QuickTime video

For more than 450 years East Timor was Portugal's colony on the island of Timor. But when the leftist Fretilin faction gained control over most of the region in late 1975 and declared independence, the Portuguese withdrew rapidly, leaving a power vacuum. The rebels appeared to be winning over their rivals in the ensuing power struggle until Indonesian forces invaded and established control. Jakarta declared East Timor to be its 27th province in 1976, a move that sparked international outrage and fueled a growing separatist movement.

Human rights violations that included the killing of demonstrators in 1991 in the East Timor capital, Dili, have kept the controversy in the public spotlight. Scores of people have died in clashes, and two East Timorese activists, Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta (now a spokesman for the separatists), won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for their efforts to find a non-violent resolution.

On September 4, 1999, the East Timorese, a majority of whom among the population of nearly 700,000 are Christian, overwhelmingly chose independence for their troubled homeland in a U.N.-sponsored ballot. In a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said 78.5 percent of the voters had endorsed independence, rejecting an Indonesian proposal of special autonomy for East Timor under Jakarta's sovereignty.

The vote prompted a wave of violence against the independence seekers that cost more than 200 lives. The Indonesian military reportedly stood by -- and perhaps participated -- while pro-Indonesian militias rampaged through the territory.

The violence finally ended when Australian peacekeeping forces arrived later in the month. The Australians handed the former Indonesian province to a U.N. administrative team in February 2000.

QuickTime video

The western half of the island of New Guinea -- the world's largest tropical island -- constitutes the Indonesian province of West Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya. The interior is rugged and densely forested. Its more than 1.6 million people live mostly along the coast, leaving large swaths of the province's 163,000 square miles (423,800 square kilometers) sparsely populated.

New Guinea's eastern half, Papua New Guinea, became an independent state in 1975. The Dutch-controlled western half declared independence in 1961 but became part of Indonesia two years later.

The United Nations recognized Indonesia's claim to the territory in 1969 when 1,000 ethnic Papuan delegates -- representing a population of 800,000 -- voted to become Indonesia's 26th province, and its largest, embracing 22 percent of Indonesia's territory.

The government wants to maintain a firm hold on West Papua. It has relocated at least 200,000 people from Java to "transmigration" camps in the vast province, and another 50,000 have moved there voluntarily. West Papua has abundant natural resources, many of them still untapped, that include spices, copra, timber, crude oil, uranium, and the world's largest concentrations of gold and copper.

West Papua's indigenous population is mostly Melanesian and Christian, ethnically and culturally different from Indonesia's predominantly Muslim majority.

Resentment toward the government boiled over in the 1970s and 1980s, and thousands of separatist Papuans were killed during clashes with the Indonesian army. Some guerrillas, part of the Free Papua Movement, still operate in the region along West Papua's border with Papua New Guinea.

In June 2000, a Papua People's Congress recommended independence from Indonesia, contending West Papua has never legally been part of Indonesia. Indonesian President Abudurrahman Wahid responded that the congress does not represent the wishes of a majority of the province and that the congress excluded anti-independence voices.

According to Elsham, a human rights group based in Jayapura, the provincial capital formerly known as Hollandia, four people have been killed, 81 detained and 165 injured by police and militias since late 1999.

QuickTime video

Also known as Acheh, Achin or Atjeh, Aceh is a special district situated on the northern part of Sumatra.

Aceh's more than 3.3 million people are mostly ethnic Malays who practice Islam. From 1870 to 1904 they fought an unsuccessful war with the Dutch to remain independent. They have also resisted Jakarta's rule and unsuccessfully rebelled in 1953. Banda Aceh, the district's capital, is called the "doorway to Mecca," because of its history as a stop for Muslim pilgrims traveling by ship to Mecca.

Indonesia declared Aceh an Area of Military Operations from 1990 to 1998 in an effort to quell activities by the Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh), an armed separatist group that is still strong in the region. According to a report by the human rights organization Amnesty International, "serious human rights violations -- including extra-judicial executions, 'disappearances,' torture and arbitrary arrests -- were commonplace" in Aceh during that period.

Aceh is important to Jakarta, if only for the large oil and gas deposits in the territory. There are also extensive agricultural investments.

A cease-fire went into effect in early June 2000, but sporadic fighting has been ongoing since then, including a rebel ambush of a police patrol in early July that left three policemen dead and five others wounded. More than 5,000 people have died in the past decade, 350 so far in 2000, according to the Associated Press.

QuickTime video

One of Indonesia's Spice Islands, Ambon attracted European adventurers and colonists for its clove trade as early as 1521. It was fought over by the Portuguese, British and Dutch until finally coming under Dutch rule in 1814. The Dutch presence created a relatively large Christian population in Ambon.

Following World War II, during which the island was occupied by the Japanese, many Ambonese resisted becoming part of Indonesia and attempted to establish an independent South Moluccan Republic, but Indonesian troops suppressed the movement.

Ambon is home to the capital of Maluku province that consists of about 1,000 islands formerly known as the Moluccas, or Spice Islands. Ambon island embraces 294 square miles (764 square kilometers) of generally hilly, agricultural terrain that produces coffee, corn, copra, cloves and sugar, among others.

Muslims have steadily immigrated to Ambon since the establishment of the Indonesian Republic in 1949. Christians and Muslims co-existed in relative peace for decades, although the new settlers steadily chipped away at the traditional Christian predominance. The population in 1980 stood at more than 650,000.

An Ambonese Muslim became the governor of the island in the early 1990s, and the change in the power structure of the island increased tensions.

A series of church burnings and attacks on mosques in Jakarta and West Timor brought the situation to critical mass. On November 22, 1998, at least 14 people were killed in clashes between religious factions in a part of Ambon called Katapang.

Government attempts to suppress the unrest were unsuccessful, and in January 1999 what began as a street fight between a Christian bus driver and a Muslim passenger escalated into the worst religious fighting in Indonesia's history. More than 1,000 people were killed and thousands more fled.

By late June 2000, when Indonesian President Abudurrahman Wahid proclaimed a state of civil emergency, about 3,000 people had been killed since the outbreak of violence, and Wahid's declaration did little to quiet the uproar.