1.             Journalistic Integrity

Indonesian East Timor

A television producer (I’ll call him Fred) called me from Sydney. He was coming to Timor to shoot material for a current affairs programme. I was interested but cautious.

‘Why did you contact me?’ I asked.

‘The Embassy gave us your name.’

‘Of course, what else,’ I said. I shook my head. I was under instructions to steer clear of journalists and here was the embassy putting some in touch with me. 

‘Let me check a few things.  Call me back in an hour or so,’ I promised.

I contacted my superiors (I use the term reluctantly) in Jakarta to ask if I should assist.

‘Help them, but not very much,’ my superior advised. ‘We know they are coming but we are concerned at any slant they might put into their story.’

‘Bias? Australian TV?’ I laughed. ‘Never!’

‘Help them, but not very much,’ he repeated.

Fred duly called back and I agreed to help.

‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked.

‘We want to travel as widely as possible.’

‘I have to go back to Suai and Ainaro and you can tag along if that suits,’ I offered. ‘I can’t act as driver or even provide a driver for you. You can come with us and that’s the best we can do.’

‘But we would like to be taken all over the place,’ persisted Fred.

‘Then hire a car and do that,’ I advised.

‘Limited budgets, my friend,’ said Fred. ‘We need a guide and the embassy said…’

I ignored the implication that I was running a free tour agency. ‘I doubt they promised my services.’

‘We would appreciate it if you could spare the time and resources to…’

‘I will take you to Suai and Ainaro. I will help where I can. I will provide one vehicle but it travels in convoy with us. I am sorry, but that is the best I can do.’

As required, I explained to my Indonesian minder, Colonel Soedarto, who Fred was (he already knew) and why I was taking him (he knew that too) and what they wanted to do. He nodded.

‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘The army is edgy.’

Fred and his team duly arrived. We spent a pleasant evening, leaving the following morning for Suai. We stopped en route to film all the roadblocks we passed. At Batu Gede the guards were twitching. I had never seen them so tense.

‘Can we film you?’ asked Fred.

The guards ordered him away. Fred pressed the point. One of the guards blurted out that if they spoke to them or helped them they would be killed.

‘Who is going to kill you?’ asked Fred.

‘The paramilitary,’ they replied.

‘The paramilitary? Aren’t you military?’

I intervened. ‘These men are not soldiers. They are villagers press ganged into service to man the barricades. Forget it and move on.’

Fred grinned. ‘Great. We got that wrapped up!’

I heard more angry shouts. One of the cameramen had started filming the old fort in the center of the tiny town. They ran towards the cameraman waving machetes and guns and yelling at him to stop.

The cameraman whirled his camera round to capture footage of the guards running towards him as he raced back to the car. He slammed the door and the driver sped off. I had no choice but to follow.

I was annoyed. For one thing, only a few kilometres away at Balibo, five journalists had been shot by the Indonesian military during the initial invasion by Indonesia of Portuguese Timor in 1977. Could history have repeated itself? For another thing, this deliberate provocation did not stand me in good stead for future travel.

 I had the confidence of most of the military, but this kind of incident would impact on that trust. Had Fred put the cameraman up to it? I would need to find out.

We stopped in the delightful West Timor hill town of Atambua for lunch. I turned to Fred.

‘You nearly got yourselves shot back there,’ I said. ‘There are limits to what you can do to get a good story.’

Fred smirked. ‘We got the footage we hoped for,’ he said. ‘Nothing you can do about it now.’

Fred’s smug satisfaction irked me. ‘Are you telling me that you placed all of us, including my staff, at risk simply for some footage? My god, man, are you crazy?’

Fred patted my hand. ‘Calm down, calm down,’ he said, ‘we survived and we will continue to do so. All we want you to do is to take us to more places like that.’

‘And all I want you to do,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound quiet with a subtle suggestion of menace, ‘is to respect the fact that we have to live here, that there are staff of mine here who do not need to create incidents with the potential to kill. Respect. Respect. Respect.’

Fred nodded. ‘It was too good a chance to miss. I do get your point, but I thought you were the one keen to get the message out.’

‘I am, but not at any cost. Get this point as well,’ I continued. ‘I will help you but I will never put my staff at risk again and I hold you accountable for that. You do what you like when you are not with us, but when you are with us, please play by our rules.’

After lunch we left for Suai. I was keen that we arrive as soon as we could in the hope that the crew could get footage of the thousands of refugees that continued to pour in to Suai.

We passed the border post back into East Timor without incident. Despite my anger at what they had done, I was keen that the story got out. In Suai, with the help of my staff, we arranged interviews with military, pre independence supporters, integrationists and even the guerrillas.

My staff had set up a meeting with the guerillas for five o’clock in the morning, out of town on the Bobonaro road. At eleven in the evening, Fred decided not to go.  After his ill-considered bravado at Batu Gede this was more than annoying. It was unforgivable. They had shown themselves to be persistent at Batu Gede. Why not on this occasion? My staff had put themselves at risk organising the necessarily clandestine meeting with the guerillas.

I said nothing, aware that next morning they needed to spend most of the day filming the refugees crowding into Suai. The numbers of refuges in Suai was rising. Some villagers were going home to tend their animals during daylight hours.

The main refugee camp in the church ground was still a quagmire of thousands of befuddled and worried humanity. By morning I had almost calmed down  about the cancelled meeting. Fred was apologetic, but pointed out that they had to be careful themselves.

‘Like you were in Batu Gede?’ I asked.

He smirked.

