Late Night Live In Timor-Leste

Note: This blog is now an archive.

The full fruits of our labour can be heard this week - Monday 22 October to Friday 26 - on Late Night Live, 10pm AEST (repeated at 4pm the following day, and available to stream or download).

The series continues on Late Night Live on Thursday 8 November, Thursday 15 November, Thursday 29 November, Thursday 6 December and two final shows for 2007 on Monday 17 and Tuesday 18 December.

You can find the program audio, videos of interview highlights and more pictures at the official Radio National site.

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The LNL team is heading home with hours of audio and video and many photos of our travels. The Late Night Live programmes commence on Monday 22 October, with accompanying material available via the Radio National website.

As we pack up in Timor-Leste, there’s time for one final video ‘postcard’ on the blog - from Dili’s Santa Cruz Cemetery, scene of the 1991 massacre…

 

 Santa Cruz Cemetery [1:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Back in Dili, to spend much of the day with President Jose Ramos Horta. A long, rambling chat about his life and his plans for the future - everything from the dark days as a wandering diplomat without a country, to his not unreasonable plans to be Secretary-General of the United Nations, but not before four or five years of intense nation building. I told him that, for my part, our two weeks in East Timor had begun with a sense of despondency – that the people were so traumatised, the infrastructure so devastated, the social and health problems so overwhelming, that not even 100 Hortas would have a hope of overcoming the problems. But here, at the end, the feeling is different.

It is one thing to talk to Presidents and Prime Ministers but another to talk to the voiceless, the scores of villagers in remote mountain areas and tiny coastal towns, who have been through hell but who remain committed to the same dream as their President. Horta is as resolute as they are and you feel that, despite a task that would crush the spirit of Sisyphus, they’ll bloody well bring it off. You couldn’t meet a tougher and more determined people than these. In many ways the Timorese evoke the determination of the Israelis to survive. Horta welcomed the comparison and thought it legitimate.

For the last words recorded for this series of programmes the setting was Santa Cruz cemetery. Cemeteries are where you bury the dead. Santa Cruz is different. It was here that living human beings were turned into corpses in a mass production of martyrs in 1991. The final body count remains mysterious but may well exceed 500. I stood beside a black metal cross surrounded by candles and hundreds upon hundreds of bouquets. The rest of the cemetery is full of plastic flowers. Here the flowers were fresh. And in the half hour we were there, there was an endless stream of the young and the old. coming to add to the pile. I was approached by a family, given a bouquet and asked to lay it at the cross. This is a grave for the missing – for the people they killed here were not buried here. There were tears – and not from the Timorese. From us. Yet we leave the cemetery – and the country – with a conviction that East Timor is not a failed state and never will be. Two overwhelming weeks. And we’ll try to bring you the essence of what we’ve learned and experienced in the weeks ahead, on the programme and on the web.

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We spent much of the day in the company of President José Ramos-Horta. The interview we recorded covered a wide variety topics fuelled by our encounters with the Timorese people over the past two weeks, and concluded with talk of a very personal project for the President…

 

 José Ramos-Horta [1:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Two hours drive from Viqueque, past broken bridges, through subdued villages, we reach what remains of Aliembata. Eight weeks ago 200 houses - the majority of the village - were torched, the latest incident in an ethnic feud that dates back to 1959 when sides were taken in an uprising against the Portugeuse. The arson coincided with Parliamentary elections, and was widely, reported to be related to current national politics.

Read Phillip’s blog entry.

The village of Aliembata [Aliembata] Click to enlarge	At the well [Aliembata] Click to enlarge	Aliembata eyewitnesses [Aliembata] Click to enlarge
A determined woman [Aliembata] Click to enlarge	Passionate accounts [Aliembata] Click to enlarge	A home destroyed [Aliembata] Click to enlarge

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Bibi Bulak [9 October] Click to enlarge	The Arte Moris Gallery [9 October] Click to enlarge	Xanana on The Wall [9 October] Click to enlarge
Gabriela Gannser [9 October] Click to enlarge	Max Stahl [9 October] Click to enlarge	ADF [9 October] Click to enlarge

