In 1975, East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was annexed by Indonesia and for the next twenty-five years, East Timorese suffered under a harsh regime in which an approximate 200,000 people were killed and even more were displaced. With the fall of General Soeharto in 1999, the East Timorese were given the right to hold elections. Although they suffered active intimidation, the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence; militias responded by killing over 1,000 people, displacing thousands more, and destroying property and infrastructure in several towns and cities. In the ensuing transitional period, the United Nations governed East Timor and in 2002, East Timor became an independent state, Timor-Leste. In 2002, The United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET) helped establish a Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) to investigate human rights violations and atrocities committed between 1974 and 1999. The commission was given a two-year mandate and during that time it held a series of public hearings, collecting testimony from more than 7000 witnesses and victims. In addition to investigating facts about the conflict, the commission was charged with helping perpetrators and their victims reintegrate into their communities and with making recommendations for the prevention of future abuses. The commission delivered its final report to President Gusmao in October 2005 and it was made available to the public in 2006.
The archives of CAVR (20,000 pages and 800 hours of audio and visual recording) are in immediate danger of physical destruction, or of being lost or concealed.