Distant Voices (35 page)

In 1977 the Indonesian regime threatened to close down the ABC's bureau in Jakarta after its correspondent in Washington, Ray Martin, reported that the Indonesians were using Napalm in East Timor. The threat was relayed to Martin personally by the director general of the ABC, who demanded to know why his scoop had not been verified by other media coverage. (It was.) In 1981 the ABC office in Jakarta was closed down after Radio Australia's reporting of the famine in East Timor, which was the direct result of the Indonesian occupation. It was re-opened in 1990 only after ‘careful negotiations'. In future, reported the
Sydney Morning Herald
, ‘officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are to have regular meetings with the corporation [the ABC], as it has already done with Radio Australia, to discuss where problems with the service might arise'.
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No problems have arisen. ABC correspondents in Jakarta dutifully report the pronouncements and denials of the regime. After rare videotape of the East Timorese resistance leader, Koni Santana, was made available to the new satellite service, it was ‘lost' en route to the Darwin studios.

In November 1991 British photographer Steve Cox, who was a witness to the Santa Cruz massacre, was the only passenger on a flight from Timor to be body-searched by Australian Customs officials when it landed at Darwin. ‘They looked at every passport and picked me out,' he said. ‘It was clear they had been tipped off and were looking for my film. They were disappointed. I had given it to another passenger, who hid it in her clothing.'
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We planned to enter East Timor in three ‘teams'. David and
I would go first, followed by Ben Richards,
^fn1
a voluntary aid worker, and Max Stahl. Each of us would have a Hi–8 video camera, which is not much bigger than a professional stills camera. David had designed a bag with concealed compartments in which the camera operated through a gauze screen. We had started out with a number of eccentric ideas for disguises – priests was one rejected early, followed by ornithologists, although we did acquire the latest volume of
Birds of Borneo, Java and Bali
in preparation for a period of study.

This, however, was overtaken by ‘Adventure Tours', which, according to a draft brochure I wrote, offered ‘a new concept in developing third world tourism' that promised ‘hard currency of the kind only tourism brings'. In 1989, when it was thought that Fretilin was beaten, the Jakarta regime decided to lift the ‘batik curtain' around East Timor just enough, it hoped, to improve its international image and to be able to say that its ‘27th province' was not closed to the outside world. A policy of ‘openness' was declared and a few tourists were permitted to travel to Dili, where they were restricted and watched. Tourism, believed the generals, would legitimise their hold on East Timor.

Although the massacre in the Santa Cruz cemetery had set back ‘openness', we believed we stood a reasonable chance of success disguised as ‘travel consultants'. A London travel agency provided us with documents which lauded our business acumen and which we had translated into
Bahasa Indonesia.
(Of course, if all else failed, we could talk authoritatively about the
Lorico
, Timor's ‘curiously small parrot'.) In the meantime, Ben would be travelling on ‘aid business'; and Max would acquire yet another identity. We expected one or two of us to be caught, probably David and myself. One successful camera would be enough. We agreed to meet again in six weeks.

Ben and Max flew direct to Indonesia; David and I flew to Australia. In the warm, late southern winter, Sydney, my hometown, was welcoming. I had arranged to meet former
Ambassador Richard Woolcott, now retired as head of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Standing in front of a spectacular Javanese painting in the dining-room of his flat overlooking Sydney Harbour, he seemed the embodiment of a career diplomat, courteous, with a constant faint smile.

I reminded him of his leaked 1975 cable recommending a ‘pragmatic rather than a principled approach' to East Timor. He said that what had happened since had been ‘rather disappointing and rather tragic'. ‘At that time', he said, ‘I saw no intrinsic reason why the East Timorese would not be as comfortable within the Republic of Indonesia as were the rest of the Timorese.'

I suggested that what the Indonesians had done to them amounted to genocide. He disagreed; neither did he believe the figure of 200,000 dead. ‘There was a civil war raging,' he said. I replied that it was generally accepted that no more than 2,000 people had died in the civil war. ‘I don't know that figure,' he replied.

