Abdullah Alamudi, Jakarta – The discovery of a grave in a South Jakarta cemetery of the five Australian-based journalists killed in Balibo, East Timor, nearly 35 years ago, may soon shed some light on their ashes or remains.

The journalists, known as the Balibo Five, died on Oct. 16, 1975 while covering the Indonesian invasion on the then Portuguese colony.

A larger than normal tombstone with an epitaph bearing the names of the five men: Gary Cunningham, Greg Shackleton, Malcolm Rennie, Tony Stewart and Brian Peters, was found.

Underneath their names is a statement that says, "No words can explain this pointless death in Balibo."

The wrong spelling of the word "explain" raised suspicion that the wordings of the epitaph was either written in East Timor or by an Indonesian. Or was it purely misspelling by the tombstone workers?

Judging from the location of the grave in the cemetery, one could conclude that they were originally moved from the old Karet Cemetery in Central Jakarta with other deceased to the present Tanah Kusir in Bintaro, South Jakarta, when the government was constructing a road over a part of the cemetery in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

How the ashes or remains of the Balibo Five ended in the Karet Cemetery is yet to be uncovered. Over the past three and a half decades the cause of their deaths has been controversial.

Both the Australian and Indonesian governments said they were killed in a crossfire between the invading Indonesian military troops and the Free East Timor Liberation Front (Fretilin).

But the Australian press and witnesses at the coronerial inquests in Sydney said the five journalists were deliberately executed by a number of elite members of the Indonesian army and then burned.

For decades, many Indonesians believed that the ashes of the five journalists were scattered in East Timor or in the Timor Sea to avoid identification.

But it is yet to be proved if the ashes or remains are buried in Tanah Kusir – if indeed there are ashes or remains in there – actually belong to the Balibo Five.

DNA forensic investigation is needed. It's going to be a tough legal battle between relatives of the deceased and supporters of press freedom and government accountability in both countries against their respective governments.

Successive Australian governments since Gough Withlam have been holding the opinion that the five journalists were caught in a crossfire. And who wrote the epitaph, "No words can explain this pointless death in Balibo," is still a mystery.

However, the remains of the so-called "forgotten sixth member of the Balibo Five", Roger East, 50, an Australian journalist working for AAP-Reuters, who traveled to East Timor to investigate the death of his five compatriots, is still unknown. East was captured in Dili by Indonesian soldiers on Dec. 7, 1975, and was killed the next day in the wharf area. His body was reportedly dumped in the sea.

East's relentless efforts to uncover the truth about the Balibo Five was portrayed in the film under the same title but ended his life in the barrels of Indonesian soldiers in Dili.

The discovery of the Balibo Five's grave came about during the visit of the widow of Greg Shackleton, Shirly, to Jakarta.

She was asked to appear at the State Administrative Court (PTUN) last month as a witness for the Legal Aid Press (LBH Pers) and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) against the Film Censorship Board (LSF) that banned the screening of the film, Balibo Five, during the annual Jakarta Film Festival early this year.

The Balibo Five journalists and their "forgotten" sixth member may have been long dead, but their sacrifice to uncover the truth has become great inspiration to many young Indonesian journalists.

It is now up to the Indonesian government to remove any legal barriers that may block efforts to identify the ashes and remains of the Balibo Five and shed light on the grave at Tanah Kusir cemetery.

[The writer is a journalist.]