He was a rebel, a guerrilla leader, the symbol of his country. She was A foreigner, a teacher, a spy. They fell in love though they'd never met.
This is a story, a pair of stories, as big as a nation and as small as A kiss. I know it sounds like a movie promo, but it's true. Please Welcome the President and First Lady of East Timor, Xanana and Kirsty Sword Gusmao.
Andrew Denton: Welcome, Kirsty. Mr President. You may sit there, Kirsty. Applause
Andrew Denton: Welcome to you both. May I be informal and call you Xanana, Mr President? And may I call you Kirsty, Kirsty?
Kirsty Sword Gusmao: You certainly may.
Andrew Denton: Thank you so much. Kirsty, do you get back to your homeland very often?
Kirsty Sword Gusmao: A couple of times a year.
Andrew Denton: Yeah?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Very rarely just for pleasure and catching up with family, but for other purposes.
Andrew Denton: Is it like a Princess Mary visit? Are the streets of Bendigo lined 100-deep with people waving?
Xanana Gusmao: "Don't quote me, please."
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: No, it's quite a different story.
Andrew Denton: Yeah. Can you actually, because you have security guards here and so on, I mean, do you actually get to hang out with your old friends?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Very rarely, in fact it's a source of regret. I don't get to catch up with many friends, we're so busy rushing from one official engagement to the next. Or, you know, busy talking about Timor. I mean, Timor is what consumes us, it's our passion, it's our life and that Leaves us very little time, really, for old friends.
Andrew Denton: As indeed it should consume you. It's an extraordinary story. Xanana, you were actually christened Jose Alexandre. How did you get the name Xanana?
Xanana Gusmao: I was a journalist before the war. And in the articles That I criticise people, I try to hide myself just to be acceptable for... by everybody, and I chose the name Xanana.
Andrew Denton: Where did that name come from? Where did you choose that from? Xanana Gusmao: At the time in '60s that, in the early '70s, the... (Sings) Sha-na-na...
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: It was a pop song.
Andrew Denton: Oh, really? You got it from that?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: We still actually can't work out whether it was The Carpenters or another.
Andrew Denton: Oh, really? Just trying to think. Thank goodness you didn't take, because this was the early '70s, wasn't it? You could've taken a disco name. You could've been known as Captain Boogie. That would not be good. You could've been known as Shaft. Well, it's a very cool name, I have to say, and if I ever have another life I'm going to call myself that.
Xanana Gusmao: But not Banana.
Andrew Denton: Oh, right.
Xanana Gusmao: Meaning the Republic of Xanana.
Andrew Denton: Xanana Republic, yes. It's such a cruel game, politics, isn't it?
Andrew Denton: I want to go back to the time of the Indonesian invasion Or in fact a couple of years after that. Indonesia invaded in 1975, you Fled from Dili. You left behind a wife and two children, who you didn't see For 20 years, and within a few years there was a very brutal invasion. An estimated 200,000 East Timorese were killed, a quarter of your country's population. Most of the leadership of Fretilin, the independence movement, were captured or dead and you became the leader of the resistance movement and you describe that time as the worst moment of your life. Why was that?
Xanana Gusmao: Well, you know, in the first three years we were all the population together trying to resist, and in the end of '77-'78, we were destroyed. And from almost 50,000 guerrillas, we were reduced to 700.
They said, "How can we resist? How can we win?"
Andrew Denton: Kirsty, you're now the First Lady of East Timor but it's almost as if all your life you've been tied up with this region. You, at your parents' example, spoke your first words of Indonesian at four, you majored in it at university. In your 20s you started to travel there, what you called a love/hate relationship. What's at the heart of that fascination?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I think the language really. I began studying Indonesian in Bendigo in Central Victoria which was something of a Centre for learning on Indonesian language and culture, and it was really Through my interest in Indonesia that I came to know about East Timor, of course, which is rather different from the journey of most East Timor activists and sympathisers who come to know something about Indonesia on the side as a result of learning about East Timor, but for me it was the opposite. I loved the country, I loved the people. I travelled there for the first time in about 1984, 1985. Was absolutely enchanted with the place and still am in many ways.
