The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste 9789048544448

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The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

Edited by Lia Kent and Rui Graça Feijó

Amsterdam University Press

This book was partly financed by FCT, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through a Pluriannual Financing Contract with the R&D Unit UIDP/50012/2020 as well as with Portuguese funds within the scope of the Research Project ADeTiL, ref. FCT-PTDC/ HAR-HIS/30670/2017.

Cover photo: L7’s ossuary, Laga Source: Lia Kent Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 431 9 e-isbn 978 90 4854 444 8 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463724319 nur 761 © Lia Kent & Rui Graça Feijó / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Preface

The Dead, the State, and the People in Timor-Leste Elizabeth G. Traube

Introduction

Martyrs, Ancestors and Heroes: The Multiple Lives of Dead Bodies in Independent Timor-Leste Lia Kent and Rui Graça Feijó

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Part I  Ancestors, Martyrs and Heroes 1 Ancestors and Martyrs in Timor-Leste

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2 Remembering the Martyrs of National Liberation in Timor-Leste

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Susana de Matos Viegas

Michael Leach

Part II  The Dead in Everyday Life 3 Spirits Live Among Us

Mythology, the Hero’s Journey, and the Supernatural World in a Community in Ataúro Alessandro Boarccaech

91

4 ‘Sempre la’o ho ita’

115

5 Unfulfilled Peace

137

Ancestral Omnipresence and the Protection of the Living in Timor-Leste Bronwyn Winch

Death and the Limits of Liberalism in Timor-Leste Damian Grenfell

6 The Politics of Loss and Restoration

159

7 Death Across the Border and the Prospects of Improved People to People Relationships

179

8 Working for the Living and the Dead

197

Massive Bad Death in the Oecussi Highlands Victoria Kumala Sakti

Andrey Damaledo

Challenges Associated with Personal Identification from Skeletal Remains in Timor-Leste Soren Blau

PART III  The Dead and the Nation-State 9 Remembering the Dead in Post-Independence Timor-Leste

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10 Gender, Agency and the (In)Visibility of the Dead and the Wounded

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11 On the Politics of Memory

263

12 Gathering the Dead, Imagining the State?

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13 Selling Names

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Index

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Victims or Martyrs? Amy Rothschild

Henri Myrttinen

Cult of Martyrs, Contested Memories and Social Status Rui Graça Feijó

Examining the Work of Commissions for the Recovery of Human Remains Lia Kent

The ‘Material Dimension’ of State Recognition of Martyrs in Timor-Leste Kate Roll

List of Figures Figure 0.1 Garden of Heroes cemetery, Metinaro 29 73 Figure 2.1 Nicolau Lobato statue, Dili Figure 4.1 Familial grave-site for Knua Baduria, Uartu-Carbau, Viqueque116 Figure 6.1 Revamped graves 174 Figure 7.1 East Timorese in West Timor carrying bones of family 189 member for reburial in Atabae, Timor-Leste Figure 9.1 Santa Cruz commemorations. Banner reads ‘My whole 235 life I gave to the people and beloved land of Timor’ Figure 10.1 Street Art in Dili by Tony Amaral depicting Rosa Muki 256 Bonaparte Soares, January 2019 275 Figure 11.1 Falu Cai’s memorial under construction 292 Figure 12.1 Feeding the dead at the Quelicai ossuary

Preface The Dead, the State, and the People in Timor-Leste Elizabeth G. Traube This volume, the editors write in their Introduction, ‘aims to shed light on the myriad ways in which the dead – especially those who died during the occupation – matter to the living’. In successfully realising that aim, the volume provides a thick ethnographic analysis of how death rituals have become a site of struggle in post-independence Timor-Leste, a contested terrain where participants from different social positions play out overlapping conceptions of the past and the future. In both pre- and post-independence Timor-Leste societies, ritual treatment of the dead is a cosmological as well as a social concern. Mortuary ceremonies weave together two sets of obligations: those of the living to the dead, and those among the living; the latter include the obligations of house members to assist one another in honouring their dead relatives, and formal prestation obligations between allied groups established through marriages. At the mortuary ceremonies I attended in early 1970s Aileu, in what was then Portuguese Timor, Mambai described all material gifts offered in mortuary ceremonies, whether the animal sacrifices made to the spirits of the deceased or the livestock exchanged between marital allies, as ‘paying for the fatigue of the dead’ (seul maeta ni kolen). Kole, fatigue, tiredness, refers to states of exhaustion incurred in life-giving activities, and its repayment can have the sense of a ‘wage’ (Traube 2007). Paying the dead their wages took time. Death was not a momentary event but a lengthy process, structured by a series of ceremonies that began with the burial and concluded months, or more often years later, with ceremonies to ‘dispatch’ (toil) the dead to their final resting place.1 In the interval, people said, the 1 In Mambai eschatology, the f inal destination of the dead is across the sea, where they undergo a decisive transformation, the precise nature of which the living can never know. In other Timorese cultures, mortuary rituals conclude with the final emplacement of the dead in the land, an idea evoked by Mambai conception that a long sojourn on the mountain of origins

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dead linger near the living – as protective ancestors, if satisfied with the honours they have received, or raiding the gardens in the form of ‘wild’ spirits, if they feel neglected. Performing burial and post-burial ceremonies maintained the proper balance between the living and the dead at the same time as they organised the alliance relations among the living. Dispatch ceremonies were the largest scale of any performance, as several men from one lineage house (or agnatically related houses) would usually band together to dispatch their dead relatives in one ceremony, to which each would summon his own wife-takers and wife-givers. At times, the intense sociality of the exchange transactions among marital allies seemed to me discordant with the gravity of the debt to the dead. Mambai themselves would describe mortuary ceremonies as occasions where participants ‘argued over goats and pigs’ (the conventional prestation items expected from wife-takers and wife-givers, respectively), and would ruefully concede that the often acrimonious atmosphere ‘made one’s head ache’ ( fun aim klutan ban). Material as well as moral interests were stake in these events. Skilled negotiators could ‘win’ (manan), that is, emerge from a ceremony with a surplus of ‘live water buffalo’ (arabau-morin) after having honoured the dead and feasted the guests with the sacrificial gifts of ‘dead water buffalo’ (arabau-maten). Symbolic profits, however, were critical. Feast-givers enhanced their prestige by honouring the dead, while in repaying their debts to marital allies they secured the conditions for renewing alliances. While each region had its own particular ways of honouring the dead, the high stakes Mambai attributed to the process were typical of pre-occupation ritual life. Indonesian policies imposed during the occupation severely disrupted collective ritual performances. The Indonesian authorities displaced populations, restricted travel, limited the size of gatherings, and monitored material transactions. Ritual life went on, but its temporal rhythms, social locations, and scales were all upset, and the ramifications were profound, both for social relations and for the balance between the human realm and that of the non-human, to which the dead belong. While the Indonesian policies affected collective rituals of all types, funerals faced additional obstacles. The bodies of many combatants killed in battle were either never recovered, or, along with those of countless civilians who died of hunger and disease, were disposed of hastily, often far from home, with minimal rites; in addition, there were all those who had ‘disappeared’. On Timor, violent or sudden deaths – ‘red deaths’ – are inauspicious; in ordinary times, these precedes the final journey across the seas (see Traube 1986). What they have in common is the idea of a lengthy process that leads eventually to some form of decisive separation.

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‘bad deaths’ necessitate prompt ritual treatment to transform the disoriented and potentially vengeful spirits of the deceased into benevolent ancestors. The lack of proper ceremony during the occupation thus compounded the dangers posed by the sheer numbers of bad deaths that occurred. In the post-independence period, recovering and reburying remains, as well as holding secondary treatments without actual remains and repairing graves, have emerged as matters of intense concern. In retrospect, we might see the pronounced concern observed across Timor-Leste with rebuilding origin houses in the immediate wake of the Indonesian withdrawal (McWilliam 2005) as preparation for holding mortuary ceremonies for those who died during the occupation. Social relations, statuses, and prestige are certainly at stake in the revival of mortuary ceremonies across the country. Nevertheless, the social dislocations of the occupation and the efforts to reconstitute local social arrangements should not obscure the deep disquiet aroused by the perceived presence of the dead themselves. As Feijó and Kent observe: ‘The restless, unburied dead remain dangerous, to their descendants and to the nation’. In the post-independence period, as the abundance that many had expected to come with nationhood has failed to materialise, these concerns have mounted. The contributors to this volume document a deepening sense of the negative presence of the dead, who manifest their anger by afflicting the living with individual and collective misfortunes. As Damian Grenfell cogently observes in his chapter, ‘there are more spirits to appease, and their appeasement is more important, at the same time as there are fewer resources available to do so’. Into this charged situation, the new nation state has inserted itself. Attending to the dead, as this volume elucidates, is as much a matter of national as local politics. Susana de Matos Viegas’s chapter on the dynamics of ‘ancestorship’ in Timorese societies identifies those who died in the resistance struggle as a special, historically emergent category of ancestors, the ‘martyrs and heroes’ who gave their lives for the nation and await thanks from the living. When I first returned to Aileu in 2000, the association between death and nationhood was strong, but the terms ‘martyr’ and ‘hero’ were less common than they have since become. Nor were people disposed to distinguish some ways of dying for the nation from others. My Mambai interlocutors certainly honoured the sacrifices made by Falantil combatants, as well as the risks that members of the clandestine movement had incurred. Most often, however, speakers represented the resistance struggle as having been waged by ‘women and men’ (hina nor maena), Bi Bere and Mau Bere, or simply povo, the people. ‘The people’, speakers declared, had ‘purchased’

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the nation ‘with their blood and their bones’ and now awaited ‘payment for their fatigue’, the ‘wages’ due to them from the state (Traube 2007). Certain official discourses concur with this inclusive construction. The narrative of funu, Michael Leach observes in this volume, recounts the struggle of a united people, and Amy Rothschild similarly notes that all Timorese alive during the occupation are heroes, in one discourse. Such inclusiveness, however, has become more exception than rule, at least in official political discourses and symbolic practices. Within what Leach calls a ‘political economy of recognition’, some contributions to the independence struggle are valorised over others: military combatants over clandestine members, and both of these over civilian ‘victims’. The inequality is instantiated in the state’s involvement in the reburial and commemoration of those who belong to the narrowly defined category of martyrs. At issue is not only whom the state honours but also how they do so. New state-sponsored national ceremonies reserved for ‘martyrs’ are located away from villages, in national cemeteries built in Metinaro and other district centres, administrative spaces that Timorese, I suspect, would classify as ‘outside’ and ‘light’, in contrast to the dark, enclosed, inner realm of customary rites (Traube 2019). In contrast to both Catholic and customary graveyards, burial in these new spaces physically separates the dead from their families, making it difficult for relatives to perform such traditional practices of care as lighting candles or laying flowers on the grave. From the state’s perspective, this is no accident. The dead themselves are secondary to, if not absent from, state rituals to honour ‘martyrs’, and caring for the dead is not these rituals’ purpose. Damian Grenfell makes this point with clarity and force in his chapter. State funerals and memorials, he argues, and the ‘liberal peace’ they envision, are about the living rather than the dead. In this construction of the debt owed to the dead, the central obligation incumbent on the living is to remember them. Although the dead are its objects, the activity of remembering serves the living, who ideally produce themselves as citizens of the nation in thinking about those who died. Within the animist ontologies that inform customary rituals, the dead expect less abstract forms of attention: they expect the living to care for them, to instantiate remembrance in concrete acts. In this approach, which resonates with the Catholic majority as well as with followers of the indigenous religions, the dead are agents whose goodwill is essential to the future wellbeing of their descendants and of the nation. This theme recurs throughout the volume: whatever else mortuary ceremonies do, in the eyes of many Timorese, they need to reciprocate those who gave their lives in the struggle and so secure and maintain a proper ‘balance’ between

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the living and the dead. For this, the living must recognise the dead as full participants in any rites held in their name. As I read the chapters, at issue in the conflicts over where and how to bury the dead and how long to mourn them is the nature and extent of the new state’s role in ceremonial life. Ricardo Roque (2010) has established the importance of ceremony in colonial governance. Portuguese colonial authorities ignored or disparaged overtly animistic rituals, including customary funerals, but as Roque shows in detail, they were very attentive to the ceremonies of jural affairs, into which they inserted themselves. They surrounded themselves and their interactions with the populace with ceremonial etiquette and symbolism, raising and lowering flags, distributing sceptres, and displaying assorted regalia of office that embodied the sacred power of the outside world (Traube 2019). Indeed, Christopher Shepherd (2019) has argued that over the course of the early twentieth century, overseas foreigners absorbed qualities associated with indigenous spirits and effectively displaced them as powerful beings. That is, as the balance of power shifted from ritual authorities to political executives (local as well as colonial), colonial authorities, Shepherd argues, assumed qualities of sacredness and danger formerly embodied by spirits (280). This argument, to my mind, is provocative but overstated, and I would suggest that the contemporary reluctance of the dead to make do with state-sponsored ceremonies underscores the enduring gap between political leaders and the spirit world. It should be emphasised that the new national leadership is much more closely related to the spirits they actively seek to represent than were Portuguese colonials. Many members of the new government were military combatants themselves, like the ‘martyrs’ they have singled out for honours, so that in celebrating the military dead, they are also celebrating their own role in making the nation (see Grenfell in this volume). From this perspective, national leaders, like Portuguese colonials before them, are seeking to use political ceremony to legitimise their rule. If so, the many Timorese who insist on a wider, more inclusive definition of ‘martyrs and heroes’, one that includes civilian as well as military dead, would seem to be resisting any simple homology between living political leaders and the spirits of those who died for the nation. Rather, as I have argued elsewhere (Traube 2011), customary ritual leaders and the spirit world for which they care are homologous with the broad category of povu, ‘the people’, the suffering ‘women and men’ of the resistance struggle. The state’s masculinist rhetoric ignores a simple but pervasive premise of Timorese thought, that life giving is always dependent on the union of female and male. The united nation that won the war, the ‘old mother, old father’, expects recompense from the new state it birthed.

