Roger East's Final Communique from Dili, December 1975

I saw Robert Connolly's film Balibo last Monday at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Its a magnificent work of Australian cinema - the best I have seen in many years. Both historically sound (respected East Timor academic and justice campaigner Clinton Fernandes was the historical consultant) and dramatically set at perfect pitch. The treatment is neither overplayed nor overwrought, the dialogue remains tight and realistic throughout. As a result, the impact of the dramatic climax stays with you long after the film.

As readers of this blog might recall, I once visited Balibo, and its a beautiful, quiet town on a mountain, with a long view down to the border between Batugade and Indonesian Mota'ain. The Balibo House Trust - funded by the Victorian Government - now owns he Chinese house and runs it as a community learning centre. Also involved are the Australian Friendship Group, the Friends of Balibo.

I reproduce here Roger East's final communique from Dili in December 1975. He was murdered on the Pertamina Wharf in Dili - along with scores of East Timorese independence leaders and supporters, including Nicolau Lobato's wife - by invading Indonesian forces on December 7, 1975.

Australia's nearest neighbour, tiny East Timor, has cast the die. It's 'Independence or Death', a western cliche, but here a daily salutation - and the Timorese people mean it.

The mortar that binds the East Timorese is the thoughts of Independence after 400 years of colonial rule. They will settle for nothing less.

Fretilin's army is basically anti-colonial, strongly Catholic-tinted and, not surprisingly, has many vehement anti-Communists in its midst.

Djakarta has elected to win support from its nervous neighbours by attaching the Red label to Fretilin.

However, Fretilin's initial planning is a blending of socialistic and cooperative policies which would appear natural for a colony bereft of secondary industry and winning only a subsistence existence from the soil.

Membership of Fretilin by Australian standards would include thinkers from the centre to the extreme left - the latter in a fringe grouping in the Central Committee.

Secretary of the East Timor Department of Foreign Affairs, Jose Ramos Horta, admits the committee's views vary on many issues, the sole exception being independence.

"I expect to see a multi-party set up in East Timor after we cross the present hurdle.

"We are a tolerant people who have waited a long time for the democratic process. We'll share it when it comes."

Fretilin believes the Governor, Colonel Lemos Pires, now living on the Island of Atauro, the St Helens of his choice, aided and abetted the UDT to stage its ill-fated August coup.

Fretilin had been told of the coup plot and a request to the governor to disarm the plotters is said to have been turned down.

Fretilin was defenceless when the fighting started and its members hounded, jailed and some murdered. UDT lost when the Portuguese-trained soldiers defected in favour of Fretilin.

UDT's leadership is now split three ways. Some are languishing in Timorese jails and others in the more comfortable surrounds of Australian cities.

The remaining standard bearers are in Indonesia, hosted and promised a triumphant return, albeit in the wake of mortar bombs.

Their platform of independence, which over a year ago saw them in a political alliance with Fretilin, is now abandoned. They are opting for Indonesia after 450 years of Portuguese domination.

Apodeti, the party pressing for union with Indonesia, is a bad bar-room joke. Its political rallies could be staged in the proverbial ten by four room which includes a table.

Founder and President, Arnold Araujo, 62, a respected horse thief, is currently being detained at Fretilin's pleasure.

The Portuguese jailed him for nine years for war crimes committed against the Timorese during the Japanese occupation.

This leaves only Fretilin which wants to embrace an offer of a United Nations supervised plebiscite.

East Timor's problems grow daily. Its primary ricebowl in the Maliana Valley is now a battlefield. Other crops have been destroyed or neglected in the turmoil of the fighting. Hunger is a reality and starvation a growing threat.