Telling East Timor: Personal Testimonies 1942-1992
By Michele Turner
New South Wales University Press
218 pp. $19.95
Reviewed by Lenore Tardif
This book is the oral history of some of the most brutal human rights abuses in recent times. It is a moving first-hand account of the sufferings of the East Timorese — first as victims of Japanese war crimes during the second world war, then from the cruelty and arrogance of the occupying Indonesian army beginning in 1975.
The testimonies, carefully collected by Turner over the past 10 years, portray a country ruined by an army of occupation: a people robbed of their land and livelihood, removed from their homes and herded into virtual concentration camps, subject to wholesale murder extending even to newborn babies.
It is also the story of the East Timorese disbelief at the betrayal and callous indifference of successive Australian governments. It is the telling of those able to speak about the mental anguish and bruised lives.
Even silence has something to say, Turner observes: "To be silent is so often the most eloquent communication of East Timorese, people with a strong oral tradition and fifteen languages. It is part of the cosmology of the Mambai people of central Timor that everything is divided into 'speaking mouths' (humans) and 'silent mouths' (rocks, trees etc.)
"In the conditions of war and occupancy, it's as if the Timorese become 'silent mouths', while to us who are free to be 'speaking mouths', they are just silent."
This book will make you cry and make you angry. It will also fill you with wonder at the East Timorese, still eloquent in their belief that some of their Indonesian brothers are capable of good will. There is an understanding that democracy within Indonesia is a prerequisite for a lasting peace in East Timor and in the region.
Telling is essential reading for all Australians. In April, when Prime Minister Keating announced Australian aid to Indonesia for a clear water project in Dili, did he not realise that all the waterways of East Timor have been the repositories for the bodies of thousands of innocent East Timorese?