| Subject: Bearing witness: John Martinkus
discusses ET documentaries
Metro Magazine, Spring, 2004
Bearing witness: John Martinkus discusses Carmela Baranowska's
documentaries on East Timor John Martinkus
In issue 138 of Metro there was a piece by Mary Debrett titled
'Reclaiming the Personal as Political', which looked at three
documentaries concerning the events in East Timor and that country's
transition to Independence. Reading the article depressed me a great deal.
At one point the author states that Tom Zubrycki's film about Jose
Ramos Horta 'provided a film about Timorese Independence at a time when
filming in Timor was impossibly dangerous, following the murders of five
members of an Australian television crew in Balibo'. This statement is not
only wrong but deeply offensive to the handful of journalists who were
working in East Timor in the period (the late nineties) that Debrett is
talking about. What the writer has done is dismiss the testimonies of
those on the ground in East Timor at the time, in favour of the work of
those who were basically too afraid to go there, to see for themselves and
record what was happening. Debrett is wrong when she writes that 'filming
in Timor was impossibly dangerous', as there was somebody there doing it
throughout 1999--Melbourne based filmmaker, Carmela Baranowska.
Baranowska produced two films in 1999 that covered the violent daily
life in East Timor, as the population was subjected to a wave of
Indonesian military-controlled terror to force them to support Indonesia,
and when that failed, to punish the Timorese for supporting Independence.
They were shown as two separate half hour documentaries on SBS Dateline
and later combined into a sixty-five minute film entitled Scenes from an
Occupation.
When Carmela first arrived in March of 1999 there was only five foreign
journalists permanently in Dill, myself included. The Australian Aid
workers in Dill had all fled in late February, following specific death
threats against Australians by the then emerging militia leaders. The
Portuguese media had fled following the beating and detention of one of
their TV crews by the Indonesian military. With the UN yet to arrive, the
Jakarta-based foreign media only came to Timor sporadically and the almost
daily shootings carried out by the Indonesian military, police and
militia, that were a feature of life in Dill, went on largely unrecorded.
Filming in Dill and East Timor then, was dangerous, but not as Debrett
says, 'impossibly so'; it just took someone with the commitment to the
story to ignore the obvious danger and work around it. This is exactly
what Baranowska did.
Working alone with a small camera she became more or less a part of the
scenery in Dill at a time when the people in the capital felt so abandoned
by the outside world that they welcomed any foreigner who was willing to
try to record some of what the Indonesian military were imposing on them.
It was her ability to blend in and work closely with the Timorese that
meant Baranowska recorded the most revealing scenes of that period. The
oft-used footage of militia leader Eurico Guterres, exhorting his men to
attack and kill the pro-Independence supporters gathered at the house of
leader Manuel Carrascalao on 17 April 1999, was shot by Baranowska for the
first of her documentaries. Because she had been in Dill for more than a
month she knew that the rally, at which the militia were parading in front
of the Indonesian military commanders and the Indonesian appointed
governor, was significant. This was at a time when the Australian
government was still maintaining that there was no connection between the
militia and the military, and the farce of the militia parade was lost on
the newly arrived ABC crew, who did not film the entire rally.
In many ways the ABC journalists in Dill still believed what the
Indonesian authorities said, that the militia were simply Timorese who
wanted to remain a part of Indonesia and were not the paid thugs of the
military that everyone in Dili knew them to be. The scenes Baranowska
filmed, of Eurico exhorting his men to murder under the approving gaze of
the Indonesian military command, were later used as evidence against both
the leader and the Indonesian military.
There were other scenes in that first movie that could only have been
captured by someone working with the trust of the Timorese themselves. In
the clinic of the Motael church, where pro-Independence casualties were
taken during that time, as the Indonesian run hospitals had shut down
after the doctors fled, we see Timorese trying to treat severe bullet
wounds with no anaesthetic and little equipment. In one instance a man who
has been shot by the military has to be sent to the military hospital
where his leg is amputated. The anger and helplessness of the Timorese is
overwhelming and Baranowska doesn't allow the viewer to shy away from the
untrained doctors' grisly task of probing around a man's smashed kneecap
looking for the bullet, whilst the patient writhes in pain from lack of
anaesthetic. Such scenes show the viewer exactly what it means to be shot
in a conflict where the authorities control access to medical care on the
basis of political allegiances.
