Complicity: Human Rights and Canadian Foreign Policy : The Case of East Timor

A fearless exposé of Canada?s moral failures on the international stage, Complicity is a groundbreaking investigation into this country?s role in enabling one of the 20th century?s most brutal occupations. Meticulously researched and passionately argued, Sharon Scharfe?s work lays bare how Canada?s economic and political support for Indonesia helped sustain the decades-long atrocities committed in East Timor.

From Indonesia?s 1975 invasion to the show trial and sentencing of East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmão, Scharfe traces a harrowing record of massacres, repression, and genocide?acts that Canada continued to ignore while maintaining arms deals, trade ties, and diplomatic niceties. Drawing on her experience as national coordinator of the East Timor Alert Network, Scharfe applies a rigorous analysis of foreign policy frameworks to show how human rights were routinely subordinated to economic interest.

Complicity is more than an indictment of Canada?s foreign policy?it is a call to conscience. Bold, urgent, and deeply unsettling, this book challenges Canadians to reckon with the costs of silence and the dangers of diplomatic pragmatism in the face of atrocity.