Bubba + Joey 4eva

We were all tickled in 2002 when we found out that Bill Clinton would be landing in Baucau for the independence celebrations (the airstrip in Dili was too small for his plane).

But some of us remembered how Mr Clinton did little from 1992-1998 to promote Timorese self-determination – in fact, he literally fled from the question, as Amy Goodman recounts. (Please listen to this fierce question by Allan Nairn to Bill Clinton from May 2002. Clinton: ‘I can’t say that everything we did before 1999 was right.’)

Interesting, now, that in a big December interview with Foreign Policy Magazine, that Clinton cited East Timorese President José Ramos-Horta as “a top three leader” to watch in the world.

I would look at another guy, José Ramos-Horta, the president of the first country in the 21st century, East Timor. Is it too small to be a nation? Can you get too small? Can your courageous fight for independence and freedom lead you to an economic unit that is not going to have a population or a geographic base big enough to take care of your folks?

Bill Clinton can relate to José Ramos-Horta, they are both idealist-realists who see no contradiction in this, and are not ashamed – far from it – to be center stage. They have no problem being Commander in Chief during abuses/excesses and then appearing in public to be above them.

(C. f. Ramos-Horta on the Timor police’s alleged shooting of innocent musician in late December. Compare with Mr Clinton’s answer to Nairn above.)

They both practice(d) an “exceptionalism” and “blank slatism”. In Clinton’s case a “liberal” version of the idea that American democracy is the best political system the world has ever seen and let’s just gloss over the (residual) sins of the Cold War. In Ramos-Horta’s case the notion that the Timorese will be the most magnanimous and forgiving people the world has ever known, with no need for justice for Indonesia’s past crimes. (Nevermind that the same, unrepentant Indonesian police and military continue to terrorize the people of West Papua, who also seek self-determination.)

Bubba + Joey 4eva!

The Ala Mutu

Talking to a friend who grew up on the slopes of Matebian a couple of days ago, hearing stories about his childhood, I was struck by one thing in particular – his memories of the ala mutu, which translates from Makassae as “the jungle people”.

A mere change of timing and change of point of view, and everything changes.

My friend was too young to have spent his first years on the Mountain, fleeing the Indonesian onslaught. He never lived together with Falintil guerrillas. Instead he learned to walk and grew up in a “settled” environment. He explained, these were the years before the clandestine resistance became more organized and supplies were channeled efficiently to the mountains.

His world was made of routines and state structures. Schools, clinics, police. He remembers how people lived in double fear. As a child, he knew the ala mutu were watching. As were Indonesian spooks.

Some nights, the equivalent to Indonesia psy-ops teams would come to town, put up projectors and show films. Everybody who did not attend was considered sympathetic to the resistance and thereby dangerous. But everybody who did go feared being seen by the ala mutu. Some of these nights, things would be raided or go missing in town. The ala mutu, while invisible during the day, circulated more freely at night. They could “communicate” in many ways.

The ala mutu represented a silent and omniscient force in people’s lives. For a child, a source of anxiety. These too are memories of resistance – I hope they are not lost.

Somebody tell the Pilot

[Dear readers, My guest blogger rightly fears reprisals, so even a pseudonym is out.]

At the ‘development partners’ meeting a few weeks ago I was reminded of a line from a the book Outliers, where the First Officer says to the pilot “the weather radar has been very useful” suggest that other devices apart from the naked eye could be used to land the plane as they are about to crash into a mountain.

Except that not one of the ‘development partners’ would even hint that there was such a thing as a weather radar. At this meeting the government, the DSRSG congratulated the government on its excellent progress to date, especially on matters such as food security and security sector reform – what the hell?!

The World Bank also appeared to be in an extremely congratulatory mood. When the national priorities of justice and governance came up, not one ‘development partners’ raised a question about the President’s, Prime Minister’s, and Minister of Justice’s alleged breaches of the constitution with regard to the Martenus Bere case, nor did any of the ‘development partners’ raise any questions about the lack of accountability, transparency, and apparent unlawfulness and outright craziness of the misappropriation of the $70 million from the now postponed(?)/cancelled(?) heavy oil plant for pakote referendum.

The excuse appears to be that these issues are raised privately in meetings between high level representatives of the ‘development partners’ and Ministers. I know that these issues are not raised or even hinted at.

Why are the ‘development partners’ so afraid of offending their hosts? I understand that bilateral partners have a long term relationship to think about, but what about multilateral partners. What is the worst that would happen if they do offend their hosts by telling them the truth about what they are doing wrong? Would they get kicked out of the country?

Unlikely as people like the President are too cautious about their international image for that. What is the worst that will happen if they don’t inform their hosts about what they are doing wrong? The country may descend into civil unrest again. And isn’t the raison d’etre of a DPKO mission to “keep the peace”?

Why won’t the UN openly state: security and justice sector reform in Timor-Leste is a joke. Today some government civilian staff who were trying to uphold some administrative systems were threatened by senior FFDTL members and PNTL officers waving weapons in their faces because they would not just handover cash to the FFDTL and PNTL.

What can these civilian staff do?

If they complain about the unlawful behaviour of these FFDTL and PNTL to the PNTL or the Prosecutors Office either 1) nothing will happen or 2) they will be faced with reprisals by the people they have complained about.

If they just handover the cash to these FFDTL members and PNTL officers they will be accused of maladministration and may face investigation by the Provedor or the Office of the Prosecutor.

