Diary, Day Four: Balibo
Balibo. It’s a funny name – the sort of thing you might expect to find in a kid’s book. Fun to say, fun to say. But not anymore. Not since 1975 when it became a sacred site for Australians. Since then it has come to be a focus of all that’s best in the relationship between our country and East Timor. But as we approached Balibo this morning we saw a slogan painted across a burnt our building: WE HATE AUSTRALIANS. That’s how much things have changed in a very short time.
The Flag House, as it’s known, is an unremarkable even nondescript building on one side of a civic square. In the square’s centre, a revolutionary monument – a resistance fighter on top of a monstrous pediment, holding a banner aloft.
Greg Shackleton had no banner in ’75. Instead, he painted an Australian flag on the wall of that nondescript house in the hope that it would protect him and his four cobbers from the Indonesian onslaught. It failed to do so – and became their shroud.
For 32 years the events in Balibo have been shrouded in mystery – misrepresented, distorted and censored by forces who would have preferred to forget that anything happened there. The conspirators could be found in Jakarta and Canberra.
More atrocities were committed there in 1999 when Timorese resistance leaders were rounded up and slaughtered, martyred. Now their names and faces share the walls of Flag House with those of the Australians.
We spent some time there thinking aloud about the place, the continuing political fallout and a new wave of stories about how the Balibo Five were killed. I found them too appalling to repeat, but you’ll find them in the coronial records. Now the place has a cheerier new life as a community centre. From here they hand out mosquito nets to pregnant women, teach them sewing, cooking and provide childcare. Young blokes can learn carpentry or computer skills. And there’s even a library, lacking only books. An army marched by while we were recording – perhaps 1000 strong. All wearing the uniform of the local Catholic Church – Vatican yellow it was explained to me. Once again this emphasised the vast wave of the very young who have not only replaced the perhaps 200,000 killed since 1975 but are swelling the population to record numbers. One million and counting. Yesterday Mari Alkatiri seemed quite calm about East Timor having three million! If only the country can find an economy to employ them, feed them, house them and educate them.
Were now dossing down for the night in a hotel in Maliana that offers no urgent threat to anything in the Hilton or Sheraton chain. The only other guests are three UN policemen, two from Africa, one from Pakistan. Who have a ghetto-blaster. And what is it blasting out? Simon And Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. I kid you not. Perhaps that’s the UN theme. If we get any sleep tonight we’ll tell you about a visit to an animist temple tomorrow.
Phillip Adams
October 4th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
i would like to work for some one in east timor who can use my profile.
it is a sad reality that the west is a cess pool of greed & arrogance.
thus, it is possible a ‘genocide’ could happen again.
e.timor will get ’screwed’ by foreign corps like others in LDCs,
such as africa, s.america, and so on. the list is very long.
in order that this does NOT happen,
e.timor needs proper systems in health, education & finance/treasury.
this is not possible in the west, as there are vested interests in existing systems of GREED.
thus, unless e.timor [&other LDCs] get valid & fair systems,
genocide will occur via economics.
search [ abc “victor kacala” ]
summary=system design ‘expert’ in the areas of health [mental and physical], finance, eco, codes and education.
i love life and kids - i do not like many ‘adults’.
i HATE greed arrogance revenge, served up in any face of zero grace.
so, do you have a job in e.timor?
email to “zolotenko@yahoo.com”.
October 4th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
“WE HATE AUSTRALIANS.” I am curious to know if that is related purely to recent events or does it stretch back to Whitlam’s days and the pro-Indonesian pro-Suharto Canberra alliance which resulted in the Timor Gap agreement. Does Mr Alkatiri have an opinion on the Timor Gap agreement? Did Lord Downer’s negotiations alienate the current government further from Australia? Just how compromised is the current East Timor government over the oil agreements? Would the ABC board develop acute monetary asphyxiation techniques towards the entire LNL team if such embarrassing issues were explored? Would this result in you all being bedded nightly in dog kennels and having your budgets cut to such an extreme degree that Mr Bullock would have to go fishing every morning for your daily bread? Dr Victor, q.v. above, sounds a trifle bitter and twisted but his post alludes to a passing interest in such matters, and thus we are grateful to him.
