A Critical Examination of Punitive Damage
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A Critical Examination of Punitive Damage ANNIE GOLDSON Helen Todd in court. Punitive Damage is a seventy-seven minute The documentary then picks up Helen feature documentary, which follows the story Todds story, tracing her legal battle to obtain of Helen Todd, a New Zealand woman who accountability for her sons murder. The lm successfully sued an Indonesian general in ends with Todds provisional victory. a Boston court after her son, Kamal Bamadhaj, was killed in the Dili massacre in East Timor Historical Background in 1991.1 Nearly 300 young Timorese were also slaughtered during this incident because When I began the lm in 1996, the furor they had dared to stage a peaceful protest. A generated by the international broadcast handful of Westerners were present and one of Stahls footage had died down. Most Max Stahlwas able to lm the carnage.2 As Western nationsincluding the United a consequence, the Dili massacre became States, Australia and to a lesser extent, New a turning point in East Timors history; Zealandeyed Indonesias large population the existence of Stahls images proving the with interest and concern, drawn by its brutality of the Indonesian occupation during trade potential while remaining fearful of its which one-third of the population of East instability. By the time I began fundraising Timor were killed or died. in earnest for Punitive Damage in 1996, ve Punitive Damage interweaves the personal years after the massacre, the world took stories of Kamal and Helen with the history of a constructive engagement line with East Timor. It begins with the trajectory of the the giant nation, ignoring the widespread young mans life, following his upbringing abuses that continued not only in East Timor, between New Zealand and Malaysia (his but in other regions also. However, as the mother is a Kiwi, his father, Malaysian), lm neared completion, the circumstances his school years, his growing politicization surrounding East Timor changed radically as a university student in Australia, and and I experienced one of those rare moments nally, his death in Timor at age twenty. in history when politics becomes intertwined 50 Screening Southeast Asia Sophia Siddique Harvey, editor, Spectator 24:2 (Fall 2004): 50-60. ANNIE GOLDSON with, and overtakes, a documentary project. as Indonesia went on their pre-referendum By May 1998, the Indonesian economy campaign, organized from the safety of West collapsed, its infrastructure crippled Timor, a former Dutch colony that remained by cronyist corruption. Sensing future under Indonesian rule. Reliable sources and chaos, General Suhartos friends in the eyewitnesses reported that branches of the multinational community, who had pro ted Indonesian military armed, trained and paid from the quiescent workforce under his paramilitary forces called militias. rule, disappeared overnight. The student Despite this campaign, the Timorese voted democracy movement, led by friends of overwhelmingly in favor of independence. Kamals (he saw himself as a young pan- After the result was announced, there was a Asian activist as he had spent time in brief pause. Thenenragedthe Indonesian Indonesia) seized the day. Suhartos military military went on the rampage, their response forces opened re on a protest, and ve vengeful in the extreme. In the chaos that students were killed, a number of them from followed after the ballot, ordinary people prominent, even military, families. Facing were attacked and murdered at random. mounting public anger, and seen as a liability, 250,000 were forcibly relocated to West Timor, Suharto was forced from power, handing the while hundreds of thousands ed to the reigns over to his deputy, Jusuf Habibie. hills where many died of malnutrition and Meanwhile, the East Timorese leadership, exposure. Dili and surrounding villages and taking advantage of the regional volatility, towns were also looted and burned. placed pressure on the United Nations Much of the world watched the graphic, (UN), which in fact had never recognized grainy television trans xed. Eyes turned to Indonesian rule in Timor as legitimate. The the United States, the worlds superpower UN in its turn pressured Habibie. Despite and the only country with the economic and being a Suharto ally, he decided to respond military muscle to enforce the referendum and in January 1999 announced there result. But given the fact that the United would be a referendum on the future of States had supported and funded the Suharto the country. The East Timorese would be military regime, how would it now treat allowed to choose between autonomy its former ally? And if there were Western that is, some freedoms under continuing intervention, what would Indonesia do? Indonesian ruleand total independence. What were its forces capable of? Just as The referendum would be supervised by important, what would China, a sometime the UN, but Indonesian forces would retain ally of Indonesia, do? Habibie, under pressure control of security. This stipulation proved from the United States, nally agreed to let a in fact to