If they just handover the cash it will also give courage to others trying to violate the system.

So where is the progress on security sector reform the DSRSG was so effusive in his praise about? And what kind of lawless state are we living in when the FFDTL and PNTL can pull their weapons on civilians and because the formal justice system is so dysfunctional and both institutions are so unaccountable (despite millions of dollars of bilateral and multilateral support) that only the civilian will be punished?

Malaes continue to privately bemoan the lack of accountability and responsibility of Timorese for anything – whether it be for not turning up to work, stealing fuel from generators and vehicles, handing out millions of dollars of contracts to companies which only exist in the scrap of paper in the back pockets of Minister’s wives/husbands/brothers/sisters/sons/daughters, paying tens of thousands of dollars in spurious medical costs of convicted murderers who tried to overthrow the state, or providing clemency to mass-murderers.

And malaes also complain that Timorese will not honestly tell each other “NO, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. YOU CANNOT TAKE A 50% CUT OF EVERY CONTRACT THAT COMES THROUGH THIS MINISTRY.” But why should Timorese be accountable, or responsible, or honestly tell each other anything, if their malae ‘partners’, and especially the biggest malaes – the UN, World Bank, and other ‘development partners’ will not provide the same courtesy?

“Ukun rasik an” is a term that many in the Timorese in power like to bandy about. I am not sure what is so rasik about the fact they still have malaes to police the state, malaes to provide external security, malaes to write the budget, malaes to manage the country’s wealth (the Petroleum Fund).

The only thing that seems to be done rasik is to fail to execute the budget, fail to tender for or oversee contracts, and to violate every single law in the country on a daily basis.

As one commentator has suggested, if the Minister of Finance and Prime Minister are so delusional as to believe that Timor really can ukun rasik an, maybe its ‘development partners’ should let them do it for a while and see how they go.

How much more of the Petroleum Fund is left?

This fund that was supposed to last more than 50 years (and probably would have if Fretilin had not been forced out) will be lucky to last 8 years.

Who will pay the FFDTL and PNTL then? (let alone all the other civil servants). How many other countries have descended into civil war because the government was so corrupt and so inept that it could not only not provide basic services, but could not afford or was incapable of paying the people with weapons? What will the UN and other ‘development partners’ say then? Sorry, we knew this was going to happen but because we held your delusional ukun rasik an in such high regard we did not want to offend you?

The plane is still descending through the storm clouds, and there may still be time to remind the captain about the weather radar and even better suggest an alternative means of landing before the plane crashes, and everyone on board, development partners included, becomes incinerated by the flatulence of their own egos.

Burning

This photo is dated October 28, 2009 – it was taken by NASA’s Earth Observatory. Interest of course was directed to the oil spill in the sea southwest. But take a look at central Timor, at its driest moment on the eve of the rainy season.

If we needed any further proof, here is NASA’s 10 day “Fire Map” showing fires between October 17 – 28. Timor is essentially all fire.

Palm Tree Index

I remember once, as the Merpati flight was winging its way into Dili, a UN staffer told me how excited he was to be back in Dili. Port-au-Prince was god-awful, even though it had a tropical clime, it was too dangerous, too complicated. Kabul was a boring dustbowl, while the per diem was high, there was nothing to do. He smiled as he told me he was happy to be back in Timor for a short stint. There he could scuba dive, things were calm (relative to Port-au-Prince), and Bali was close by.

I recently tweeted about the “elite of poverty development” (a nod to the painfully “real” NGO Inepd). Somebody asked me to clarify what I meant.

Here goes. International altruists tend to congregate, and stay longer, in places that are nice to live. I met more than one person in my last trip to Dili had more than a passing interest in moving to Maputo – a city with a similar “Palm Tree Index” to Dili.

Is there really anything so strange about this? People want to eat camembert, go scubadiving, AND save the world. Being honest, at age 24, I probably would have stayed longer in Dili if instead of scuba, there were bookstores, art-house cinemas and a better live music scene. And of course, I left before IKEA started delivering to Dili.

And, not to be overly cynical here, but Timor’s seesaw of conflict only adds to the attraction. The moment people get too accomodated and bored with the scuba diving and claustrophobic nightlife, a conflict erupts, and they get an adrenaline rush and big boost in their per diem. And of course they get to join the Facebook group “I Got Stoned in Dili“.

I scoured the internet for some old OCHA (?) NGO coordination maps from the UNTAET-UNOTIL periods. Unfortunately I couldn’t find what I was looking for. But I distinctly remember seeing that the number of international NGO projects in Lospalos was much higher than say, a mountain district like Manufahi. Lospalos has some of the most beautiful beaches in Timor, namely Kom and Tutuala.

Some highly populated central mountain areas hardly had any “coverage” at all, as compared to numbers of projects dotting less-populated areas of Lospalos, district with the highest Palm Tree Index. (For the record Lospalos is not any poorer than other parts of the country, nor was it disprortionately wrecked in 1999.)

There are other local factors that define where the BINGOs put their money and people. If I were to do statistical analysis, I would figure in social factors including something to capture the “entrepreneurial spirit” of local people, and their friendliness to outsiders. Any oral history of Lospalos, our palm-treed, INGO-favorite district, would show that people have been constantly invaded there for the past 150 years (at least) by outsiders, so they have probably learned to make the best of this. (So, friends from Lospalos, take this as a compliment!)