Andrew Denton: So you decided to move to Jakarta as a foreign aid worker, but you were actually leading a double life weren't you? You were, you became involved with the resistance movement as a spy and a networker, a money launderer and you took a different name didn't you?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Yeah. That makes it all sound as if it was all sort of a bit deliberate and that I was in the employ and pay of the Timorese resistance which, of course, is not quite the case.
Andrew Denton: You stumbled into it.
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I went there without an idea of what I was going to do other than I wanted to work more intensively for Timor. I got work as an English teacher because I trained as a teacher. That's basically what helped me to support my work for the resistance, which started off in the beginning really as helping young students that were involved in the pro-independence movement in Jakarta to translate documents, to draft petitions, to visiting members of human rights delegations and the like. That was the extent of it. I mean, human rights activist is actually a far more apt term than spy but I know it makes better story, of course.
Andrew Denton: You took another name, didn't you? What was your name?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Well, everybody that was involved in the Clandestine movement had a pseudonym. Mine was Ruby Blade initially and later Xanana changed it to Mukia. But we all adopted a name basically to protect our identities and protect the other members of the clandestine movement.
Andrew Denton: It was slightly more than just human rights work. I mean, as you said, it was clandestine, and there is a fairly famous incident where you helped smuggle 11 East Timorese men to safety in a foreign consulate in the middle of Jakarta. How do you do that?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Basically these seven young men, actually, came to Me and explained to me how they were on the run from the Indonesian Military and feared for their lives because of their pro-independence Activities. And I helped them to get into the Finnish and the Swedish embassies Which were in a block of, you know, company buildings in the centre of Jakarta. I and some friends of mine, you know, cased the place out for a couple of weeks beforehand to work out how we were actually going to perform this feat.
Andrew Denton: As any humanitarian worker would.
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Yeah. And basically managed to get them in. I had to sort of dress up to look like an executive who belonged in that kind of environment and, you know, walked in with four of them up to one level where the Finnish embassy was and the other three went with my friend and colleague.
Andrew Denton: How did you explain who the four men were?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Well, we were actually stopped as we were going up On to the third floor by one of the security guards on the ground floor and because I'd done my homework I actually had the name card of one of the companies, I think it was Revlon, up on, you know, the fifth floor and I managed to flash that to explain why it was that we were going up in The lift, and that seemed to satisfy the security guard.
Andrew Denton: What, you said these four men needed Revlon cosmetics?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I can't remember how I explained it.
Andrew Denton: Was that a nervous moment?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: It certainly was, yeah, yeah, extremely nervous.
But I felt that I had a duty to help these young men. There weren't too many other foreigners resident in Jakarta at the time, who were prepared to really take the risks involved, to, you know, guarantee these guys a safe passage out of the country.
Andrew Denton: And it was risk. Jose Ramos-Horta, your foreign minister, has said that the risk to you shouldn't be underestimated. That had you been caught you would almost certainly have been murdered. How aware were you of that risk?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I continue to think that is somewhat of an exaggeration. I think probably Indonesia wouldn't have wanted a diplomatic incident with Australia and I think probably the worst thing that could've happened would've been I would've been deported. Which would've been a terrible tragedy for me, not only because it would've curtailed my activities for the Timorese, but because of my ongoing love of Indonesia. I enjoyed living there. I had many friendships with lots of Indonesian people and it would've been incredibly distressing for me not to have continued to have access.
Andrew Denton: And you may never have met this man?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: That's right.
Andrew Denton: Let's not forget that.
Andrew Denton: You fought until 1992 when you were eventually captured.
And you were tortured and you were put on trial. You weren't even allowed To speak at your trial and you were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Considering you had been such a thorn in the side of the Indonesians You have been so strong as a resistance leader, why didn't they just kill you?
Xanana Gusmao: I think that it is for two reasons. When during six months of cease fire, we were treating them very well. They used to come to our bases and nothing happened to them. If we wanted we could kill them, but we didn't.
