a people betrayed

Comrades,

When you go into the world class Archives & Museum of East Timorese Resistance in Dili you will find a small ante-chamber with a black curtain drawn half across the entrance. There is a sign, in Tetum, Portuguese and English, warning you that the exhibit is not suitable for patrons under the age of 18. Inside is a 1990's era vintage television set embedded in the wall. On the small screen is very raw footage of the aftermath of the 1999 independence referendum. It has not been filtered, it's seen no editor's touch, it is as the camera found it. Although it lasts less than eight minutes and plays on a continuous loop, it is utter terror writ large. You can sit, but I stood, and watched the screen aghast, transfixed by the horror. You see civil war at its most ghastly extreme. Watching seemingly innocent civilians being shot at point blank range and murdered by machete in the streets is not easy, not even for a hardened ol' journo who has seen death and destruction first hand and up close. I came away, not shocked - no, it was the strange feeling of being deeply disturbed that shocked me - and told my Good Lady Wife not to go in there. She saw my ashen face, and took my advice. Somehow, it felt personal, and I couldn't detach myself from it. Still can't.

2012 seemed the right time to fulfill my ambition of finally visiting East Timor - as a tourist, nothing more - and taking a look for myself at a country which had fascinated me for the previous 37 years. The disappearance of television news crews covering the then un-declared Indonesian invasion in 1975, which became known as the Balibo Five and went on to be an enduring enigma with a hagiography all it's own, made me sit up and take notice. I was 18 years old. It had been overshadowed by the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam war five months earlier, but being a Pinko from a very early age, I had a natural empathy with The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor [FRETILIN] and independence movements world wide for that matter [please, don't get me started on West Papua]. It was one impetus that eventually pushed me into an accidental career in journalism that miraculously lasted a quarter of a century. In every newsroom I worked in I became the in-house de-facto "East Timor expert' only because I was the only one who'd paid it any attention and people thought I was a smart-arse. [and I've written more than enough about it since], but, jeez, it was a hard story to sell. For the most part, the care factor just wasn't there. While Xanana Gusmão, Jose Ramos-Horta and Mari Alkatiri over time joined the ranks of my heroes, I played all my coverage of the joint with an entirely straight bat, never ever allowing my bias to slip into the reportage. I'd been out of the pro journo game for three years by the time I turned up in Dili in '12, and it was the "edgiest" place I have ever been; the UN had almost finished pulling out, there was still the odd Australian soldier looking out of place and a few AFP cops lurking about, but there were no local police to speak of, and there was this unsettling feeling of being constantly watched, knowing you were doubtless among faceless killers and murderers. Everybody knew. A decade on and the tensions were still palpable. A driver looked aghast at me when I asked to be taken to the Santa Cruz cemetery - the site of 1991 Dili Massacre - where the dead are densely packed, in some places buried on top of each other, in elaborately decorated meticulously maintained graves. He clearly thought I was mad. I paid another driver $US100 for the arduous 4WD journey into the rugged, mountainous 'rebel country' behind Dili; he took me to his childhood home and proudly showed me photographs of his father with Gusmão in their battle fatigues. He showed me the route of the 14km walk he took every day from his village to school and back. He took me to the shabbily incongruous tumble-down Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in the poverty-stricken town of Emera, which had been a key strategic centre of the armed resistance. He showed me places marked by a simple cross, where Indonesian troops had herded old men, women and children into houses and burnt them alive as a warning to others. We saw places where his sister tended her coffee trees. My wife introduced me to a Timorese man who was an old work colleague of hers in Sydney. One day he showed me his office desk, in which he kept a large machete, a small but deadly crossbow and a replica pistol "just in case, you know, because..." We all drank, alot.

People forget that the result of the Miracle of Democracy that was the 1999 referendum, while very conclusive, was not overwhelming. Even so, after a sustained campaign of threats and intimidation by Indonesian operatives against those who supported independence, it was truly remarkable that 78% voted yes, while 22% voted no. But, the Indonesians and their heavily armed militia's of sympathisers were never going to go quietly, and they never intended to leave anything behind. The East Timorese were clearly warned of the scorched earth withdrawal to come, and that a Yes vote would visit wide scale death & destruction on them, and that is exactly what they got. The rest of the world was sleepwalking.

When General Sir Peter Cosgrove and his advance party of SAS troops rolled into town, they were three weeks too late. It was no fault of his. Indonesia professed not to care, Portugal cared less, the UN prevaricated, the USA prevaricated, Australia prevaricated and dithered, as East Timor burned. Cosgrove dropped into a full-on death-fight with no orders beyond stopping the violence. Nobody knows exactly how many people had been killed in the interim, but the best estimates put the number of dead at more than 1500. Dili was in ruins; 80% of the buildings had been torched. It was too late - mate. The arrival of Australian troops [most people mistakenly think they were peacekeepers - they were most definitely not, this was war - that came later] in effect did nothing more than scatter the pro-Indonesian militias, who promptly fled across the border to the safety of West Timor which had been Dutch country for centuries, taking nigh on half of the population with them, many of whom never returned. After de-populating and destroying the place, it took a full 18 months for Indonesia to finally, begrudgingly, formally recognise East Timor's independence, but the immediate aftermath of the referendum was a wholesale tragedy from which the country will never fully recover.

Enough of the li'l history lesson. ScoMo had a hide turning up in Dili for the 20th anniversary. He'd been invited, as a matter of course, of course, but it was the last place in the world that he wanted to be, having just returned from gay Paris via some sea-side spa town and the former French colony of Vietnam. He was given a hand woven personal sash as a traditional mark of honourable intentions, but it was galling to see him badly pop a Champagne cork with that stoopid grin on his ugly dial. What had he got to celebrate? Less than nothing. He surely knows, we all know, that Australia fucked-over East Timor time and time and time again, ever since Sparrow Force was driven into the Timor Sea by the Japanese in late '42. Scomo knew that many knowing eyes were upon him, and they were withering in their gaze. ScoMo signed the third and final Timor Gap Treaty, effectively repeating what Australian governments from both sides had been saying from the outset: "it's the best you lot can expect". The people of East Timor are a people betrayed, and while they may forgive in time, they will never forget.