REMINISCENCES OF EAST TIMOR
By Rui Araujo
Indonesia occupied East Timor in 1975. Since then, according to human rights officials, 100,000 to 200,000 Timorese, out of a population of 750,000, have perished, victims of Indonesia's repression.
Five foreign journalists have been killed covering the struggle between Indonesia and the Timorese.
Rui Araujo, a Portuguese television journalist and Nieman Fellow 1991, has been to Indonesia five times, four times to East Timor.
In the following reminiscenes of his visit last May, he explains the impact of the visits on him as a journalist.
We were dining at the Hotel Turismo in Dili, the capital of East Timor. Petrus Suriady explained to me: «You have a problem. The military commander and the Secret Service fear for your life.» Suriady, Indonesian journalist, businessman and guide, denies being an agent of the Indonesian Secret Police. Yet, he is constantly accompanying foreign journalists to East Timor and follows the Indonesian Red Berets on behind-the-lines missions.
«This is unbelievable!» I replied, not trying to suppress my anger. Suriady continued: «They had a meeting early this morning to discuss your problematic situation. You made another mistake. You left Dili late last night and journalists are not supposed to engage in such escapades. Nor are they supposed to spend nights roaming the jungle to make contact with the guerillas.»
Demonstrating that he had learned nothing, he imparted a last piece of advice. «Be cautious! You have lots of enemies here. I would say the Timorese from Atauro island don't like you much. I am not sure we can guarantee your safety.»
Still angry, I shot back: «Too bad for you! It was something I had to do. Making threats to reporters is wrong. I am not speaking as a lone Portuguese journalist. This is not 1975 anymore. The five foreign journalists your troops shot to death was a big mistake. I am doing my job, so stop trying to fuck me.»
I was responding to the intellectual terrorism and moral intimidation the Indonesians were attempting to inflict upon me and those of my profession.
After dinner I left him and joined a group of journalists at the garden bar. Suriady was not too far away. I could hear his voice, something like cartoon lockjaw — so excruciatingly stretched out you could fall asleep waiting for him to get to the end of the sentence.
At the trial to judge Xanana Gusmao, the Timorese leader, for sedition, soldiers were much in evidence. There was also an overabundance of officials who, in the best Indonesian tradition, examined each passport and press card six times before passing it on to the next official, who examined it six times more.
Although the paper shuffling slowed the line through the arrival gate to a sweltering crawl, the Secret Service bureaucrats seemed unconcerned. Promptness and efficiency, I was to learn, were not welcomed.
Most Portuguese reporters were still barred from East Timor. For Xanana's trial, in fact, few foreign journalists of any nationality were welcomed.
I was surprised by and suspicious of the reasons the Indonesian military let me come back. After all, I was the same "Portuguese pain-in-the-ass" reporter earlier placed on their blacklist. «The devil you know... » a sarcastic Ian Macintosh (ABC-Australia) offered, as a way of explaining why the Indonesians had permitted my return.
During the trial, foreign journalists had to stay in the last rows of an adjoining courtroom. We received orders from police officials not to record anything.
Only the Indonesians were allowed to take pictures and record sound and image. Xanana was far away from us. «Sorry for the lack of loudspeakers, it's a difficult technical problem» an official spokesman explained.
The trial judge, Hieronimus Godang, intoned «Jose Alexandre Gusmao, alias Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao, alias Xanana, for 17 years the chief of resistance in East Timor, is found guilty of leading a separatist movement and illegal possession of weapons.»
Judge Godand proceeded through the 200 pages of accusations, getting progressively angrier. The sentence: life imprisonment, the maximum asked for by prosecutors. After passing sentence, the judge explained that «the reason the punishment is so heavy is that the defendant's actions disturbed stability in East Timor.» Finally, he tucked a large white handkerchief in his pocket and, still scowling, ordered the trial ended.
I had recorded
Xanana's first interview with Portuguese television (RTP) almost four months before
his capture last November.
LINK (Interview given in the bush, a guerrilla reads my questions to Xanana):
https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/reporteres-parte-ii-2/
LINK: (Arrest of Xanana in Dili):
https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/prisao-de-xanana-gusmao/
We had met again in Jakarta, earlier this year, for a second interview in captivity. At that time there were 15 soldiers, policemen, Intel intelligence agents, a military camera crew and two official translators with us in the same little room. Xanana smiled.
Xanana was under
intense pressure. He knew he was dead if he said anything against Jakarta's
rule , He did not. I, in turn, did not ask him a single question about military
or political issues. I followed the advice of Bill Kovach, the curator of the
Nieman Foundation «let the window
open, that's all.»
LINK: (Interview in prison - Cipinang):
https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/entrevista-a-xanana-gusmao-na-prisao/
Xanana spent our 28 minutes of «conversation» signaling in Morse code, his foot on my foot. He said nothing important, knowing he was not alone.
After this interview I left Indonesia on police orders. I was again becoming «persona non grata». I made further contacts with the rebels and some Indonesian democrats. Later, back in Jakarta, I was arrested at Sukarno Airport and, after four hours of interrogation and surveillance, was escorted «manu militari» to the first flight out of Indonesia for Europe. The fact I had a legal visa and a «green light» from an Indonesian general to be back in Indonesia did not seem to matter. I had succeeded in reaching the ranks of the Indonesian blacklist.