I made sure they had as much time as they needed to cover the refugee crisis. I still felt they would have benefited from an interview with the guerrillas, particularly as the guerillas themselves were keen. My point was that if the TV crew did not cover every angle, the program would be just what the Indonesian Government wanted: more of the same. They had interviewed the military, the militia, villagers and the refugees — with excellent shots of the privations they were suffering in the churchyard — and the priests and nuns. What about the Guerillas? Balance.

That evening, I discussed whether they would be happy to return via Casa and Ainaro as the refugees were from that area reported that the situation remained grim. The militia blocked the roads. I had called the ICRC in Dili. They had got through the previous day. If they could get through, it was worth a try. Fred agreed. They were on a tight schedule and needed to get back to Dili. So did I.

As a precaution, I arranged for a convoy of vehicles from our Suai office to accompany us to Ainaro and radioed ahead to ask my staff in Ainaro to meet us just past Casa. I wanted as much security as I could get.

Early next morning we left. I wanted them to see the site of the killings two days earlier in Galitas, about twenty kilometres from Suai. As we drove past abandoned Balinese temples, through deserted villages and in to Galitas, I played my favorite soprano Renata Tebaldi at full blast. Ilidio, my Suai office head, asked if I had any real music! I told him to shut up and become cultured!

‘If you keep playing that rubbish so loud the militia will run away. It is awful!’ he laughed and I grinned.

‘Do you want to borrow the CD for your own defenses?’

He refused my kind offer, laughing. 

Puccini was playing when we reached Galitas. Two of the villagers had returned to tend to their animals. I greeted them and explained what the TV team wanted to do. He nodded and bowed towards Fred and his team. Verdi’s glorious music spread out across Galitas. The cameramen set up their cameras. Fred, who was checking angles, shouted at me.

‘Turn that fucking music down! We need silence.’

Two steps forward, two back, with Fred. Cultural peasant, I thought! I turned the fucking opera music down. Fred yelled at me again.

‘Get these two bloody people out of sight round behind that hut.’

The two bloody people were intrigued by all the activity and watched fascinated as the team set up its cameras and equipment. We killed Verdi and hid the people. Fred primped his coiffured hair, looked at the camera and cleared his throat.

‘I am standing here in the deserted village of Galitas, scene of …’

Journalistic license? Appalled, I went back to the car and turned Tebaldi up, just a little, so that I could enjoy her Sono Andate from La Bohéme. Once the ‘on the spot reporting in the deserted village’ had been completed, with shots of destroyed houses, bullet holes, blood stains etc., I invited the crew to view a tree where one of the villagers had been found.

‘It’s only a few metres!’

They looked at the tall grass. They looked round them. They decided against it. I made clucking noises. Fred glared at me.

‘We got enough footage. We don’t need shots of bloody trees.’

I shrugged and got into my car. Renata had handed over to Placido Domingo whose Nessun Dorma rang out as we left the village in which, indeed, none would sleep that night.

When we reached Zumulai, empty apart from militia standing on all corners watching as we crawled past; I did not stop. Casa was the real worry. This was the headquarters of one of the most feared militia operating under Indonesian blessing within the province. I wanted to get past it to our rendezvous with my Ainaro staff. I did not want a repeat of the provocation of Batu Gede.

As we passed through Casa, we slowed to a crawl. Dozens of sullen and wide-eyed (many were drugged) militia lounged under the shade of the trees, their rifles at the ready. I waved. A small, almost imperceptible wave. There was no response. I breathed a sigh of relief as we left the outskirts of the town. Two kilometres past Casa we met up with the Ainaro team. Fred stormed out of his car and ran up to me.

‘Why did we not stop back there?’ he asked. ‘We should have interviewed the militia.’

‘I understand your position Fred,’ I said, ‘you have to understand mine. These men are the main scoundrels in this godforsaken place. These men are the killers.’

‘All the more reason to interview them,’ said Fred.

‘And the guerillas? Why not interview them?’

Fred looked at me as if wondering whether I would lose my temper again.

‘At least this way, I suppose you can be equally nonobjective,’ I said, wanting to comment on the deserted village line, but biting my tongue.

‘Your point being?’ asked Fred.

‘I mean that the main parties in the conflict will be out of your story,’ I replied. ‘More seriously though, I know these people. I am worried for the safety of my team. Casa is the headquarters of the most violent of the militia in East Timor. These are the bastards who have been on a killing rampage throughout the area. Sure, meet them, but meet those they fight as well.’

‘It seems that you are the one directing what goes into our story,’ said Fred.

‘If you want to go back you can walk, but we will wait here. I don’t want my staff placed in any danger.’

Fred looked at his watch.

‘It’s late, maybe we should move on,’ he said.

I said goodbye to my Suai staff and asked them to radio me when they were safely through Zumulai. We drove on to Ainaro. Just past the village of Manutasi we slowed down as we approached a militia post. Two boys ran away from the post and disappeared into the village. They were carrying guns. I stopped. The guards on duty welcomed us. They carried only swords and knives.

Fred got out of his car and looked at the devastated village. The newly opened clinic was ransacked. Six houses were burned to the ground from fighting a few days earlier.

‘Perhaps that is worth shooting?’ I suggested. ‘Evidence of militia attacks?’

Fred shook his head.

‘Who knows who did it,’ he said. ‘We won’t film it.’

My Ainaro team leader looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I just shrugged my shoulders.

‘Don’t ask me!’

We spent the evening in Ainaro reviewing the past days. On balance, I thought that they would put together a reasonable story, though I was still irked that they refused to meet the guerillas and it annoyed me that they used Galitas as a cover for a falsehood. Certainly, I had not cooperated in Casa, so I was prepared to back off my high horse a little.

But not too much.