JP/7/KAMALA1

JP/7/KAMALA1

Part 1 of 2

Telling what they know:
Women, truth, and reconciliation in Timor Leste

Karen Campbell-Nelson
Researcher
Commission for Reception,
Truth-seeking,
and Reconciliation
(CAVR)
Dili

It is important the women of Timor Leste tell what they know
about past violations, to balance the tendency for men to
dominate the documentation of history, and to remind social,
political, and religious leaders of Timor Leste what is required
of an inclusive reconciliation process.

This is how Beatriz Guterres begins telling us what she knows.

"After Andre and I married in December 1982 we moved from
Beobe to Craras. When the Craras massacre occurred on 8 August
1983, I was two months pregnant. [Because] my husband...was
suspected by ABRI (Indonesian armed forces, now TNI) ...we sought
refuge in the forest. However ... we were ambushed.

"I surrendered, but my husband got away and ran to Bibileo
Mountain. Every day I was interrogated by ABRI at Buikaren. My
child was born in February 1984. When he was five days old, my
husband surrendered. He stayed in our house for one month before
he was made a TBO (Tenaga Bantuan Operasi, Operational Assistant)
by ABRI. After he reported for duty he never returned. He was
probably murdered the same day he was called to report. My child
also died at 14 months because of illness and we had no
medicine."

Beatriz was one of 14 Timor Leste women invited to Dili by the
Commission for Reception, Truth-seeking, and Reconciliation
(CAVR) to participate in the Commission's third national public
hearing held on 28-29 April.

According to its mandate, CAVR is to seek the truth about
human rights abuses that occurred in the context of political
conflict in Timor Leste from 1974-1999. One means for
establishing the truth is by giving witnesses, and experts the
opportunity to speak in public hearings.

The theme for this hearing, Women and Conflict, was explored
through various submissions, eye-witness accounts, and the
sharing of personal experiences by women such as Beatriz. The
women's stories painted a painfully vivid picture of their
experience of human rights violations from 1974-1999, the
historical period being investigated by Commission researchers.

During the hearing these accounts were supplemented by two
presentations. Mario Carrascalco, East Timor's governor from
1982-1992, shared stories that clearly illustrated the impact of
Indonesia's militarization of the territory on Timor Leste women.

John Fernandes, field coordinator for the Indonesian Family
Planning Program in Manufahi district shared his knowledge of how
the promotion of birth control prevented women from freely
exercising their reproductive rights.

Submissions by three different groups -- Timor Leste women,
the Indonesian National Commission Against Violence Towards
Women, and members of the former West Timor Humanitarian Team
that investigated violence against Timor Leste women in West
Timor refugee camps -- provided different perspectives for
analyzing how gender is exploited, but also shaped, in contexts
of political conflict and violence.

To better understand all that is required, we must hear the
rest of Beatriz's story. Not long after her child died, Beatriz
was forced by the military to join a women's night patrol to
guard the village, Lalerek Mutin, from Falintil attack. Patrol
members were regularly harassed on their night rounds and it is
likely this is how Beatriz first came to the attention of a
Kopassus (Special Forces) officer, E.

Only a few days after meeting E, Beatriz lived with him as his
wife. E first demanded Beatriz dance with him all night at a
military party. The following day, he followed Beatriz to her
rice field where he beat her mercilessly. Beatriz ran home only
to be confronted by male members of her family and community who
persuaded her to give in to the soldier, "Better you sell your
soul to save our necks. No one will blame you."

So Beatriz lived with this soldier for one year before his
term of duty expired and he left Timor Leste. Although Beatriz
was pregnant with his child, she had a miscarriage. This was
Beatriz's first forced marriage. It was followed by two more.

"In 1991 another Kopassus soldier, Prada M, had duty in
Lalerek Mutin. When my friends and I were in the rice field he
shot in our direction. My friends pressured me so that I would
become his wife in order to save myself. Because I was ashamed I
stood and said, "OK. I'll cut myself in half. The lower half
I'll give to him, but the upper half is for my land, the land of
Timor." They said to me, "Don't be afraid, don't run. You
probably must suffer like this because your husband was murdered,
whereas you are still alive. ... Our lives are the same."

Then Prada M. walked with me and I answered each of his
questions only with, "Ya"...I was just resigned to my fate. We
lived as husband and wife and I had a child.

Although Beatriz' friends tried to assure her their lives were
just the same, they were not. Once Beatriz was perceived as a
"fallen woman" for living with Indonesian soldiers, it was easy
to forget that friends, family, and community members had
contributed to her fall.

Politically-motivated violence became so distorted that a
beating or being shot at was interpreted, correctly it seems, as
a soldier's interest in a Timorese woman. Such was the distortion
that Beatriz's own community treated her as the village's
scapegoat, turning her into a sexual sacrifice to mitigate
violence against the larger community. The community logic
seemed to be that if military violence could be limited to the
women they abused (to Beatriz) it would not so easily spill over
into broader attacks on the residents of Lalerek Mutin.

But once Beatriz "fell" she became more vulnerable, not only
to repeated incidents of forced marriage, but also to community
perceptions that this was her fate.

The tendency to blame the victim is nothing new. However, in
the context of political violence in Lalerek Mutin this tendency
was used to explain away the disappearance of Beatriz's husband
as well as to accept her forced marriages as judgment for her
simply being alive. They knew Beatriz suffered. Yet they saw her
suffering as fate or divine judgment rather than a violation of
her rights and in this way deflected blame from themselves and
others who did not rally to Beatriz's defense, but indeed
pressured her to accept the violations.

The third incident of forced marriage begins when two
soldiers, one the commanding officer of the other, come to where
Beatriz is working in the rice field and begin to fight over who
will take Beatriz as his own.

Local village officials become involved and the village head
scolds Beatriz, telling her if she wants a husband to choose one,
not two. Beatriz protests. "I was in the paddy field cutting rice
when suddenly these two appeared and started fighting ... I just
wanted to cut rice, not talk to them about who would be my
boyfriend."

The village head repeats his demand, "You date just one of
them, not both!" In the end Beatriz is, once again, resigned to
what she and others call her fate. She lives with one of these
two soldiers and gives birth to his child. When the child is
only a few months old, the soldier who fought with his commanding
officer in order to win Beatriz, as if she were a boxing trophy,
leaves Timor Leste.

Beatriz's story points to the complexity of gender-based
violence in Timor Leste during the 25 years of conflict prior to
the country's independence, a complexity the reconciliation
process cannot afford to ignore.