Baranowska films the interrogation of some Timorese who have been taken
in to the pro-Independence CNRT party headquarters in Dill. They are
members of the militia who have joined for the money, and the CNRT members
treat them as prisoners. At that time such a scene, in the wrong hands,
could have been used as propaganda to discredit the pro-Independence
party. But what you see is the frustration of the pro-Independence leaders
trying to work for Independence whilst being subjected to an organized
campaign of terror in order to silence them; a campaign which, at that
time, was largely successful--the CNRT office was shut soon after.
The random and surreal nature of the violence in Dill, the aim of which
was to terrorize the entire population into supporting the campaign for
autonomy, was shown through the smiling incredulity of student leader
Antero da Silva, as gunshots ring out in Dili's suburbs and the dead body
of a man is discovered and then taken away by Red Cross workers, having
being shot two hours before. It is clear that the violence is going on all
around Baranowska and da Silva. The daily killings are actually taking
place as you listen to the shots ringing out. That is what it sounds like,
and the confusion, uncertainty and the jarring sudden cracks of gunfire,
and the startled
It is the willingness of Baranowska to place herself in that
environment--not just for a week or two but for the months before the UN
arrived and then right up until their evacuation in September 1999--that
has left this visual record. Other documentaries, such as the ones cited
by Debrett, are in many ways only trying to recall and recreate what
occurred through the testimonies of others.
The second film Baranowska made in 1999 told the story of how the
United Nations and Australia abandoned the Timorese again, following the
UN sponsored ballot. In other documentaries about East Timor's
Independence, and indeed in most of the officially sanctioned histories of
what happened in 1999, the UN and the Australian government have
whitewashed the details of their evacuation and their reluctance to stop
the Indonesian military looting, burning and murdering East Timorese in
the wake of the pro-Independence result. In the triumphalist version of
events put forward by the UN's PR machine and the Howard Government, the
violence in the post ballot period was largely the result of 'rampaging
militias'. In this version the Indonesian military was trying to deal with
their 'rogue elements' who were out of the control of the command
structure, and not really the responsibility of the Indonesian government.
It was all tosh, and any official worth his own salt would tell you that
at the time. Indeed many officials involved later resigned; some spoke
out, and I know of at least one former UN police officer who committed
suicide due to the official lies told about the UN's actions. However this
did remain the official line, and it has, through the regurgitation and
repetition of academics and certain journalists--in Australia in
particular--come to be regarded as what actually happened.
The Indonesian military was fully responsible for the destruction of
East Timor and the widespread killing of civilians that occurred in the
wake of the pro-Independence result in East Timor. It was an enormous
operation, and those of us who witnessed it unfold around us in Dili were
left in no doubt as to who was responsible. That is what makes the second
film Baranowska produced in 1999 such an important visual record. It shows
what actually happened in the UN compound as the Indonesian military
forced the removal of the foreign witnesses to what they were carrying out
in Dili. With the foreigners out of the way they could lay the blame for
the destruction at the feet of the militia, who were conveniently East
Timorese. It is a line that the Indonesian military is still using as a
very successful defense of its own conduct, and to deflect the prosecution
of senior officers for crimes against humanity. So successful are these
arguments that the most senior military man who presided over the Timor
operation, then Army Commander in Chief, General Wiranto, is now running
for President of Indonesia.
Appropriately, the second film begins with an American UN official
explaining to a group of East Timorese that they have nothing to worry
about, the UN will not abandon them after the ballot. The official speaks
loudly and slowly, in the manner of people who are speaking to those whose
language is not their own, and which also comes across as patronizing. To
anyone familiar with what happened after the ballot in Timor the UN
official's comments have an ominous ring to them. The viewer knows that
the people will be abandoned as the Indonesian military takes revenge for
the Independence vote, but the atmosphere is almost carnivalesque as the
people prepare to vote.
