Absctract
The national historical account of the East Timorese people struggling against foreign rule during the long years of Portuguese colonialism (1769–1975) and Indonesian occupation (1975–1999) has been dominated by male heroes engaged in armed resistance and in clandestine networks, with only a few exceptions. There has been scant research into everyday life under colonial rule and occupation, especially women’s lives and their roles, nor has there been any substantive analysis on how colonialism and occupation impacted women’s daily lives.
This paper shares the results of an oral history research project that managed to record women’s daily lives in rural areas and the capital during the periods of Portuguese late-colonialism (1950–1975) and Indonesian occupation (1975–1999) in the districts of Bobonaro, Dili, Ermera, Lospalos, and Suai. This was a research project carried out by a team of Timor-Leste-based researchers from the Commission of Research and History Production of the Timorese Women (CPEHMT) and the Popular Organization of the Timorese Women (OPMT), which aimed at ‘documenting the experience of women who lived through the Indonesian occupation’ and resulted in interviewing nearly 800 people.
The histories told by these women do not carry the self-identification of ‘heroic actions’ in the sense that is attributed in contemporary Timor-Leste. The research shows that women from all social classes and occupations were engaged in essential roles that sustained their families and their communities’ socio-economic lives, extending from Portuguese colonial times through independence.
Introduction
The topic, Everyday lives and resistance of East Timorese women under colonialism and occupation, is highly relevant because the male perspective still dominates research and narratives. Being a male writer Timorese women’s histories can lead to bias and other difficulties; I cannot completely avoid my subjectivity and the male viewpoint. However, because only a few Timorese were involved in this research, I am presenting this as one of the researchers.
The research was initiated by the Popular Organization of East Timorese Women (Organização Popular da Mulher Timor, OPMT), under the leadership of General Secretary Merita Alves, which founded the Commission for Research and Elaboration of the History of Timorese Women’s Struggle (Comissão de Pesquisa e Elaboração da História da Luta Mulher de Timor, CPEHLMT) in 2011. The goal was to write a book about women’s participation in struggles against the Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999. In fact, it was methodologically challenging to reconstruct the facts with a coherent interpretation into a book comprised of thirteen chapters, using the broad temporal and spatial scope to provide various thematic divisions. The Commission had limited resources, making it impossible to analyze all of the interviews and verify all facts included by cross-checking with other documents. Also, some of the writers were not involved from the beginning of the research, which created a challenge to ensure the same perspective among different writers.[1]
The research used oral history methodology and included interviews with more than 800 people, with the majority of interviews being with women. Both women and men were involved as interviewers, transcribes, and administrators. The OPMT used its network to identify members during the period of resistance. However, due to various obstacles and limitations, there are still many women who have not been interviewed.
Interviews were conducted with people who ranged the gamut from elites who mostly lived in the capital of Dili to ordinary people who mostly lived in remote areas. Interviews focused on the lives of each person from their early age, expanding to their involvement in historic events during the Indonesian occupation period until 1999. While interviews were largely with people as individuals, there were several occasions where several people were interviewed in succession or together in a group interview to better reflect the collective memory about an event.
Digging into the topic of women’s history on the island of Timor and particularly the eastern side, which is now the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, one must carefully review the past. In the 13th century, the production of sandalwood put the small island of Timor on the map and attracted the Portuguese, who eventually came in the 16th century. A key insight from the original narratives written by the Portuguese about Timor showed that most areas in Timor were led by queens, who had the most authority; however, this collapsed because of the colonizers’ preference for and elevation of kings (male).[2]
The global dynamics of the 20th century, spanning the colonial period through the Cold War, affected the Timorese people, who were already living in strained conditions. Essentially, the history of Timor-Leste in the 20th century was marked by violence and bloody conflicts brought by and fought against colonizers and invading nations (Portugal, Japan, Allied Forces led by Australia, Indonesia).
