children. We were running all the time and we were weaker. When people died we'd just lay them next to the dead animals.

A few days after the assault on Dili, the Indonesian soldiers attacked other major towns and eventually pushed inland. On Christmas Day, the original 10,000 ABRI troops were supplemented by 15,000–20,000 more. By mid-February—a little over two months after the invasion began—60,000 East Timorese were dead. 

After the invasion, Indonesia set up a puppet legislative assembly, whose 28 members—described by Indonesia as "prominent citizens of East Timor"—were handpicked by Indonesian intelligence officers, with the help of APODETI, who made sure they had no previous ties to FRETILIN or the UDT. 

On May 31, 1976, this puppet assembly declared that East Timor wanted to become part of Indonesia. Observers at this event have stated that it was completely staged by the Indonesian authorities. The few journalists and junior diplomats from other countries who attended the proceedings were not permitted to speak with any delegates of the People's Assembly. As one journalist stated: 

Immediately after the council meeting, all were led back into their cars and briefly driven around the town before going straight back to the airport ....No one had a chance even to shake hands with council members, and executive members of the Provisional Government refused to answer press questions, climbing immediately into their new Volvo cars.

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