Then we are back in the Motael clinic. A twenty-three year old man is
dying from a bullet wound. They can't get the bullet out. People are
talking about what happened. 'The police said it was a rock. They why did
his brains come out here? It was a bullet', says one young man,
exasperated. The Indonesian police are supposed to be looking after
security for the ballot. The implication is that the same police who have
been given responsibility for the security have shot this young man in the
head. 'At the traffic lights they [the militia] were holding automatic
weapons. The police did nothing', says another. This was what was
happening. While the pro-Independence fighters had agreed to refrain from
violence and restrict what few weapons they had to the cantonment areas in
the countryside, the militia, with approval of the so-called 'neutral'
police, were roaming about town with guns.
In another scene militia leader Eurico Guterres is dutifully attending
a rally for the visit of then Indonesian presidential candidate, Megawati.
It is a measure of how much Baranowska had become part of the daily life
in Dili that Eurico doesn't try to hide his contempt for the paid
supporters that he has gathered for the rally, and how he doesn't make any
attempt to conceal that he is taking a call from his Indonesian military
commander on his mobile. After a one-sided conversation in which Eurico
mostly answers 'Yes sir' again and again, he jokes that the call was from
the Commander in Chief: 'Does he think I have deserted or what!' The scene
encapsulates his role as simply a functionary of the Indonesian military.
This was at a time when many journalists or television news crews blamed
the violence on the militia, and believed--to a certain extent--that they
were solely responsible for it. The scene clearly exhibits that the
militia were just a subordinate part of the Indonesian military program.
The western media by and large took Eurico seriously, but Baranowska shows
him for what he was--a paid lackey.
But the violence gets worse. We see young students reporting the deaths
of three of their colleagues through military violence. They are
attempting to ascertain whether a female colleague is still in the process
of being raped by Indonesian soldiers. The girl's distraught father
arrives, looking for information. He has nowhere else to go. The
authorities themselves are responsible and these students have yet to
inform the UN of what has happened or is happening. Either way the man is
helpless. This all unfolds in front of the camera, not as a second or
third hand story, but as it happens.
As the ballot result is announced we see the silent tears of joy and
relief and fear on the faces of the ordinary Timorese family that has
gathered around the television to witness this declaration. It is
Baranowska's familiarity with the family that allows us to see the
reactions of ordinary people to an event that will change their lives and
end a war that they have lived with for twenty-four years.
The pace of events of the next few days--as Dill is depopulated, looted
and burnt to the ground by the Indonesian military--is reflected in the
film, as we see refugees being forced out of the Red Cross compound,
buildings burning and then eventually the chaos of the UN compound.
Baranowska, like the twenty or so journalists who remained in Dili as all
the major news organizations fled, was rounded up by the Indonesian police
and escorted to the UN compound. Once there, it the reality of the life or
death choice for the Timorese who were trapped that Baranowska focuses on.
They are seen in the process of deciding whether to leave and save
themselves by fleeing through Indonesian gunfire, or whether to trust that
the UN will not abandon them. In the end the UN does abandon them, and we
see one official lamely offering the excuse that the 'decision was made in
New York', as women plead with him to do something to save their children.
It is horrible to watch because, despite all the reassurances given by the
UN and the international community, all that mattered to the UN in the end
was the preservation of their own people. The evacuation was delayed when
some UN police and workers declared that they would stay.
The scenes in the UN compound that were shot by Baranowska earnt her
international acclaim when she won the Rory Peck Award for Features in
2000. The award for News Footage in the prestigious UK-based awards went
to the other person with a camera who was among the last in the compound,
Max Stahl. The chaos of those few days, when there was constant gunfire
directed over the heads of those of us who remained as the city was
destroyed around us, is hard to forget. There was no food, little water
and very little sleep for anyone in there. But that was exactly what the
Indonesian military intended. They were trying to make us leave. Above
all, there was a very real belief among many there that--in the words of
one Australian Federal Policeman--there was 'a better-than-even-money
chance' that the Indonesians would send their people over the walls.
Baranowska conveys that fear. The panicked faces, the screaming, the
too-near sound of gunfire; the look on people's faces when they really
don't know what is going on and whether they will be the next ones shot
at. These are the things you get from these two films, and that make them,
for me personally, very hard to watch. They bring back so much of the
terror, that as a print journalist working in the confines of daily news,
you can't convey to the reader. I say they are hard to watch for me
because there are many aspects of that fear that I try to forget as time
goes on. But for someone trying to understand what happened in East Timor
in 1999 these two films encapsulate the scope and enormity of the crimes
the Indonesian military inflicted upon all East Timorese people.