I also believe that the Palm Tree Index affects the way donor countries treat recipient governments – or “relations between development partners” – but I will leave that for another tirade.

Tasi ida de’it

Because instead of Rote, the land on top of this image could be Timor Leste’s Tasi Mane, I spent 90 minutes putting this page together on the Timor Sea Spill.

Judging by the Australian (non)-reaction to this environmental catastrophe, Timor Leste should not rely on its neighbor to clean up its future messes.

Environmental disaster knows no national borders, or redrawn maritime boundaries.

(Credit goes to Skytruth, who have been blogging and proving the extent of the spill with satellite photos.)

Balibo

I saw Balibo tonight on the big screen, in the first row. The mortars and explosions nearly knocked us out of our seats.

Let me start with a disclaimer. I know it is annoying. But this is something that I personally to need to recognize more often. Those who are interested in Timorese history (and by interested I mean obsessed), those who have lived that history whether in Timor or in exile, often have a fiercely personal relationship to all representations of the place. It becomes hard to peel away emotional layers which we have painted over the course of events.

As a movie-goer, I felt the film was effectively framed, with great pacing and enough attention to detail to merit praise. I thought the historical footage was artfully spliced with footage recently shot in Dili. There was enough micro/macro for a political thriller about an “obscure” place. Enough soapbox rants balanced with enough authenticity.

However, as somebody perhaps afflicted by this palimpsest of the personal and the political, the film did not reach down beneath the surface. (Perhaps it simply could not.)

Lapaglia’s performance was solid – not overdone in any way, which is crucially important. And yet, as he is being dragged along the dock on December 7, 1975 to his execution, I felt my connection to events being abruptly felled. (Please do not think that I am suggesting there should have been some contrived love story or love interest.)

Perhaps the Timorese protagonists: Ramos Horta, and two less-present members of Falintil, are not enough to create a stronger emotional “trunk” that can stay standing. The closing footage of Ramos Horta returning in 1999 is definitely not enough.

To be fair, “Balibo” is clearly a sensitive labor of love of people who had the “acumen” (quoting Lapaglia) to deal with a loaded story which calls into question our own complicity with distant injustices. Something quite rare. I believe Balibo is compelling enough to become a global arthouse film, and that it very may well be “the” Timor film for many years to come.

“We are our shadows”

If you like this image by Wolf Böwig called “Matebian”, please take a look at the photo/essay “Shadows, Dreams and Shapes: The Lulik Reality” by Böwig and Pedro Rosa Mendes. (It also exists in Portuguese. Careful, it is a big download.)

Rosa Mendes writes,

In Timor, the dead or the part of them that survives, are the geography of their own relationships, in the literal sense of the word, the lines that establish contact between two points, two people, two lives. That defines a concept of life as a symmetry, with two reciprocal locales. It is not the elimination of one of them that will make – just the opposite – the other lose sense of where it is, or the place to which it belongs, and of where it is going.

Lauf Neno, a woman living by herself

I am writing a paper in which I attempt to make sense of some of the (colonial) anthropology that has come before me. Schulte Nordholt is a fascinating figure because among other things he was an administrator in West Timor before and after World War Two. His interest in history, but inability to grapple with “Timorese” perspectives on history, is particularly compelling and troubling at the same time.

I came across this quote, from a rather dry (literally) section of “The Political System of the Atoni” on agriculture, which I found so incredibly haunting and sad.

During the famine of 1930 the people of Amfoan sought help from Lauf Neno (Van Alphen, 1933), a woman living by herself in a shack in a river valley. Her only clothing consisted of a loin-cloth, and she had no other belongings than a cooking-pot and a sirih purse. She had been discovered in 1927, when there was also a food shortage, and was reputed to have descended from heaven on to the Mutis, so that she was a neno aman, or celestial child. Others said she came from Kauniki where Sonba’i, the great son of heaven, once lived. She was said to have attended school and speak many languages. People brought her quantities of sacrificial gifts, such as hens, pigs, cloths, beads and sirih pinang, in order to bring on rain. Her fingers were deformed, except for the index fingers and thumbs. She had the appearance of an old woman, although she was probably not much older than 30. It was believed that if she opened her right hand the drought would continue for a very long time to come, and if she opened her left hand many people would die. The fetor (district head) decided to send her to Kupang, but when she became aware of his intentions she was literally struck dumb and wept so much, for days on end, that the fetor, prompted by apprehension, released her. But a few months later she was conveyed to Kupang after all, on the orders of the Netherlands East Indies Government. Here people continued to bring her sirih pinang to her in jail. She was charged with fraud and died a month later. She had opened the fingers of her left hand before her death, and was buried with her hand in that position. And many people died, for the drought continued. (75-76)

Part of what I find disturbing about this tale is the voice of the narrator(s). Strange, to start, that he does not seem extremely up front about the source(s) of all of the information. Schulte Nordholt has a borderline empathetic voice, and yet by telling the story the way he did, he seems to somehow endorse the colonial version. She was “discovered”? By colonial authority I am assuming.

He concludes “popular imagination places a lonely and disfigured person in the sphere of the hidden world [...] The woman herself probably had no part in this at all.” (Highly speculative, isn’t it?)

Anthropology still often seems to operate on this level – make sense of, even empathize with but, when push comes to shove, the analysing seems to somehow explain away very personal struggles and hidden histories. As an object of study she has meaning. As a woman who died in prison she is either absurd or tragic.