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References McWilliam, Andrew. 2005. ‘Houses of Resistance in East Timor: Structuring Sociality in the New Nation’. Anthropological Forum 15 (1): 27-44. McWilliam, Andrew and Elizabeth G. Traube 2011. ‘Introduction’. In Land and Life in Timor Leste: Ethnographic Essays, edited by A. McWilliam and E.G. Traube, 1-21. Canberra: ANU Press. Roque, Ricardo. 2010. Headhunting and Colonialism: Anthropology and the Circulation of Human Skulls in the Portuguese Empire, 1870-1930. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Shepherd, Christopher J. 2019. Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters: Ethnography and Animism in East Timor, 1860-1975. ASAA Southeast Asia Publication Series: Singapore: NUS Press. Traube, Elizabeth. 1986. Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual exchange among the Mambai of East Timor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Traube, Elizabeth. 2007. ‘Unpaid wages: Local narratives and the imagination of the nation’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 8 (1): 9-25. Traube, Elizabeth. 2011. ‘Planting the Flag’. In Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Ethnographic Essays, edited by Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube, 117-140. Canberra: ANU Press. Traube, Elizabeth. 2017. ‘Returning to Origin Places in an Expanding World: Customary Ritual in Independent Timor-Leste’. In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations, edited by Susana de Matos Viegas and Rui Feijó, 47-60. London: Routledge. Traube, Elizabeth. 2019. ‘Outside In: Mambai Expectations of Returning Outsiders’. In Crossing Histories and Ethnographies: Following Colonial Historicities in Timor-Leste, edited by R. Roque and E. G. Traube, 49-75. Oxford: Berghahn.

Introduction Martyrs, Ancestors and Heroes: The Multiple Lives of Dead Bodies in Independent Timor-Leste Lia Kent and Rui Graça Feijó Abstract This introductory chapter considers the diverse ways in which dead influence the living in the new nation-state of Timor-Leste. We argue that experiences of acute suffering, loss, dislocation, and protracted struggle are intensified by the spiritual dangers posed by the vast numbers of missing or unburied bodies and disrupted mortuary rituals. We consider how deceased beings perceived as ‘ancestors’ are thought to hold the capacity to influence the lives of the living. We also examine how the dead – especially those designated heroes or martyrs – are manipulated by the living to achieve certain aims. We argue that, because the dead continue to profoundly shape relationships amongst families, communities, and the nation-state, they must be understood as pivotal to ongoing processes of nation and state formation. Keywords: the dead, mortuary rituals, ancestors, martyrs, heroes, nation-building

Over a century ago, Robert Hertz (1881-1915), a young French scholar, wrote a seminal article entitled ‘A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representations of Death’ (Hertz 1960 [1907]), in which he formulated an idea that has since become a critical topos in the social sciences. For Hertz, death has a double face: on the one hand, it is a physiological event that strikes individuals and removes them from the world of the living; on the other, it is a social and cultural phenomenon. As Hertz wrote: Where a human being is concerned, the physiological phenomena are not the whole of death. To the organic event is added a complex mass of

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beliefs, emotions and activities which give it its distinctive character. […] Death has a special meaning for social consciousness; it is the object of collective representations. (1960, 27-28)

While physiological or biological death is generally a discrete, timebound event, social death is often a prolonged process. This is because, as Laqueur (elaborating on Hertz’s ideas), writes, the dead are ‘social beings’: as such they ‘need to be eased out of this world and safely settled into the next and into memory’ (Laqueur 2015, 10). The requirements of this settling-in process vary according to historical, cultural and social factors. They often involve the transformation of the identity of the dead into some other form – for instance an ancestor – or their initiation into an afterlife, or into nothing. Regardless of their culturally specific form, the social aspects of death create obligations for relatives of the deceased and other acquaintances, who want the dead body to be cared for and to be in the right ‘place’ (Kaufman 2016). That this is the case in societies around the globe underscores the degree to which the abandoned, desecrated or uncared-for body is almost universally regarded as ‘unbearable’ to the living (Laqueur 2015, 8), as ‘an affront to the moral order’ (Kaufman 2016). Because the dead matter so much to the living, they cannot be left to themselves. They demand the attention of, and actions by, the living. They suffer the burden of decisions made by those who feel empowered to take them – among them families, governments, and religious and communal authorities – regarding how they should be remembered and into what identities they should be socially transformed. The idea that death is a protracted process of social transformation rather than a self-contained event resonates in contemporary Timor-Leste. Anthropological scholarship has generated rich insights regarding the role of mortuary rituals in reconstituting social life and of the obligations of the living to the dead (see Traube 1986; McWilliam 2008, 2011; Hicks 2004; Grenfell 2012, 2015; Bovensiepen 2014, 2018; Viegas 2019.) East Timorese mortuary rituals are not confined to what we might imagine to be a nuclear family or a close kin network but, rather, involve extended kin networks and other social networks. They are also not discrete events but entail ongoing obligations in the form of periodic visits to gravesites to lay flowers, light candles, offer prayers, and communicate with the dead, either on special days (2 November is the Catholic ritual day dedicated to the dead) or at important junctures in the life of the deceased’s family (see Viegas 2019). Mortuary rituals, like marriage rituals (with which they are closely connected), must also be seen as part of the life cycle: as part of an ongoing

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process of reciprocity and exchange that works to reassert, reproduce and recalibrate social and status relations (Bovensiepen 2014, 113). In a context where the dead are thought to possess the power to influence the lives of the living, these rituals are critical to well-being. While death in ‘ordinary’ circumstances presents an onerous enough set of obligations for East Timorese families, these obligations are magnified in a context where many died in ‘unnatural’ or violent circumstances. The precise number of those who died as a consequence of the 24-year Indonesian occupation is unknown. Based on its truth-seeking work and sophisticated demographic analysis, the Commission for Truth, Reception and Reconciliation (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste/CAVR) estimates that, at a minimum, 102,800 (+/- 12,000) deaths may be attributed to the occupation, of which 18,600 were due to direct killing and 84,200 were due to hunger and illness (CAVR 2005, Part 6.3). While this figure is now widely cited in Timor-Leste studies, the actual figure is likely to be much higher given the difficulties of accounting for the substantial number of people who died during the 1970s, many of whom were not buried in properly marked graves (see Rothschild in this volume; Roosa 2007, 576). Even the CAVR considered that the same data could yield a higher figure of 186,000 deaths and admitted that figures in excess of 200,000 – as claimed by international organisations such as the International Committee on the Red Cross – should not be discarded. A vast number of people died during the early years of the occupation, between 1975 and 1980. In this period, many civilians lived in the mountains in territories controlled by FRETILIN.1 While this offered some protection from Indonesian forces, thousands perished from aerial bombardments (as the military attempted to separate civilians from the Resistance) or from starvation and disease due to the destruction of food sources. The circumstances in which people died often did not permit the performance of the required death rituals. The displacement and military operations that were features of everyday life meant that bodies were hastily buried in makeshift bush graves or simply abandoned to decompose. Those who remained in their villages fared little better, and ‘entire families, even entire neighbourhoods perished at that time’, again due to starvation, disease and aerial bombardments (Roosa 2007, 575). Others were ‘disappeared’ by the Indonesian authorities, their bodies thrown into the sea, down wells or deep valleys, or burned. Many bodies have not been recovered. 1 Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor).

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This edited collection is informed by our experiences of working in Timor-Leste since national independence was achieved in 2002.2 Over this period, we have been struck by the considerable time, energy and resources that ordinary East Timorese are devoting to the rehabilitation of graves, the recovery of human remains, and secondary burials of those who perished during the Indonesian occupation. This is especially remarkable in a context where a significant percentage of the population lives in long-term, structural poverty. Both of us have engaged in enquiries into these practices, which are particularly noticeable in the case of the bodies of those deemed to be ‘martyrs’: those perceived to have died directly or indirectly due to their participation in the struggle for national liberation. We have also been intrigued by the profusion of state-sanctioned efforts to memorialise, recognise and rebury those popularly regarded as ‘heroes’ of the national resistance struggle as part of a process of constructing a new national identity and projecting the legitimacy of the state. This collection aims to shed light on myriad ways in which the dead – especially those who died during the occupation – matter to the living. Recognising that these issues must be examined from multiple angles and utilising diverse disciplinary frameworks, the following chapters are written by political scientists, scholars of international studies, peacebuilding and development, and anthropologists. They variously explore what the recovery, reburial, and honouring of the conflict-dead accomplishes politically, socially, culturally, and in terms of familial well-being. In these explorations, the multiple ‘lives’ of the dead as martyrs, ancestors and heroes, and the complex relationships between these lives, is brought to the fore. In the remainder of this introduction, we provide a brief historical background to the emergence of Timor-Leste as a nation state. We then set out a broad framework within which the issue of the relationships between martyrs, ancestors, and national heroes will be addressed in the individual chapters. The key theme we wish to draw out here is that the dead possess a power or a potency, which gives them a central role to play in animating political, social, and cultural life. We briefly discuss two different yet intertwined ways in which the power of the dead can be envisaged. First, we examine how deceased beings perceived as ‘ancestors’ are thought to have the capacity to influence the lives of living communities. Second, we turn our attention to how the dead – especially those designated heroes or 2 Most of the chapters in this collection use the off icial name Timor-Leste to refer to the post-2002 nation state and East Timor when referring to the pre-2002 territory. East Timorese is employed as the demonym throughout.

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martyrs of national liberation – can be manipulated by the living to obtain certain goals. We conclude by focusing on the Timor-Leste government’s flawed Kore Metan Nasional (National End of Mourning) initiative, which underscores the degree to which efforts to manipulate, manage or otherwise contain the powerful dead have thus far not proven entirely successful.

The emergence of modern Timor-Leste The most relevant event in the modern history of Timor-Leste was the restoration of its independence. At midnight on 20 May 2002, Xanana Gusmão, the leader of the Resistance and president-elect, raised the flag of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste in the presence of UN Secretary-General Kof i Annan, the presidents of Portugal (Jorge Sampaio) and Indonesia (Megawati Sukarnoputri), and former US president Bill Clinton, and a vast crowd that assembled in Tasi Tolu, on the outskirts of Dili. Unlike the short-lived proclamation of independence made by FRETILIN political leaders on 28 November 1975, which was a gesture of despair with very little echo in the international arena, this time the event was greeted as a symbol of hope for a peaceful development. Soon the territory was accepted as the 202nd member of the United Nations and recognised by almost every country in the world. Located in the Lesser Sundas group of islands in maritime Southeast Asia, close to the north shore of Australia, Timor-Leste occupies the eastern part of an island; it has an area of 15,000 square kilometres and a population that is now around 1.2 million. The island has been inhabited for over 40,000 years. The first migrants came from the east, that is, from Papua. Around 1500 BCE, a new wave of migrants came from the north – the Taiwanese Austronesians – who are the ancestors of most of the island’s population and their different languages (Hull 2002; Durand 2006). The Portuguese arrived around 1515, trailing the Chinese merchants who introduced them to the wealth of Timor after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca, a critical trading knot between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific and the China Sea. At that time, there seems not to have existed any form of central authority over the island. With the Portuguese came the encounter with Christianity, the first of the major religions of the world to establish a presence on the island, which, unlike most of the Indonesian archipelago, had hitherto been untouched by Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus. Only in 1703 did the Europeans set a permanent political and administrative basis in Timor – Lifau (nowadays, in the exclave of Oecussi). From

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then on, power in the land was not only derived from ancestral origins and exercised by local rulers, but also emerged from the interplay between a native people and foreigners who possessed the means of domination. This interplay was not always peaceful, and over the centuries several episodes of dispute and conflict took place (Durand 2011; Kammen 2015). The aim of European colonialism was not limited to the extraction of resources. It comprehended a ‘civilising mission’ to impose deep changes in the colony’s way of life and vernacular culture. On the one hand, it was supposed to deliver material improvements (schools, health care), which in the case of ‘Portuguese Timor’ were quite feeble in comparison to other colonial domains. On the other hand, it purported to ‘convert’ the colonised to new social norms of behaviour and it suppressed manifestations of local culture regarded as forms of ‘primitivism’. Catholic missionaries, for instance, attempted to eradicate what they perceived to be a ‘fear of the dead’ amongst the Timorese, even if these attempts did not always have their desired effect (Bovensiepen and Rosa 2016, 676; see also Viegas 2016; Rosa 2019.) Debates over the value of vernacular culture permeated the protonationalist movement that emerged in Dili in the early 1970s (Araújo 2012; Silva 2019). For many of its young supporters, nationalism ought to be defended as the right of the Timorese to maintain their cultural values and practices, which were being attacked by the colonisers imbued with notions of ‘progress’. Others would present a different view on the role of the nationalist movement: to overcome centuries of ‘backwardness’ imposed by the colonisers, whose hunger for extracting resources was held to have overwhelmed any serious commitment to investing in ‘development’. Those who represented this view argued that the nationalist movement should engage in a struggle against ‘feudalism’ in their own society, and that this entailed the eradication of all sorts of customary practices in order for a ‘new man’ to emerge (Hill 2002, 86). These two antagonistic views of the implications of self-determination would resurface in the wake of the referendum of 30 August 1999, and remain key fault lines during the post-independence era. They would also come to infuse arguments about, and approaches to, dealing with the dead. The Portuguese Carnations Revolution (25 April 1974) created an opportunity for self-determination in Timor-Leste, which turned sour in 1975. First, a brief but lethal civil war (August 1975) revealed very deep fractures in the nationalist movement. A few months later, as the Portuguese authorities had all but surrendered their sovereignty, Indonesia occupied the territory on 7 December, and tried to incorporate it into the vast nation it then was. However, the brutal methods employed by the occupiers for the next 24

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years led Benedict Anderson (1993) to observe that that period had done more to create a sense of commonality and national interests among the people of Timor-Leste than the entire period of Portuguese colonial rule. The Timorese Resistance never gave up on its defence of the principle of self-determination, and in the end, their courage and endurance paid off. In 1999, a UN-supervised referendum was held, in which an overwhelming majority voted in favour of separating from Indonesia. The Indonesians reluctantly accepted a result that they had not expected, but not before pursuing a scorched earth policy that left a trail of devastation in September 1999. Over 2,500 people were killed, all significant government and commercial basic infrastructure was destroyed, and around 400,000 people were displaced (including more than 200,000 people into West Timor: OHCHR 2000; CAVR 2005: Part 7.5, 48). The UN responded by setting up a special mission, UNTAET, to guide the territory towards independent nationhood.3 It would take another two and half years before the ceremony of restoration of independence would formally end the long period during which the Timorese lived under the domination of foreign rulers. The period after independence would also be the first opportunity for people to seek to dispel the ghosts of conflict and internal strife. Dealing with the weight of the dead in the lives of the living, has been and continues to be an important part of this process, as the following sections and the individual chapters highlight.

The dead as agents The idea that the dead – or at least some of them – continue to intervene directly in the lives of living individuals and communities has been around for a very long time, spanning several parts of the world and different religions and cultures. Some of the earliest references to this power come from Herodotus (c. 484-c. 425 BCE), who wrote that the people from Sparta went looking for the bones of Orestes, the oracle of Delphi having told them that these were required to be laid to rest in order for the Spartans to win an 3 Even if one argues that this was a necessity under the circumstances, the specific ways chosen by the UN to intervene constitute yet another example of foreigners disposing of dominant power. Jarat Chopra (2000) viewed this juncture as the ‘UN Kingdom of East Timor’ in which Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, was ‘a pre-constitutional monarch’. Others regarded this intervention as a ‘benevolent’ form of autocracy (Beauvais 2001), despotism (Chesterman 2002) or even dictatorship (Powell 2008), all expressions of a ‘benign colonialism’ (Kingsbury 2009).

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upcoming war. The power of the dead, including the importance of ‘proper burial’, is also a strong theme in Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone (441 BC), in which ruler Creon’s decision that rebel Polyneices’ body will lie unburied on the battlefield to be eaten by worms and vultures is experienced as unbearable by Polyneices’ sister. Many centuries later, when Christianity was undergoing a true religious revolution during the fourth century and moving from persecuted sect to the status of state religion, the new creed absorbed in its beliefs and rituals elements present in ‘pagan’ societies now being ‘converted’. One example can be seen in the story of St. Augustine’s mother, Monica, who visited him in Milan and made several visits to the tombs of Christian martyrs, bringing with her ‘a basket of pottage, bread and wine’ to share with the dead, just like the pre-Christians used to do. At that time, St. Augustine was thought to have asked a critical question: ‘Why can the dead do such great things?’ (Bartlett 2013). He was referring to the emerging cult of martyrs – Christians who, after their deaths, ‘attained an exceptional reward and had powers of intercession’. As Robert Bartlett (2013, 1) argues: Medieval Christianity developed to an extraordinary degree […] the idea that bodies of those holy people [beings with extraordinary powers derived from special contact with the divine] should be cherished as an enduring source of supernatural power […]. These are the saints.

The cult of saints, that is, of deceased people who performed ‘miracles’ while alive and retain that capacity after they die, remains to this day closely associated with the notion of ‘martyrs’ – ‘real people who suffered bravely for something they believed in’ (Ellsworth 2004, 332; see also Tambiah 2013). The idea that such people continue to have a direct influence on the events that affect living individuals and communities is one of the bedrocks upon which the official Catholic Church is based. While the dead might be thought to have lost their power in many parts of the secular modern world, they remain potent actors in parts of Southeast Asia and in societies grappling with the legacies of colonial rule and mass conflict, especially where animist ontologies persist. Here, they continue to demand responses and urge actions from the living. Heonik Kwon (2006) writes of how the ‘ghosts’ of those who died in massacres committed during the long period of war in Vietnam returned to haunt the living several decades later, calling for a revival of ancestral practices that had been banned by the revolutionary post-war regime. Kwon attributes the proliferation of these ghosts to the absence of adequate funerary rituals for the dead who

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were buried en masse in shallow graves, bulldozed or otherwise mistreated. Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid (2002) similarly call attention to the presence of ‘the potent dead’ in postcolonial Indonesia. For these authors, the potency of the dead is ‘the power that certain dead – ancestors, saints and national heroes – exert over the living in contemporary religious thinking and practices’ (2002: xvii). 4 Powerful dead have also materialised in the Peruvian Andes where, as Isaias Rojas-Perez (2017, 75) observes, in the face of the state’s failure to account for those who were disappeared during the counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s, ‘the spectres of the dead roam around their untreated remains’ demanding proper funerary rights. In Timor-Leste, the dead – who are generally transformed into ancestral spirits – are also thought to hold the capacity to intervene in the lives of the living. Variously described in this collection as ‘agents’ or ‘actants’,5 the dead possess powers that can be benevolent and protective (see, for example, Winch in this volume) as well as malevolent. In cases where families have failed to meet their obligations, the dead can unleash misfortunes such as illness, famine and death. To appease the dead requires the performance of rituals, a key aspect of which involves ‘separating’ the living from the dead (Bovensiepen 2018, 59). Combining aspects of customary and Catholic practice, and taking varying forms across Timor-Leste, these rituals seek to keep the worlds of the living and the dead apart by facilitating the safe passage of the dead to the ancestral domain and ensuring that they do not return to the domain of the living – or, if they do, that they do not come in a malevolent capacity. Processes of separating the living from the dead are perceived as particularly urgent in cases of ‘bad deaths’ (sometimes referred to as mate mean, ‘red deaths’) that occurred violently, unexpectedly, and suddenly. Perceived as profoundly threatening because they abruptly break the life cycle and complicate the spirit’s difficult journey into the ancestral domain, secondary burials involving ‘special mortuary provisions’ are required to render the dead ‘spiritually harmless’ (Bovensiepen 2018, 67; Sakti 2013, 4 Perhaps this is the reason why it has been reported that one of the three conditions the Indonesian military are supposed to have laid down before accepting President B. J. Habibie’s offer for a self-determination referendum in Timor-Leste was the need to guarantee proper treatment of the remains of soldiers who had fallen during the occupation period and were buried in Dili (Greenleaves and Garran 2002, 98). The ‘Indonesian graveyard’ in Dili, close to the famous Santa Cruz cemetery, is actually kept in perfect condition. 5 Bruno Latour (2004, 237) suggests that things can be actants: ‘source[s] of action’ that can ‘make a difference, produce effects, alter the course of events’.

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443). These rituals facilitate the safe passage of the dead to the ancestral domain and prevent them from returning in a ‘vengeful mood’ (Thomas 1985, 36). Disruption to these rituals can result in ancestral punishment, a breakdown of existing kinship alliances, and the obstruction of potential future marriage alliances (Sakti 2013, 450). The ‘bad’ deaths suffered by those who resisted the Indonesian occupation imbue the secondary burial rituals organised for them with a particular urgency; these rituals facilitate the transference of the dead from their liminal, abject state into the community of the ancestors. Freighting these rituals with added significance is the fact that there are compelling and widely circulating narratives about the necessity of ‘repaying’ those who are seen to have sacrificed their lives for the nation’s liberation (Traube 2007). The living, who are thought to be reaping the benefits of the dead’s heroic actions (in the form of living peaceful and prosperous lives in an independent nation state) are required to share these benefits with the dead because, in accordance with local codes of reciprocity, ‘those who suffer to bring something forth must be repaid’ (Grenfell 2015, 23, referring to Traube 2007, 10). Ultimately, these secondary burials are for the benefit and the peace of the living, helping to ensure the continuation of ‘meaningful and prosperous relationships’ (Bovensiepen 2018, 59, 61; see also Grenfell 2012). They can be understood as important forms of collective sense-making that have become a prevalent component of how East Timorese seek to deal with their experiences of the terrible violence of the Indonesian occupation. What do families do in cases where the remains of the dead are unrecoverable? This is a predicament faced by many East Timorese families whose loved ones perished in unknown circumstances in the bush. The acute distress experienced by those who believe that the spirit of the dead – unable to leave the world of the living nor reach the land of the ancestors – may continue to wander and torment the living, has been well documented (Traube 1986; Robins 2010). As several of the chapters of this book touch upon, families and communities are addressing this distress in a variety of ways because the restless and unburied dead remain dangerous, not only to their living descendants but potentially also to the nation itself. The case of Nicolau Lobato gives some sense of the scale of the dangers associated with the unburied dead. Lobato, who briefly served as East Timor’s first Prime Minister, from 28 November to 7 December 1975, died in battle against the occupying Indonesian military forces on 31 December 1978. Twenty years after the referendum of 1999, the Indonesian government has not yet disclosed where his remains lie, let alone volunteered to return them. This issue remains a point of tension between the governments of

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Timor-Leste and Indonesia, a thorn in otherwise peaceful relations, which reveals the injured pride of the new nation. Some view the failure of the state to secure the return of Nicolau Lobato’s body as a reason why the Timorese nation has suffered so much instability and has failed to ‘develop’ since gaining national independence. Until the bodies of all the conflict-dead have been recovered, it is argued, it will not be possible to move ahead as a nation (see Kent in this volume).

The power of the dead to animate politics Just as the dead possess the capacity to influence the living, the living can manipulate the dead to obtain certain goals. The dead are articulated with politics in at least two ways. First, political authorities may attempt to formulate prescriptions and implement public policies regarding the ways in which the dead are to be disposed of, and regarding the ‘social and spiritual obligations of the bereaved’ (Robben 2018, xxi). A historical example can be seen in the case of the French Revolution, when the French state argued its duty was to protect the right to life and to remove the dead from the conviviality of the living, as they were deemed to convey miasmas and diseases, creating new cemeteries. Europe in the nineteenth century followed the French lead and devised ‘health laws’ to adequately frame the relations between the dead and the living.6 In East Timor, the colonial authorities attempted to regulate similar instances, namely the delay between the proclamation of death and the time of the burial, which was sometimes considered excessively long (Viegas 2016). More recent regulations have been outlined in the Concordat signed between the Vatican and the Timor-Leste state in 2015, which stipulates the need to create ‘Catholic cemeteries’ and prevent the burial of the dead in front of houses (as is still very common in most rural areas) (Parlamento Nacional 2015). The second (and for our purposes more relevant) way of addressing the relationships between the dead and politics is to look at attempts by the living to integrate the dead’s past deeds into a narrative that transcends the realm of the close family to assume community or national relevance and social importance. These manipulations may be conducted by political elites but also by others, including families (see Feijó in this collection). In a context where, as Catherine Arthur (2019, 11) has argued, East Timorese elites 6 Portugal provides a good example of the difficulties experienced by the nineteenth-century authorities in their attempt to impose their modernist values (Pina-Cabral and Feijó 1983).

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have attempted to develop a national historical narrative based on political symbols that, in the end, are an ‘unrepresentative foundation for national identity’, there is ample room for bottom-up practices of remembering and caring for the dead that extend, challenge or fill the gaps left open by elite initiatives (see Kent 2011, 2015; Viegas and Feijó 2017). Much has been written about the vital role played by dead bodies in legitimising political regimes and imagining collective identities (Stepputat 2014; Verdery 1999). Katherine Verdery’s powerful scholarship has drawn attention to how rituals focused around the bodies of renowned dead persons have served in ‘many times and places as symbols of political order’, helping to ‘sacralise’ political authority and give ‘new meaning to political communities in moments of crisis’ (Verdery 1999, 28; Stepputat 2014, 24). Verdery’s own empirical site of analysis is the Eastern European post-socialist states in the 1990s. She writes of how, in these contexts, restless and symbolically charged dead bodies ‘enchanted’ or ‘animated’ transitional politics as their reburial in public spectacles drew attention to and sought to correct the wrongdoings of previous regimes. For Verdery, there are at least three reasons why dead bodies possess a symbolic effectiveness in projects of nation- and state-building. First, corpses have a materiality or ‘thereness’ ‘that allows abstract concepts such as patriotism, heroism or martyrdom to be rendered tangible’ and imbues particular sites and territories with significance (Verdery 1999, 27-28). Second, corpses possess an ‘ambiguity, multivocality or polysemy’, which means that they are ‘open to many different readings’. The dead body can be interpreted and ‘evaluated from many angles and assigned perhaps contradictory virtues, vices, and intentions’ (Verdery 1999, 28). While ambiguity adds to their flexibility as political symbols, it also makes them difficult for political elites to fully control because people can imbue the same corpse with diverse and personalised meanings, and such meanings can be changed. Third, the corpse is presumed to bear an ‘aura of sanctity’ due to its association with the sacred and the cosmic, and ideas about kinship and ‘proper burial’ that continue to resonate in many societies (Verdery 1999, 32-33). Examples abound of official authorities utilising the symbolic efficacy of the dead in the process of implementing public policies and crafting national narratives. Political elites direct vast resources and energies into the creation of lieux de mémoire (‘sites of memory’: Nora 1989, 9), including national cemeteries or pantheons, the erection of statues, or simply the naming streets after the illustrious dead. This zeal is particularly striking in postcolonial and post-conflict societies, where the drive to reinforce

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a sense of shared national identity is perceived as urgent and where the legitimacy of states is predicated on their ability to signify a definitive break with the violent past (Rojas-Perez 2017, 89). Through memorialisation and commemoration practices, and the reburial of emblematic dead bodies, new political orders are legitimised. By working to transform the ‘universal experience of bereavement into a positive force’ (Kwon 2006, 176) state-sponsored remembrance of the dead seeks to control and contain memories of violence, strengthen national unity and open up possibilities for a collective future (Rojas-Perez 2017, 89). There are many examples of such practices in postcolonial Southeast Asia. Kwon has written of how the post-war state hierarchy in Vietnam ‘promoted the worship of the heroic war dead to a civic religion [and] the apparatus of the unified Vietnamese state put great emphasis on centralizing and controlling commemorative practices’ (Kwon 2006, 2-4). Schreiner observes how, in Indonesia, ‘the dominant feature of the hero commemoration’s spatial dimension is not the individual grave, but the collective monument, the “heroes’ cemetery”’. This feature was initiated by Sukarno, who intended to ‘push forward national unification by installing a new set of symbols’. It was continued by Suharto’s policies, which sought to ‘centralize all political arenas and to dominate the relevant symbols’ (Schreiner 2002, 185, 192, 202). Practices of this type have proliferated in Timor-Leste. Since national independence, successive governments have articulated the significance of heroes and martyrs of the Resistance for the nation. The Timor-Leste constitution affirms the ‘recognition and valorisation of the secular resistance of the Maubere people against foreign domination, as well as the contribution of all those who fought for national independence’ (section 11). It defines the colours of the national flag in such a way that the largest part, in red, stands for the ‘struggle for national liberation’ (section 5.2). Over time, a range of policies and projects have been pursued to translate these constitutional provisions into practical measures and, in the process, construct a shared national narrative based on the national liberation struggle. These include an elaborate veterans’ ‘valorisation’ scheme including pensions and medals, statues to heroes of the Resistance, and a Resistance Museum and Archive. Perhaps the most visually impressive of the state’s projects to honour the dead is the national ‘Garden of Heroes’ (Jardim dos Heróis) cemetery in Metinaro, which is being replicated on a smaller scale in each of TimorLeste’s 13 municipalities. Like military cemeteries around the globe, including in neighbouring Indonesia, the spatial layout of the Garden of Heroes is designed to express a ‘commonality of destiny’ (Viegas and Feijó 2017, 101) amongst the dead, by seeking to bring them into connection

