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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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)

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: