Jude Conway – The hardships endured by the East Timorese are detailed in a memoir by Dr Vacy Vlazna, both a story of courage and a political analysis. Dr Jude Conway reviews "East Timor Reveille for Courage: Recollections of an Australian Human Rights Activist, 1998-2001".
Dr Vacy Vlazna's paean to the unflinching courage of the East Timorese while gaining their freedom from the brutal occupation by the Indonesian military; and to the courage of Timor's international friends and Vlazna herself, a Sydney activist, is an account of "history in the making".
Many previous accounts of the Timorese struggle for independence, from the invasion in 1975 to the successful United Nations (UN) sponsored referendum for independence in 1999, have focused on the leading political actors, whereas Vlazna opens a portal to the experiences of grassroots Timorese. A timely read in 2024, the 25th anniversary of the referendum.
Although living in Darwin, I met Vacy through Timor activist channels in the 1990s and I visited and lived in East Timor (now Timor-Leste) over a similar period of time as she did. My first quick reading of "Reveille For Courage" took me back to the most inspirational and terrifying times of the Timorese referendum and its aftermath. It made me laugh, brought tears to my eyes, brought back memories I had forgotten and described events I never knew.
My second close reading savoured Vlazna's perceptive analogies and lyricism, her knowledge of Timorese customs and her sensitivity to "the situation" – the oppressive presence of the Indonesian military.
The memoir is punctuated with black marks against the Australian Government's moral sell-out of the East Timorese by its tacit support of the Indonesian invasion and occupation, starting with PM Gough Whitlam's silence on 'the sacrificial altar of politics and trade', after the Indonesian military murder of five Australia-based journalists at Balibo in October 1975 and Foreign Minister Gareth Evans signing the Timor Gap Treaty to gain access to oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea in 1989.
On her many trips to Timor, Vlazna learnt about the atrocities committed upon family members of her Timorese acquaintances: imprisonments, beatings, killings.
She was overawed by:
'...the profoundly understood code of resistance among Timorese that was well outside our comprehension; everyone who took up the struggle knew full well they had written their own death sentence.'
Vlazna delved into life behind 'the political curtain'. Because of Portuguese colonisation, Timor-Leste was a predominately Catholic country and after the invasion, the church was the only place that Timorese could gather in large numbers. Reveille chronicles the courage of many Catholic nuns and priests in the clandestine struggle.
The catalyst for the referendum was the Asian economic crisis in 1997, which triggered the fall of President Suharto in Indonesia. This provided a window of opportunity when the new President, BJ Habibie, impulsively agreed that the Timorese could choose autonomy or independence, and the UN decided to hold a referendum in August 1999.
Readers will experience 'the heights and horrors of Timor's pivotal historic time' as the 'Dili spring' was 'blasted by a blizzard of intimidation and murder'.
On becoming a UN staff member in the lead-up to the referendum, Vlazna felt like 'Alice falling down a hole into Muddleland'. Her commentary on the worth (or uselessness) of her fellow UN personnel is no-holds-barred. 'Little wonder many internationals were criticised by the Timorese as having no understanding of Timor' in an organisation 'opulent with incompetence'.
When it comes to elections, Timor-Leste and its system of voting has given its citizens a reason to feel excited about democracy.
One conundrum was why the UN allowed the Indonesian police and military to provide security for the referendum when, in actuality, they provided no security against the 'brazen militia activity' of shootings and killings. She is nearby when a young Timorese was shot in the head and died in a UN office. In this violent atmosphere, one of the local staff worried about foreign staff getting killed because they were 'far away from their families'. 'We Timorese are used to dying,' he said.
On referendum day, Vlazna handled a bag of votes soaked with the blood of a local UN staff member, killed while carrying the bag to a UN vehicle. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan's announcement a week later of over 78 per cent voting for independence should have been 'the happiest day' in Timorese lives but was permeated with a 'feverish fear of reprisals'. Everyone was trying to find shelter as 'burning and gun firing accelerates... M16s with Tourettes'.
After firing into a Timorese refugee compound alongside the UN compound, Timorese threw 'their babies over the barbed wire topped wall' to safety, forcing the UN to allow the refugees to enter. The UN in New York ordered that the international staff had to evacuate to Darwin without the local staff and refugees. The internationals refused to leave. New York relented and the Timorese in the compound were evacuated as well.
Like many others, Vlazna felt the shame of leaving when the Timorese who were left behind, had 'trusted the UN' and 'were betrayed'. She recalls an American Civpol saying the UN exodus was 'a sure-fire death warrant'. And so it was.
After the UN returned in November 1999 to operate a transitional administration, Vlazna was employed as a tertiary education officer. She saw how, despite the gutting of Dili by the Indonesian military, the Timorese were 'resilient – like grass pushing through asphalt'. Good relations between the UN and the Timorese had taken 'a nose dive': there were frequent robberies of rich foreigners and the 'near cessation of the once ubiquitous waves and smiles as internationals sped through the villages'.
UN vehicles caused 67 accidents in three months and in a mountainous country where most people walked to their destinations, UN staff were 'forbidden to give lifts to non-UN people'. Vlazna enjoyed breaking that rule.
Later, Vlazna worked in civic education, the 'latest idiocy from the UN' allowing 'pro-integration parties to share political platforms in a country of traumatised citizens'. The project ground to a halt, so Vlazna transferred to the National Council, 'a political circus' with Timorese members on a 'learning roller coaster'.
Timorese leaders wanted the UN to leave but Vlazna was not alone in thinking that they should stay on to develop the capacity of the Timorese for building a new nation and because many Timorese remained fearful that Indonesian violence would reappear when they left. That position was her last contribution to the fledgling nation.
Reveille is not an academic tome, there are no references or an index and Vlazna makes the odd mistake. For example, the Timorese guerrillas did not kill 10,000 Indonesian soldiers, the estimate is 2,100. And the InterFET liberation force arrived in Timor-Leste on 20 September 1999, not 17 September. There are no photographs in the memoir, but I took a photo of Vacy the activist.
More importantly, Vlazna's contrary feelings about the duplicity of the Australian Government, the UN operations and the challenges of living in a dangerous, humid, impoverished, mountainous country are wittily described, and the courage of the Timorese warms the reader of this detail-packed memoir, highlighted time and again through anecdotal evidence.
The whole complex situation is brought to life by Vacy Vlazna's love of words and knowledge of literature and current affairs, in a memoir that will appeal to people who have a close knowledge of Timor-Leste and those who know little about its history. I highly recommend East Timor: Reveille For Courage.
[Dr Jude Conway is a historian who was involved in the international solidarity movement for East Timorese self-determination.]