He said that Australians did not have ‘the luxury' of Europeans ‘to read moral lectures' to Indonesia, and that the Suharto regime was ‘moderate, tolerant and stable'. He said it was ‘a myth' that journalists could not visit East Timor, that ‘thirty Australian journalists' had been there since 1976. As for the two Australian television crews murdered by the Indonesian army, they were ‘unwise to be where they were'.

‘The Indonesians', he said, ‘are highly sensitive and feel that journalists may well cause further trouble, as happened of course after the massacre of 1991.' I suggested that the ‘trouble' had been caused by the Indonesian troops who murdered several hundred people. ‘I don't know the truth of this,' he said. ‘Some of the journalists were there on tourist visas and had played a part in the stirring up of the trouble.' He added, ‘That doesn't justify what happened.'

I asked him if he was seriously suggesting that the action of journalists had led to the massacre in the Santa Cruz cemetery. He replied no, but that was what the Indonesians had put forward. ‘The trouble with the world we live in,' he said, ‘[is that] there has been a very substantial focus on East
Timor [and] it's not the only trouble spot on earth by any manner of means.'
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James Dunn also looked the diplomat he once was, as Australia's consul in Dili, though he will be remembered for his tireless personal campaign to break the international silence on East Timor. His book,
Timor: A People Betrayed
, published in 1983 by the tiny Jacaranda Press in Queensland and long out of print, is one of the finest documents of human tragedy, struggle and betrayal I have read. ‘I think it is incredible', he told me, ‘that the resistance continues with no outside help. It is such a tribute to the East Timorese. I recall one of them saying to me, “Although we have to work with the Indonesians we all support the armed resistance, because it's a spark . . . a spark that shows it isn't over, that somewhere out there some of us are saying, “You can't get away with this”.'
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‘You can't get away with this' could be the title of Shirley Shackleton's autobiography, should she ever decide to write it. I hope she does. The murder of her husband Greg and of his five Australian television colleagues, the cover-up that followed and Shirley's odyssey to find the truth say much about what has happened to the Timorese themselves. When we met in Canberra she spoke only about the Timorese, their courage and ingenuity, and about a recent meeting at the Department of Foreign Affairs between herself, the minister, Gareth Evans, and Amelia Gusmao, wife of the Fretilin leader given a twenty-year prison sentence by an Indonesian kangaroo court.

‘Evans didn't want this meeting,' she said. ‘But we wouldn't be put off. When he saw us, he put his hand over his heart, looked sorrowful and said, “We can't endanger our relations with the Indonesians. What little influence we have we want to keep.” I said, “Are you going to take on Xanana as a special case?” He said nothing. Well, I did it, I broke down, I said, “My husband's dead, but this woman's husband is still alive. You can do something for him.” I didn't want to cry, I tell you I didn't want to cry, not there, not in front of him.
Because then they have me typed; I'm the widow, you see, and I can be dismissed. But I won't be . . .'
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When the Indonesians launched their secret invasion in September 1975 no proof had been produced that they were operating inside East Timor. So they could continue to lie that the ‘instability' in the island was due entirely to the civil war. At 4 am on October 16, Indonesian special forces came ashore on the north coast, near Balibo. The defending Fretilin troops had between them only one machine-gun and quickly withdrew, leaving the two Australian crews. They were Greg Shackleton, aged 29, a television reporter, and Tony Stewart, 21, a sound recordist, both Australians with Channel 7, Melbourne; Malcolm Rennie, 28, a British citizen and a reporter with Channel 9 in Melbourne; Brian Peters, 29, also British, who was the cameraman accompanying Rennie; and Gary Cunningham, 27, a New Zealander and the second cameraman.

Greg Shackleton and the others knew the risks they were taking. From the battlements of the old Portuguese fort they had filmed the Indonesian warships approaching. They must have expected to be captured, but they also had reason to believe they would be released quickly, given the ‘special relationship' between Indonesia and Australia. They went to some lengths to demonstrate that they were non-combatants. They were unarmed and dressed in non-military clothing, and Greg Shackleton had painted a large ‘Australia' sign and an Australian flag on the whitewashed wall of the house where they were based.