In the meantime, Xanana had given up, or so it seemed, according to what Tony Emerson of Newsweek later wrote: «Xanana, captured last year by Indonesian troops, urged rebels of his Fretilin movement to surrender. Placed in the dock on charges of leading an armed rebellion, Xanana told the court, 'I am an Indonesian citizen, ' apparently renouncing his dream of an independent East Timor. Then, in his trial in May, Xanana took the stand in his own defense and issued a dramatic about-face in his first language, Portuguese.» He thus apparently confirmed the insistence by his supporters that his statement had been coerced by the Indonesian Army or distorted by official translators.
The trial was a summary one, filled with controversy and injustice. Xanana could not choose his lawyer nor could he speak his language. After long weeks of silence he was permitted to denounce — in Portuguese-the «cowardly and shameful» occupation and declare «before my conscience, I am a citizen of East Timor.» The trial judge did not wait to hear Xanana out. He silenced the defendant after two minutes and, four days later, sentenced him. Said Asia Watch Executive Director, Sidney Jones: «This is the first Indonesian political trial in memory where the defense statement has been censored by the judges. A courtroom is the only place in Indonesia where unfettered freedom of expression is possible. In this case it was clearly the Indonesian government that felt it had something to lose by Xanana' s speaking freely.»
LINK: (Trial of Xanana):
https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/julgamento-de-xanana-gusmao-2/
Xanana shouted «Viva Timor-Leste» and was escorted under heavy guard out the back door of the courtroom. Suddenly there was shouting in the parking lot. I looked around and saw two motorbikes and three vans screech up, horns blaring, impeding the recording of interviews. It was the security parade. In the midst of this hectic excitement, I managed to talk with Xanana's family. Xanana's sister was angry with the injustice but could not tell us much.
I still remember a silent meeting I had months before with her and her husband, both of whom had been detained «for protection» in an illegal jail of Intel in downtown Dili. Their crime-being related to Xanana.
Our interview with Xanana's sister was interrupted by an attack on us by Indonesian «thugs». As we later learned, our attackers were brought to the site on government trucks and provided with guns and knives. Their job was to intimidate us and prevent any communication between the foreign press and the Timorese people. They were successful in their mission. Both my cameraman, Godofredo Guedes, and I were beaten, suffering black eyes and bruises. Finally, the police escorted us back to our hotel where we were kept under close surveillance.
My flight into Dili for the Xanana trial was a long one. lt gave me ample opportunity to reflect on why I was compelled to cover the situation in East Timor. I had been bothered by the idea that, like many others, my thoughts about Timor were guided by preconceptions. Based on what I had learned from many sources, I had, for instance, expected the guerrilla rebellion to be a story of awful atrocities, with the Indonesians suppressing the Timorese brutally. Of people being pushed out of helicopters.
Of innocent women and children shot in cold blood. In fact, some observers insist that the atrocities have been worse than those in Cambodia.
The problem was how to report it. I could not and would not ignore it. I was a reporter and thus, by definition, atrouble-maker and thorn in someone's side. Perhaps, though, my feelings had gotten in the way of my reporting. A good reporter does not let that happen. But this was more than a simple story for me. It was a question of ethics and humanity as well as honor and respect for my craft. I felt it inevitable that the reporter is caught up in human affairs.
While some journalists refuse to acknowledge this, preferring to ascend to a non-existent nirvana or neutrality, I do not.
In 1983, after the dramatic adventures of Adelino Gomes of Publico, one of Portugal's greatest reporters in 1975, I was the first Portuguese journalist to be authorized to cover the reality of the occupied island. I knew what Amnesty International's report said of extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and political imprisonment: «... accounts of hundreds of killings of non-combatant civilians during and shortly after the invasion itself, the systematic execution of hundreds of people who had surrendered to or been captured by Indonesian forces in 1978 and 1979; the 'disappearance' or killing ... after arrest on suspicion of links with Fretilin forces; after interrogation in centres in Dili; after being taken out of temporary detention centres or official prisons.» I also knew that diplomatic files confirmed the Amnesty report. I knew the dossier. Yet the Indonesians denied everything.
All of this was more than sufficient to make me check the situation with curiosity, pugnacity and invention. It was a big story. But the obstacles were great.
The Indonesians prevented me from talking freely to the people, sending armed soldiers ahead to intimidate the people and bar me from going into certain areas. Of course there was no way to record the atrocities on camera.
The picture of the territory presented to me by the military had no such violence and the Indonesians denied me the opportunity to record evidence from interviews or shots of victims. I decided, with the approval of José Manuel Barata Feyo, my editor at the time, to forego regular television shots. Instead I used the method of theatre to tell the story of the dreadful accumulation of gratuitous horrors that concealed history.
I used the silence of the people, letting their eyes and glances tell the story and contrasted those faces and their eloquent silence with the official verbal diarrhea of Indonesian officials.
The result was that I took the side of those people: the vulnerable heroes of a forgotten war. What else could I do?
«Not a single similar visit to Atauro Island with television cameras has been permitted since then by the military that said on various occasions that Rui Araujo's trip had been a disaster for them» wrote British sociologist John G. Taylor in his book, «Indonesia's Forgotten War».
Rui Araújo
In NIEMAN REPORTS (HARVARD UNIVERSITY), Cambridge, MA, USA – Fall 1993
LINK:
https://niemanreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Fall-1993_150.pdf
