Death in Dili
By Andrew McMillan
Hodder & Stoughton
235pp $14.95
Reviewed by Nick Everett
Death in Dili is a remarkable account of 17 years of struggle by the East Timorese for national self-determination. It pieces together events from 1975, when Indonesia invaded East Timor and Australia turned its back on Indonesia's killing field, to the violent crackdown at Santa Cruz last November and the controversial peace mission on the Lusitano Expresso earlier this year.
Andrew McMillan, author of Death in Dili, was holidaying in Dili in January 1990 when he was caught in the middle of a pro- independence demonstration that was ruthlessly suppressed by Indonesian soldiers. McMillan recollects these events filling in the historical background behind the situation in East Timor.
McMillan accurately and concisely puts forward evidence of the complicity of consecutive Australian governments in the repression in East Timor. This is made clear in a cable from the Whitlam government's ambassador in Indonesia in 1975 which says:
"It would seem to me that this Department (of minerals & energy) might well have an interest in closing the present gap in the agreed sea border (between Australia and East Timor), and this could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia than with Portugal or an independent Portuguese Timor. I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than principled stand but that is what national interest and foreign policy are all about".
Summing up Australia's role, McMillan says: "Back in 1974-75, when Australia could've played a major role in east Timor's peaceful transition to independence, Prime Minister Whitlam argued that an independent East Timor wasn't an economically viable proposition, that it was a backwater devoid of natural resources worthy of exploitation. So the deal was done, Australia accepted the Indonesian invasion and then, after a suitable time had elapsed, set about carving up the oil deposits in the seabed off East Timor and sharing them with the invaders. And in the meantime, a third of the East Timorese population had been killed. That's no way for a respectable government to behave".
In reflecting on the Whitlam Labor government's role, McMillan points to its reluctance to voice condemnation of the Indonesian government's murder of three Australian journalists during the invasion. McMillan carefully traces the efforts of others, following in their footsteps to get information out of East Timor on the violation of human rights in the territory and the strength of the resistance movement.
One such journalist, Robert Domm, who is interview with the recently captured Fretilin leader Xanana Gusmao in 1990, is quoted by McMillan. Xanana affirms the strength of the Maubere (Timorese) resistance, describing Dili as "the centre of clandestine activities, nd activities. The level of the underground organisation enables us to affirm once again that if Jakarta continues to be inflexible, the war will not end soon".
The courage of East Timorese youth in protesting the Indonesian occupation during the Papal visit, and again last year in anticipation of a planned visit by a Portuguese delegation, is described vividly by McMillan. The huge disappointment at the cancellation of the Portuguese visit and the anger at the death of 18 year old Sebastion Gomez in October last year, led to a public display of resistance at Gomez's funeral on November 12 last year. McMillan states:
"As the funeral procession left the church early on that Tuesday morning, scores, hundreds and then thousands of people joined the procession as it wound through the streets of Dili en route to Santa Cruz Cemetery. By the time the procession wound past the Governor's office, numbers had swelled to an impossible six thousand people, this vast throng buoyed by thunderous chants of Viva Independencia! and Viva Xanana!"
McMillan goes on to describe the military mobilisation in response to this demonstration and the mass killings that occurred both inside and outside Santa Cruz cemetery that day. In his description of the events that followed, the jailing of participants in the demonstration and the National Commission of Inquiry called by Suharto, McMillan notes that, while a handful of military officers were either dismissed or court-martialled, student activists faced prison terms of up to seven years.
Angered by these injustices, McMillan decided to join the peace mission on board the Lusitano Expresso in March of this year. Accompanying him were students from around the world and an Australian delegation that included Shirley Shackleton, widow of one of the Australian journalists killed in 1975, and a variety of journalists.
McMillan, in his typically dry humour, says of his decision: "Hell, what could be sweeter than a tropical cruise into the old Spice Islands with a bunch of crazy journos and a boatload of nubile young students with delightful accents? I signed on and got the Wild Turkey and Chivas duty free".
Underlying this humour is a sense of gravity of the predicament of the East Timorese people: a recognition that after four hundred years of Portugese colonialism the East Timorese are not about to give up their struggle for freedom. This is a book well worth reading.