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with one another through their deaths for the nation (Grenfell 2012, 99). In contrast with common practice in East Timorese cemeteries, where each grave is unique and idiosyncratic in its design, the Garden of Heroes cemetery contains tombs of the same shape, material and colour, evenly spaced in rows. Yet the Garden of Heroes also establishes and entrenches hierarchies amongst the dead, delineating those who are more worthy of state recognition than others. The cemetery in Metinaro, in Dili municipality, is designated for those whose participation in the Resistance is deemed of ‘particular importance’, while those deemed of lesser importance are to be buried in the municipality equivalents. The internal spatial arrangement of the Metinaro Garden of Heroes further reinforces these hierarchies, with the largest and highest graves designated for the ‘founding fathers’ of the state – Xavier do Amaral and Nicolau Lobato.7 Needless to say, those who were not part of the resistance struggle (including those deemed to have supported the ‘wrong side’) are excluded from burial in these cemeteries. While political elites may seek to use the political efficacy of the dead to serve nation-building goals and bolster legitimising narratives, history is awash with examples of how such projects do not always play out according to the official ‘script’. Dissonance between state-sponsored projects and the feelings and stories of families is not unusual, and corpses can be assigned new meanings in accordance with shifting political circumstances. A recent example can be seen in the transformation of the grandiose monument entitled Valle de los Caidos (lit. ‘the valley of the fallen’) in Spain. Erected by the late dictator Francisco Franco during his term in office, to render homage to the nationalists killed in the civil war, the monument is now being turned into a memorial to all the victims of the civil war, and the Spanish parliament approved the removal of Franco’s remains from the monument in 2018.8 In Portugal, there has been much controversy about how the main figure of the right-wing authoritarian regime that fell on 25 April 1974, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, should be publicly remembered. In the immediate aftermath of the regime, most references to Salazar’s name were removed from the public sphere. An exception was the little town in 7 See Decree Law 30/2017. 8 The rationale offered for this new attitude is the fact that Franco was not a victim of the civil war, but someone who died peacefully in bed 36 years after the end of the conflict. The move has been staunchly opposed by his family. Franco supporters have brought the case both to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, who are the trusted keepers of the monument, and (unsuccessfully) to the Spanish civilian courts, delaying the execution of the parliamentary mandate until November 2019.

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Figure 0.1 Garden of Heroes Cemetery, Metinaro

Photo: Lia Kent

central Portugal where he was born, where a statue remained for some time. A few months after the revolution, after the statue had been painted with bright yellow and red paint, the authorities decided to cover it with a large black cloth. Even so, an anonymous group of people managed to behead the statue in early 1978.9 In Timor-Leste, official projects to honour the dead have similarly not always proceeded according to plan. Yet, in contrast to Spain and Portugal, the issue here seems to be not so much that the legitimacy of those designated as heroes or martyrs of the Resistance is contested (although rumours that ‘false’ veterans and martyrs are receiving funeral honours and veterans’ payments do circulate). Rather, it is that centralised, statesponsored projects operating according to the controlled, modernist (and 9 In early 1978, after the heat of the revolutionary period had waned, a local committee was formed to raise money to restore the statue of the town’s best-known son. They managed to have the severed head of the dictator replaced on the statue, but this action elicited a strong response from the other camp, and a bomb blew the statue to pieces. There were conflicting public demonstrations during which at least one person lost her life. Recent attempts to create an ‘interpretative centre’ for the Salazar era in this little town elicited widespread national controversy and opposition, including a vote of rejection for the idea taken in the national parliament. All of this shows that the recent international movement to remove controversial statues from the public domain has a long history.

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largely secular) language of nation-building and imposing a collective frame of remembrance are, at times, in tension with families’ needs and obligations to the dead. To take one key example, families have sometimes opposed the reburial of a deceased family member in a centralised Garden of Heroes cemetery on the basis that proximity to graves is important to facilitate regular visits and ongoing communication with and care for the dead (Viegas and Feijó 2017, 107). This tension speaks to a broader reluctance of families to alienate the dead from their personalised identities, embedded as they are in a complex web of kinship relations. A related issue is that state-sponsored initiatives, in which the dead are treated as abstract symbols capable of being subsumed into collective narratives, fail to acknowledge or engage with the potency of the dead as agents. As we explored in the earlier section, in East Timorese cosmology the dead are not merely ‘symbols’ that can be used for political goals, but rather ‘agents in their own right’ (Myrttinen 2014, 99). To explore these dynamics in more detail, we provide a brief case study of the failed Kore Metan Nasional (the National End of Mourning) initiative.

The Kore Metan Nasional (National End of Mourning) The Kore Metan Nasional was an officially-sanctioned initiative that sought to deal with the power and the weight of the dead in the lives of the living and expunge it once and for all. In August 2015, the national government announced the Kore Metan Nasional to mark ‘the end of mourning of the whole nation in relation to those who fell for national liberation’ (Government of Timor-Leste, Press Release 25 August 2015). The initiative would take place from 4 September – the anniversary of the date when the results of the 1999 referendum were announced – until 31 December, ‘Heroes Day’, which marks the date of the murder of FALINTIL leader Nicolau Lobato in 1978. On 31 December of that year, the first stone of a new ‘National Monument to Those Sacrificed in the War’ would be laid. Organised by the Ministry of Home Affairs, under the guidance of the then Minister, Dionísio Babo Soares – an anthropologist by training – the Kore Metan Nasional brought together traditional leaders and representatives of the Catholic Church for a series of ceremonies in Dili. Following a mass in the Dili cathedral, traditional leaders sacrificed pigs and chickens and lit white candles around a biti (mat) in front of the Government Palace. This aspect of the ceremony mimicked the nahe biti (spreading the mat) rituals that are performed throughout the country and that are used by

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families and neighbours to resolve disputes (Babo Soares 2005). Major figures of the Resistance, including Xanana Gusmão, Mari Alkatiri, and Lu Olo, were present, as was Prime Minister Rui Maria de Araujo. Similar events were held in each district. Black ribbons were widely distributed throughout the country, the idea being to offer an opportunity to every family to publicly display a symbol of mourning while the national process lasted. The ribbons would then be collected at the end of the period and placed in a central location in order to have personal references to each individual who was being honoured. The government’s press release (Government of Timor-Leste, 4 September 2015) set out clearly that the underlying goal of the Kore Metan Nasional was to provide a contained and time-bound mechanism to acknowledge the dead with a view to moving forwards as a nation: This period is a time to look back on the past, recognizing the struggle, and then to look forward, to embrace the future with unity, committed to the journey of nation building and development […] Our ancestors are watching. In this time we mourn the past and acknowledge our loss. Then we honour the struggle by moving forward, faces uplifted, unified as we develop the nation. By remembering and then pressing on together to build Timor-Leste we know that those that went before us would be proud and those who come after us can enjoy a promising future.

Minister Babo Soares further explained to the online newspaper Timor Agora on 4 September 2019 that the aim of the Kore Metan Nasional was to: put an end to the period in which we are dominated by the sentiments of sadness, suffering, revolt and loss of our beloved ones during the Indonesian occupation, and move forward into a phase of superation, acceptance and peace along the way of evolution, progress and development.

As he elaborated in an interview (12 November 2016), ‘We were expecting to reformat the people’s mindset’. Although it was not spelled out explicitly, the Kore Metan Nasional was driven in part by concerns amongst the political elite about the impact on f inances (both public and private) of the high number of individual ceremonies to recover, rebury, and honour martyrs. Such activities were regarded as an irrational use of resources that should be channelled to other, more ‘productive’ ends. Of particular concern was that families were using their sizeable payments under the veterans’ scheme to fund

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reburial rituals rather than setting up small businesses or otherwise investing this money. Such wastefulness, it was argued, was impeding ‘development’.10 Seen in this light, the main purpose of the Kore Metan Nasional was to reduce, if not altogether eliminate the need for families to conduct mortuary rituals for each and every deceased person. By providing a collective, national ceremony, the Kore Metan might serve as sort of a blanket to cover those dead who, for whatever reason, had not yet been the object of a funerary ceremony of their own. In a way, the initiative was also a pragmatic acknowledgement by the state that, in a context where thousands of bodies remained unaccounted for and where there are many competing priorities for resource allocation, it would be practically impossible to locate, identify, exhume, and rebury each and every martyr. Set against these concerns, the Kore Metan Nasional was performed in such a way as to satisfy – at least at face value – both customary and modern forms of honouring the dead. The participation of the Catholic Church, customary leaders, and leading political figures associated with the Resistance instantiated this ideal unity. The government’s decision to name the event a Kore Metan was itself a reference to the widely practiced customary Timorese ritual of ‘taking off the black’ that generally takes place after one year of mourning. Several years later, this initiative has not met its desired aim. The first stone in the National Monument to Those Sacrificed in the War has not been laid and families continue to spend large sums of money on organising individual ceremonies for their own dead. The black ribbons profusely distributed among the population have not yet been retrieved by the authorities to be brought together in a central place. Some East Timorese refer to them as pieces of a meaningless enterprise. Others continue to light candles nightly and wait in vain for the government to return to collect them and officially end the mourning period. Members of the political elite also seem to have recognised the flawed nature of this initiative. One year after the supposed end of the national mourning period, Dionísio Babo Soares commented that ‘ideas about this project have evolved’ and ‘we now envisage it as an ongoing process’ (interview, 12 November 2016). He acknowledged the difficulty of bringing about an official ‘end’ to national mourning. When asked why, he responded, ‘Well, we cannot remove the period of struggle from our heads’. 10 Kelly Silva (2017, 194) notes that a similar rationale was behind the government’s decision to promote a procedure known as tara bandu in Ermera and elsewhere in Timor-Leste.

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We can think of several interrelated factors that contributed to the resounding failure of the Kore Metan Nasional. First, it is likely that many people perceived this initiative as an inadequate means of recognising, honouring, and repaying the debt owed to those who sacrificed their lives for the nation. As an initiative that operated at a symbolic level, the Kore Metan Nasional did not provide the material means to sustain individual rituals around the country for each and every martyr. Moreover, by attempting to enrol the dead into a collective, national, memory framework, it is likely that the Kore Metan Nasional did violence towards families’ efforts to reconstitute and recognise each martyr in their distinct personhood: in their anatomical specificity, their network of kinship relations, their personal history and as agents with needs and demands (cf. Crossland 2015, 242-243). Finally, and relatedly, to accept a symbolic measure such as a Kore Metan Nasional would, for many East Timorese, be a risky venture due to the ‘elusive and fundamentally unknowable’ nature of the dead and their demands (Bovensiepen 2018, 67). As Bovensiepen observes, the dead can be unpredictable and capricious, and their unknowable quality increases the threat that emanates from them. Even in cases of family-led rituals, there is always an element of doubt or uncertainty as to the completeness and success of such ceremonial actions, including whether they have been able to fully accomplish the ‘severance between the living and dead’ (Bovensiepen 2018, 67). Such doubts are likely to be magnified in the case of a controlled, time-bound, state-led initiative over which families of the dead have had little control. Focusing on the failure of the Kore Metan Nasional makes visible the fact that, while authorities may seek to harness the power of the dead as part of a process of building political community, the dead are not a ‘blank canvass for the inscription of political agendas’ (Stepputat 2014, 26). They are not, that is, abstract symbols to be appropriated and used by political elites in the service of nation-building goals. Families may resist attempts to subsume the dead into collective narratives by imposing time-bound initiatives that alienate the dead from their kin and fail to appreciate the depth and complexity of the moral and social obligations of the living. The dead may also participate in the disruption of elite nation-building goals through their capacity – as both visible, material substances and as agents – to call attention to forms of misrecognition, neglect and unfinished business. This is a case in which the sovereignty of the living over the dead has been reversed, and the dead actually govern the living (Borneman 2014, 229).

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Overview of the Chapters Part I comprises two framing chapters that address some of the fundamental questions posed by a consideration of the dead as martyrs, ancestors, and national heroes. Taking as a starting point a review of the literature on ancestors in general, Chapter 1, by anthropologist Susana Viegas, discusses the historically and socially specific meanings of two categories – ‘ancestors’ and ‘martyrs’ – in Timor-Leste. She suggests that these categories are not synonymous: rather, ‘martyrs’ has emerged as a ‘category of personhood’ in a specific historical context, which is marked by a deep articulation with the strong presence of ‘ancestors’ in the daily life of the Timorese. In Chapter 2, Michael Leach, a political scientist, examines the relationship between ‘martyrs’ and ‘heroes’ and explores the ongoing challenges involved in creating a narrative of national identity based on past suffering during the resistance to Indonesian occupation. With a specific focus on the conservation of difficult sites in the struggle for independence, including jails, interrogation centres, sites of massacres, and monuments, he draws out the different colonial and postcolonial ‘layers’ of the cultural heritage landscape and their competing visions of East Timorese identity. Part II comprises six chapters that explore the power of the dead in everyday life. Rich in ethnographic detail, these chapters are principally focused on the relationship between ‘martyrs’ of the long East Timorese struggle for self-determination and the powerful entities into which they may have been transformed by virtue of their death, which are usually called ‘ancestors’. The chapters bring to the fore the conviviality and vitality of ancestral practices inscribed in the longue durée and highlight their relevance in the aftermath of the Indonesian occupation as part of the process of reconstituting community. The dynamism, creativity, and transformation of social and cultural values in contemporary Timor-Leste also emerge as a central theme. In Chapter 3, Alessandro Boarccaech discusses the Humangili, a community located on the island of Ataúro in Timor-Leste, for whom the worlds of the dead and the living maintain a constant relation. Boarccaech investigates possible points of contact between the belief in spirits of nature and ancestors and the meaning of the hero among the Humangili. He finds that the notion of hero (who is generally understood to be a warrior who held a leadership role and died in combat) contributes to the stability of local customs and beliefs because it reinforces established values. In Chapter 4, Bronwyn Winch examines how the dead can provide forms of protection for their living relatives. She considers how items imbued with protective

