Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

F
Facing History and Ourselves. Founded in 1976 by William S. Parsons (b. 1945) and
Margot Stern Strom (b. 1948), Facing and History and Ourselves is an acclaimed educational
program, offering an interdisciplinary approach to citizenship education that connects
the history of the Holocaust and other cases of genocide to the moral questions
young people face. Its mission is to engage students in civic education—an education that
encourages the skills, promotes the values, and fosters the ideals—needed to sustain a
democratic society. Facing History “provides middle and high school educators with tools
for teaching history and ethics, and for helping their students learn to combat prejudice
with compassion, indifference with participation, and myth and misinformation with
knowledge.”
Failed State. A nation in which its various bodies (e.g., legislative, judicial, and/or
military) are either in disarray or have crumbled, and chaos has ensued to such a point
that there is no clear sign as to whether or not there is even a governing body. The cause
of such failure can result from a wide array of factors, including (but not limited to): violent
conflict between the government and one or more actors, an attempt at secession by
an actor, economic chaos, civil war, and genocide.
FALANTIL. An irregular military organization that for twenty-five years waged a
guerrilla war in East Timor against the occupying Indonesians. The name is an acronym
of the force’s formal Portuguese title, Forças Armadas de Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste,
or National Liberation Forces of an Independent East Timor. FALANTIL was formed in
1975 as an armed wing of the leftist East Timorese political movement known as
FRETILIN (Frente Revolucionária do Timor-Leste Independente). Its leader, until his capture
by the Indonesians in 1992, was Jose Alexandre “Xanana” Gusmao (b. 1946), who was
later (in May 2002) to become the first president of an independent Timor-Leste.
FALANTIL’s struggle to free East Timor from Indonesian rule began on the day of the
Indonesian invasion, December 7, 1975. In the first few days following the invasion, two
thousand citizens in the capital of Dili were killed and, by the end of 1975, twenty thousand
Indonesian troops had occupied the small country. This number rose to thirty-five
thousand by April 1976. Confronting the Indonesian army were up to twenty thousand
well-armed FALANTIL fighters, who put up a solid guerrilla defense for the next three
years, until the last formal outpost of resistance, at Mount Matebian, fell in November
1978. After this, FALANTIL numbers declined, and only the most ardent and seasoned