Before we can focus on the lives of women, let me talk about the significant period when a lot of Timorese were killed. In 1912, the first big revolt against the Portuguese was from the Kingdom of Manufahi; between 15,000 and 20,000, or 5% of the total population at the time, were killed. During World War II, Australia, Japan, and the Netherlands fought battles against each other in Timor-Leste, and more than 60,000 Timorese people were killed (nearly 14 percent of the pre-war population).[3] 30 years after this, the Carnation Revolution in Portugal sparked a civil war in Timor-Leste as the Portuguese administration began to withdraw. This left Timor-Leste vulnerable to the invasion and occupation by Indonesia in 1975, which lasted until 1999 and killed an estimated 200,000 Timorese people, decimating 1/3 of the total population.[4]
Few works have so far focused on telling East Timorese women’s histories. Michele Turner’s Telling (1992), whose historical reconstruction of Timor-Leste centers on common people during the occupation of Japan and Indonesia, also uses oral history to convey the lives of women. Sally-Anne Watson’s Buibere: Voices of Timorese (1999) documents women’s testimonies during a conference in Dili in 1998. Irena Cristalis and Catherine Scott’s Independent Women’s Activism in East Timor (2005) covers the period during and after the Indonesian occupation. Jude Conway’s Step by Step: Women of East Timor, Stories of Resistance and Survival (2010), is a compilation giving the opportunity for thirteen outspoken East Timorese women to tell their life stories: what it was like living in a Portuguese colony; how they were affected by the Indonesian invasion; what day-to-day life was like under the occupation or in the diaspora; how they contributed to the resistance; and how they have adapted to the stark contrast of independence.
Teresa da Cunha’s research has emphasized the roles and functions of East Timorese women during and after the war that took place in East Timor between 1975 and 1999, highlighting a feminist and postcolonial critique.[5] Hannah Loney’s In Women’s Words: Violence and Everyday Life during the Indonesian Occupation of East Timor, 1975–1999, (2018) draws primarily upon oral history interviews, presenting a woman-centered history of the Indonesian occupation. It reveals the pervasiveness of violence, as well as its gendered and gendering dynamics, within social and cultural “everyday” life in occupied East Timor. The National Truth, Reconciliation, and Reception Commission Chega! The report is also rich with testimonials from Timorese women about human rights violations during the Indonesian occupation.
These stories of women’s resistance and survival through extreme hardship provide us with insights into women’s lives that can contribute to a world historiography of women’s roles and human experiences during war and the struggle for peace. In this context, it’s not possible to generalize Timorese women’s history because each woman’s history is unique. The stories below provide a sample of stories gathered from the interviews conducted between 2011 and 2017. I have tried to choose these stories randomly and without prejudice, while representing the diversity of individual experiences and including women from various municipalities and socio-economic profiles.
Rikabete[6]
Rikabete was born in 1935 in Suai, a town close to the Indonesian border. Rikabete worked as a nurse during Portuguese colonial rule, and she lost her husband during the Indonesian occupation. She was a child when World War II ended, which meant that she faced significant challenges, including accessing education. There were no teachers, and many buildings were in ruins. Most women didn’t continue their schooling beyond the elementary level. Rikabete asked for help from a Catholic bishop to continue her study. Opportunities for girls to get an education were only available through Catholic missions, specifically orders of nuns. Girls had to live in dormitories, and in addition to their standard school lessons, they also learned other skills like how to sew clothes. Rikabete stayed with the Dominican Congregation in Ermera for 10 years.
After graduating, Rikabete started teaching at a primary school. She decided to resign because of the extremely low salary and to instead continue her education. She went on to study nursing for three years. At that time, there were only 2 female and 3 male students, and all of them were mestiço (mixed race, one Timorese and one Portuguese parent). During her studies, Rikabete met her husband, who was the first Timorese chief nurse in the 1960s. They had eight children together.
