Byron Bay meeting boosts East Timor aid

BY MAXINE CARON AND GARETH SMITH

BYRON BAY — About one hundred people gathered at the Great Northern Hotel here on October 29 for a fund-raising meeting organised by Byron Friends of East Timor and the Helping Ordinary People Exist(HOPE).

Isa Bradridge spoke about the HOPE's plans to run a flying doctor medical service and to build orphanages for street kids in East Timor. His wife, Ina Varella-Bradridge, an East Timorese woman who fought with Falantil during the Indonesian occupation, brought the audience to tears as she spoke about her two-year ordeal in the mountains during which time she was captured and tortured.

Film-maker David Bradbury spoke about his recent visit to East Timor and showed 50 minutes of his forthcoming feature film which spans the period from the 1975 invasion to the post-1999 referendum. Gareth Smith presented him with $1000 from the Canberra Program for Peace, while $301 was raised at the meeting for the HOPE project.

The meeting supported a proposal to twin Byron Bay with a town or village in East Timor in order to provide a community focus for aid distribution.

Other initiatives included exerting pressure for: Australia to support an International War Crimes Tribunal; the Australian Federal Police to agree to United Nations' administrator Sergio de Mello's request that an extension of time be granted to two officers involved in investigating the 1975 Balibo murders of five Australian journalists; the cessation of all military aid to Indonesia; and Australia to exert the fullest influence in international fora on behalf of the East Timorese refugees in West Timor.

From GLW issue 427