Share/Email This Item ]]>
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…
]]>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.
]]>
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
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
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
They’re all pretty sure that
Phillip Adams
]]>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
]]>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…
]]>You’ll hear the full interview on LNL in coming weeks. Here’s a taste…
]]>This seems, to me, the greatest tragedy of East Timor – the one that imperils its future. The victims of the arson – and “victim” is their own word - have widely varying interpretations of what happened and why. For some, hostility focuses on Fretilin, suggesting they responded to their election defeat with this atrocity. Others hint at ancient resentments that have been building between ethnic groups for generations. Whatever the truth, there is another truth. The relationships between the East Timor people are now fragile and fractured, and the greatest task facing Xanana Gusmão and Jose Ramos Horta is not the rebuilding of infrastructure but the rebuilding of what made independence possible – a sense of national identity.
Tonight we rest in East Timor’s ’second city’ Bacau.
Phillip Adams
]]>At any moment the dry season will end with a few claps of thunder and the downpour will transform East Timor from dust and gravel to tropical excess. And our only hope is that it holds off for another couple of days as it would render our further plans to explore the place redundant. We’re just making it at the moment, our trusty 4WD enduring more mechanical insults from the wrecked roads than bare thinking about. If there were mechanical rights like human rights we would be guilty as charged for making it suffer such long and agonising days. But it’s all worth it – every encounter we have had has been extraordinary.
This morning began with further details on the Australian army’s activities in Same and this afternoon we visited an impossibly beautiful village in the ‘Valley of the Widows’, were we learnt of a vast massacre carried out on these people by the Indonesian forces. There’s a glimpse of our encounter on the website.
Phillip Adams
]]>
Phillip and Chris in Balibo
[Balibo]
Click to enlarge
Flag House, Balibo
[Balibo]
Click to enlarge
Trees for the Balibo Five
[Balibo]
Click to enlarge
Flag House guide
[Balibo]
Click to enlarge
I’m finding it just as tough myself as I’m now used to going into a local cafe and ordering a meal which turns out to be absolutely, utterly, inedible. By the time I return to Australia I’m going to look like Twiggy.
But there are other rewards.
Today we drove for the best part of eight hours to record one interview- with an eyewitness to the killing of four East Timorese during an operation by the Australian Defence Forces earlier this year. It’s an incident shrouded in mystery. Our interview raises issues that must be addressed. Discretion requires that we keep the details to ourselves for the next week. We’re in the ancient town of Same, where the Australians came barging in with their Blackhawk helicopters putting many of the townspeople to flight - it seemed reminiscent of the Indonesians. But this is a place with an ancient history of wars and uprisings.
Tomorrow, another long journey in search of stories along road that’s going from bad to worse, to ludicrous. And with a bit of luck I might find an edible meal.
Phillip Adams
]]>We were serenaded with a song for the future of