As for the empty bookshelves. Is there a librarian who could nominate books he/she would like to be donated to fill them? (I’m sure he/she does not want to be flooded with used copies of the Anglers Guide to Tanzania, the Margaret Fulton Cookbook, or even SHAM: How the Gurus of the Self-Help Movement Make Us Helpless.)
The coronial inquest into the death of the Balibo 5 was disturbing, but also shameful in what it did not reveal about official Aus government policy towars all East Timorese at that time. And now, is it any better?
October 5th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Yes, a sacred site where we can remember nasty muslims (Indonesians) slaughtering and murdering and pillaging a country full of christians.
So I take it that it is ok for poor dark catholics to have a “noble resistance” against oppresive, invading muslims, but not ok for rich white westerners to defend themselves against imperialistic, aggressive muslims?
We should rename Fretlin the “knights templar” and rechristen Timor Leste as the first crusader kingdom of the 21st century.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I first logged in to make a comment on Philip’s thowaway remark that ‘Young blokes can learn carpentry or computer skills’, I think you will find that all the learning centres around Timor-Leste are dedicated to providing such skills to both ‘young blokes’ and young women. The level of gender awareness in Timor is pretty high, at least in the District Centres and capital, its translation in equal opportunities for girls and women is another matter. I hope you will have time to visit REDE FETO, the Women’s network of all Timorese women’s associations in Dili, meet some of their members, and read the policy recommendations from their latest Congress.
When I logged in I saw the comments of Mr Creosote above. This representa a fundamental misapprehension about the nature of the war in East Timor, far from being a Muslim versus Christian war the original plan of ‘Operasi Komodo’ was hatched by Catholics within Suharto’s administration, in particular General Benny Murdani, and a group of his advisors from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (with backing, as many will remember, from B.A. Santamaria’s organization).
Indoneesia has five official religions, although the largest is Islam.
Interestingly both sides have been keen not to portray the war as a religious war, although the Indonesian side did wish to diminish the role of the Catholic church in politics, sending in a great many Protestant soldiers to Timor for this reason (the half-bilt cathedral in the corner of Hosanna Church - opposite the Catholic Cathedral is a testament to their involvement in local Protestantism - after they left the Church was too poor to finish it). On its side FRETILIN, and later the CNRT, never claimed to be a Catholic organization but mentioned the multi-religious nature of Timor-Leste (even through Cantholics are in the vast manority). Among the non-governmental organizations in Indonesia itself there were many (including Muslims) who supported East Timor’s right to self-determination and opposed the occupation.
October 13th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
there is a saying that “the first death in any war is the truth”. i am not that interested in debate about who did what to who and who were the masters of a ‘local’ genocide. my guess is that what helen states is likely to be ‘true’, even if only a part truth of a war in the making. the ‘real’ villians are unlikely to be caught. it is also clear that fretilin was armed and used by ‘western’ states [via a ‘third’ party]. oz also has blood on its hands [even based on public info - the other info will dis-appear or be held in secret files some where]. i have no doubt that ‘catholic’ power brokers [domestic & foreign] were key players in genocide - of course, heavy hands on innocent people increased the violence cycle. in the back ground, the west security services [and foreign corps] were keen to get their hands on gas & oil linked to e.timor - the deals done by downer + corps + cronies makes this clear.
oz and ‘other’ western states [via UN*umbrella of chastity and fair play] now seem set on an agenda to exploit e.timor people again using a shield of catholic vritue + dogma.
the end result is clear.
i see the faces of kids & adult grim pain & grimACE inside.
a fair system of governance at a national level is crucial, such that ALL people are included.
e.timor has the same issues as all other states & families [such as oz & usa & etC].
a basic course in literacy & numeracy in business ethics, in a COMMON code [language] is crucia;
this could be done in one step, with kids leading the charge [in ENGLISH].
all terms [words] must have a common meaning suited to a local context,
with examples in words and pic/fig to suit.
a simple FONETIC english word set would be built,
in order to increase the rate of learning.
creosole is a venom bag, wrapped in a sense of pure arrogance of
“I KNOW^*i”.
the west has a dominant mode of colonial power via eco-genocide.
thus, creosole is just one among many who stalk
the power alleys on the global stage,
hidden under a veil of venom as verbal bile.