A Not-So-Distant Horror

A Not-So-Distant Horror is essential for understanding the broader context of Washington's latest support for Jakarta's military. The book provides a thorough overview of 'international community' backing for the twenty-four-year Indonesian military occupation of East Timor, and shows the blatant power calculations that went into the sell-out of the East Timorese. As Nevins quotes then-U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Stapleton Roy saying in 1999, 'Indonesia matters and East Timor doesn't.'.

-- Ben Terrall * Counterpunch.org *

In an account described by Noam Chomsky as 'searingly honest,' Joe Nevins analyzes how Western nations conspired to back Indonesia and keep the East Timor issue out of the spotlight. The price paid by the East Timorese was a loss of life estimated at close to two hundred thousand, or a third of its population, proportionally one of the worst cases of genocide since World War II.

-- Maire Leadbeater * The New Zealand Herald *

Nevins's account of the period from Indonesia's unlawful invasion of East Timor on 7 December 1975 to the withdrawal of its forces in September 2001 is factual, accurate, and spare.... There is much to reflect on in Nevins's book, not least the mute acceptance in Australia of many U.S. policies as our own.

-- Richard Broinowski * Australian Book Review *

Rarely do contemporary histories address foreign policy making from the perspective of human rights and justice. Even rarer is a book like Joseph Nevins's A Not-So-Distant Horror, which compellingly makes the case that failure to give such concerns adequate weight in policy formulation has produced ruinous results.... This book should be read by all those concerned that Washington's eager embrace and empowerment of rogue militaries in the so-called 'war on terror'—as we did during the Cold War—will again strengthen regimes characterized by their corruption and hostility to democracy and human rights.

-- Edmund McWilliams * Foreign Service Journal *

This book identifies many villains and even more numerous accomplices, not only in East Timor but in 'painful events' around the world. It will raise the reader's righteous indignation as well as awareness. Implicit is the hope that awareness and indignation will stimulate deeper, more truthful accounts of 'painful events', leading to justice, restitution and moral closure.

-- Stephen Hoadley * New Zealand International Review *

This is a gripping and powerful saga rooted in the horrible atrocities and deprivation endured by the East Timorese following Indonesia's invasion in 1975. Indonesian security forces ruled ruthlessly until 1999, causing nearly 200,000 conflict-related deaths, imprisoning and torturing thousands more, while raping and plundering with abandon. A generation of East Timorese grew up where the rule of law was a distant rumor and human rights were routinely violated. Joseph Nevins briefly recapitulates this history, focusing on international complicity in these crimes against humanity, but mostly dwells on the troubling failure to secure justice.

-- Jeff Kingston * The Japan Tim