Courage

The massive turnout for the referendum 10 years ago today was a testament to the courage of ordinary people. Today is a day to celebrate.

This photo, taken in Beaçu on August 30, 1999, I borrow from the UNAMET archive site. Credit belongs to Simon Davies.

The site is well worth checking out today.

Also, I recommend a Youtube viewing of the Australian series “Answered by Fire” which many have told me does justice to the events preceding and following the referendum.

Will fear get everything?

Ah o medo vai ter tudo
tudo
(Penso no que o medo vai ter
e tenho medo
que é justamente
o que o medo quer)

- Alexandre O’Neill,
do “Poema Pouco Original do Medo”

Why is it that, according to Amnesty, there is only one person still in prison of the 84 convicted of crimes against humanity in 1999?

It has been called “forgetting from above” in other countries – but in the case of East Timor, it is also “forgiving from above.” Last year, the President released nine militiamen, whose crimes included: chopping people to pieces in front of their families, torture, the premeditated murder of priests and nuns, and mass execution.

(I wrote about the pardon of Joni Marques and Tim Alfa, but three members of Oecusse’s Sakunar militia and two members of Laksaur militia also walked free last year.)

They were tried at great financial expense, and psychological cost to witnesses and family members. (And they were released, because as the current Prime Minister says, we are all “saints and sinners”.)

Why is that the Parliament has yet to discuss the Truth Commission report, or the Truth and Friendship Commission report? Why is it the major figures of Timor’s political elite favor a blanket amnesty for EVERYTHING that happened since 1975?

What do they have to fear?

Will “fear get everything”?

Quoting Alexandre O’Neill: “I think of how much fear will get / and I am fearful / and that’s exactly / what fear wants.”

The UN dead

One thing I feel has been sorely overlooked since about late 1999 is the number of Timorese staff who worked for UNAMET who were killed.

UNTAET claimed in 2000 that only 6 UNAMET workers were killed.

Geoffrey Robinson’s definitive report names 14 killed.

I found this slide show commemorating the 60th anniversary of peacekeeping in Timor, by UNMIT (caution: large PDF file) and they mix the deaths of the butchered UNAMET staff, some of whom were tortured, raped and killed before their families, with those who died in car accidents in subsequent UN missions.

For the record, I’ve tried to create a list of those killed before, during and after the referendum, most of whom were targeted because they worked for the UN. If you have more information about any of the people listed here and/or convictions for their murders, please comment or send to my email.

I hope the UN is planning on finally commemorating them 10 years on.

And I am curious: what kind of compensation have their families received?

1. Abreu DA COSTA, (Shot attempting to flee in Bulle in Laga subdistrict by Battalion 745?)

2. Mariano DA COSTA (tortured and killed by militia in Liquiça before the Referendum)

3. Hilario Boavida DA SILVA (Last seen out front Dili Diocese)

4. Silva Leonel DE OLIVEIRA (Last seen out front Dili Diocese)

5. Manuel DE OLIVEIRA (beaten and stabbed to death in Atsabe – conviction)

6. Orlando GOMES (beaten and stabbed to death on day of the ballot in Atsabe)

7. Paulos KELO (executed by Sakunar militia in Oecusse)

8. Ana da Conceição LEMOS (raped, tortured and murdered in Gleno)

9. João LOPES (stabbed to death while carrying a ballot box in Atsabe)

10. Carlos MAIA (Maliana, killed in Police Station massacre)

11. José Ernesto de Jesus MAIA (AKA José Ernesto Mariano? – no specific info available on the internet)

12. Domingos PEREIRA (shot in Bobanaro by TNI – [correction: partial] conviction)

13. Ruben Barros SOARES (beaten, stabbed and attacked with rocks in Bobanaro by militia – conviction)

14. Francisco TAEK (executed by Sakunar militia in Oecusse)

The top of Timor

A far cry from my first time up Mt Ramelau. Looking due east:

Loved these daisies:

Looking due west, notice the conical shadow Ramelau makes stretching above West Timor:

Life under the flip-flop

The night before I left, grass fires lined the hills, like bleeding gums.

I had been asking myself over and over again, toying with in my head, how Dili could be this calm, this “ok” only three years after the violence. The calm, at times almost giddy, sense of prosperity.

In 2006, people were pulled out of mikrolets and forced to prove they could count to ten without the wrong accent. Those who failed to effortlessly say “h-at” for four were beaten, or worse dragged away. People lived wracked with fear of their neighbors. Of strangers. They lived in fear of themselves. There was no longer a jackboot, it was a terrifying Timorese shinelo.

All that remains on the city landscape of 2006 is the memorial for the police killed in Caicoli.

But what happened to the dead civilians?

More importantly, the roadblockers? The mask-wearing rock throwers? The rama-ambon makers? The house burners? The civilians who FDTL distributed arms to?

During tours of the city limits of Dili — through Becora, down through Bidau Santana, then out to Cristo Rei, and back out up the back of Delta Comoro, back down through Fatumeta, then up Taibesse’s up and around China Rate and back down Lahane – I wonder how much is stored up there — how is stress and anger contained. Where does it go? Is it swallowed? Is it buried? Is it literally stored away like an unused rama ambon?

I met some young people who have made a conscious decision to leave Dili, to go to Indonesia, to go to England. Dili is too small to contain all of their stress and anger.

It is hard to transmit how it felt in 2006, so it is hard to capture the strange dissonance with today’s Dili.