Andrew Denton: I'm amazed that considering the brutality of what the Indonesian army did in East Timor to your people that you could have restrained yourself from killing their soldiers when you had the opportunity. How can you do that?
Xanana Gusmao: We didn't fight against the soldiers. We were fighting against the regime. The regime that sent the soldiers to kill us, to fight us. In many, many other occasions, even in the operations... we captured weapons, captured Indonesian soldiers alive and we sent back. You surrendered, go back home and tell the Indonesian people that you are not our enemy. Our enemy is the policy of coming here, staying here and being our colonisers.
Andrew Denton: That's a remarkable thing to do. When you were sent to prison, did you feel that you had failed in your job as the resistance leader?
Xanana Gusmao: Not at all. I was still in jungle. And I already had connection with people in the prison. It could take advantage of these facilities there, to continue to have links with the resistance.
Andrew Denton: Well, you talk about the facilities in prison, and Kirsty, that's where you come in, and this is where your stories start to come together. You were already working in your role as a humanitarian worker, smuggling documents in and out of the prison and you started to give Xanana English lessons via correspondence and you also bought him materials That were passed on to him for his artwork. And in 1994 for your birthday You sent Xanana a picture of yourself. Can you tell us about that?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Yeah, I sent him a photograph. We'd been Corresponding for some time and it seemed to make sense to actually get to know one another physically as well as, you know, emotionally and so I sent a photograph. But I chose one which showed only the back of my head because I was a little bit concerned that the letter might be intercepted and my identity might be revealed through the photograph. So it was actually a photograph of me overlooking some rice fields in West Java. And to my surprise and my delight, some months later, I received from him a painting which was done of that photograph.
Andrew Denton: Nonetheless, Kirsty, even though you had never met or Even spoken to each other, you, through your letters, could feel a bond growing, couldn't you, between you?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Yes. Um...
Xanana Gusmao: Ladies first.
Andrew Denton: What was that?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I suppose first and foremost it was the shared... shared values. Goal of working towards Timor's... independence.
That's what had brought us together in the first place. And I think Over time it extended to other parts of our lives, including our personal passions and hobbies such as an interest in art, and in literature.
Andrew Denton: You went away for a holiday for 25 days and when you got back, what was waiting for you?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: A huge plastic bag full of many weeks of correspondence. Yeah. And I think it was probably at that moment that I realised that there was something very special that had developed between us.
Andrew Denton: Had you seen any more of Kirsty than the back of her head by this time?
Xanana Gusmao: No.
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Not terribly much more, I don't think.
Xanana Gusmao: No. Until December '94. December 1994.
Andrew Denton: Which is when you first met after all this time, you Managed to bluff your way into the prison almost. Tell me about that meeting, Kirsty.
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: OK. Quite by chance, there was an Australian who Was in prison with Xanana on charges of fraud. Anyway, we decided to make John Edwards into Uncle John. Uncle John. Your Uncle John. Christmas time I turned up at the prison, looking just like Little Red Riding Hood with my basket of goodies for Uncle John and extremely innocent and managed to smuggle my way into the prison with a group of Indonesian well-wishers including some fellow human rights activists. And we managed to spend probably about three or four hours together during this Christmas ceremony which was quite remarkable.
Andrew Denton: Come on, you're skipping the details here. What was the first moment of meeting like? What was that moment like?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Well... I think I describe it in my book about how strange it was to have to sort of run into the arms of Uncle John, who I didn't know from a bar of soap. And then turn to Xanana very formally And shake his hands as if it was a completely casual meeting.
Andrew Denton: It must have been a wonderful torture, in a way, to be together, but not really be together.
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I remember the worst moment was having to leave Again because throughout that three hours there was just such a feeling that Was meant to be and it was awful realising that I had to leave again and That it would be an unknown number of years before we would actually be able To repeat that moment.
Andrew Denton: Rosalie, Kirsty's mum. Welcome. Everyone wants their daughter to fall in love, but seldom with a man in prison with a country to liberate. At this time, how was it for Kirsty? Rosalie Sword: Well, it was a very difficult time for Kirsty and a very difficult time for us too probably. I remember when she came back after that visit to the prison and she had some photographs that had been taken and we had a holiday where Xanana wrote to her every day. My husband and I had travelled with her for about three weeks. And during that time, she had read many of the letters, much of the homework which Xanana had done for her in English lessons.