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If you go to the University of New South Wales you can get a Batchelor of Art and Military Studies. Art and military studies may seem a paradox but Brigadier John Hutcheson, Commander, Joint Task Force 631 in East Timor, likes to juggle chess with military strategy, the role of the warrior with that of the worrier. When he is not being a soldier he is a scholar, and I asked him about his book “Wars of Conscience”. He likes to think – whether in a military think-tank or late at night - and his book attempts to drag military thinking in to the 21^st century: “Armies will no longer defend themselves from aggression or seek to expand their country’s territory. More and more it will be like this. A country will choose to get involved in military operations on more ethical grounds.” And what happens if your personal conscience conflicts with the views of your political masters. When I put it to him, he said that, finally a soldier does what he is told. LNL met the Brigadier before, when he commanded the military contingent of RAMSI (Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands) in the Solomon Islands. He is the new model. Rather than hurling yourself on a beach in the Dardanelles you wander the world protecting people from a third party threat and perhaps helping with a little nation building.

Our discussion with the Brigadier rounded off a day that was somewhat more optimistic in tone than others. We met young filmmakers at what might grow into a Timorese film school, run by British ex-patriot filmmaker Max Stahl. Max survived the Santa Cruz massacre to bring those horrendous images to world attention – and if there was a moment in recent Timorese history that changes history (Max said “including my own”) it was that. None of us can ever forget the images of fleeing Timorese kids tripping over the headstones as hundreds of them died. Now youngsters of the same age work with Max in learning to make documentary films, and with him are building an impressive archive of urgent historic images.

Another impressive and long term ex-pat was Gabriela Gansser, who hopes her art school will become the foundation of a national art college. Surrounded by the best library I’ve seen in East Timor – a splendid variety of art books from Hieronymus Bosch to Van Gogh - her students were hybridisers mixing traditional Timorese artistic styles with European influences and their results have immense impact. Both Max and Gabriela have been to hell and back in recent times, their respective institutions barely surviving the wide spread burnings. And both their small enterprises have the additional burden of supporting IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons). As well as training their students they have to feed the people who ‘gatecrashed’ their buildings. Their stoicism is remarkable. The one thing that the Brigadier, Max and Gabriela have in common is optimism.

They’re all pretty sure that East Timor is going to make it.

Phillip Adams

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A momentary break in the relentless recording, filming and travelling - in Bacau, on the north coast.

 

 Postcard From Bacau [1:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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For the time being, at least, politics doesn’t come out to the barrel of a gun in East Timor. But it sure as hell comes out of the nozzle of spray cans. Forbidden during the Indonesian years, democracy now blossoms in the form of slogans. Guerrilla warfare is now graffiti warfare. Much of it is common garden political self aggrandisement or the slander of your enemies. The most hurtful slogan to Xanana is the endlessly repeated accusations of treason. “XANANA TRAITOR” is almost universal, and despite his airy dismissals, it’s clear it hurts him deeply. It was, after all, the very first issue he raised in our conversation few days back.

Australia also cops it. We are not universally popular up here. One enormous graffiti read “Xanana – screw your mother and screw Australia” (And I‘m modifying the wording for the purposes of propriety on this occasion). It is the obscenity rather than the vehement language that offended one woman I interviewed in Bacau today – and she’s determined to do something about it. She wants the political leaders to go directly to her town from Dili with mops and buckets – to wipe away the offending epithets and set an example to the nation. One telling slogan that caught my eye was aimed at Australia and knew how to press a hot button. “WE AE NOT AUSTRALIANS, WE ARE TIMORESE AND NOT YET ABORGINS” (sic).

The writing on the walls may be hostile to Australia, yet we’re met with nothing but warmth, hospitality and friendship, even by some of those who have been writing the slogans. The size of the lettering does not necessarily indicate the depth of feeling.

Remote from Australian media I have no idea what has happened in recent days. Has Howard called the election? Or is it going to coincide with Christmas Day? I’m a little bit frustrated as I almost wish I was in Sydney with a tin of paint writing up my own political slogans on important buildings.

Phillip Adams

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We’re heading back to Dili now, seeking our final round of interviews in the nation’s capital. Throughout the trip we’ve been talking to people from all walks of East Timorese life. You’ll see and hear these interviews on the program and online soon, and in the meantime we’ll post some snippets right here.

Our first interview appointment was with Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao and his Australian wife Kirsty Sword Gusmao. In this clip they recall how they fell in love despite never having met, when the future PM - jailed by the Indonesians - knew Kirsty only by a photo of the back of her head…

 

 Xanana and Kirsty [2:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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