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powers from the ancestors, prayers conducted in Uma Lulik (sacred houses) in order to receive ancestral blessings and protection, and rituals aimed at identifying the problems caused by transgressions or inadequate ancestor veneration contribute to ‘lived’ or ‘vernacular’ experiences of security in contemporary Timor-Leste. Building on these themes, in Chapter 5 Damian Grenfell argues that ancestral spirits are fundamental to conceptions of a good life in Timor-Leste, to the extent that it is difficult to imagine ‘peace’ without recognising them. Grenfell is critical of the ways in which state agencies and the United Nations in Timor-Leste have largely expunged ‘the spiritual’ from how peace is imagined at that institutional level. The two chapters that follow explore how families geographically dispersed on different sides of the Timor-Leste/Indonesia border negotiate their obligations to the dead, often developing innovative responses. In Chapter 6, Victoria Sakti brings the reader to the enclave of Oecussi and considers the social, cultural, and political dynamics that shape the multivalent quality of the spirits of those who died in a village massacre in 1999. She examines how family networks have been mobilised to deal with the failure to meet obligations to the dead, and how this mobilisation involves cross-border activities amongst conflict-divided families. Chapter 7, by Andrey Damaledo, analyses mortuary rituals undertaken by East Timorese living in Indonesian West Timor. Informed by Robert Hertz’ model of how the process of double burial transforms the relationship between the dead and the living, he argues that the dead remain a powerful force in the renegotiation of belonging and the rebuilding of relationships across borders. By focusing on the borderlands between Timor-Leste and Indonesia, these chapters prompt reflection on the borderlands between social groups and between the living and the dead. In Chapter 8, Soren Blau examines recent approaches to the exhumation and forensic identification of human remains in Timor-Leste. She draws out the complexities that have arisen due to the large number of missing persons, a lack of resource and expertise in forensic practice, and local beliefs about the power of the dead to influence the lives of the living. While forensic practitioners tend to assume that the ‘identification of a deceased person, once confirmed scientifically is absolute’, East Timorese families do always accept these findings, complicating forensic practitioners’ attempts to construct a ‘forensic truth’. Part III consists of five chapters that deal with the power of the dead to shape imaginings of the state and nation. This part of the book is primarily concerned with the historical short term and the contingencies of the political project to build a state and imagine a nation. They demonstrate the degree to which, as Philippe Ariès (1975) has observed, popular attitudes to death are

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ordinarily best understood in the longue durée, but there may be periods in between two cycles in which they can change quite dramatically.11 The use of the dead to foster a sense of national identity moves between the two forms of envisaging history: the long term that proposes continuities, and the short term that allows for ruptures. This part of the book finds its roots in such a terrain. The first two chapters in Part III consider how different categories of the conflict-dead are publicly remembered within contemporary narratives and practices of public commemoration and memorialisation. In Chapter 9 Amy Rothschild compares and contrasts the two main competing remembrance frameworks, which are built around the categories of ‘victims’ and ‘veterans’ (or heroes). She argues that, while the CAVR produced a narrative focused on past violations and framed the deceased in the human rights language of suffering and victimhood, this narrative has subsequently been displaced by a state-promoted narrative focused on the heroes or veterans of Timor’s struggle for independence. In Chapter 10, Henri Myrttinen likewise considers the dead who are rendered publicly visible and invisible. Bringing an important gender perspective to his analysis, Myrttinen suggests that while men (or ‘men of action’) are remembered, women and other men are invisibilised, as are the disabled and those who were killed during Timor-Leste’s recent period of unrest from 2006 to 2008. Both Rothschild and Myrttinen reflect on the societal and political implications of these inclusions, exclusions, and silences in public discourse. In Chapter 11, Rui Graça Feijó similarly considers the centrality of national narratives of resistance and heroism. He does so through two case studies of people who were killed during the Resistance period in circumstances that generated ambiguity and led to the emergence of competing narratives regarding their bravery, and thus questioned their right to be fully recognised as ‘heroes’. Their families, however, have devoted significant efforts to establishing a hegemonic narrative that renders their position in the pantheon of heroes undisputed, and thus enable them to derive benefits from their association with them. The symbolic character of those benefits is stressed in contrast to more common approaches based on material gains. The final two chapters examine official discourses and practices pertaining to the ‘valorisation’ of martyrs and their diverse effects. In Chapter 12, Lia Kent explores the establishment of local ‘commissions’ for the recovery of human remains by former members of the armed and clandestine resistance. 11 The same idea is espoused by Michel Vovelle (1983), for whom the longue durée cannot be understood without the consideration of ‘brusque ruptures, or crisis, which express the importance of the short term’.

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These commissions have exhumed the remains of thousands of bodies of the conflict-dead, which are currently being stored in makeshift local ossuaries until such time that they are able to be buried in a state-sponsored Garden of Heroes cemetery. Kent argues that these practices are taking the government’s valorisation agenda in new, unexpected directions and need to be understood – at least in part – as responses to the demands of the powerful dead. Chapter 13, by Kate Roll, provides an important focus on the economic values associated with martyrdom. Specifically, she considers how, through the official veterans’ programme, certain deceased persons are transformed into martyrs, a form of recognition that carries significant financial value. This has perversely led to the creation of a secondary market for the names of the dead. These unexpected dynamics are explored along with their implications for the consolidation of the post-conflict state.

Conclusion The dead matter to the living everywhere. During formative periods of state and nation building, where they are often victims of political violence or war, they are imbued with added potency. Deeply entangled with questions of care and dignification, healing, status, and identity, the dead also become, at such times, central to the legitimation of political regimes. Intense struggles around meaning-making ensue as families, communities, and even the dead themselves push back against, or attempt to transform, totalising nationalist narratives and lieux de memoire that seek to control and contain the legacies of the past. The meanings attached to the dead are also deeply local. The chapters in this collection reveal the unique ways in which they influence the living in the new nation state of Timor-Leste. Here, the experiences of acute suffering, loss, and dislocation, and the protracted struggle against violent occupation are intensified by the spiritual and existential dangers posed by the vast numbers of missing and unburied bodies, and delayed or disrupted mortuary rituals. Further aggravating these dangers is what Elizabeth Traube refers to in her Preface as a ‘deepening sense of the negative presence of the dead’ in the context of the perceived failure of independent nationhood to deliver its expected ‘abundance’. All of this adds urgency to efforts to respond to the dead. Collectively, the chapters show how new forms of understanding, categorisation and care for the dead mingle with older traditions in an ongoing search for ways to rebuild the worlds of the living. If there is an overarching theme to emerge from this collection, it is that the dead are omnipresent in independent Timor-Leste; they remain a major

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force that shapes relationships amongst families, communities, and the nation state. Because of this, they offer an important window into – and are in fact pivotal to – ongoing processes of nation and state formation. The dead have, until recently, been peripheral in studies of nation and statebuilding in Timor-Leste, which have been preoccupied with the creation of institutions and the struggles for rights and recognition and political power. By bringing the dead to the centre of the analytical frame, this collection enriches and deepens Timor-Leste studies while also contributing to a growing literature on the influence of the dead in nation- and state-building processes around the globe.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Elizabeth Traube and an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter.

Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. 1993. ‘Imagining East Timor’. Arena Magazine 4: 7-33. Araújo, Abílio de. 2012. Dato Siri Loe II. Autobiografia de Abílio de Araújo. Lisbon: Aletheia. Ariès, Philippe. 1975. Essais sur l’ Histoire de la Mort en Occiden du Moyen Âge à nos jours. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Arthur, Catherine E. 2019. Political Symbols and National Identity in Timor-Leste. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Assembleia Constituinte. 2002. Constituição da República Democrática de TimorLeste. Dili: Assembleia Constituinte. Babo-Soares, Dionisio. 2005. ‘Nahe Biti: Grassroots Reconciliation in East Timor’. In Roads to Reconciliation, edited by E. Skaar, S. Gloppen and A. Suhrke, 225-46. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Bartlett, Robert. 2013. Why Can the Dead Perform Such Great Things? Worshippers from Martyrs to Renaissance. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Beauvais, Joel. 2001. ‘Benevolent Despotism: A Critique of UN State-Building in East Timor’. New York University Journal of Law & Policy 33 (4): 74-89. Borneman, John. 2014. ‘Abandonment and victory in relation with dead bodies’. In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by F. Stepputat, 229-249. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014. ‘Paying for the Dead: on the politics of death in independent Timor’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15 (2): 103-122. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2018. ‘Death and Separation in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste’. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Death, edited by A.C.G.M. Robben, 59-70. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Bovensiepen, Judith and Frederico Delgado Rosa. 2016. ‘Transformations of the Sacred in East Timor’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 58 (3): 664-693. CAVR 2005, Chega! Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. CAVR: Dili. Chambert-Loir, Henri and Anthony Reid, eds. 2002. ‘Introduction’. In The Potent Dead: Ancestors, Saints and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia, xv-xxvi. Crown Nest, Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen and Unwin and University of Hawai’i Pres. Chesterman, Simon. 2002. ‘East Timor in Transition: Self-Determination, StateBuilding and the United Nations’. International Peacekeeping 9 (1): 45-76. Chopra, Jarat. 2000. ‘The UN Kingdom of East Timor’. Survival 42 (3): 289-305. Crossland, Zoe. 2015. ‘Epilogue’. In Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights, edited by Francisco Ferrandiz and Antonius C.G.M. Robben, 239-251. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Durand, Frederic. 2006. East Timor. A Country at the Crossroads of Asia and the Pacific. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books with IRASEC. Durand, Frederic. 2011. ‘Three Centuries of Violence and Struggle in East Timor, 1726-2008’. Accessed 4 April 2020. www.sciencespo.fr/en/document/threecenturies-violence-and-struggle-esat-timor-1726-2008. Ellsworth, Patricia. 2004. ‘Mártires’. In Enciclopédia da Morte e da Arte de Morrer, edited by Glennys Howarth and Oliver Leaman, 332-333. Lisbon, Quimera. Government of Timor-Leste. Press release on Kore Metan Nasional, 25 August 2015. Government of Timor-Leste. Press release on Kore Metan Nasional, 4 September 2015. Greenleaves, Don, and Robert Garran, 2002. Deliverance. The Inside Story of East Timor’s Fight for Freedom. Crow’s Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin. Grenfell, Damian. 2012. ‘Remembering the Dead from the Customary to the Modern in Timor-Leste’. Local-Global: Identity, Security, Community 11: 86-108. Grenfell, Damian. 2015. ‘Of Time and History: The Dead of War, Memory and the National Imaginary’. Communication, Politics and Culture 48 (3): 16-28. Hertz, Robert. 1960 [1907]. ‘A Contribution to the Study of Collective Representations of Death’. In Death and the Right Hand, (translated by Rodney and Claudia Needham), 27-86. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Hicks, David. 2004. Tetun Ghosts and Kin. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

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Hill, Helen. 2002. Stirrings of Nationalism in East Timor: FRETILIN 1974-1978, The Origins, Ideologies and Strategies of a Nationalist Movement. Otford (Sydney), Kuala Lumpur and Dili: Otford Press. Hull, Geoffrey. 2002. The Languages of East Timor: Some Basic Facts. Dili: Instituto Nacional de Linguística da Universidade Nacional de Timor-Leste. Kammen, Douglas. 2015. Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor. Singapore, National University of Singapore Press. Kaufman, Sharon. 2016. ‘Why we need the dead’. Los Angeles Review of Books, 7 March 2016. Kent, Lia. 2011. ‘Local Memory Practices in East Timor: Disrupting Transitional Justice Assumptions’. International Journal of Transitional Justice 5 (1): 434-455. Kent, Lia. 2015. ‘Remembering the Past, Shaping the Future: Memory Frictions and Nation-Making in Timor-Leste’. State Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Discussion Paper 2015/1. Kingsbury, Damien. 2009. East Timor: The Price of Liberty. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kwon, Heonik. 2006. After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai. Berkeley: University of California Press. Laqueur, Thomas W. 2015. The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2004. The Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McWilliam, Andrew. 2008. ‘Fataluku Healing and Cultural Resilience in East Timor’. Ethnos 73 (2): 217-240. McWilliam, Andrew. 2011. ‘Exchange and Resilience in Timor-Leste’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17: 745-763. Myrttinen, Henri. 2014. ‘Claiming the Dead, Defining the Nation: Contested Narratives of the Independence Struggle in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste’. In Governing the dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by F. Stepputat, 95-113. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nora, Pierre. 1989. ‘Between Memory and History: Le Lieux de Mémoire’. Representations 26: 7-24. OHCHR (Office of the High Commission for Human Rights). 2000. Report of the International Commission of Inquiry of East Timor to the Secretary General (UN Doc S/2000/59, January). Geneva: OHCHR. Parlamento Nacional [Timor-Leste]. ‘Resolução do Parlamento Nacional no. 18/2015 de 11 de Novembro. Ratifica o Acordo entre o Governo da República Democrática de Timor-Leste e a Santa Sé’. Jornal da República 1, no. 43: 8417-8425. Pina-Cabral, João, and Rui Feijó. 1983. ‘Conflicting Attitudes to Death in Modern Portugal. The question of Cemeteries’. In Death in Portugal. Studies in Portuguese

