2 East Timor: The Secret File 1973-1975 CHAPTER I: (Prelude) EAST TIMOR 1973 2 3 East Timor: The Secret File 1973-1975 1. UPON ARRIVAL Timor has always been enveloped in legends that only the distance can create. In Portugal, Timor was but a dream, quietness, the one thousand and one nights of the exotic Orient, the tropical sortilege. Upon arrival, the European could only feel disillusioned. Without forewarning one is flying over a sterile island, filled with mountains and rocks, the rustic scenery intersected by dried riverbeds, rocky and abrupt cliffs facing the sea, a ravaged land, without any signs of life or the trademark of humanity. Timor is indeed this land, sparsely arranged bamboo huts unveiled under the plane. The visitor questions: “How is this possible? - Timor, is it this? The light plane draws concentric circles. Unsettled passengers search in vain for the airport. Suddenly, behind an unanticipated hill, halfway through a daring tilt there it is, the small ‘T’ of the runway. The control tower of the tourist leaflets is nowhere to be seen the dusty building with straw ceiling is the bar, customs and the boarding room. This is the International airport of a Vila Salazar, otherwise known as Baucau. It only exists in the geography texts of the Portuguese high schools. A strange crowd piles up outside. This is the ever-baffling spectacle of the arrival of “cockatoo-bote” (big cockatoo) or the “steely paws,” 1 the ceremony of a foreign God, coming down from skies. The people attend this sacred manifestation as if it was the very start of yet another religion. Their coloured clothes contrast with the many suns they have been exposed to. It is five in the morning, dusty and hot. 2 A mute surprise composes the silent mouths of the newly arrived. Here the formalities have a new taste, like the slowly rhythmic waiting of people who seem to have centuries of life ahead of them. At some distance, under a large shed with a tin roof, an old Bedford lorry is sheltering from the sun with an aged canopy protecting the wooden stools, on top of the cabin a very pompous sign: “Public Coach Service Dili-Baucau.” The mountain track turns along the sea, descending slowly to Baucau; a girlie town ensconced between groves of palm trees and lush tropical rain forests. From the back of the lorry, these are brand new images of a stillborn land. We drive past men dressed in a ‘lipa’3 clutching fighting cocks between the naked arms and the torso as they walk. Baucau has a few stone and stucco houses and the exotic air of a colourful population. From the ruins of the markets, one invokes unknown Roman temples. A quick stop for a sandwich and lemonade in the military headquarters, at the Officers’ Mess facing a small swimming pool, which somehow seems out of place, then we are back on Highway #1 to Dili. Rugged cliffs and escarpments disgorge into multi-coloured sea of white coral banks. The mountain trail sometimes 1 Local names given by the Timorese to a plane. 2 As a conscripted army officer in the Supply Battalion, and not a professional army man, the author was one of many unwilling followers of the (future) military junta, or the National Salvation Army Junta, in Lisbon, forced to choose between two years fighting the African Independence movements in Mozambique/Angola or three years solitude in this remote but at this time peaceful land. 3 Sarong-like skirt: garment of coloured silk, cotton or cloth worn by both men and women originated in Malaysia. 3 4 East Timor: The Secret File 1973-1975 draws so close to the abyss that our hearts go into suspended animation. Along the way, we cross, large, dry riverbeds that time has converted in occasional roads. The gravelled soil, the undefined colour between the brown and green, the “palapas” 4 disguised by the vegetation, all provide a sad image of rocks and hills. The bays, primitive and unconquered by boats of any type or size, the beaches filled with jetsam, unveil unsuspected paradises. It is hard to catch a glimpse of the locals with their smiles. I gasp startled, but no, it is not blood dripping from their mouths, it is only “masca” - a mixture of quicklime and “harecan” 5 chewing it, is the psychological placebo for the food that does not exist. The red smile hides the centuries old hunger. (January 1998, I listen to José Ramos Horta appealing to international solidarity to defuse the hunger that still assails the territory). Suddenly, after passing by and leaving behind villages that only the wordless memory could describe, here is Dili, 212 km and eleven hours later. An extremely large avenue spreads the heavy dust to the neighbouring ‘palapas’ and some concrete one-story houses with tin roofs. Entering Dili by the east one can see how the Chinese and Timorese share