Unfortunately, both for documentaries in Australia and for the accurate
understanding of what happened in East Timor, the work of the few who were
there before the guns stopped firing has been drowned out by the many--and
there have been many--who came along later when things were safe.
With so much at stake for the governments of Australia, Indonesia and
the United Nations over their conduct in East Timor since 1975, it is
inevitable that attempts have and will be made to rewrite the history of
what happened and their individual roles. Individuals and organizations
will try and reposition themselves.
Prime Minister John Howard has done a superb job of that in relation to
his role in East Timor, as has the Indonesian military in avoiding
prosecution and responsibility for the violence. That is why records such
as these films are important. They help show us how the nation of East
Timor has come about, away from the flag-waving and choreographed events
that surrounded the 'official' granting of Independence by the UN to East
Timor on 20 May 2001. Baranowska has been working on a feature length
film, Welcome to Independence, covering the period since the nation came
in to being, and promising a very different look at events since the
world's media focus has moved on.
John Martinkus covered East Timor from 1997 until 2000 based in Dill
for Fairfax, AAP and The Bulletin. In 1999 he was nominated for a Walkley
award for his coverage and in 2001 his account of the period, A Dirty
Little War, published by Random House, was shortlisted for the New South
Wales Premier's award for literature.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAM/is_140/ai_n6112573
---
Letter to the editor
Metro Magazine, Fall, 2004 by Mary Debrett
In Metro No. 140, John Martinkus' article, 'Bearing Witness', about
Carmela Baranowska's documentaries on East Timor, cites my earlier article
on three documentaries about East Timor, (Metro No. 138) claiming my
statement that 'filming in East Timor "was impossibly
dangerous"', was 'deeply offensive to the handful of journalists who
were working in East Timor in the period (the late nineties)'. He goes on
to make several unpleasant inferences with regards to the films and
filmmakers concerned in which it becomes apparent that he has thoroughly
misread the context of my article and formed a number of assumptions from
that misreading. I would like to clarify these.
Firstly, the reason my article, 'The Personal as Political--three
documentaries on East Timor', was restricted to just three documentary
makers was because it was a paper delivered at the Australian
International Documentary Conference (AIDC) held in February 2003 and was
thus grounded in an actual event. The paragraph I had written explaining
this fact was unfortunately buried at the end of the article amongst the
endnotes, instead of being inserted after the title where I had placed it.
My paper was more about recent developments in political documentary than
it was about East Timor. I had also anticipated that the article would
appear alongside other papers from the AIDC conference, or that it would
be framed as part of a series of papers from the AIDC. This would have set
my discussion in an appropriate context for readers. Unfortunately, the
way in which Metro chose to foreground the war, inserting a large and
arresting photograph of an Indonesian soldier and another of an Indonesia
demonstrator giving the finger to the camera--images unrelated to the
films discussed--invited such misreading.
My discussion of political documentary was about the ground that
documentary occupies in public discourse and how this has been made more
difficult by the changed circumstances of the television documentary, due
to the pressures now faced by public broadcasters and the blurring of the
'genre' with populist reality forms in an increasingly commereialized
media landscape. The impact of the media concept of 'compassion fatigue',
and fear of difficult subjects being an 'audience turn-off', now mean that
broadcasters are reluctant to invest in political documentaries. While
this is clearly not a desirable trend it is the reality. My article
discussed this with reference to the documentary, Death of a Nation (John
Pilger and David Munro, 1994), a political documentary attributed with
having influenced international response to the Timorese situation, but
which encountered difficulties in funding and exhibition, for the
afore-mentioned reasons. My article then went on to discuss how three
documentary makers had overcome these kinds of difficulties and succeeded
in getting documentaries about East Timor into prime television
documentary slots.