Rikabete was placed in the city of Los Palos as a maternity nurse; however, she was soon entrusted to work as a midwife. Rikabete often attended births in rural areas and was one of only four nurses who were working at the time in Lospalos. There was no laboratory for diagnostics, so patients had to go to the referral hospital in Baucau or Dili. According to Rikabete, the predominant health issue was a skin problem that caused red and blotchy skin, similar to parasitic infections or eczema. Despite the availability of medical treatments, most people preferred treatment with traditional medicine rather than going to the hospital.
In April 1976, her daily life began changing: “Aircrafts would fly above; warships appeared in the sea; and military trucks dominated the road. The sound of gunshots firing back and forth was heard everywhere in Lospalos. We panicked, gathered our things together, and fled to the mountains on a horse”. After a few months of sheltering in Mount Matebian, the ongoing aerial bombardment and lack of food forced them to surrender and return to Lospalos. Indonesian forces found out that her husband was an important resistance leader and took him to be interrogated. One of their sons went to KODIM’s[7] interrogation site in Lospalos to see what they might do to his father and returned home only once the soldiers had calmed down.
At 2 o’clock in the morning, her husband returned home. “What have they done to you?”, Rikabete asked. “They just interrogated me. I told them what I knew, I didn’t make anything up. They demanded I go back at 5 o’clock tomorrow afternoon for further interrogation.” The next morning, her husband spent time with his youngest daughter. Just before dusk, at 5 o’clock, he called their children together to do a rosary prayer because he had a bad feeling that he wouldn’t be coming back home. As if it were his last day, he gave Rikabete and his children a parting kiss on their foreheads. To his wife, he said, “Rikabete, I’m leaving. I don’t know if I’ll be back or not. Look after our children; send them to school; don’t let them get married too early; let them get a diploma and bread in their hands before getting married.” Before he left, Rikabete said to him, “You’re going now, but you’ll be back home.” From that moment on, her husband was lost to her.
Rikabete decided to move to Dili, where she raised her children and continued to be part of the struggle for independence. Being a nurse, she wasn’t directly involved in clandestine activities, but she helped her son, who was the founder of a youth organization that helped with the logistics of getting critical supplies to the guerrilla fighters, such as medicine, clothes, and food.
Ursula[8]
Born in Ermera in 1941, Ursula graduated from the 4th grade during the Portuguese occupation. She spoke of how, during the Japanese occupation, Timorese people were tortured, including one of her older brothers, and how parents were terrified of leaving their daughters alone because of the risk that Japanese soldiers would rape them and they would become pregnant.[9]
Her village was full of coffee plantations, and when it was time to harvest, they organized women from other areas to go and pick the coffee along with the men. In contrast to the men, women were treated as servants (asuliar) and only received food for their work. They weren’t paid a cent for the three months they toiled. Almost all the coffee was sold to Chinese traders.
Ursula was from a family of the ‘nobility’, which meant that instead of working the coffee plantations, she was able to study at a Dominican congregation college from 1953 onwards. It was fascinating to discover that Rikabete, from the previous story, was one of her teachers!
Classes started at 8 in the morning and went until 4 o’clock in the afternoon; they had to bring their own food for lunch. They learned Portuguese, how to count, and Catholic doctrine. Boys and girls were separated; if any girl was caught mixing with the boys, she would be kicked out of the school. Their skirts had to be below the knee, and their shirts had to cover their shoulders.
The school introduced a regulation that the girls could not get married before turning 18 years old and that their parents had to accept the man. Female students could be punished by being forced to stand under the hot, blazing sun for one to two hours if they got caught by the nuns having a relationship with a boy.
All the girls had to stay at home, and they had to get permission from their parents before going to any parties. The girls were afraid of the Portuguese military because they could be taken by force and made to serve as a nona (prostitutes). “This is why there are a lot of Portuguese descendants in Timor-Leste”, said Ursula. Only Portuguese who worked and lived permanently in Timor would ask the girl’s parents directly to marry their daughters.
