East Timor is the story of us. It's a story of what we are capable of, both bad and good. It is, in many ways a barometer of how we treat our own – the smallest, the poorest, the most humble of our fellow man.
The story starts with David Munro's documentary. This was produced in 1993, when Indonesia was still occupying the island. A pretty ragged, untrained group of guerillas in the mountains were fighting an Army stocked with American made planes, helicopters, bombs and ammunition. Much of the footage was taken clandestinely, as foreign journalists were not allowed in the country at the time.
As with many documentaries, they’re not filming the atrocities as they happen, which is easier on the nerves. (The really scary parts are the Australian and US government officials.) It also has some very cool footage of the resistance fighters in the mountains, and early footage of José Ramos-Horta with a beard, in fatigues.
I hope you'll take the 70 minutes to watch it. It's worth it. If you can't, it can be summarized quickly – East Timor under the Indonesian occupation was hell. In an attempt to “integrate” an independent East Timor into Indonesia, the Timorese people were brutalized, killed, raped, tortured and slaughtered. Entire families, and entire villages, were extinguished. José Ramos-Horta, now the President of East Timor, looks back on his childhood friends today, and they're virtually all dead.
American and Australian officials were providing the arms to make it possible, toasting and drinking with the Indonesian President throughout. It is a story of atrocity, committed while we in the West either condoned it, celebrated it, funded it, or chose not to notice.
In August of 1999 hope came in the form of a UN referendum allowing the Timorese to vote for independence from Indonesia. The Timorese walked from every village to vote, sometimes leaving the house at 3 a.m. to get to the polls. One person described a long line of Timorese waiting in line at a poll. The Church bells rang. The men took off their hats, and bowed their heads in thanks for this day, and this chance to win their freedom.
The referendum passed with 86% for independence.
It wasn’t as easy as that, unfortunately. Militia who had been put in place by the Indonesian military were unleashed and burned 85% of the country’s buildings to the ground. At least hundreds were killed in the streets. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly displaced – herded, really -- to Indonesian West Timor.
To be clear, this was not a civil conflict. It was a systematic effort to bring the country – both cities and villages -- to its knees. Virtually every truck was either stolen to West Timor by the militia, or permanently disabled. The water buffalo used to work the fields were stolen or slaughtered. Power and phone lines pulled down and stolen. Even fishing nets were burned.
This video is by Ian White, who has been a friend of TheCommunity.com for years, among other things helping us on design, and shooting our video of the Paul Simon trip in 2005. A former creative exec for ad agencies in Australia, Ian jumped off into the developing world and now creates media for peace in East Timor, Cambodia, Thailand and other Asian "hot spots". (Time: 8:37)
The referendum for independence was held on August 30, 1999. The violence broke out on September 4, when the results were announced. On September 13, the UN Security Council authorized the establishment of INTERFET, a multinational peacekeeping force to secure the country. They deployed on September 20, with thousands of troops, causing the militia to flee to West Timor. The Australians were the first to arrive, followed by units from Brazl, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Kenya, Malaysia, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal South Korea, England, and the US.
This is where the story starts to turn for East Timor. On October 25, UNTAET -- the UN Transitional Administration of East Timor -- was established. Administrative teams began to arrive and set up in the government building in Dili.
Working with Timorese leaders, and training others, they would effectively run the country for the next two and a half years. In the process they educated the Timorese on democracy and the voting process. In addition to the job of physically rebuilding the country and caring for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Timorese, they led East Timor through elections of a Parliament, the drafting of a new Constitution, and the selection of their first democratically elected President and Prime Minister.
TheCommunity.com had done a project with one of our partner organizations, PeaceJam, to raise school supplies for East Timor. We had raised six tons of school supplies.
José Ramos-Horta, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, had come to the San Francisco area, and met with some of the kids who worked on the project. At that time he was Acting Foreign Minister under UNTAET. I drove him to the airport and we talked for a long time. He recruited me to come to Timor. A few months later, I went, with a friend of mine from CARE.
It as an amazing time. Yes there were still some military checkpoints, and you drove past plenty of burned out houses and schools.
But 2000 was a time of rebirth. Teams from Ireland, Bangladesh, Portugal, Korea, Jordan, Portugal and more, were rebuilding the country. They were not only providing security. They were rebuilding roads. They were stringing power lines. Directing traffic. They were training Timorese in how to vote, how to handle media, how to run a tv station, even how to build a web site. NGOs were bringing buffalo back into the villages so people could work their fields again. Satellite dishes had sprouted up for phone communications. We traveled the country freely without fear – waving to the Australian soldiers on top of their Armored Personnel Carriers as we passed them on the road.
When you walked down the road, the Timorese people would smile and greet you with a warm "Bon Tarde!", one of the many Portuguese words that worked its way into their native Tetun.
Something you couldn't help but notice was the song and dance. It was not uncommon to be driving and turn a corner, and find the street filled with Timorese in some kind of song. We were driving back from Bacau one day on one of many religious festivals and had to stop for more than 200 people, in a procession in the street with little girls dressed and angels and boys dressed as monks, combined with Timorese in the fields to the side in their traditional Tais dancing to drums. We stopped to watch and couldn't have felt more welcome.
The Indonesians had had their hands full trying to suppress this spirit.
