The end of the road

I never originally set out to do a blog. It was suggested to me by a couple of people with whom I had been in correspondence, so I decided to give it a go. I'm not a journalist, and consider 'freelance' a dirty word, originally being used to mean a mercenary. Nor am I a columnist, as I describe columnists as people who speak for those who cannot think for themselves, and syndicated columnists as people who write for newspapers that can't write for themselves.

However, I have felt duty bound to vent my spleen on various issues to do with East Timor, namely incompetence and maladministration, or ignorance and prejudice, be it Australian, Indonesian, or Portuguese. Funnily enough, the people I have seemed to upset the most are the Portuguese, despite the fact that I speak their language and have sought to defend them in the past.

Nevertheless, if I had got to work for the Foreign Ministry in Dili, I would have happily signed a gagging clause in return for getting paid. In fact, I did, after my contact got upset by the tone of some of my posts, although I would have stopped posting anyway, or at least exercised maximum discretion.

Still, I make no apology for wishing Gough Whitlam, Australia's former Prime Minister, dead at the age of 91. Leaving aside the fact that he was (and still is) a despicable egomaniac, I think he should count himself lucky that he's still alive at that age - my mother died at 31.

Besides, the wild goose chase that I was prepared to undergo in order to work in Dili, has been an insight into how cripplingly inefficient the government bureaucracy is. People are afraid of spending money, because they think it might be wasted, but they should be more afraid of wasting time. That's as much an indictment of the AMP government as it was of the Fretilin one, and I should know: it was the incoming AMP Foreign Minister who decided to put recruitment on hold, and made me give up on any hopes of getting a job there.

Even by the standards of the country's small budget, we were talking chicken feed - less than US$20000. Hardly the kind of money that would make me one of what I call WILCs - Wankers In Land Cruisers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a killjoy or hairshirt who thinks that expatriates should live in abject poverty in their host countries, but if people are prepared to do the same job for less money (I don't have children or a mortgage) then they should be seen as strong candidates. After all, migrant workers in the UK have an advantage over local ones because they are either single or leave their families at home in countries where the cost of living is much lower, and where small amounts of money will go a much longer way. Countries like Poland, Brazil, and, er, East Timor.

Last year a book came out by someone called Andrew Keen called The Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing Our Culture, which was a denunciation of blogs, Wikipedia, YouTube, you name it, and how these were all a threat to professionally produced material. However, I don't think that they are, and even if there were no Internet, there would still be video and music piracy and vanity publishing. (Does anyone think that pirated DVDs in Dili were made by using Timor Telecom for downloading? Surely downloading a single MP3 would use up all available bandwidth!)

I took a swipe at the Southeast Asian Times last year, not because it was a bad idea, but that it was badly done. Just because you are an amateur, doesn't mean you have to be amateurish, and if you have limited resources or skills, you might as well have a blog rather than maintain an online newspaper.

Yet while the idea of professionals having more control over content on the internet might work in countries with developed media, it would be a disaster for places like East Timor, where, with 'professionals' like theirs, they don't need amateurs. It would be a threat to the existence of blogs like Forum Haksesuk, the output of which is no worse, and often better than, that of Suara Timor Lorosae or Jornal Nacional, never mind RTTL, which has no web presence at all.

So, for East Timor's sake, blog on!

Another anniversary

I've been preoccupied these past few weeks with other things, not least the acquisition of a new computer, hence the lack of activity here.

Today is the eighth anniversary of the return of Macau to China after four centuries of Portuguese rule, although had the government in Lisbon had its way, it would have happened a lot earlier than 1999. In fact, it was because of the Chinese that the Portuguese remained in Macau as long as they did. Yes, they wanted Macau (and Hong Kong) returned to the motherland, but not before conditions were ripe.

By contrast, East Timor never belonged to Indonesia, not least as there was originally no nation state called Indonesia to which it could have belonged, so the description of East Timor as an "enclave", along the lines of Macau (or even Goa) is absurd. Even without the Portuguese legacy, the East Timorese might well be more distinct from their Indonesian neighbours than the Macau Chinese are from their fellow Cantonese in Hong Kong or southern mainland China, given that the island is the meeting place of the Austronesian and Melanesian peoples.

Macau is arguably Portugal's most successful former colony, although that is probably in spite of the Portuguese legacy rather than because of it. Portuguese remains an official language in the Macau Special Administrative Region, but it is probably less widely spoken there than in East Timor, where at least people might have a passive understanding because of the Portuguese influence on Tetum.

There is only one Portuguese-medium school in Macau, with few Chinese-medium ones teaching Portuguese at all. As a result, the use of Portuguese is not the source of resentment that it is in East Timor, given that the emphasis is on coexistence rather than compulsion. Yet even in Hong Kong, only 40 per cent of people spoke English at the time when the British left, and many schools are switching from English as the medium of instruction to Chinese. English may be the language of global buiness, but it still faces stiff competition from Putonghua or Mandarin Chinese.