In 1975 and 1976, she was the Fretilin delegate for Ermera. They surrendered after a short time, and a lot of women became prisoners in the Indonesian military company for a month. Ursula’s husband remained in the mountains, and, as happened to many other women in this situation, Ursula was forced to marry an Indonesian soldier. As if that was not bad enough, because their husbands were still fighting as guerrillas in the mountains, whenever there were attacks from Fretilin, Ursula, and the other women whose husbands were still in the mountains, they would be taken and interrogated.
Elisa Amaral
She was raised on a coffee plantation, so her parents focused on teaching her skills related to farming coffee. At the time, the Portuguese colonial governor ordered that all men had to pay taxes per capita.[10] Her father worked as a moradór (servant) for the Portuguese administration. Elisa spent most of her time with her mother, trying to make money through any means possible to help pay her father’s taxes.
One of her father’s roles was working security at the Portuguese Administrator’s residence in Aileu, turning on the lights and guarding the house through the night. Every single night, Elisa brought her father food packed inside hollow bamboo. She was alone because her siblings had passed away; if she got bored or fed up, she’d ask her relatives to help her.
One of the ways Elisa earned money was through trading coffee. She would load up a horse with coffee and walk with it from her village to Aileu. If she wasn’t able to get a horse, then she would stack the coffee on her head and carry it herself, navigating rough, rocky paths and crossing rivers. The journey took half a day, so setting off in the early morning, she would arrive at midday to sell the coffee to Chinese traders. Prior to selling, she had to work hard day by day to prepare the coffee—picking the beans and drying them. She was lucky that an uncle of hers helped her out financially, which meant that she was able to pay her father’s tax debt to the Portuguese administration.
Elisa was also selling fruit and vegetables to earn money. She planted the vegetables herself, fertilized them with horse manure, and watered them every day. During the mandarin season, she picked the fruit and took it to sell in Dili, a 25-kilometer journey from her village. They traveled in groups of 4 to 5 people, returning home in the late afternoon. They would make this trip four times a week.
There was nothing easy about their journey. They were frightened of being kidnapped by what was called Ahu, or what Elisa would call a ninja. All of them believed that “if you were a young woman traveling alone, you could easily be attacked and seized. That was why we always walked in a group with a male accompanying us”.
Her grandpa forced her to work instead of getting an education. “My grandpa was not a good person; he didn’t allow me to get a proper education. He would say, ‘If you go to school, then who will look after me?’ My brother was also treated in the same way. It wasn’t the same then as it is nowadays”.
When Timor-Leste was invaded by Indonesia in 1975, Elisa was 12 years old. Along with her community, she fled to the mountains of Aileu. Elisa, with some other women, created a ‘rancho’, or base camp, to help look after the guerrillas by cleaning, sewing, and washing their military uniforms. They planted some root vegetables like corn, cassava, and potatoes in communal fields. Once they harvested them, they shared the vegetables with the guerrillas and took a little bit for their families. They also collected wild foods, some of which were bitter or poisonous. It took a long time to process and prepare them so that they were safe for eating. Elisa was involved in a collective that involved her working once a week, weaving baskets and processing coffee: picking, drying, pounding to remove the skins, frying or roasting and finally grinding. Their productive work was their way of contributing to the resistance against the armed Indonesian invasion.
Another challenge for Elisa was looking after her mother, who had a serious leg wound. She would attend to the wound as well as gather and prepare food for her. Indonesian military planes would regularly bomb the area, and each day more and more people would run to caves to hide and seek shelter. Elisa, together with 4 to 5 other women, would keep watch during the day. They’d keep an eye on people’s movements, looking out for enemies. Some of them had arrows that they could throw to protect themselves. During quiet times, Elisa would join a literacy class, using charcoal and bamboo to practice writing. Eventually she had to stop because her hand was hurting and it would constantly shake when she tried to write.
Elisa had to face the bitter reality of life hiding in the mountains as her mother’s life started to slip away from a black snake bite. She had scratched the itchy bite until it became swollen and infected. When the Indonesian military launched a large-scale attack, her mother couldn’t run away and had to be left lying on the ground in the mountains. She remained there, unburied. Her elder brother was shot one night and suffered the same fate.
The attack forced them to flee suddenly, and Elisa lost contact with her relatives. She was with her maternal grandmother, who soon passed away. Elisa wrapped her grandmother’s body in a woven mat and dug a shallow grave with a long metal bar that she had. The attacks were relentless; they were constantly chased and besieged, eventually completely surrounded by the Indonesian military. Elisa started to get sick and could no longer run. Along with the others, Elisa was captured and interrogated about the movements of resistance fighters. She was lucky that, unlike many other women, she was not tortured. She became a witness to her male relative’s punishment and torture at the hands of the Indonesian military inside the detention center.
Bikara[11]
Bikara was born in 1964, and she was 10 years old when Indonesian paratroopers descended on Lospalos in 1975, causing her life to change completely. Orders were issued to evacuate to Mount Matebian so that they would not fall under enemy control.
During the Portuguese colonization, Bikara was only able to complete the second grade at school; she forgot everything she learned. She used her talents in singing and theater to organize groups of children in their mountain hideouts. They could not stay long on Mount Matebian. Helicopters regularly circled them, observing them from the sky. Aircraft bombarded them with artillery fire, causing rocks to explode and fragment, blocking the exits from the caves in which resistance fighters were hiding. The best thing to do during aerial fire was to just lie down flat on the ground.
When they were surrounded and the aerial bombardment became heavier, people had to take off in all directions. Bikara’s family was forced to leave their grandmother behind as she could not walk. Until this day, there is no grave to mark her death. To get down from the mountain, they had to use two ropes wound together to climb down. All her family climbed down, but Bikara could not do it because she was too small and only a young girl. She had to wait for other members of the family to join her. When they did, they made a makeshift ladder with bamboo. By the time she got down, her own family had fled from the daily artillery assaults.
The family that helped her eventually decided to surrender to the Indonesian military, so Bikara decided to join the guerrilla fighters. Together with other women and men, she helped gather and prepare food, and she sewed the resistance emblem onto uniforms. Throughout this horrid time, they tried to survive by eating wild leaves and grasses. At first, this diet would cause blood in their urine; it took months for their bodies to adjust.
Hiding in the mountains, Bikara had to be on guard every day. When walking, she would have to conceal herself carefully, ensure no smoke from cooking fires could be visible, and keep a close eye on cooking materials so that she could grab them quickly if the enemy attacked.
It was here that she met her husband, a political aide-de-camp. They had three children together. Giving birth was extremely difficult, and her husband had to attend to her and cut the umbilical cord. In Timorese culture, the placenta and umbilical cord are hung from a tree, but they had to bury them instead, to make sure the enemy didn’t discover them.
When the baby cried, they had to cover its mouth so that the enemy wouldn’t hear. This put women at extreme risk, forcing some women to throw their children over the side of the mountain to save the larger group. Once her child was old enough to walk, she tried to find a family in the town to take care of her. Through clandestine networks, she found a home for her first child in Lospalos but because they didn’t look after the child well, the child eventually died.
Her second child was born in Soibada in 1987. She left the baby near the church with a note that said, “This child is Fataluku; if someone finds this, please hand my baby to the nuns or priests”.
When her third child was five years old, she placed him in the care of a pregnant woman who had decided to surrender in Viqueque. “When I and the baby’s father are dead, you can adopt him or her as your own. But if we’re still alive and things get better, we’ll come back and get him or her’.
Bikara had made the decision to find a secure place for their children while her husband was away, and he accepted her decision. “When things are peaceful, everyone can play with them happily. But in those trying times, I suffered and stressed a lot. Will we die together? Will our children die? It wasn’t manageable, so I had to let my children go”.
When she surrendered in 1992, she tried to find her children to get them back, but this was not easy. The in-laws of the woman who had taken her child to Viqueque did not want to give him back. She had to pay them a significant amount of money so that she could take her child back to Los Palos.
