I left East Timor on September 4, 1999, only hours after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the results of the historic balloting there. Despite widespread acts of terror and intimidation by the Indonesian military and its militia groups, 98.7 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots and 78.5 percent opted for independence.
I was in a convoy of hundreds of cars and trucks heading to Indonesian West Timor. The convoy was made up mostly of Indonesian civil servants ...