Nevertheless, Macau does not regard the Portuguese as an embarrassment, even as new casinos spring up, competing with old colonial buildings for space. It is no coincidence that Macau's new airline is called Viva Macau, alluding to the region's "500-year blend of Portuguese-Chinese heritage", according to its website. Similarly, mainland China, unlike the rest of Asia, sees the Portuguese language as more than a quaint or anachronistic relic, but as a way of forging commercial ties with South America and Africa. There are no flights to Lisbon from mainland China (or even Macau) but there are flights to São Paulo and Luanda. (The flights to São Paulo go via Madrid!)

If the Portuguese language survives in Macau, it will be in spite of Portugal, not because of it. As for East Timor, the jury's still out on that one.

Remember, remember

Unlike the UK, where non-religious public holidays are just called Bank Holidays, in other countries, they commemorate historical events. Post-apartheid South Africa has Soweto Day on 16th June, and today in East Timor it's Santa Cruz Day, which commemorates the 1991 massacre.

In August 1991, I had plans to go to East Timor, with a video camera, no less. Yes, I was aware of what had happened to the Balibo Five and Roger East, but I was still silly enough to want to try something similar, even though I would have been completely out of my depth. I don't think they were "foolhardy" (as Gough Whitlam did) but I definitely was. The previous October, Australian lawyer Robert Domm had managed to record an interview with Xanana Gusmão, but that took a great deal of prepapration and risk. I couldn't get a flight to Dili from Singapore, or even Kupang, so instead, my first acquaintances with East Timorese were in Darwin and Sydney.

The adage that if it wasn't on television, it didn't happen certainly rang true for East Timor, which had been sealed off from the world for fourteen years. However, after 12th November, that changed, thanks to cameraman Max Stahl, who videotaped Indonesian troops opening fire on mourners at the Santa Cruz cemetery.

There were other foreigners there, including American journalists Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn, who was badly injured by an Indonesian rifle butt. It was because they were Americans that their lives were spared. When Indonesian soldiers shouted "Australian, Australian!" they showed their US passports, which not only saved them from the same fate as the other journalists in 1975, but also saved Jakarta the embarrassment of having to account for the deaths of Americans.

Kamal Bamadhaj wasn't so lucky: he was a New Zealander, and only half white (his father being Malaysian). He was shot dead as he was walking back from the cemetery. He managed to flag down a Red Cross jeep, waving his New Zealand passport, but lost consciousness while the jeep was held up in a roadblock.

I met an East Timorese in the UK who met Kamal before his death. He warned Kamal to be careful, as the Indonesians might mistake him for an East Timorese. Poignantly, Kamal asked him why his life was worth more than a local one.

I have great respect for Max Stahl's work, which is why I find it puzzling and distasteful as to why he has been involved with David Bradbury's film project, Beyond Paradise, which is trashy dumbed-down sexed-up fiction. Read this and puke:

This feature film, to be directed by twice Academy Award nominated filmmaker David Bradbury, is a love story set in a warzone - the tiny island of Timor

It's not tiny. If Timor is tiny, what does that make Singapore.

to the north of Australia.

HOPE was just a child in 1975 when her journalist father disappeared, presumed dead while on assignment in Timor on the eve of its invasion by Indonesia.

None of the five men killed in Balibo had daughters - this is just an excuse for a topless scene on the beach. Why not drop the whole Timor thing and just do soft porn?

Now, it's 1991 and Hope is a 29-year old single mum and a not-so-good singer in a thrash band that's going nowhere fast.

Rather like David Bradbury is a not-so-good film producer with an idea for a film that deserves to go nowhere.

When the band finishes its last gig in Bali, Hope ducks across to neighbouring Timor.... On board the plane to Dili is PAUL, a mid forties freelance English cameraman/journalist who despairs about the human condition

Is 'Paul' yet another of Max Stahl's many pseudonyms, like 'Dean Stoecker', who had an equally ghastly idea for a feature film about East Timor called Ming? Max, Dean, Paul, whoever you are, I despair about your dismissive attitude towards docudramas. Why not do a feature film about Kamal Bamadhaj?

but believes that, just maybe, an image he captures with his camera might turn the tide of events for the better. Also on board the plane is 35 year old COLONEL TAFIK, nicknamed Geronimo, who is drop dead handsome.

Cue for schmaltzy music, this is a lurve story...

As Hope attempts to discover what happened to her father, she becomes involved in a relationship triangle with the charming Geronimo and Paul.

Oh, great, a menage à trois. What next, an orgy?

Meanwhile, events in Dili slide inexorably towards the murder of a Timorese student friend.

SEBASTIO's [sic] funeral and the subsequent protest demonstration by the Timorese, leads to the massacre of hundreds of innocents by the Indonesian army, the infamous Dili massacre. Hope is drawn into this web of intrique [sic] and forced to take a stand. An unexpected twist at the end will defy even the most seasoned cinema buff's guess as to what will happen!

I don't want to know. To quote Thomas Kenneally, author of Schindler's List (yet again) fiction debases the record.