Conclusion
The OPMT project’s research succeeded in documenting stories that otherwise would be lost when the subjects are no longer in this world. This research provides a foundation for further research in the future, especially on themes such as the socio-economic status of women, biographies,[12] portraits, women’s movements, family histories, and the relationships between women and men, among other potential topic areas.[13] The recordings have their own strength, allowing the listeners to hear women’s true “voice”, and to understand the detailed aspects of their expression.
Despite the success of the project and conducting the research via oral history, there were many challenges when interviewing women about their histories, starting with limited human resources and issues with the methodology. For instance, because some of the interviewers lacked historical knowledge, the final result of the interviews was not always optimal. An additional challenge related to Timor-Leste’s diverse socio-linguistic reality: some interviews had to be conducted in Timorese national indigenous languages. In these cases, the interviewer needed to be able to use the correct language for the interview, and once completed, it had to be translated into Tetum during the transcription process.[14] The sensitivity of discussing episodes of sexual violence and other sensitive or controversial issues like murder, torture, and execution were challenges in that the interviews needed an attitude of empathy, not to be offended, and the ability to hear and record all of the testimony.
This narrative offers another perspective to help understand ordinary women’s lives during Portuguese colonization and the Indonesian occupation. The research to date has mostly focused on women resistance leaders; in contrast, the struggles of ordinary women have not been valued since Timor-Leste’s independence. Marisa Gonçalves (2016) states that injustice towards these women is further aggravated by the lack of recognition of their role in the struggle for Timor-Leste’s independence. While male veterans have been celebrated as heroes of the independence struggle and have benefited from political positions, jobs, and veteran pensions, the portrayed role of women has been relegated to victimization and martyrdom.[15] For this reason, the research described in this paper is especially important, and we need to continue the process of listening to, documenting, and honoring the stories of ordinary East Timorese women.
* I would like to thank Marisa Gonçalves, Pamela Sexton, Josefina Bakhita, Jony Cunha, Titiso Kour-Ara, Emily Morrisson, Dionísio Sávio, Nick Kettle and Mário Silva for their valuable input.
References
Álvarez. Eusébio.
2003. Princesa Mártir em Timor: Virgínia das Mercês Doutel Sarmento e Cardoso. Editorial A.O. Braga
CAVR.
2005. Chega! Relatório Final da Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste. Dili
Conway. Jude.
2010. Step by Step: Women of East Timor: Stories of Resistance and Survival, Charles Darwin University Press
Cristalis, Irena, and Catherine Scott
2005. The story of women’s activism in East Timor, London: Catholic Institute for International Relations
Cunha. Teresa.
2005. Depois da Guerra e Antes da Paz As Vozes das Timor Leste
2007. Sete Mulheres de Timor. Feto Timor na’in hitu. Santa M. de Feria. AJP.
2007. Vozes das mulheres Timor-Leste. Porto: Edições Afrontamento. Timor-Leste. e-cadernos. CES, Universidade de Coimbra
2012. Para além da ortodoxia nacionalista timorense: a estória de Bi-Murak. e-cadernos CES, Universidade de Coimbra
Gonçalves. Sandra Marisa M. Ramos
2016. Intergenerational perceptions of human rights in Timor-Leste: memory, kultura and modernity. Thesis. University of Wollongong
Gunn. Geoffrey C.
1999. 500 Tahun Timor Lorosa’e, Sa’he Institute for Liberation, and Nagasaky University
Guterres. Fátima.
2014. Timor: Paraíso Violentado. Lisboa. Lidel
Hägerdall. Hans.
2013. Cycles of Queenship on Timor: A Response to Douglas Kammen. Paris. Archipel
Kuntowijoyo.
2003. Metodologi Sejarah. Yogyakarta. Tiara Wacana
Matsuno. Akihisa.
2005. Luta ba Lia Loos no Justisa. Dili. Yayasan HAK and Koaligasaun Japonés sira ba Timor-Leste
Loney. Hannah.
2018. In Women’s Words: Violence and Everyday Life during the Indonesian Occupation of East Timor, 1975–1999. Portland, Oregon: Sussex Academic Press
Niner. Sara.