Andrew Denton: Homework, was it?
Rosalie Sword: Yes. And I thought at the time, there's much more Interest in this than a teacher to her pupil. And so I also thought so when she brought the photos from having met Xanana in prison. And soon after that, Xanana wrote to me a very nice letter which was brought out and Kirsty had posted on, saying to me that he understood how difficult it must be for us to have her fall in love with somebody who had 20 years imprisonment sentence. But he's such a wonderful man and such a wonderful leader and Kirsty was so devoted to both him and the Timor liberation movement.
Andrew Denton: Xanana, East Timor got its independence in 2002, you Became its first president, but it wasn't really a job you wanted, was it?
Xanana Gusmao: Even now.
Andrew Denton: Even now? But you get limousines and security guards.
You get to meet John Howard.
Xanana Gusmao: My limousine... It's a good argument, it's a good argument, yes!
Andrew Denton: Why didn't you want the job?
Xanana Gusmao: Because of the guerrillas, because of all the sacrifices that it... I tried to tell, during the struggle to the guerrillas, to the people, "We are not fighting for ourselves, we are fighting for an ideal. Ideal is to liberate our country, our people." I asked them not to occupy state houses, not to ask for jobs and I regret... because of not fulfilling my, my promise...
Andrew Denton: Kirsty, you have a T-shirt which says, "It's harder Living with a saint than being one." What's it like living with a national icon?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: It's certainly not... Yeah. It's more grueling Living with a saint than being one, yeah.
Andrew Denton: Did you not know about this T-shirt?
Xanana Gusmao: Pardon?
Andrew Denton: Did you not know she had this T-shirt?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I can't remember who gave it to me, but, yeah, it certainly seems quite apt. Um, yeah, it's not easy. I think not easy because, ah, it's... Because um...
Xanana Gusmao: At night I don't wake up to take care of the baby.
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: Saints don't wake up in the middle of the night to change nappies.
Andrew Denton: Saints need their sleep, do they?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I think, hard because it's a role that's not Largely acknowledged. It's a role that comes with a lot of public attention, a Lot of public duties and responsibilities. He's someone who is looked to as A father of the nation. He has to fulfil that that duty he does, and he Does it very well. But it comes with an extraordinary number of pressures And burdens for those that are closest to him.
Andrew Denton: Sometimes Mrs Saint is a little less than patient about it, a little less than happy. What do you hope the future holds for you both?
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: I guess a little more normality than we presently enjoy. I guess for him, I'd like to see him have a bit more calm to be able to indulge some of those hobbies that I mentioned earlier that perhaps ironically since he's been released from prison he's not been able to take up again. He hasn't painted a painting, written a poem since he's been released from prison.
Andrew Denton: You need to break the law and be back in prison quickly.
Kirsty Sward Gusmao: In fact, we often think back somewhat Nostalgically about those days.
Andrew Denton: Is that right?
Xanana Gusmao: I would prefer to be pumpkin farmer...
Andrew Denton: A pumpkin farmer? Well, I look forward to the day for Both you when you're raising pumpkins, painting paintings and watching your children run around. Xanana, Kirsty, thank you very much.
"Your help is urgently needed to train the East Timorese in eye surgery"
On the 8th July 2005, the President of East Timor, Xanana Gusmao, visited Australia to draw awareness and help raise funds towards the training of eye surgeons in East Timor. The goal of the East Timor Project is to improve the health status of the East Timorese people requiring general and specialist surgical treatment. It is estimated that 10,000 eye operations need to be performed in East Timor and money raised through the East Timor Eye Program will assist in the long-term goal of making East Timor self-sufficient in eye care by 2007.
To make a tax-deductible donation towards this most worthwhile cause, please call The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons on 1800 051 033.
Cheques can be made payable to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.
For further information please contact Kathryn Austin at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons on 02 9249 1262.