HL Deb 19 February 1992 vol 535 cc50-1WA
Viscount Brentford

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What are the respective proportions of the populations that have been killed by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and the Indonesian regime in East Timor.

The Earl of Caithness

There are no reliable figures for either the population of Cambodia in 1975, or the number of casualties of Khmer Rouge rule. But it is estimated that between one in 16 and one in five of the Cambodian population were killed by the Khmer Rouge or died as a result of their policies. In East Timor estimates of the numbers of dead resulting from civil conflicts before the Indonesian invasion, the invasion itself, the subsequent atrocities and famine vary between one in 10 and one in 6 of the East Timor population; the famine being responsible for the greater number of these. Some NGO estimates suggest as many as one in 3 of the territory's population died.