Fast forward to 2002, when that rebirth reached its peak. The UN had been administering the country for two and a half years. Now they were ready to formally handed the reins of the country over to the newly elected government. The Timorese flag was officially being raised for the first time – something any person in the audience could have been put to death for doing just three years before.
I was there, webcasting the events with the UN Foundation. Here is a little bit of that day. I had gone out to the airport with some friends for President Clinton’s arrival and press conference. Somehow I got stuck – probably wandered off from the people I was with, and didn’t have a ride back into town.
I ended up hitchhiking back with a reporter from NPR (the girl with the microphone). A UN truck got us part way there. From there we walked 2-3 miles into Taci Tolo.
Everyone was happy. No one was paying too much attention to the UN trucks pulling out – moving personnel, satellite dishes, etc. out of the country, on their way to Afghainstan. We should have been paying more.
There were chairs and benches at the ceremonies for the more civilized. I tried that for awhile, but ended up on the dirt by the fence with the Timorese. A better view, and much more fun. These are home movies – I had a small video camera in my hand, and no particular talent for shooting it.
The island of East Timor is shaped like a crocodile's back. The children's story is that the island was formed by a giant crocodile swimming through the ocean, who stopped and rested. (Time: 2:24)
Each of the regions has their own music, which is generally a mix of Portuguese and traditional, just as their religion is a somehow comfortable mix of Catholicism with animist elements. The fabrics you see both men and women wearing, called Tais, are hand woven in the villages. Like the music, each region has its own patterns. The techniques are handed down through generations of women. (Time: 2:29)
I believe the second picture here is a painting of Xanana Gusmao, the resistance leader who is now President of the country. Other than that, the images are of people who died in the struggle, including foreign journalists who were killed.
It is impossible to describe the experience of seeing that field fill up with candles. (Time: 7:54)
A tribute to the surviving Falintil, the resistance fighters who risked their lives, their families -- everything -- for freedom, and who were, for many years, the only hope the Timorese people saw. (Time: 4:17)
As midnight approaches, José Ramos-Horta introduces the more serious part of the event, the formalities. The more you know about East Timor's history, the more astounding the final frames of this video are.
A note on this and the next tape -- as these two speakers are speaking in English, someone else is translating for the audience. We have cut out the translations. But the audience doesn't understand and doesn't react until the translation -- so unfortunately, you are missing a whole lot of cheering and clapping. (Time: 7:19)
Kofi Annan speaks to the Timorese people shortly before midnight, when they will formally be recognized as an independent country.
Note, he refers here to UNTAET -- "my colleagues at UNTAET". Stands for United Nations Transitional Administration, East Timor. And yes, the Sergio Vieira De Mello he mentions, his Special Representative in East Timor, is the same one who was killed by a car bomb at UN Headquarters in Baghdad.
After the events were over and the dignitaries had gone home, the party started!
Bands came out and played, the field filled with Timorese -- I have no idea how many, my guess would be more than 20,000 -- dancing until 3 a.m.I walked around the middle of the crowds with my little hand held video camera.
I struggle to recall another white person in the crowd or on the field. I might have seen two. And I did not feel a drop of fear. Not because I'm extraordinarily brave (I'm not). But because it never crossed my mind to be afraid. There was nothing to fear. Peace was achieved. The country was free. No one was going to spoil this moment with violence.
I was back in 2004. The people were still as nice as ever. We traveled freely. More than freely, actually. At times we were the only car on the road. An ominous feeling. Cell phone reception outside the cities was impossible. The country was at peace. But there were difficulties. People on one side of the country who had things to sell, that people on the other side would buy, had no way of getting them there. In places people had trouble even getting their produce to market.
The kids in Dili had always been unreserved and unabashed about trying their hand at getting a dollar out of you. This time there was a new twist. When I parked my car on the main street, kids would offer me "security" for my car for $1. I laughed.
In 2005 I went with Paul Simon to distribute mosquito nets, provided by the UN Foundation. José Ramos-Horta was still Foreign Minister at the time. He took two days with us to help make it all happen. The first day we went to the seaside village of Manatutu. The second day we drove to Hatubelico, a four hour drive, mostly over unpaved roads. "Dr. Dan", an American doctor who has been running a busy clinic in Dili since forever, came with us, with a kind of "mobile medical clinic". He treated acute cases, and vaccinated children. Afterwards, the mothers with small children got mosquito net.
There are lots of pictures of this trip, at http://www.thecommunity.com/fet/projects.html
On the way up, we stayed overnight in Maubisse, an old Portuguese hill station. The photo here is Maubisse. It was my second time there. My first had been in 2000. I am still in love with the place. It's a cool relief from the Dili heat, quiet, above the clouds, with stunning mountain views. I thought, if I could, I would buy this place and turn it into a retreat house of some kind. It's special. (Not to mention that some of the rooms even have hot water -- a treat).
I read recently where Alfredo Renaido had taken the place over and used it as his headquarters. Definitely not fair.
On the way home we stopped to check out an agricultural product that José wanted to see -- some kind of a blight was hitting their potato crops, and a group was experimenting, growing different potatoes under different conditions to try and work out the best route forward.
On the way home, José and I were talking, and this is the conversation I mentioned in my Huffington Post article. East Timor was at peace. People were working their fields, going to market, going about their lives. No story to it. Just nice.