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Anthropology and Modern History, edited by R. Feijó, H. Martins and J. PinaCabral, 17-43. Oxford: JASO. Powell, Samantha. 2008. Chasing the Flame. Sergio Vieira de Mello and the fight to save the World. New York: Penguin Press. Republica Democrática de Timor-Leste. ‘Decree Law 30/2017, Cemitérios Especiais dos Combatentes da Libertação Nacional Jardins dos Heróis da Pátria (Special Cemeteries for National Liberation Combatants/Gardens of Heroes of the Nation)’. Jornal da, República 1, no 31: 1455-1460. Robben, Antonius C.G.M. 2018. ‘An Anthropology of Death for the 21st Century’. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Death, edited by Antonius C.G.M Robben: xv-xl. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Robins, Simon. 2010. ‘An Assessment of the Needs of Families of the Missing in Timor-Leste’. Report for the Postwar reconstruction and Development Unit. York: University of York. Rojas-Perez, Isaias. 2017. Mourning Remains: State Atrocity, Exhumations, and Governing the Disappeared in Peru’s Postwar Andes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Roosa, John. 2007. ‘How Does a Truth Commission Find out What the Truth Is? The Case of East Timor-Leste’s CAVR’. Pacific Affairs 80: 569-580. Rosa, Frederico Delgado. 2019. ‘Catholic Luliks or Timorese Relics? Missionary Anthropology, Destruction and Self-Destruction (ca. 1910-1974)’. In Crossing Ethnographies and Histories. Following Colonial Historicities in Timor-Leste, edited by Ricardo Roque and Elizabeth Traube, 313-338. Oxford, Bergahn. Sakti, Victoria Kumala. 2013. ‘Thinking Too Much: Tracing Local Patterns of Emotional Distress After Mass Violence in Timor-Leste’. Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 14 (5): 438-454. Schreiner, Klaus H. 2002. ‘National Ancestors: The Ritual Construction of Nationhood’. In The Potent Dead: Ancestors, Saints and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia, edited by H. Chambert-Loir and A. Reid, 183-204. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Silva, Kelly. 2017. ‘Managing Resources, Persons and Rituals: Economic Pedagogy as Government Tactics’. In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations, edited by Susana de Matos Viegas and Rui Graca Feijo, 193- 209. London and New York: Routledge. Silva, Kelly 2019. ‘The Barlake War. Marriage Exchanges, Colonial Fantasies and the Production of East Timorese People in 1970s Dili’. In Crossing Ethnographies and Histories. Following colonial historicities in Timor-Leste, edited by Ricardo Roque and Elizabeth Traube, 313-338. Oxford, Berghahn. Stepputat, Finn. 2014. ‘Governing the Dead? Theoretical Approaches’. In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by F. Stepputat, 11-34. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Tambiah, Stanley. 2013. ‘The Charisma of Saints and the Cult of Relics, Amulets, and Tomb Shrines’. In Radical Egalitarianism: Local Realities, Global Relations, edited by F. Aulino, M. Goheen, and S. Tambiah, 15-50. New York: Fordham University Press. Thomas, Louis Vincent. 1985. Rites de Mort. Pour la paix des vivants. Paris: Fayard. Timor Agora. 2015. ‘Timor-Leste inicia hoje período de desluto nacional’. 4 September 2015. Traube, Elizabeth. 1986. Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual Exchange Among the Mumbai. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Traube, Elizabeth. 2007. ‘Unpaid Wages: Local Narratives and the Imagination of the Nation’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1): 9-25. Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. New York; Columbia University Press. Viegas, Susana de Matos 2016. ‘Territorialidades e ambivalências. A co-habitação dos Fataluku com os missionários em Lautém (1947-1957). In Timor-Leste: Colonialismo, Descolonização, Lusutopia, edited by R.G. Feijó, 139-158. Porto: Afrontamento. Viegas, Susana de Matos 2019. ‘The Co-Presence of Ancestors and their Reburials Among the Fataluku (Timor-Leste)’. In Indonesia 107: 55-73. Viegas, Susana de Matos and Rui Graça Feijó, eds. 2017. Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste. Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations. London: Routledge. Vovelle, Michel. 1983. La Mort et l’Occident de 1300 à nos jours. Paris: Gallimard.

Interviews Dionisio Babo Soares. Dili, 12 November 2016.

About the Authors Lia Kent is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on questions of peacebuilding, reconciliation, transitional justice, and memory politics in the aftermath of mass violence. Lia has undertaken research in Timor-Leste since 2000, and has recently also worked on Aceh, Indonesia. Her current project, which is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), considers the diverse forms of memory work being undertaken by non-state actors in Timor-Leste. Lia is the author of The Dynamics of Transitional Justice: International Models and

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Local Realities in East Timor (Routledge 2012) and has published in journals including The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Human Rights Quarterly, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Third World Thematics. Rui Graça Feijo is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (where he holds a contract under the Transitional Norms of Law 57/2017), and Associate Researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History, Nova University of Lisbon. Over the last fifteen years he has devoted most of his research to contemporary issues in the history and society of Timor-Leste, including the process of self-determination, the construction of a new state after independence, and the global process of nation and democracy building. He has published Dynamics of Democracy in Timor-Leste. The Birth of a Democratic Nation (AUP 2016) and co-edited with Susana de Matos Viegas Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: dynamics of social and cultural cohabitations (Routledge 2017).

1

Ancestors and Martyrs in Timor-Leste Susana de Matos Viegas Abstract This chapter reflects on the subject of ancestors: what are they in TimorLeste? Assuming a comparative perspective, I argue that ancestors are inscribed in unilineal kinship dynamics implying mutuality of being. The category of martyrs emerges in the historical process of resistance against Indonesian occupation and should be understood as part of the lived experience of ancestorship and cosmic circularity (lulik circle). Contrasting constrained forms of honouring the dead imposed by colonial authorities after the Japanese invasion during World War II with the liveliness of the programmes destined to support reburials and pay tribute to martyrs in post-independence Timor-Leste, I argue that more than war heroes, martyrs inscribe the homage to the deceased in the conquest of freedom and self-determination. Keywords: ancestorship, anthropological comparison, mutuality of being, martyrs

The debate on ancestor worship was initiated in anthropology back in the nineteenth century in order to address the history of religion preceding Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism. In present day anthropology, a consensus has emerged to reject the expression ‘worship’, as it presumes an evolutionary view of religions (cf. Bloch 2008 [1986], 320). Couderc and Sillander have suggested replacing it with the expression ‘ancestorship’ (2012, 6). Their proposal provides a good introduction to the Timorese case. Their suggestion is that the semantic core of the term ancestorship consists of ‘the relationship of the living with the ancestors, and the latter encompass both presently existing spirit agencies (ancestor spirits) and formerly existing people of the past’ (Couderc and Sillander, 2012, 6). In this light, the comparison between sociocultural contexts in which ancestorship

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is central and others where it structures social life to a lesser extent is a primary consideration. Taking as his starting point a historical and contemporary comparative panorama, Maurice Bloch (2002) highlights a particular contrast between, on the one hand, certain African and Asian (including Southeast Asian) contexts where ancestorship takes a central place, and on the other hand the Amerindians of Lowland South America, where this issue is residual. In the latter contexts, we frequently find that, instead of complex forms destined to create or maintain the presence of dead kinsfolk in the lives of their descendants, oblivion and the transformation of dead relatives into alternative categories of relatedness are produced (Bloch 2002, 66).1 Bloch argues that ancestorship should refer more strictly to kin relationships, usually referring to those who descend from a common patrilineal or matrilineal grandfather or great-grandfather. This is how it is interpreted in most of the anthropological literature, where ancestorship is associated with continuity from ascendant generations of unilineal kinsfolk. In the Encyclopaedia of Religion, for instance, Hardacre argues that ancestorship implies that ‘a member of a certain lineage [unilineal descent group] prays only to the ancestors of that lineage’ (2005 [1987], 321). She adds: ‘it would be regarded as nonsensical to pray to ancestors of any other lineage’ (ibid.).2 Addressing the issue of ancestorship in Borneo, Couderc and Sillander propose an analytical framework which is much broader than Hardacre’s. They argue that in Borneo, as well as in Southeast Asia in general, the category of ancestorship comprehends individuals who may not necessarily be related to each other by virtue of kinship, including those who are venerated because they have been prominent figures and possessed a socially specific value while they were alive (2012, 7). In this light, they argue against a vision of ancestorship circumscribed to the universe of unilineal descent, which they claim is excessively influenced by analysis of the Chinese and African contexts (2012, 7). For the case of Timor-Leste, I propose to retrieve both Hardacre and Maurice Bloch’s argument, referring to ancestorship as kinship, cosmology, 1 The seminal work on the Amerindian peoples of Lowland South America is Manuela Carneiro da Cunha’s monograph on the Krahó (1978). See also Viveiros de Castro (1992), Taylor (1993), and more recently Guerreiro (2015). 2 Grosso modo, in anthropology unilineal descent is understood as forms of generating bonds of belonging through descent from relatives of one matrilineal or patrilineal line, which encompasses the network of ancestors (cf. Pina-Cabral 1989). For the purposes of this chapter, I wish to underline that ancestorship practices tend to reinforce, constitute, and continuously feed this form of kinship ties of unilineal descent.

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religion, and hierarchy, thus excluding the homage paid to individuals based on honorific feats accomplished in their lifetime. I believe this to be a framework that better permits us to understand rigorously how the relationships between ancestors and martyrs are established and differentiated in contemporary Timor-Leste. Here, I understand ‘martyrs’ in Timor-Leste as a category of personhood that has emerged in a specific historical context, that is, when Timor-Leste became an independent nation. The religious dimension of martyrdom should, then, be articulated with structural elements of the longue durée, namely the strong presence of ancestorship in the life of the Timorese. As the introduction to this volume mentions, the category of ‘martyrs’ is consecrated in the preamble to the constitution of Timor-Leste, reflecting the degree to which the members of the Constituent Assembly decided to transform their work into a ‘heartfelt homage to all the martyrs of the Fatherland’ (Kent and Feijó, in this volume, see also Viegas and Feijó 2017, 95). Even though some other aspects of this important document may be regarded as somehow exogenous to specifically Timorese life experiences and strongly tainted by the logics and history of external interventions, such as those of the Portuguese or the UN (Trindade 2008, 167), this specific reference to ‘martyrs’ reflects deep feelings amongst the East Timorese. In this chapter I will follow the Timorese philosophy espoused in its Constitution, referring to martyrs as all those who suffered while participating in or dedicating their lives to the Resistance. Section 11 of the Constitution states that ‘the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste acknowledges and values the centuries-old resistance of the Maubere people against foreign domination and the contribution of all those who fought for national liberation’. The red in the national flag also stands for ‘the fight for national liberation’ (Viegas and Feijó 2017, 95). The argument put forward by Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth Traube (2011) on the importance of suffering in the make-up of sentiments of belonging to a nation in Timor-Leste frames this perspective adequately, and underlines it well. As they suggest, ‘ideas of shared struggle against the Indonesian regime thickened a sense of pan-ethnic “Timorese” identity cultivated under common submission to Portuguese colonial rule and became the basis for asserting a horizontal solidarity of fellow sufferers’ (McWilliam and Traube 2011, 18). The political elite responsible for drafting the constitution and recording the public homage to the people who fought for independence is the very same group that formed the Resistance, and its members have relatives who perished in that struggle. It is true that, as Lia Kent has argued (2012) and as Michael Leach has reiterated, ‘older nationalists have politically dominated

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the post-independence state, and it is clear that significant numbers of young people have felt misrecognised’ (Leach 2009, 145). However, as far as the tribute to the martyrs is concerned, there is a transversal understanding of their importance in different generations. A case in point is the fact that when a serious political crisis erupted in 2006, only four years after independence, one of the explanations for its surge was that there had been a lack of adequate homage to the martyrs (cf. Viegas and Feijó 2017; Loch and Prueller 2011, 321). Leading exponents of this view were Bryant Castro and Josh Trindade, who showed that, from the point of view of ‘some interviewees […] the East Timorese people, through the government, have forgotten3 the martyrs (Matebian/War Heroes) who sacrificed their lives during the resistance’. (Trindade and Castro 2007, 17-18). 4 Forgetting actually means disregarding the world of ancestors, and this forgetfulness has consequences. This is because ‘these martyrs or fighters are part of the spiritual world at the moment. When they are upset, the spiritual world is out of order, resulting in conflict in the real world, i.e. in the form of the Lorosa’e-Loromonu issue’ (Trindade and Castro 2007, 17-18). Josh Trindade and Bryant Castro’s thoughts on ancestorship guide the discussion in this chapter. Their view is clearly in favour of an identification of martyrs as part of the spiritual world where ancestors occupy a central role. The relationship between the circumstances of martyrs’ deaths – for instance, the fact that many of them were buried without proper mortuary rituals and far away from their homes, or that they were shot by a bullet – and the multiplicity of homage processes taking place after Timor-Leste obtained its political independence is a theme that I have addressed, together with Rui Graça Feijó, elsewhere (cf. Viegas and Feijó 2017; 2018). There, we underlined the tensions experienced by Timorese when making decisions about whether to bury their deceased kinsfolk regarded as martyrs in dedicated cemeteries – for instance, the Metinaro Garden of Heroes cemetery and its district replicas, or even in smaller ones that have been created spontaneously to honour martyrs and heroes – or else to opt for a burial in places that belong to the family and are inscribed in a territorial logic, including their ancestors. In this chapter, I shall concentrate on showing, on the one hand, the translation of sufferance as martyrdom, and on the other, that those who perished in this way are also deceased-ancestors. I shall argue that 3 My emphasis. 4 Interviews in this report were conducted among a sociological sample comprising 53 persons ‘representing a range of professions, social status and local knowledge’ (Trindade and Castro 2007, 8).

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the presence of ancestors in Timorese people’s lives, and the historical emergence of ancestors-martyrs as a category of personhood, constitutes a framework for the comprehension of the theme of death that subsequent chapters of this book will develop.

Ancestorship and unilineal descent In Timor-Leste, practices of ancestorship are circumscribed to a network of unilineal descendants associated with the group of origin, be it patrilineal or matrilineal. Therefore, it is critical to understand how, in a historical context such as the one experienced in Timor-Leste, and in spite of matrimonial alliances being structurally intertwined, practices of ancestorship do contribute to reinforcing, constituting and streamlining forms of belonging associated with origin groups and networks of unilineal descent. In the rituals and homages paid to ancestors, only the network of kinsfolk descending from one origin group integrates and participates effectively in such rites as, for instance, the act of sharing and eating together sacrificial meat. Taking the example of the Fataluku, which I know not only from literature but as result of fieldwork research,5 in the ancestorship rituals, leura tei (‘sacrificial/sacred meat’) is only shared among members of one origin group (ratu), that is, ‘a dispersed, exogamous, patrilineal “house of origin”’. (McWilliam 2011, 65). In Fataluku, the generic for ‘ancestors’ is calu ho papu (lit. ‘grandfather and great-grandfathers’) that may correspond to patrilineal descent forefathers, considered – as in so many other Southeast Asian contexts – as ‘an anonymous collectivity’ (Arhem 2016a, 20).6 In some rituals those anonymous entities intervene, whereas in others it is a relative who is a specific deceased-ancestor person belonging to one patrilineal ascent line who is addressed. One example of the first kind are rituals performed in the ‘house shrines’ known in Fataluku as aca kaka or lafuru tei (which literally translates to ‘sacred heart’). McWilliam considers 5 I carried out fieldwork in the region of Lospalos/Lautém for three periods of between two and four months each, totalling nine months in all, in the years 2012-2016. In most of these periods research was undertaken together with Rui Graça Feijó. This research was supported by a grant sponsored by the Foundation for Science and Technology of Portugal (FCT PTDC/ CS-ANT/118150/2010). 6 Calu ho papu also includes the connection with the calu ukane – the ensemble agnatic forbearers, as the relationship with a calu ho papu never entails only one individual. It embraces and may approximate (for instance, in a communal sacrificial meeting and meal) many different kin of the same agnatic descent line.

