Bitter Dawn: Tracing the pain of East Timorese

Bitter Dawn: Tracing the pain of East Timorese

Carmel Budiardjo, Contributor, London

Bitter Dawn: East Timor, a people's story;
by Irena Cristalis;
ZED Books, London, 2002;
286 pages

After three years of breathtaking changes, transforming it from a
down-trodden, occupied country to the first newly independent
state of the 21st millennium, East Timor has become the subject
of a flood of books, dissecting the fortunes and misfortunes of
the country from many angles.

It is a subject that casts a penetrating light in particular
on the malicious efforts by the Indonesian military to counter
the decision by then president B.J. Habibie to allow the East
Timorese to decide whether they wanted to accept special autonomy
or extricate themselves from their Indonesian tormentors.

Bitter Dawn can be counted as possibly the best account of the
tragic events that preceded and followed in the wake of the
ballot on Aug. 30, 1999, when 80 percent of the country's
infrastructure was left in ruins and a quarter of the population
was forced to abandon their homes and become refugees in West
Timor.

Cristalis' prose is lucid, making this a highly readable book
full of drama and tenderness for the victims of these terrible
events. She spent most of the year before the ballot in East
Timor, traveling widely and using her remarkable journalistic
skills to understand a people deeply traumatized by 23 years of
Indonesian occupation and daring to hope that at last things
would change.

While her commitment to East Timor's righteous cause is never
in doubt, her frank and sometimes critical accounts of the people
she met -- local commanders of Falintil, the armed resistance,
leaders of the Catholic church, human rights activists, militia
fighters and ordinary people, as well as UN officials -- leave
the reader with a refreshing sense of diversity that challenges
the often stereotyped accounts of a people united around a common
cause.

The book is studded with beautifully crafted portraits of a
number of individuals trying to adjust to the situation, the
euphoria that greeted the decision to hold a "popular
consultation", which was rapidly overtaken by fear and
apprehension as army-backed militia groups took control in many
parts of the country, compelling over 200,000 East Timorese to
flee their homes and become "internally displaced people" (IDP).

One major turning point was on April 6, 1999 when dozens of
innocent civilians were murdered in the Liquica Church massacre.
It was intended to ram home the message that churches could no
longer be regarded as sanctuaries.

The massacre was also intended, the author argues, to disrupt
talks underway at the UN in New York to agree on the modalities
for the ballot.

Her account of a visit to Liquica to attend a mass on the
Sunday after the massacre vividly portrays the depth of the fear
gripping the population. Even with Bishop Belo there to take the
mass, the people held back and trickled very slowly into the
church. This was the first time, Belo later said, that he turned
up to an empty church.

Eleven days later, the home of Manuel Carrascalao in Dili,
where dozens of Timorese were taking refuge, was attacked by the
Aitarak militia under the command of Eurico Guterres (whose trial
is now underway in Jakarta).

This was intended to convey the message that "turncoats" like
Carrascalao who had switched from supporting integration with
Indonesia to supporting independence were in the sights of the
killers.

One of her constant companions was Antero Bendito da Silva,
the head of the East Timor Students Council which had responded
to the reform rallies in Indonesia that drove Soeharto from power
in May 1998 by mounting a nationwide "open forum" campaign.

But da Silva was so obsessed with thinking about conflict
resolution and designing future education projects for the
Timorese that he often seemed blissfully unaware of the chaos and
danger surrounding him and needed to be rescued many times.

Another of the author's favorite characters, Mana Lou, an
irrepressible "secular nun", is fondly portrayed. She pursues her
own brand of grassroots Catholicism, dedicated to trying to
restore people's sense of self-esteem and identity which, she
says, is what faith is all about.

This put her at loggerheads with Bishop Belo on the one hand
and Falintil leaders on the other. Dubbed by some the "Joan of
Arc" of East Timor, she tried as things grew worse to persuade
militia members of the folly of their ways while organizing food
and medicine for the thousands of IDPs around Liquica.

Another fascinating character who pops up regularly is a
Falintil commander known as L7, a flamboyant guerrilla, fond of
delivering speeches, of being the center of attention and a heavy
drinker, when supplies were available. Yet with all that, he was
the proud head of a Catholic youth organization, Sagrada Familia
(Sacred Family) that claimed (justifiably, she was told) to have
a membership of 60,000.

The author is no faint-heart and visited some of the most
dangerous places in the country as the ballot drew near. A
constant theme is her puzzlement at the failure of members of the
UN mission, UNAMET, to take seriously the threats of the militia,
on behalf of their military paymasters, to plunge the country
into chaos, should the vote swing heavily in favor of
independence.

When East Timor descended into chaos and mayhem erupted just
before the ballot results were due to be announced, hundreds of
foreign and Indonesian journalists fled the country in the face
of constant harassment.

The intention was clear; to ensure that the coming events
would not be reported. But the author and a tiny handful of
journalists refused to leave. She managed, with another Dutch
journalist, to make her way to the UNAMET compound where scores
of East Timorese had taken refuge, inside the compound and in an
adjacent building.

As Dili burned and most of the country was reduced to ruins
and as 250,000 East Timorese were herded into trucks and boats
and taken to West Timor, the UN was forced to wait till President
Habibie in Jakarta took the decision, after nearly three weeks of
violence, to allow intervention by an international force. Even
in the depths of such a crisis, the Security Council decided that
a decision to send in foreign troops could not be taken without
Jakarta's approval.

Bitter Dawn recounts the closing chapter of UNAMET's mission
with careful attention to detail and colored by the writer's own
emotions and frustrations. For anyone wanting to know how it felt
to live through these events, this is the book to read.