The mad construction keeps the city busy, and Prime Minister’s spokesman gloats over 12% growth in GDP.

Heaps of carpenters buzzing away making window and door frames with deslokadu money; the massive $400,000+ Civil Society Fund renovation of Motael Church, and the bigger and more expensive work on the Cathedral; the new wooden crocodile heads around the Monument to the Discoveries in front of the Palace of Government (a symbolic encircling of the colonial object); the traditional houses going up like lightening around the new Presidential palace, and in time for the big party in August.

While most people display a dangerous level of distrust in their political leaders, Dili seems perfectly lanu and mosu at the moment.

Have people begun to tell 2006? How can it ever be told?

Lost worlds

Last weekend, we were lost in cloud up near Ossu, on the pass below the Mundo Perdido mountain. We probably could not see more than four meters ahead of us. People, horses, houses, and turns in the road just bounced out of the background, becoming foreground at frightening speed.

A friend told me later about the top of the flat mountain, named after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book. There are flocks of wild horses, monkeys, lakes, vast stretches of green grass that he described as “golf course” like, rock cairns and many lulik places. To get up there it was a four or five hour huff up waterfalls and riverbeds, and only advisable with local guides.

There are places and people here that we often do not even know exist. They do not appear to us. (The word “mosu” comes to mind in Tetum.)

That same trip, we came across a large public meeting in Wailili I believe. It could have been any kind of routine meeting. But we noticed lots of RDTL flags, and there was a table and formal speeches going on. I hopped out, with caution, to find out what was on. A sullen guy on a motorbike, a good 50m from the event, scowled that it was an “esclarecimento” by CPD-RDTL. We were clearly not welcome.

Shortly after, we stopped in to visit the Parish Priest in Ossu, and ask about their archive and records. I very meekly asked if it might be possible to see baptism records from as early as they have them. I was taken back to the Parish Archive, which was buzzing with activity on a Saturday. There were heaps and heaps of type-written long sheets with names, dates of birth, priceless genealogical information, seemingly out of order and in wads of paper clearly suffering in the moist mountain air. But we were reassured that the information was being copied over carefully into new notebooks. What Ossu Parish really wants is a scanner to scan all of the papers, dating from just after the “reoccupation” from the looks of it. And they told us, if you are amazed by this, you need to see Soibada’s archive, they have saved records since the 1890s.

I am discovering lost worlds in Dili: I stumbled into a malai party on Friday that had the distinct air of some kind of reality TV series. I fled.

And yesterday I was given a catch-up on the luxury residential compounds in Dili – there are more and more of them, lost worlds, and heavily guarded ones.

Cold, hard cash

In the past four days, I’ve spent only three hours in Dili. I have another two days in Baucau, so I’m imagining this is sadly as close as I am going to get to some “deep Timor” experience. I have been trying, as best one can, from brief stops off of mostly paved roads, to get a feeling for the state of things beyond Tasi Tolu and the Cristo Rei.

Roadside Timor does indeed seem more prosperous. The evidence? New kiosks, painted and renovated houses from mountain Maubara all the way to Ossu. The MTCI rice appears to be reaching certain rural communities, where I have seen the odd new, full bag. But I have not seen it piled up anywhere. Mostly people seem to be recycling the bags for their own harvests.

In Ossu, there were new (since 2006) kiosks selling vegetables. Thriving bengkels and mikrolets being repainted, overhauled in Baucau district. Tons of new stickers and names on mikrolets and buses. All evidence of increased cash flow on almost every paved road.

(But I wonder: is this cash reaching the deep Timor, hours walk from the roadside? And are these merely signs of the relatively well-off getting richer?)

On the road near Bazartete, we stopped and chatted with the “dua dollar” work crews repairing the roads. This was one of the first and longest standing schemes to infuse cash into rural areas. There still seemed to be healthy competition for the work, and according to the overseer, rotation of people working. Payments were allegedly quite late.

During a chat hiking near Loe Huno, I asked about the new universal old-age pension, and our guide chuckled as he told the delight of those over 60, some of whom still remember the Portuguese head tax. He said, “Old folks say ‘Before the government forced us to pay them, and look, now they are paying us!’”

Obviously there have been major problems with the pension, which is paid out in six month blocks. In the first round, chefes de suco were apparently able to manipulate the system. In many places, people are continuing to use the voter IDs of deceased people as the government simply does not have databases linked up to prevent this.

There may be massive “leakage”, but the point is, money is clearly reaching cash-starved rural communities. These are places where before you could not even get change for a dollar in the market.

Last week in a “brown bag lunch” at UNMIT, one high-profile UN type revealed that the victims of the Passabe massacre said they interpreted the pension as a form of government reparation for their suffering.

Cash is powerful and is not a cure-all. But if there is one growing consensus, it is that not enough “nation building cash” stayed in Timor, let alone in Dili. I remember calculating how much each man, woman and child in Timor would have received if the UN never returned, and just gave the money for peacekeeping and administration to the Timorese. I think it amounted to something like $20,000 per person.

It is quite amazing how actually something as cold and hard as cash can be something so hard to know what to do with.

The scarlet letter(s)

On Monday, making my way to work at quarter past 8 the city struck me as quiet. At the City Courts of Dili, however, the GNR packed into its small parking lot, with two vans. At least three UNPOL cars as well. Soon the street was shut off, causing mass disturbance to the city’s traffic.

Not this much security or attention was paid to the trial of the Tim Alfa militia from Lospalos, whose members were accused of ambushing and killing nuns and priests.

This week the trial for the alleged conspiracy leading to the February attack on Ramos Horta began.

On TVTL Monday night Angela Pires appeared calm but focused, wearing a tais dress. Newspapers reported she was barefoot – which they interpreted to mean she had come ready to fight. (I do not know what to make of that.) The other defendants, dressed in what can only be described as Guantanamo Orange jumpsuits, looked more the part of people accused of plotting to kill the President.

This morning on the way to Cristo Rei, I biked over some fresh graffiti in large capital red letters “Viva Lia Los. Viva Justisa. Viva Alfredo no Angie.” This is the first graffiti I have ever seen with Angie included. The message was tailor-made for the trial, and cleverly painted in a place where the President would be forced to walk past to continue his morning exercise routine to the beach.

Later in the day, I tripped over some of the bigger conspiracy theories, which seem hyperbolic and indicative of a huge distrust for the two most powerful people in the country. I did not realize, for example, that a great number of people doubt that Ramos Horta was ever shot. They are actually waiting for him to show his wounds at the trial to prove that he was actually attacked! Moreover, some believe that Alfredo’s mate fatin was not on the pavement at Ramos Horta’s house. They believe his body was dumped there. I asked around, to know if these ideas are “regional” but the first person who told me this was indeed from Oecusse, which I imagine defies regionalism. All asked said these ideas are widespread and not limited to one group.

Dili, as in Portuguese colonial times, remains addicted to the whisper. The rumor. It does not help that the major sources of information, daily papers and TVTL are either at best too weak to cover events (let alone investigate), or at worst putty in the hands of a quite aggressive government.

This culture of rumor has serious consequences, one need only to look at 2002 and 2006. TVTL news coverage can be expanded, and from the sounds of it, people want to see Ramos Horta on the stand, and they want him to show his wounds. After all, haree hanesan fiar.

Let’s hope JSMP (whose website desperately needs updating) and some of the weekly papers can provide more information for the public.

Access to information aside, I have started to wonder whether these ema boot can ever regain the trust of a great number of people.

Peaches and a certain Planta

From the top of Ramelau yesterday morning, I saw the world. The boundaries of the visible from Timor. The top of Alor peaking out. Matebian to the east, the sun rising just next to it. Behind, the triangular shadow the mountain extending over West Timor, which was the most amazing surprise. Most of the island was covered in cloud.

Ramelau is the center for many Timorese. Not just mountain people. I remember during the time I lived here, it was still very rare to come across a world map, in a school or a workplace. A friend was saying how often young people take offense when you actually sit them down in front of a map and point to Timor. Not only is it small, but on most projections, it is far from the center.

In thinking of people’s worlds here, it is not on the spatial that is limited to direct experience. I was struck by a brief conversation with C., our guide up the mountain. I asked what his grandparents’ generation tell about war on the mountain. He immediately referred to a moment within his own experience in 1997. I persisted and asked about time before the Indonesians. He said this was something the grandparents knew as though to say that he did not either know enough or have the authority to share.

Often everything pre-1975 seems to be some primordial behemoth, stuck in time like a mastodon in a tar pit. Some carry with them crystallized images of colonial abuses, others of some kind of communitarian permaculture paradise. But this is mostly professionals and elites, people who I might have contact with in my work. In many communities, oral histories in fact reveal a Timor in constant flux, recounting arrivals of new groups, war, of expanding trade and tax networks, and of the consolidation of direct rule.

I remember thinking, as C. and his Maun pointed out Cailaco, Kablaki, Marobo, and the Loes river valley, how many battles with the Portuguese are written on this landscape. How absurd the idea of direct rule was in Timor. The Map of Cailaco (Planta de Cailaco) sprung immediately to mind – a lurid and strange image where 3D perspective and scale seem entirely lacking. Marauding Timorese war parties are depicted burning villages, and holding severed heads. Considering that map from the dizzying view from Ramelau, all of the episodic violence and history pre-1975 seemed so present, so written into the very landscape of the island.

But perhaps these are idle thoughts of somebody who does not commute six hours to high school on foot, like C. does. Thoughts of somebody who did not just lose a 25 year old friend to a “sick stomach.” (The funeral car from MSS brought the young man’s body from Dili the night before – C. had come from Ainaro for his funeral.)

On the way back, the bustle of Maubisse market seemed downright urban compared to the peace of Hatobuliko. Below the cemetery, dozens of horses “parked”. I saw peaches for sale for the first time in Timor. I asked what they were to confirm, the answer: “pissego”. They were hard and green, worlds away from the massive, soft peaches of Roald Dahl and my childhood. Another customer told me, “here, they are like this, Senhora.”

Tetumglish

Far be it from me to be the language police, but I can’t help but have a disappproving chuckle with the number of English words that have entered into Dili Tetum:

environmentu
artikulu (for article)
manajementu
treinamentu
comitmentu
tenderisasaun
bankrup (from Indonesian?)

Any additions?

The visible

Hitting the ground running on Saturday, there was much more this year that jumped out at me as compared to last year. Changes of the visible kind in Dili are quite numerous.