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that the ancestors evoked in aca kaka may be ‘understood as an extension ultimately of the earliest origin hearth of the named clan’ (McWilliam 2011, 12; 2011a, 73; see also McWilliam 2008, 232). An example of the second kind of rituals is the ones performed next to the tomb of a given and named patrilineal relative. These rituals mobilise a larger number of relatives than the first kind, house-based aca-kaka, but they are still confined to relatives belonging to the same origin group. In contrast to the aca kaka, in these ceremonies one communicates with a specific deceased relative – the one who is buried in there (cf. Viegas 2018, 2019). There are a third and a fourth category of ancestorship rituals among the Fataluku which involve wider networks of descendants of the same ratu (origin group). These may happen both in the case of rituals performed next to a tomb located in previous dwelling places and in the case of those organised in long-distance from current inhabited villages, corresponding to more ancient inhabiting places. The latter tend to be highly formalised and performed more rarely. McWilliam gives a detailed description of such type of ritual ceremonies in the region of the Konis Santana National Park (McWilliam 2007, 197). Among the Fataluku as well as across Timor-Leste and beyond, ancestorship emerges in and through relatedness. As Richard Fox recognises when considering offers given by Balinese to their ancestors in their shrines, reciprocal obligations towards the ancestors are not substantively different from ‘those one sustains with kinsmen and neighbours’ (Fox 2015, 39). Mutuality of being marks the relationship between living kinsmen and their ancestors, showing that ancestors behave as relatives, and that networks of interaction and tension between ancestors and the living help to integrate kinship relationships (cf. Viegas 2018, 2019). Several anthropologists working in different contexts in Southeast Asia have also highlighted that ancestorship is key in constituting mutually protective ties and interdependence among relatives (Schefold 2001, 363). Cederroth in his research in the Lombok underlines the influence of the ancestors in the life of their living kinsmen (Cederroth 2016, 239). Andrew McWilliam also highlights this mutuality of being among the Fataluku, when asserting that ‘[j]ust as people depend on ancestral blessings for their own health and wellbeing, so ancestors cannot exist without the continued ministrations of sacrificial offerings and the attention of their living descendants’ (McWilliam 2011, 73-74). Mutuality of being, which in this case means the actual co-presence of living and deceased agnatic kin (Sahlins 2001, 2001a) implies that ancestorship is particularly proactive in contributing to the dynamic of kinship and belonging to origin groups or houses in Timor-Leste (cf. Viegas 2018, 2019).

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Origins, cosmology, immanence of life, and ancestorship There is, however, a cosmological dimension of ancestorship, which is associated with kinship relatedness and origin groups but which needs to be independently addressed (Hardacre 2005 [1987], 320). Josh Trindade (2008) describes the cosmological and political philosophy of the Timorese with aid of a graphic showing a circle – the ‘Lulik Circle’ – that has several internal circumferences intersecting each other by virtue of complementarity/dualism. He argues that the centre of the circle is ‘inhabited by the ancestors’ (Trindade 2008, 175). Traube (1986, 15) has also argued that for the Timorese there is a coincidence between origins (in a timeline sense) of the cosmological beginning of the world, and the ‘trunk’ of knowledge. The superimposition of the origin/trunk of the world and knowledge helps explain the fact that ‘[k]nowledge is considered to form part of the legacy of the ancestors’ (Barnes 2011, 38) that is passed on to their descendants as ‘disembodied words’, that is to say, words that are not attributed to a specific person (Bovensiepen 2014b, 62). Judith Bovensiepen discusses the de-personalisation of the source of knowledge used by ritual experts in Funar, paying special attention to the fact that knowledge is received by the living descendants of one ‘ancestor’ without going through an appropriation by him. As she writes, ‘authorship and the ability to reveal these words remained anchored in the domain of the ancestors’ (Bovensiepen 2014b, 69). This identification of a time which is simultaneously one of origin in yesteryear and source of knowledge in the present consubstantiates Josh Trindade’s argument that the centre of the ‘Lulik Circle’ inhabited by ancestors is ‘a place where the real world and the spiritual world are connected and communicate with each other’ (2008, 175). This connection signifies the existence of a co-presence of the world of the deceased and contemporary lives – a ‘cyclical interdependence of ancestral origins and contemporary living members of the group’ (McWilliam 2007, 1123). David Hicks’ (2004) reflection on the generative power of ancestors and the co-existence of death and life can be also regarded in a similar perspective, and the same holds true for his argument about the difference between ancestors and dead souls. As he writes, ‘it is ancestors, not the dead soul, who are the sources of life’ (Hicks 2004, 130). This generative force of ancestorship and its contemporary presence can then be associated with the ‘immanence of life’ that has been used to describe the spiritual world in various contexts of Southeast Asia (cf. Fox 1980, 2005). In fact, the immanence of life, as a dimension in which the reality of ancestors and many other spiritualities are projected, is widely acknowledged by ethnographic works on the subject

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carried out in Timor-Leste (cf. Bovensiepen 2014a; McWilliam 2011, Palmer and Kehi 2012; Palmer 2015). O’Connor, Pannell, and Brockwell underline that sacred sites should not be envisaged as cultural archives, but rather as alive and animated realities (2013, 211). Bovensiepen (2014a, 2014b), on her side, has underlined that the debate on Southeast Asia has identified several contexts where one finds this very same immanence of the cosmological, referring specifically the work of Aragon on Tobaku religious practices in Sulawesi: Tobaku land spirits’ and dead ancestors’ presence in the world is not a transcendent one, since people discern empirical signs of their immanent and interactive existence in the cosmos. For Tobaku, the daily interventions of spirits, deities, and ancestors are explainable and ‘perceptible ontologically “real” events’. (Bovensiepen 2014a, 124)

The immanence of ‘spiritual’ life also means that there is a sensorial dimension in experiences connected to ancestors. Couderc and Sillander recall the approach of Appleton, who identifies forms of sensorial interaction with ancestors in manifestations such as strange noises, arguing that knowledge regarding ancestors is ‘accessed experientially’ and ‘anchored in concrete rather than abstract reference points’ (2012, 38). These authors reiterate that ancestors in Borneo tend to have a strong presence in the immanent world of the living, ‘a presence which to an important extent is represented by sensorially perceived material phenomena’ (Couderc and Sillander 2012, 38-39). In Timor-Leste, smell plays an important part in framing these sensorial processes connected to the death and the ancestors (cf. Viegas 2019, 68). Elizabeth Traube has stressed that among the Mambae bad odours are an integral part of the mortuary rituals, encompassing quite often the ‘sacrificial buffalo rotting’ (Traube 1986, 207). In the description I heard from several of my interlocutors in Lautem regarding the journeys in search of the remains of a martyr, the identification of the place where a relative has been buried is connected with the appearance of a black or dark blue fly, a grasshopper, or a black bird. In addition, a very strong sign of success in having found the site is a strong smell of rotten flesh, a smell described just like the one experienced during funerary rituals (during which there is the smell of the corpses of sacrificed animals like huge buffalos). In the case of the search for the remains of a corpse buried and lost in the territory, this odour is regarded not only as a sign of the presence of the corpse at that site, but also, and meaningfully, as answering or communicating with the

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person who called on him (cf. Viegas 2019). When the smell is detected, one knows the ancestor is there to speak. This relationship between decay, bad odour, and speaking/communication between living and dead ancestor kin is again meaningful in the anthropological literature on Southeast Asia and Oceania. In her extensive work on the wooden funerary statues specifically created by the Malanggan for funerals in New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), Susanne Küchler shows how these statues are ‘left to decompose’, the odour of rotting being the vehicle for the transformation between different types of presences – in this case, she argues, between the visible and the invisible (2002, 74).7 Odour is a form of communication – smelling is a form of ancestor-talk, a way of speaking, to make co-present dead ancestors and their living kin. It is worth mentioning that descriptions of funerary rituals among the Fataluku in the past become meaningful in light of this connection between the smell and communication between living and dead ancestors. I was told by several of my interlocutors in Lautem that when, perhaps a century ago, corpses were put on the higher levels of inhabited houses for weeks, months, or even years, before being buried, the sign that the moment to bury the corpse had arrived was an intense stench of rotten flesh. People would subsequently associate that smell with a form of communication. The smell of rotting flesh meant, I was told, that ‘our elders were already speaking’ (afi calu hai lukuluku). Besides odours, the sensorial communication between the deceased and the living in Timor-Leste assumes other expressions, among the most frequent of which is that of dreams that allow the dead to be heard (cf. McWilliam 2008, 225; 2011, 74; Bovensiepen 2014b, 69; 2014c, 116; Sousa 2010, 201-202; Viegas 2019). In the context of communication with the ancestors, however, it is not only the registration of dialogue or interaction that matters. One also has to consider the equilibrium, the complementarity, the balance ‘between different and opposing elements’, to quote Josh Trindade (2012, 16). Several authors have emphasised that respect towards ancestors is necessary for such a balance to become real, and it is within such a framework that it makes sense to understand the duty to follow the ancestors’ prescriptions (cf. Babo Soares 2004, 22; Grenfell 2012, 95). As has been widely noted, failure to care for the ancestors and follow their recommendations made through dreams, or to simply remember them and respect their memory by looking after their graves, ‘is believed to incur the wrath or displeasure of the ancestors and might result in some form of misfortune, illness or death’ 7 Küchler is herself influenced by the work by Carlo Valeri who also underlined the fact that in funerary rituals the sense of smell invokes invisible forces (Küchler 2002, 74).

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(McWilliam and Traube 2011, 31). In contrast to a mentality of psychologising interpretation centred on a sentiment of fear of spiritual retaliation, respect for the ancestors should be understood as part of a larger equilibrium of relatedness in the cosmic world. Ancestors are, as Arhem refers to in the case of various contexts within Southeast Asia, ‘the most familiar and the least menacing of the spirits’ (Arhem 2016b, 291). Expressions like ‘traditionally [i.e. according to adat] those who do not care for their ancestors are bound to face severe problems’ or ‘if we don’t [care for the ancestors] tragic events will happen [to one’s family]’ or ‘otherwise we could not live a normal life’ are not grounded in abstract possibilities but rather in a number of actual events. One of my interlocutors in Lautem, for instance, experienced the death of a young son in 1989. In that same year, he considered it urgent to reply to the request voiced in a dream by his deceased brother who had been executed by the Indonesian occupiers more than ten years before, in 1976, to have a mortuary ceremony performed in his honour and an adequate grave built for his remains. In spite of the restrictions imposed by the Indonesians in 1989 (which rendered movement across the territory very difficult and made it arduous for the family to look for the remains of deceased kinsfolk, and join mortuary ceremonies), they decided to organise his ‘burial’. They went by searching for his ‘soul’ and erected a grave next to those of other members of the kin group in the backyard of our friend’s residence. Later on, in 2010, that grave was embellished by painting over it the flag of FALINTIL, the guerrilla organisation. This process exemplifies many other cases reported in this book. My suggestion is that, instead of being understood only as a response to any emotional fear of retaliation from the ancestors, it should be understood in the complex frame of kinship relatedness, cosmic equilibrium, and generative life forces that I have been discussing in this text. Victoria Stead (2017) who did fieldwork in the region of Fataluku and Makalero speakers in Cacavei, regarding events that took place during the Indonesian invasion, reports several conversations on ancestorship that help us to perceive how disrespecting ancestors is conceived as a break with more than a lifetime consequence. Stead noted that as part of its anti-FALINTIL operations, the Indonesian military would frequently press civilians to help and explicitly contribute to track down and kill the guerrillas living there. In Cacavei, she heard the following testimony by an interlocutor (Carlos) about these raids: When the raids were due to be launched, he says, people in the Laruara settlement would be rounded up by the Indonesian soldiers, who would

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hold guns to their heads. ‘Do you want to kill FALINTIL?’ they would ask. ‘You want us to kill them, yes?’ The questions would go on, repeatedly, the intention being to coerce verbal expressions of agreement. The people would keep quiet, Carlos says, not saying anything for fear of speaking out against the ancestors, of ‘breaking the sacred rules’ of obligation that bind them to one another, to extended kin, to ancestors going back to the beginning of time and to generations of descendants to come. (Stead 2017, 28)

Stead adds that in conversations about this episode various comments were made. Some are similar to several other well-known reported situations, showing that going against the wishes or the rules set by ancestors results in calamities, death, and illness for a whole generation of relatives, ‘not just for those who cause the breach but also for their kin, their children, and their children’s children to come. Whole descent groups can be devastated’ (Stead 2017, 28). This association of disrespect as having effects in a long temporal path should thus be regarded in a context of worldview balances in time. The longue durée is what Babo Soares emphasises when he underlines the connection mentioned in the beginning of this section between the concept of origin/roots, or hun in Tetum, and the future, or rohan in Tetum (2006, 23).

Martyrs in the context of ancestorship When dealing with the emergence of the expression mártires (taken from Portuguese, an official language in Timor-Leste that has offered several terms to Tetum), the experience of Catholicism by the Timorese, both at a religious and a political level, is unavoidable. The theologian and researcher Joel Hodge puts forward an argument stressing that the prolonged experience of suffering during the occupation years made the Catholic Church not only a political partner but also a spiritual supporter capable of ‘addressing the Timorese experience of suffering’ (2013, 152). As he states, ‘when there was death all around, everywhere and constantly in people’s minds, the Catholic Church was a place to find hope – otherwise there was just death’ (Hodge 2013, 153). Hodge shows how Jesus Christ was himself conceived by the Timorese as ‘the first revolutionary […] who overcame loss, despair and death’ (Hodge 2013, 159). Peter Carey had already made a similar argument when he wrote: In much the same way as in nineteenth-century Ireland or Poland, the individual experience of suffering and oppression in East Timor shaped a deep

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personal faith, a faith in which redemption and transcendence had both a personal and a national dimension. These sentiments were by no means confined to the Timorese elite. The maubere, the hitherto predominantly animist highland Timorese, were also affected (Carey 1999, 86).

