Timor Leste is commemorating today the Sta. Cruz massacre in Dili. I did not bother myself to find out the story about this historic event until around 8:30 today, Rey, my neighbor and I decided to have our comfort foods at Aru. As we were getting out of our compound, I noticed lighted white candles outside several houses in our neighborhood. Only then I remembered that today, Timor Leste marks the 20th anniversary of Sta. Cruz Massacre. All the more I became curious about the story behind it as we continued driving to the main road and saw more lighted candles outside houses, children and adults alike joined together in lighting candles or watching the lighted ones. Even along the beach road there were floating lighted candles in the sea. Because of this sight, I requested Rey if we could drive around Sta. Cruz cemetery and see what is happening there, but the area was blocked which would mean we have to walk to get closer to the cemetery, an option which I did not take. So, we moved on and while inside the car, I was thinking in admiration how impressive every Timorese's participation in commemorating this tragic event in their country's history.
After our coffee and cake, I googled Sta. Cruz Massacre from the web when I reached home. Of all the links I found, I liked the brief and concise story about it by friends of Timor. While reading this article, all the more I understood this tradition of lighting candles outside their houses. Related or not to any of those who died, it's a show of sympathy to those victims as well as a prayer offering. A symbolic and historic landmarks of their fight for independence.
Once you read the story below, you would understand and, feel with them the pain of it though 20 years has already gone. I also came to realize how forgiving the Timorese are, despite the freshness of their experience during the Indonesian occupation, they have never resented the presence of Indonesians in their country. Read below and be touched by it!
Santa Cruz Massacre - A Black Day in Timor's History
The Dili massacre (also known as the Santa Cruz massacre) was the shooting of East Timorese protesters, in the Santa Cruz cemetery in the capital, Dili, on 12 November 1991.
The protesters, mainly students, launched their protest against Indonesian rule at the funeral of a fellow student, Sebastião Gomes, who had been shot dead by Indonesian troops the month before. The students had been anticipating the arrival of a parliamentary delegation from Portugal, which was still legally recognised by the United Nations as the administering power. This had been cancelled after Jakarta objected to the inclusion in the delegation of Jill Joliffe, an Australian journalist whom it regarded as supportive of the Fretilin independence movement.
At the funeral procession, students unfurled banners calling for self-determination and independence, displaying pictures of the independence leader Xanana Gusmão. As the procession entered the cemetery, Indonesian troops opened fire. Of the people demonstrating in the cemetery, 271 were killed, 382 wounded, and 250 disappeared. One of the dead was a New Zealander, Kamal Bamadhaj, a political science student and human rights activist based in Australia.
The television pictures of the massacre were shown worldwide, causing the Indonesian government considerable embarrassment. In Portugal and Australia, both of which had sizeable East Timorese communities, there was a public outcry.The massacre was eyewitnessed by two American journalists—Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn—and caught on videotape by Max Stahl, who was filming undercover for Yorkshire Television in the UK. The camera crew managed to smuggle the video footage to Australia. They gave it to Saskia Kouwenburg, a Dutch journalist to avoid it being seized and confiscated by the Australian authorities, who had been tipped off by Indonesia and subjected the camera crew to a strip-search when they arrived in Darwin. The video footage was used in the First Tuesday documentary In Cold Blood: The Massacre of East Timor, shown on ITV in the UK in January, 1992.
Many Portuguese felt bad about their country's effective abandonment of their former colony in 1975, and were moved by the footage of people shouting and praying in Portuguese. Similarly, many Australians felt ashamed at their government's support for the repressive Suharto regime in Indonesia, and what they saw as the betrayal of a people who had fought with Australian troops against the Japanese in the Second World War.
The massacre (also euphemistically called the Dili Incident by the Indonesian government) was likened to the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa in 1960, in which unarmed protesters were also shot dead, and which saw the apartheid regime subjected to international condemnation.Although it prompted the Portuguese government to step up its diplomatic campaign, for the Australian government, the killings were, in the words of foreign minister Gareth Evans, 'an aberration'.
Now commemorated as a public holiday in an independent East Timor, 12th November is remembered by the East Timorese as one of the bloodiest days in their history, which gained international attention to their fight for independence.
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