Martinkus begins his article: In issue 138 of Metro there was a piece
by Mary Debrett titled "Reclaiming the Personal as Political', which
looked at three documentaries concerning the events in East Timor and that
country's transition to independence. Reading that article depressed me a
great deal. At one point the author states that Tom Zubrycki's film about
Jose Ramos Horta 'provided a film about Timorese independence at the time
when filming in Timor was impossibly dangerous, following the murders of
five members of an Australian television crew in Balibo'. This statement
is not only wrong but deeply offensive to the handful of journalists who
were working East Timor in the period (the late nineties) that Debrett is
talking about. What the writer has done is dismiss the testimony of those
on the ground in East Timor at the time, in favour of the work of those
who were basically too afraid to go there, to see for themselves and
record what was happening. Debrett is wrong when she writes that 'filming
in East Timor was impossibly dangerous', as there was someone there doing
it throughout 1999--Melbourne based filmmaker, Carmela Baranowska.
My paper discussed three documentaries made for Australian television.
As the title indicated, this was not an overview of the documentation of
East Timor's struggle for independence, and 'journalists who were working
East Timor in the period' were not mentioned for the simple reason that
this was outside the scope of the article. I would have thought the
statement I made regarding danger amplified their bravery rather than
denying it, although it has to be said that the visible appendage of a
camera does make filming rather more dangerous than reporting for the
print media. To interpret the term 'impossibly dangerous' as meaning it
was impossible to face such danger is clearly a nonsense. That Carmela
Baranowska returned alive, I suggest, does not disprove that filming was
impossibly dangerous by many people's judgement. Anthony Hayward, in his
book about the international journalist and documentary maker, John Pilger--In
the Name of Justice: the television reporting of John Pilger--includes
details of an interview with Pilger in which he relates the circumstances
in which Death of a Nation was filmed. After their clandestine filming
Pilger and Munro left Timor with the videotapes taped to their bodies,
changing their departure arrangements rapidly at the last moment, after a
chilling encounter with a suspicious Indonesian officer. This was 1994 and
I suggest that by 1998, when Tom Zubrycki pitched The Diplomat at the
Brisbane AIDC, the situation in Timor was no less dangerous. Yes, Carmela
Baranowska and Max Stahl were doing it, but by most people's perceptions
they were risking their lives. Whether you describe this as extremely
dangerous or impossibly dangerous depends on your point of view. Nick
Cowing of BBC World described Stahl as filming in 'an incredible,
dangerous situation' in East Timor. (http://www.rorypecktrust.org/award00/stahl.htm
accessed 25-5-04)
The assumption that those who made films about this period without
venturing into the war zone were 'too afraid to go and find out what was
happening' is deeply offensive to me, as I am sure it is to those
filmmakers concerned. Such statements miss what documentary is about. A
professional journalist, Martinkus appears to view news and current
affairs and documentary as synonymous, thereby validating only one form of
documentary, that of the documentary maker as on-the-ground witness.
Documentary frequently engages by getting viewers to interpret, to ask
their own questions. As an authored form which draws on the panoply of
cinematic techniques, it is not simple journalistic reportage, but comes
in many different styles and sub-genres, and in skillful hands can engage
and affect viewers in ways that make both intellectually and emotionally
difficult topics more accessible. As a case of near genocide, East Timor
is an emotionally difficult topic for most people. Martinkus' own comment
on Carmela Baranowska's documentary confirms this.
The panicked faces, the screaming, the too-near sound of gunfire; the
look on people's faces when they really don't know what is going on and
whether they will be the next ones shot at. These are the things that you
get from these two films, and that make them, for me personally, very hard
to watch.
Foregrounding his own experience again, Martinkus suggests that it is
only he who has this problem. I suggest many Australians felt enormous
grief and guilt about what was happening and Australia's role in all of
it, and are no less affected by such scenes than he. Consequently, while
records such as Baranowska's are undoubtedly extremely important, they are
not what broadcasters are looking for to fill their prime-time documentary
slots.
Later Martinkus reflects: Unfortunately, both for the accurate
understanding of what happened in East Timor, the work of the few who were
there before the guns stopped firing had been drowned out by the many--and
there have been many--who came along later when things were safe.
With so much at stake for the governments of Australia, Indonesia and
the United Nations over their conduct in East Timor in 1975, it is
inevitable that attempts have and will be made to rewrite the history of
what happened and their individual roles. Individuals and organizations
will try to reposition themselves.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAM/is_142/ai_n6335910
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