Re: Chomsky on East Timor (9/10/99)

Chomsky is making a comparative proportional statement. He has made
similar ones in the past concerning Timor. For example, he has noted that
in comparable terms the proportion of the Timorese population exterminated
during the Indonesian invasion is higher than many other acts of mass
murder (for example, Cambodia during the same period). On this basis, he
has stated that the Timorese genocide was probably the worst act of mass
murder since the Holocaust. In the statement criticized below he clearly
says "the proportion of casualties," not total numbers. Chomsky typically
looks at the percentage of population affected by military action. Given
this, the 200,000 to 300,000 Timorese murdered in the late 1970s is a
gigantic numbers considering the total population of Timorese is small.
Likewise, 60,000 killed of the remaining Timorese in the latest campaign
is gigantic.

Andy Austin

On Sun, 12 Sep 1999, Konstantin Borodinsky wrote:

>>As for how "things turned out,"
>>Moynihan comments that within a few months 60,000 Timorese had >been
>>killed, "almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet
>>Union during the Second World War."
>This is either a printing mistake or delusion. Soviet casualties during the
>W.W.II were 27 million people with million here, million there - noone 
>knows
>exactly. Total losses of all countries thus rising to 57 million. Hardly
>conceivable "statistics", but still.
>Proved by post-war census in the USSR.
>Though I came across a figure of 850 000 casualties on ALL fronts of the
>war. Strange - or, may be, not very strange manipulation with figures.
>Which doesn't make the tragedy of the Timorese easier.
>Respectfully,
>Konstantin Borodinsky,
>Minsk, Belarus
>
>