2013. ‘Bisoi: A Veteran of Timor-Leste’s Independence Movement’, in Women in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements, ed. by Susan Blackburn and Helen Ting, NUS Press
Taylor. John.
1995, ‘The Emergence of a Nationalist Movement in East Timor’, in East Timor at the Crossroads: The Forging of a Nation, ed. by Peter Carey and G. Carter Bentley. London: Cassell
Turner. Michele.
1992. Telling: East Timor, Personal Testimonies 1942-1992. University of New South Wales
Watson. Sally-Anne.
1999. Buibere: Voice of Timorese. Darwin
List of interviews
Elisa Amaral, Remexio (Aileu), June 13 2011.
Bikara, Sorulua (Lospalos), February, 2012.
Rikabete. Dili, August, 2013.
Ursula. Ermera, July 10 2012.
Footnote
[1] In 2015, the result of this research was presented in panels on display at the Timorese Resistance Archive and Museum (Arquivo e Museu da Resistência Timorense, AMRT).
[2] Hans Hägerdal, Cycles of Queenship in Timor: A Response to Douglas Kammen (2013) Paris. Archipel.
[3] John Taylor, ‘The Emergence of a Nationalist Movement in East Timor’, in East Timor at the Crossroads: The Forging of a Nation (1995), ed. by Peter Carey and G. Carter Bentley. London: Cassell, p. 32
[4] CAVR estimates that the minimum count for the number of conflict-related deaths during the period 1974–1999, is 102,800 and estimates 84,200 deaths due to hunger and illness. See Chega! Volume I. Relatório Final da Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste. (2005). Dili. p. 530
[5] Teresa Cunha. Depois da Guerra e Antes da Paz As Vozes das Timor Leste (2005); Sete Mulheres de Timor. Feto Timor na’in hitu (2007); Vozes das Mulheres de Timor-Leste (2007); Para além da ortodoxia nacionalista timorense: a estória de Bi-Murak, (2012)
[6] Rikabete is a ‘nom de guerre’, or clandestine code-name, a common way that Timorese hid their identity from Indonesian security forces.
[7] KODIM (Komando Distrik Militer/District Military Commands)
[8] Nom de Guerre, clandestine code-name
[9] Luta ba Lia Loos no Justisa by Akihisa Matsuno relates the experience of Timorese women as sex slaves of the Japanese military in Timor-Leste (1942–1945). (2005). Dili, Yayasan HAK and the Japanese Coalition for East Timor
[10] In 1906, on the recommendation of Portuguese Governor Celestino da Silva, the system of fintas that reached back to the first day of Portuguese contact was replaced with a capitation tax. See Geoffrey C. Gunn, 500 Tahun Timor Lorosa’e. Sa’he Institute for Liberation and Nagasaki University (1999), p. 259.
[11] Nom de Guerre
[12] Autobiographies and biographies about Timorese women are still lacking. There are some, such as Princesa Mártir em Timor: Virgínia das Mercês Doutel Sarmento e Cardoso, about Timorese women who became martyrs for the Catholic Church, written by Eusébio Álvarez (1951), reedited in 2003. The Autobiography of Fátima Guterres, Timor Paraíso violentado (2014), shares her childhood story through the Indonesian occupation. There is also Sara Niner’s Bisoi: A Childhood Veteran of Timor-Leste’s Independence Movement, about Bisoi’s childhood, life in the jungle, and post-independence politics, in Women in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements, edited by Susan Blackburn and Helen Ting. NUS Press (2013)
[13] See Kuntowijoyo, Metodologi Sejarah, Yogyakarta, Tiara Wacana (2003), p. 113–130.
[14] Another challenge was a lack of sufficient training in transcription, a skill that involves writing verbatim from often lenghty previously recorded interviews.
[15] Sandra Marisa M. Ramos Gonçalves. Intergenerational perceptions of human rights in Timor-Leste: memory, kultura and modernity. University of Wollongong (2016), p. 175.
Photo: Anonymous
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