The number of motorbikes, the “New York” yellow taxis, the growth of the seedlings planted in the sidewalks – now nearly trees, stacks of $12 subsidized rice sacks, the fish vendors with their new tents on Pantai Kelapa, Jardim as a functioning and quite popular park with children playing, young lovers holding hands and people walking around… A large number of Indonesian fishing boats in the harbor, the Port brimming with containers, the absurd Casa Europa on the waterfront, and the new pavement on the Bidau waterfront, as well as the fruit stalls…

Dili is cleaner than I have ever seen it – thanks to loron limpeza? Or due to a functioning sanitation system and the ban on pig and goat roaming? (The pigs are strangely missed – as a friend pointed out, it will be hard to shoot the “Pigs of Dili” Calendar she has been dreaming about.)

It is as though we are beginning to see the lusotropical Dili “utopia” that Doug Kammen recently described come to life. (Although where is the progress on the “Hello Mister” development by Wideform? It seems only the Chinese have been able to construct in the past year.)

The city and surrounds are unexpectedly green for July, which is probably due to late heavy rains. But the green seems symbolic of a budding of the physical space. Is this proof of what Emilia Pires claimed was Timor’s exceptional avoidance of the global financial crisis? Surely it is not all due to government spending on rice, on the urban improvements, on the IDPs, on a universal old-age pension and payments to veterans, but these seem to have had quite immediate effects. The scaling up of the UN missions in the past has had more delayed “trickle down” effects.

I also cannot help but wonder what the impact of the hundreds – thousands? – of Timorese in the UK has had not only of the economy, but on the physical.

Just as the late rains probably have a few worried about the climatic implications for the coming rainy season, I cannot help but feel a little uneasy about “the visible.” But I am going to try and keep a check on my Malai Grinch sentiments and keep seeking out the positive.

It’s going to have to wait

Until at least September. But I will be in Timor a week from now. Hopefully blogging.

June 6, 1959

On this day, 50 years ago, the infamous Viqueque Rebellion began. I believe the acts of rebellion, as I write in my MA thesis, constituted

the unplanned, last gasp of a growing conspiracy discovered by Portuguese authorities in its early stages. Three sets of actors created the conditions for the revolt that started in Viqueque town on June 6, 1959: disgruntled Timorese civil servants; bold elites from Uatolari and Uatocarbau subdistricts; and  self-styled ‘rebels’ from Indonesia. The revolt would not have occurred without the active participation of all three groups, and as such should not be perceived—as it often is—as a spontaneous local event.

From 2002 to last year, I researched, thought about and eventually wrote about the way this event is remembered in East Timor. As this is a blog, I decided to write about this today in a rather personal way. This is not an objective recounting of my findings or my research.

The Rebellion is an event that has suffered a number of official, formal revisions over the past decades. Principally during the Indonesian occupation. As such, it also began to take on new popular meanings in East Timor. In Dili and elsewhere, people are naturally quite dismissive of an event which they perceive either to be folly (cowboiada) or an Indonesian revisionist fantasy.

During my archival work in Lisbon, I stumbled on a number of fascinating tidbits about the Indonesian exiles involved in the Rebellion and Portuguese police paranoia. But what struck me most was the disconnect between the elite conspirators from Uatolari and Uatocarbau and their subjects. Interrogated by Portuguese police, one in particular said he did not know the names of the 30 or so rebels with him, as they were led by their village chiefs.

Existing documentation, and interpretation of events, tells a rather “outside” or elite version of the bloody end of the Rebellion in the eastern Matebian valley. In fact there is no official record of deaths (estimated between 50 and 500), destruction and damage caused by the repression of the Rebellion. Not surprisingly, nothing written subsequently captures local memories and interpretations of events.

So in 2006, I returned to attempt to interview residents to paint a picture of the way the Rebellion is remembered in the knua and villages between Uatocarbau and Baguia. My research was admittedly fraught with challenges and limitations. This is not the kind of thing one does in 10 weeks. Or even 10 months. Nevertheless, from this, I found:

The “Viqueque Rebellion” broke out in a remote area of Portuguese Timor and was ably repressed by a poor, isolated Portuguese Administration with machetes, matchbooks, and the centuries-old divide et impera strategy. That the repression of the rebellion occurred during “modern” times in such an antiquated fashion is a curiosity, but not my main interest. The Rebellion’s relatively recent date and the   continued “isolation” of the involved locations provide a unique opportunity for a study of the “local” memory of extreme colonial-era violence. For those in three subdistricts in southeastern Timor, memories of the violent repression of the rebellion remain surprisingly local – that is, external actors and causes are minimized. The memory of violence sparked by external events appears to have been absorbed into a local logic, in spite of continued external attempts at revisionism for political ends.

The final product, my thesis, has been gathering dust since I defended it around this time last year. Why?

The only Timorese feedback I got – loud and clear – was that this is very sensitive material. Local conflicts, between people whose families still live side by side, are better not portrayed in print, or spoken of. Recountings of extreme violence, I was reminded, can provoke extreme reactions.

I have suffered from an acute mental paralysis, a loss of conviction, a feeling that this is in fact true that some how my work could cause problems for others. I have not been able to discern what in my research indeeds transgresses some invisible ethical line. For this reason I have been very cautious about disseminating my work.

For a number of reasons, including the feeling that I must unload a weight off of my shoulders, on June 12, the 50th anniversary of the end of the repression of the Rebellion, I hope to upload here a summary of my thesis that navigates some of the invisible ethical fault lines.

I feel that June 6th deserves more from me, but I am on the road and quite exhausted. More soon.

