Destruction
In September 1999 when the Indonesian military and militia rampaged through East Timor destroying vital infrastructure, the education system was a major target for destruction. This was known as the Scorched Earth Operation.
The first buildings to be razed were resistance centers including the CNRT offices and student centers. Then the schools, colleges and the university were destroyed. Ninety-five per cent of school buildings in East Timor were destroyed. The UNTIM and Polytechnic buildings in Dili and in Hera, as well as the Nurses Institute, were looted, smashed and burnt with little surviving the onslaught.
University students fanned across the country before the referendum in 1999 to work for the vote for independence, many being killed in the violence that followed. After the destruction students again went to regional areas to teach classes in burnt out buildings to keep the children learning and the schools open. They also organized classes for tertiary students when no other education facilities were operational.
Read more about this topic: Universidade Nacional De Timor-Leste
Famous quotes containing the word destruction:
“If only nature is real and if, in nature, only desire and destruction are legitimate, then, in that all humanity does not suffice to assuage the thirst for blood, the path of destruction must lead to universal annihilation.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true. “And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation, and the beasts shall reign over the earth.””
—Ted Sherdeman. Gordon Douglas. Dr. Medford (Edmund Gwenn)