be the downfall of the process. The peacekeeping force in, blaming the carnage Indonesian military were, and are, a powerful on the Timorese militia. He ordered many of force with vested political and economic the Indonesian military units to leave, which interests in most territories within the they did, razing Timor to the ground in the Republic, including East Timor. Signi cant process. Australia then led an international military leaders saw Habibies concession peace-making contingent, with a large New as a betrayal and in an attempt to sabotage Zealand force accompanying them. This was the referendum, initiated an underhanded a tense moment also in Australasia. Would campaign of violent intimidation against the the domestic populations accept their young East Timorese people. people being sent to a war zone? The announcement of the pending vote had Punitive Damage premiered at the Hotdocs been made just as we entered the editing room. International Documentary Festival in As cutting continued, we watched events Toronto, Canada in early May 1999; opened unfold. The UN observers, with no brief to in New Zealand cinemas in July 1999, just enforce peace, watched relatively helplessly after the referendum was announced; in SCREENING SOUTHEAST ASIA 51 PUNITIVE DAMAGE Kamal Bamadhaj. Australian cinemas in August 1999, literally a sense of witnessing to uncover hidden the time of the referendum and the resulting or suppressed histories.3 Yet as a work carnage; and in United States theatres that intended rst for a theatrical release, it was September. The timing of the lms release consciously given a strong narrative shape, was fortuitous. Audiences had been watching replicating many of the story beats of the television news, which, with its emphasis classical drama. on daily developments, failed to give much The rst narrative thread of the lm, background information. Clearly, many in the which traces Bamadhajs early life and Australasian audience were shocked at what the circumstances leading up to his death, was unfolding in their backyard, and craved is carried by Helen Todds oral history more information. The announcement that interview, and supplemented by interviews troops from Australia and New Zealand were with others - his sister, Nadiah Bamadhaj, to provide a major peacekeeping contingent and his friends Alison Murray and Bibi appeared to be widely accepted. Whether Langker. All three identi ed Bamadhaj as the lm played a part in that acceptance is a young student activist, deeply disturbed dif cult to ascertain. by the fate of the Timorese, but knew him also as a brother, a friend, and a boyfriend Formal Structure respectively. Because of the documentarys strongly narrative shape and its emotional Punitive Damage combines interviews, archives character, I had decided to dispense with the (moving image, stills, letters and documents), more expositional technique of interviewing and experimental reconstructions of the traditional experts. This decision was made court case. The lm is most closely aligned easier because the cast of characters that with Nichols interactive, or participatory, surrounded Kamal were all highly informed mode of documentary that often draws on about the politics of East Timor 52 FALL 2004 ANNIE GOLDSON To enhance Kamals presence, I used a 1970s, and the invasion and occupation by its number of items from his personal archives powerful neighbor in 1975: including photographs and excerpts from his writings. Kamals letters to Bibi Langker, They swept into the city, they dragged for example, written from East Timor and people out of their homes, brought them Indonesia, depict an affectionate young man, down to the harbor and the beach, executed outraged by the political conditions of East them with newly supplied US machine guns and M16s. Then they set re to the houses Timor, but who retains his sense of humor. of the city. They later swept into the interior, When presented in close-up, his words, some massacring village after village as they misspelled, some crossed-out, exude the went. visceral living quality of handwriting. And he also kept a detailed diary that culminated Nairns testimony is sparsely illustrated in an entry written several days before he was by archival material, the little that is, killed. The diary documents the mounting that survived the invasion of 1975.5 I tension in East Timor and his own sense of supplemented this with Max Stahls footage anxiety and foreboding. Read out in the lm from 1991, particularly that which indicated by his sister, Nadiah, the diary entries ful ll the consequences, rather than the actuality, of a narrative function as well as re ecting the the invasion and occupation such as the large writers political maturity. One of the last family gravesites that dot East Timor. statements Kamal wrote, in fact, included in The second court sequence is shaped the lm shortly before the massacre sequence, around the testimony of Constancio Pinto, functions as something of a clarion call: a young Timorese leader in exile, who had organized the memorial march that turned Whether total genocide occurs in East Timor into the massacre.