Limpeza Geral. Or, sweeping dirt by force

This is a guest post from Wiernie Walshe in Dili. Yes, that is a pseudonym.

Police pull over taxis and force the occupants and driver out at gunpoint. Public transport is forbidden from operating, and as a result school children cannot get to school in time to attend their final day of national exams. It is eerily silent in the main commercial district of town as businesses and banks are not allowed to open. Parts of the city are blocked by the Prime Minister’s 10 car convoy, shadowing him as he walks slowly down the street in his blue nylon tracksuit.

Welcome to Friday morning in Dili, Timor-Leste, where the President has declared every Friday morning is “limpeza geral” (general cleaning), a day when civil servants are forced to sweep dirt and cut branches off trees. Very little rubbish seems to be collected during the cleaning. The litter which is accidentally swept up along with the dirt is left in piles by the side of the street, to blow away into the already clogged drains. Nobody has bothered to organise any rubbish trucks to come and pick it up. And everyone continues to throw their trash on the street as soon as the cleaning is over.

Most civil servants treat Friday “limpeza” as a day off. Those who do turn up for the cleaning are generally seen sitting around by the side of the road, chasing each other around with their brooms. Then, because they are wearing casual clothes and have become sweaty and dirty with sweeping, they have to go home and change, and have a nap, by which time it is too late to come back to work. Friday afternoon in the government offices is almost as deserted as Friday morning. This in a country where 50% of the population is living in absolute poverty, and in urgent need of the services the government is supposed to be providing – infrastructure, education, healthcare and security.

With the forced closures of banks and businesses, Friday “limpeza” also creates havoc for Timor-Leste’s struggling commercial sector. In a country where people are fond of resting, many Timorese stores have very limited opening hours – Monday to Friday from 9am to 12pm and 3pm to 5pm. But now, thanks to the command of the President, even these limited hours have been cut. In the words of one supermarket owner, “Friday limpeza has set the country back fifty years. I am forced to close during three of my most profitable hours of the week”.

Surprisingly, there have been no reports of objections to police strong-armed tactics to enforce what should surely be voluntary participation in “limpeza geral”. Will the police stop at forcing taxis and their occupants out and handing them a broom? Or will they force all private vehicles off the road too, and then force people out of their houses? And if the police can force people off the road, with no legal basis, to engage in vigorous dirt sweeping, then what else will they unlawfully try to force people to do?

Is “limpeza geral” an attempt to encourage civic pride, or is it the first step along a path towards something more sinister?

In memory

The above photo, care of La’o Hamutuk Nug Katjasungkana, is from the former residence of Manuel Carrascalão in the Lecidere neighborhood of Dili, where families of the victims of the April 17, 1999 massacre gathered yesterday to pay respects and demand justice.

The massacre was perpetrated by pro-Indonesia militias with encouragement and support from the Indonesian military. The survivor’s statement boldly says the following

We, survivors and victims families lament yet understand the lack of initiatives of our own leaders in demanding justice and fair trial. As many have forgotten and find it easier to move on choosing to remain silent. Our plea is to not disregard the need for justice.

I stayed there as a researcher, as it is now home to the Fundação Oriente, and I was truly haunted by what happened there in 1999 and Irene Cristalis’ account of the massacre, to be republished next week.

It is simply impossible to forget.

Some say the victims are delusional to continue to ask for justice. But there are more than enough examples to show that it is never too late.

The pool of blood

After much delaying and paralysis, I was able to defend my MA thesis last year on the memory of collective violence from colonial East Timor. I remember trying to think of a way to make sense of the subject matter at hand to my kind friends and colleagues in the room. Most were Portuguese, knew Timor growing up, unlike me. For many, the images of the Santa Cruz massacre were indelibly imprinted on their young consciousness in 1991, so I evoked them:

Hundreds of Timorese, running to the camera, kicking up dust, with looks of absolute panic. In a cemetary, young people fallen, hit by bullets from the rifles of the invisible Indonesian army. One young man in particular bleeding in the arms of another… If you like, I “heard” this image before I saw it.

I remember Amy Goodman, present in Santa Cruz, eyewitness and survivor, telling a spellbound room of young Amnesty International activists about this in 1996. I’m not sure I actually ever watched the footage of Santa Cruz except small clips in John Pilger’s Death of a Nation.

In 1999, I followed the horrifying build-up to the referendum, the last months in Brazil, where one was lucky to find even a printed image of Timor. In 2000, eyewitnesses both foreigners and Timorese shared their experiences with me of Dili and of flight. (I never saw footage of 1999 until much later, when I watched Scenes from Occupation, by Carmela Baranowska.)

The pool of blood grew, but it was still not something visible to me. The years I lived there it grew. In 2006 it grew in new and strange directions.

Now they are digging up bones in Hera, from what appears to be unmarked graves from Santa Cruz. Bones with traces of violence. Silent. Alarmingly white and solid. Alone.

In Liquiça the grave sites have yet to be found.

The pool of blood remains invisible to many but that does not mean we cannot still feel it seeping between our toes.

One reaction is silence, a trembling chin — an inability to speak or to write. Another reaction is a loud and truly righteous pursuit of Justice. Yet another reaction is to attend to the senses. To compensate. Stuff the hungry belly — to seek feeling.

Sometimes these reactions come all in short order, or intermingle and seem paradoxical and hypocritical.

Is it right for me to speak of “us” — of ita?