the promiscuity of lack of proper urban structures. Dili is a long plain by the calm lake-like sea, with a vast majestic bay stressed in the background by the superimposing shadow of the Ataúro Island. An incipient harbour shelters an aged gunboat where the Portuguese flag undulates. A long avenue accompanies the shore along Dili, ending in the Lighthouse residential quarter, where colonial villas built after World War II lodge all heads of department and the upper crust of army officialdom. At this time, Dili has 16 kilometres of bitumen sealed roads and streets. Three houses are the only survivors of the pre- war Dili but for an airport where a Land Rover has to clear the runway from buffaloes, Balinese cows and wild pigs. The commercial artery crosses Dili from East to West, like the centre. This is the backbone of the capital, with its 'Palácio do Governo’ [a government house pompously called Palace] and the Museum whose name states the emptiness of all the treasures exported by previous governors and colonisers, through the centuries. A dead museum, two traffic police officers at peak hours and some people sitting leisurely on the esplanades or cafés. There at night we can encounter the real “bas fonds”6 of Dili, not only the local prostitutes but also the slot and poker machines. The underworld, the underground life, the drowning of hopes and dreams long forgotten, a few restaurants with the bars serving Chinese tucker, bars like the “Texas” and the “Tropicália” where the soldiers and the booze silence a progressively growing distance from Portugal. Dili, September 1973: a lifeless city dying on its own ashes every night, between the silence and the sad voice of the tokés, the putrid heat and the winged flight of the roaches. During the day one can see few private cars and many official black vehicles. 4 Rectangular-shaped huts made of rattan (palm stems). 5 Harecan is a tobacco-like leaf. 6 Underworld. 4 5 East Timor: The Secret File 1973-1975 Many motorbikes circulate between the army jeeps driven by the officers’ chauffeurs who wait, patiently in front of the high school for the wives-cum-teachers of the Portuguese army officers. Are they at the hairdresser or at the primary school? The military personnel walking or being driven in Berliets and Unimogs. In addition, the many Chinese are mingling among the Timorese. Dili is this - desolation. On the hills, in a forgetful location, as a memento to a lost war, the military complex with its headquarters and the insalubrious barracks. Could have been a wonderful spot, two hundred years before, well defended by the surrounding mountains, but its current locale was out of place and out of space. Further, up on the hills, 500 metres above the sea, in a prominent location tucked in a leafy valley, the two hospitals (one small modern group of buildings for the civilians, another large old style building for the military). This pretentiously European City is sad. The palapas surmounting the almost non-existent footpaths, there live the Timorese without electricity energy or water. Ten or fifteen kids roaming around, does it really matter if the misery is still the same and will always be the same? “This is the land, the sun first sees when rising” the official motto proclaims on the upper crest of the coat of arms of the then Portuguese Timor. With this, I bequeath the images and the words. They are already history, and they will not repeat themselves in a thousand years time. This we will witness, in the following pages we will show the testimony - how to convert peaceful Pacific colonies into war scenarios. 2. PROSPECTS - OIL AND AUSTRALIAN TOURISTS TIMOR is roughly 600 kilometres off Darwin and 2,200 kilometres from Jakarta. In the Timor Sea, sandwiched between Australia and East Timor, there is an oil reserve considered to be among the 20 biggest in the world. Oil exploration starts in the late sixties with speculation that it can and will change dramatically the face of the then Portuguese Timor. The colonial administration, very lackadaisical for the past 400 years, suddenly dreams of an upsurge of wealth, which can perhaps catapult the entire Portuguese economy and stave off the impending end of the dictatorship. In small numbers, people are lured to Timor with highly adventurous and speedily drafted projects. In practical terms, though, both Timor Oil Ltd. drilling on the South Coast (Suai) by very primitive means and the more sophisticated offshore explorations by Burma Oil/BHP show no large oil reserves. Burma Oil almost creates havoc in the population. By operating a couple of helicopters with equipment and personnel for six months in 1974, and flying them back to their headquarters in Perth, twice a week, it feeds rumours of an imminent oil discovery.