Inside Report (5)

May 22, 1981

The plight of the East Timorese grows more desperate. Never as visible as the starving people of Cambodia, the Timorese now have lost the international food aid that lasted 20 months. An estimated 60,000 of them are seriously malnourished.

Half the food in East Timor is imported. The Island has only 16 miles of paved roads. All the water buffalo are gone, and the task of restoring dry and denuded lands could take years. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer countries endorse the yearly UN resolutions condeming Indonesia for its forcible takeover of East Timor.

Indonesia claims it will put more money per-capita into Timor than any of its 13,000 other islands.m