Late Night Live In Timor-Leste

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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