But staying on was very dangerous and demonstrated a real commitment to getting the evidence they had come for. As Greg Shackleton's last recorded words indicated, he felt deeply about helping the East Timorese. This is his last ‘camera piece', filmed on the eve of his death:

‘Something happened here last night that moved us very deeply. It was so far outside our experience as Australians, and so inextricably interwoven with the atmosphere of this place, that we find it very difficult to convey to you watching in an Australian living-room; but we'll try. We were brought
to this tiny native village from Maliana because we were told that Maliana was not safe at night. When we arrived the second in charge, who speaks very little English, came to us and in a haunting but urgent way said the commander wanted to speak to us. And then for the next hour, sitting on woven mats under a thatched roof in a hut with no walls we were the target of a barrage of questioning from men who know they may die tomorrow and cannot understand why the rest of the world does not care. Why, they ask, are the Indonesians invading us? Why, they ask, if the Indonesians believe that Fretilin is communist do they not send a delegation to Dili to find out? Why, they ask, are the Australians not helping us?

‘My main answer was that Australia would not send forces here – that's impossible. However, I said, we could ask that Australia raise this fighting at the United Nations. That was possible. At that the second in charge rose to his feet, exclaimed, “
Commerado
journalist”, and shook my hand, the rest shook my hand and we were applauded because we were Australians. That's all they want – for the United Nations to care about what is happening here.

‘The emotion here last night was so strong that we, all three of us, felt we should be able to reach out into the warm air and touch it. This is Greg Shackleton at an unnamed village which we'll remember forever, in Portuguese Timor.'
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The next day, one of the cameramen filmed the Indonesians entering the village. He was shot. The others pointed frantically to the ‘Australia' sign, and they were shot and stabbed. A retreating Fretilin soldier who saw this was interviewed by the Australian journalist Roger East, who himself met the same fate less than two months later. He told East, ‘The Australians were screaming, “Australians, Australians!” with their hands up. The soldiers circled them and made them turn their backs and face the wall of the house. The firing died down and we crawled away through the undergrowth. We heard the Australians screaming and then there was a burst of automatic fire.'
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Shirley Shackleton has also spoken to eye-witnesses. ‘What
happened', she said, ‘was that most of them were strung up by their feet, their sexual organs were removed and stuffed into their mouths, and they were stabbed with the short throwing knives that the Indonesian soldiers carry. Nobody knows for sure whether they choked to death or whether they choked on their own blood, or whether they just died from their wounds or whether they bled to death.'
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The bodies were dragged into the house, where one was found to be still alive. This may have been young Tony Stewart, the sound recordist. Although terribly wounded, he tried to say something into his tape recorder. According to one report, a Timorese reached out to him but was ordered back by an Indonesian officer, who then shot dead the wounded man.
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The bodies were stripped and dressed in Portuguese uniforms, of the kind used by Fretilin, and the corpses propped up behind a captured machine-gun in front of the ‘Australia' sign. An Indonesian soldier took photographs which were intended to ‘prove' that the journalists had been fighting for Fretilin. The bodies were then burned.

There is little doubt that the journalists were killed not out of any misunderstanding in the heat of battle, but because they would have exposed Indonesia's conspiracy to invade and to which their own governments were privy. The news reports of Greg Shackleton and Malcolm Rennie would have almost certainly forced the Australian Government to modify its appeasement of Jakarta. ‘What is particularly disturbing', wrote James Dunn, ‘is that the Whitlam Government knew about the impending attack [on Balibo] some days before it took place. [I] was warned about it by a sensitively placed senior official . . . Five days later US intelligence analysts, using information to which Australia had access, advised their government that the attack would be launched in a few days. Thus, the government had at its disposal enough information – and enough time – to warn Australians in East Timor of the impending risks at the border. More importantly, they could have advised the Indonesians of the presence of journalists in the area, and stressed that they should be afforded protection appropriate to their status.'
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