Australian diplomats in the Jakarta embassy mocked reports of the rape, torture and execution of the East Timorese after the invasion by Indonesia on official documents held in Canberra archives. 
The handwritten annotations are on a memo sent to the embassy in   November 1976, less than a year after Indonesia seized East Timor by force. The correspondence - originating from the Australian embassy in the Hague - displays the comments "sounds like fun" and "the population must be in raptures". Also included is a media release from Fretilin, the separatist resistance movement that was fighting the Indonesians. It describes fighting across the territory and artillery bombardments by Indonesian forces on villages.
Fretilin says, "The enemy are daily torturing, raping and executing the captured population" at a detention camp near Bacau.
This phase is underlined by a diplomat, with the comment "sounds like fun". The memo and its annotations were found in the National Archives by two researchers from Monash University, Sara Niner and Kim McGrath. The memo, said Dr Niner, was "vivid evidence of the lack of empathy and concern for human rights abuses in East Timor" in the Department of Foreign Affairs. "The archives in Canberra reveal that this culture of cover up is closely tied to DFA's need to recognise Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor so as to commence negotiations over the petroleum in the Timor Sea." The boundary negotiated in the early '70s with Indonesia was highly favourable to Australia but left a gap in the border - the so-called Timor Gap as East Timor was then a Portuguese colony.
Prior to Indonesia's invasion in 1975, Australia's ambassador in Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, cabled Canberra to observe the gap in the sea border "could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia".
Australia has declined to negotiate a permanent boundary since East Timor's independence, with the fledgling state waiting to hear if Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will begin talks.
Fairfax Media contacted a member of the Jakarta embassy staff at the time, Peter Rodgers, whose name is also on the memo, who said he could not say if the annotations were his. "Those in the embassy in 1976 had no more reason to believe Fretilin propaganda than they did to believe Indonesian propaganda over the situation in East Timor," he replied in an email.
"The commentary was blunt but this was on claims made by one of the protagonists in a messy, propaganda-rich conflict."
A United Nations 2500-page report into violence in East Timor during the occupation found thousands of instances of sexual violence, forced starvation, summary executions and torture. "Rape, sexual slavery and sexual violence were tools used as part of the campaign designed to inflict a deep experience of terror, powerlessness and hopelessness upon pro-independence supporters," the report said.
theage.com.au -Read more