Beyond the theological aspect of the suffering of Christ on the cross, Hodge bases his analysis on the reference to the solidarity of Church members – monks and nuns, priests, missionaries, and even bishops – who, starting in the early 1980s, took the side of the Timorese in their struggle against Indonesian rule to the point of risking their lives and suffering with the people. In opposition to the Indonesian oppression, the Church ‘gave implicit support and encouragement to the local culture’ (Hodge 2013, 154). This support suggested a vision of co-habitation of Catholic practices with those that the Church considers to be ‘animist’, amongst which one finds ancestorship (cf. Viegas and Feijó 2017, 2019). Hodge goes further and recalls the extraordinary case of processions of Catholic images such as the ‘national tour of the statue of Our Lady (Mary)’ in which ‘even local resistance fighters from the forested mountains became involved’ (2013, 158), which reveal that the resistance struggle assumed a political-spiritual dimension. In this light, Hodge ends up adopting an expression used by Patrick A. Smythe (2003, 47, quoted in Hodge 2013, 156) to synthesise these actions as ‘the spirituality of resistance’. As I have argued elsewhere (Viegas 2016; Viegas and Feijó 2017) in Timor-Leste history, the balance of power in cohabitation between Catholic practices and those articulated with ancestorship has shifted in different situations, historical periods, and particular locations, sometimes showing a great deal of tension between them (see also Viegas 2018, 2019; Grenfell 2012, 92; Fidalgo Castro 2012).8 Also, the nexus between the Catholic Church and the Timorese is not the only way to understand the emergence of the category of martyrs. As mentioned in the introduction, Elizabeth Traube has shown that among the Mambai, the sentiments of suffering and nationhood are articulated by a ‘code’ which is structured around a local narrative about a ‘martyred prophet’ (2007, 10). This martyr is known by the name of Felis Marindo, and he is referred to by the Mambai as ‘grandfather, ancestor, old man’, ultimately assuming ‘the name Mau 8 An understanding of how, in many places during the colonial period, Catholicism cohabited and was structurally reinterpreted by the Timorese is key to an understanding of this history from the perspective of the lived experience of the Timorese (cf. Viegas 2016; Viegas and Feijó 2019). The work by Kisho Tsuchiya on the translation of the Bible into Tetum provides important insights into this view, showing that the Tetum version of the Bible in many respects reinforces the mythological status of the pre-colonial polities (Tsuchiya 2019).

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Bere’ (Traube 2007, 10). Traube reports she has found the presence of this narrative to be unavoidable in the conversations she entertained when she returned to Aileu in 2000. She argues that for the Mambai, the story of this ‘prophet who suffered for the people has been interwoven with that of a people who suffered for the nation and gives meaning and force to popular demands upon the new state’ (2007, 10). Reconnecting the living with the world of ancestors and the place of martyrs in that process is clearly meaningful in the post-independence period. Resurgence of custom in Timor-Leste can be interpreted as ‘part of a process of reaff irming ancestral connections’ (cf. Barnes 2011, 24). Gratitude for the support of the ancestors and the reburial of martyrs can thus be envisaged as two sides of the same process. As Andrew McWilliam observes, in Lautem several ceremonies have been ‘designed as a formal expression of gratitude to the Ma’atei ancestors and as an explicit form of direct communication to the ancestors following a long hiatus’ (2008, 226). As is clear from the discussion I develop in this chapter, the hiatus in communication with the ancestors during the Indonesian occupation did not entail a rupture of their co-presence. Explicit communication was, however, not possible. Lucio Sousa, who has carried out fieldwork among the Bunak, argues that after independence the Bunak had to formally reopen their communication with the ancestors, ritually addressing ‘those who died in combat and cleans[ing] the living of the (hot) blood transported by war victims’ (2010, 254-255). Sousa argues that these rituals, named asuain kias, could not possibly be performed under the occupation ‘as it would involve remembering the war against the Indonesians’ (2010, 255). For the Bunak, as well as in many other cases across Timor, people killed during the war become a specific category of dead. If martyrs are all those who died in suffering during the collective struggle for independence, the forms of their deaths may have differed significantly. As various authors have noted, both in Timor-Leste and in other places in the Indonesian archipelago, deaths are not regarded as ‘natural’, even when they derive from illness. Violent deaths, suspicious deaths, sudden deaths – all are designated in various places as ‘red deaths’ or ‘hot deaths’ and are therefore considered to be a special case (cf. Bovensiepen 2014c, 116; Hicks 2004; Gunter 2016; Sousa 2010). Some bad deaths during the occupation resulted from illness or physical exhaustion – many Timorese perished when their hideout in Mount Matebian fell in 1978, and a lot of people died of starvation. Others occurred due to bullet or machete wounds, or ambushes. The latter require a differentiated ritual treatment, and often they need to be buried in a separate location. Among the Timorese Fataluku speakers, for instance, those who died by

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means of a sword-like weapon are designated ula ucanu (a person who was murdered, namely by a fire gun) and before burial it is necessary to perform several rituals destined to promote the ‘closure’ of the body.9 As McWilliam has mentioned, this should be read ‘in the sense of releasing their spirit (huma’ara) from the pain and suffering they experienced’ (2008, 225), so that they are healed (amukumu) (2017, 68). Lucio Sousa identifies this very same category of dead by ‘sharp instruments (knives, spears, fire arms)’ as ‘hot deaths, specific to war’, which need to be dealt with through differentiated rituals (2010, 212). As Judith Bovensiepen underlines, ‘red death’ implies a long-term effect by ‘polluting future generations and affecting the relatives both of those who have died and those responsible for the death’ (2014c, 116). One of the most contentious issues for the ‘abandoned dead’ during a war period is the difficulty of redressing the absence of ritual treatment. Janet Gunter has provided us with a reflection based on her analysis of the period of the Japanese occupation of Timor-Leste (1942-1945), when violent deaths occurred on a massive scale. This allows us to open an historical perspective on how the presence of ancestors-martyrs emerged. Gunter underlines the problem felt and expressed to her by the Timorese, regarding the fact that during this period the Timorese had not been able to properly bury their dead: ‘the practices of burial were rendered impossible, in many circumstances, by forced labour, by hunger, by orders issued by the Japanese to leave corpses behind and burn them’ (2016, 127). She further argues that the ‘intense terror’ of the Japanese occupation – which resulted in the death of circa 40,000 people (in a population of around 600,000) by starvation and violence – is heightened in the subsequent period by the Timorese, because the colonial regime impeded the living to pay the ‘imperatives of honour due to ancestors, and bury the dead’ (2016, 121). Sources Gunter refers to identify many deaths resulting from attacks with ‘bayonets and swords’, leaving ‘the chest and the belly with multiple perforations’ (2016, 123). Her interlocutors attribute the unfeasibility of performing adequate rituals both to the absence of material resources and to the absence of freedom under the Portuguese re-colonisation that immediately followed the Japanese withdrawal. The inability to perform rituals had long-term consequences; the Timorese today regard the events of that period as factors that generated protracted misfortune. The ‘unquiet spirits’ Gunter refers to are the ancestors whose deaths were never fully respected owing to ‘lack of ceremonies’ (2016, 129).

9 One of my interlocutors referred that it was necessary to ‘stitch up the wound’ with the blood of sacrificial pigs.

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Final remarks The historical window opened in the last section shows the Timorese regret not having been able to grieve appropriately their dead after World War II / Japanese occupation, because of the constrains imposed by the Portuguese colonial regime. This conclusion emphasises the prevalence of homages to martyrs after the independence of Timor-Leste in 2002 – through the provision of proper burials and adequate rituals – as a conquest of the freedom brought about by independence itself. The support provided by the state to such ceremonial burials offers a meaningful contrast with other cases such as Vietnam where, after the war in the sixties and seventies, the revolutionary state developed explicit efforts ‘to battle against what it considered feudal and backward customs’ associated with ancestorship (Kwon 2018, 297). It was in the period of the Indonesian occupation when an identification occurred between the Timorese Resistance and the suffering of Jesus Christ that the notion of martyrdom emerged, and Catholicism became a political ally of the Resistance, as is widely recognized. In Timor-Leste martyrdom is thus a comparatively recent phenomena, sustained in an interdependence between martyrdom and ancestorship, creating what I suggest to describe through a compound expression of martyr-ancestor. In Timor Leste the mortuary rituals and ceremonies that have been performed after independence (cf. Viegas and Feijó 2017) show unequivocally that the process of burying and paying homage to martyrs is conceived through the historical relevance of ancestorship. In this sense, the status of the deceased as ‘potent’ agents (Reid and Chambert-Loir 2002) needs to be understood as part of a wider balance, sustained by a cosmological worldview, which inscribes life in a wide temporality where commitments between different generation of still-alive and dead kin are assumed.

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Barnes, Susana. 2011. ‘Origins, Precedence and Social Order in the Domain of Ina Ama Beli Darlari.’ In Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Ethnographic Essays, edited by Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube, 23-46. Canberra: ANU E Press, The Australian National University. Bloch, Maurice. 2002 [1996]. ‘Ancestors.’ In Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, 66-67. London and New York: Routledge. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014a. ‘Lulik: Taboo, Animism, or Transgressive Sacred? An Exploration of Identity, Morality, and Power in Timor-Leste.’ Oceania 84 (2): 121-137. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014b. ‘Words of the Ancestors.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 20: 56-73. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014c. ‘Paying for the Dead: On the Politics of Death in Independent Timor-Leste.’ The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15 (2): 103-122. Carey, Peter. 1999. ‘The Catholic Church, Religious Revival, and the Nationalist Movement in East Timor, 1975-98.’ Indonesia and the Malay World 27 (78): 77-95. Carneiro da Cunha, Manuela. 1978. Os Mortos e os Outros. São Paulo: Hucitec. CAVR. 2013. Chega: The Final Report of the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR). Vol. 1. Jakarta: KPG in Cooperation with STP-CAVR. Cederroth, Sven. 2016. ‘Gods and Spirits in the Wetu Telu Religion of Lombok.’ In Animism in Southeast Asia, edited by Kaj Arhem and Guido Sprenger, 236-256. London and New York: Routledge. Couderc, Pascal, and Kenneth Sillander. 2012. ‘Introduction.’ In Ancestors in Borneo Societies: Death, Transformation, and Social Immortality, edited by Pascal Couderc and Kenneth Sillander, 1-61. Copenhagen: Nias Press. Fidalgo Castro, Alberto. 2012. ‘A Religião em Timor-Leste a partir de uma Perspectiva Histórico-Antropológica.’ In Léxico fataluku-português: P. Alfonso Nacher 19051999, edited by Alberto Fidalgo Castro and Efrén Legaspi Bouza, 79-118. Dili: Gráfica Pátria. Fox, James J. 1980. ‘Introduction.’ In The Flow of Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia, edited by J.J. Fox, 1-18. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fox, James. 2005. ‘Southeast Asian Religions: Insular Cultures.’ In Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. 13, edited by Lindsay Jones, 8647-8652. Second edition. Detroit: Macmillan Reference. Fox, Richard. 2015. ‘Why do Balinese Make Offerings? On Religion, Teleology and Complexity.’ Bijdragen Tot de Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde 171: 29-55. Grenfell, Damian. 2012. ‘Remembering the Dead from the Costumary to the Modern in Timor-Leste.’ Local-Global: Identity, Security, Community 11: 86-108. Guerreiro, Antonio. 2015. Ancestrais e suas sombras: uma etnografia da chefia Kalapalo e seu ritual mortuário. Campinas: Editora Unicamp.

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Gunter, Janet, 2016. ‘Os Mortos Inquietos e o Império Despido. A II Guerra Mundial e as suas consequências em Timor-Leste.’ in Timor-Leste: Colonialismo, Descolonização, Lusutopia, edited by Rui Graça Feijó, 119-138. Porto: Afrontamento. Hardacre, Helen. 2005 [1987]. “Ancestors.” In Encyclopedia of Religion, 15 vols, edited by Lindsay Jones, 1:320-325. Second edition. Volume 15 Detroit: Macmillan Thomson Gale. Hicks, David. 2004. Tetum Ghosts and Kin: Fertility and Gender in East Timor.Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press. Hodge, Joel. 2013. ‘The Catholic Church in Timor-Leste and the Indonesian Occupation. A Spirituality of Suffering and Resistance.’ South East Asia Research 21 (1): 151-170. Kent, Lia. 2012. The Dynamics of Transitional Justice: International Models and Local Realities in East Timor. Oxford: Routledge. Küchler, Susanne. 2002. Malanggan: Art, Memory and Sacrifice. Oxford: Berg. Kwon, Heonik. 2018 [2008]. “The Ghosts of War and the Spirit of Cosmopolitanism.” In Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader, edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben, 293-305. Second edition. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Leach, Michael. 2009. ‘Difficult Memories: The Independence Struggle as Cultural Heritage in East Timor.’ In Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage,’ edited by W. Logan and K. Reeves, 144-161. London: Routledge. Loch, Alexander, and Vanessa Prueller. 2011. ‘Dealing with Conflicts after the Conflict: European and Indigenous Approaches to Conflict Transformation in East Timor.’ Conflict Resolution Quarterly 28 (3): 315-329. McWilliam, Andrew. 2007. ‘Harbouring Traditions in East Timor: Marginality in a Lowland Entrepôt.’ Modern Asian Studies 41 (6): 1113-1143. McWilliam, Andrew. 2008. ‘Fataluku Healing and Cultural Resilience in East Timor.’ Ethnos, 73 (2): 217-240. McWilliam, Andrew. 2011. ‘Fataluku Living Landscapes.’ In Land and Life in TimorLeste. Ethnographic essays, edited by A. McWilliam and E. G. Traube, 61-84. Canberra: Australian National University Press. McWilliam, Andrew. 2013. ‘Cultural Heritage and its Performative Modalities: Imagining the Nino Konis Santana National Park, East Timor.’ In Transcending the Culture-Nature Divide in Cultural Heritage: Views from the Asia-Pacific Region, edited by Sally Brockwell, Sue O’Connor, and Denis Byrne, 191-201. Terra Australis 36. Canberra: ANU E Press. McWilliam, Andrew. 2017. ‘Hunting and Harvesting the Commons. On the Cultural Politics of Custom.’ In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations, edited by Susana de Matos Viegas and Rui Feijó, 61-78. London and New York: Routledge.

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McWilliam, Andrew, and Elizabeth G. Traube. 2011. ‘Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Introduction.’ In Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Ethnographic Essays, edited by Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube, 1-22. Canberra: ANU E Press, The Australian National University. O’Connor, Sue, Sandra Pannell, and Sally Brockwell. 2013. ‘The Dynamics of Culture and Nature in a ‘Protected’ Fataluku Landscape.’ In Transcending the CultureNature Divide in Cultural Heritage: Views from the Asia-Pacific Region, edited by Sally Brockwell, Sue O’Connor, and Denis Byrne, 203-234. Terra Australis 36. Canberra: ANU Press. Palmer, Lisa. 2015. Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, Environmental Governance and Development. London and New York: Routledge. Palmer, Lisa, and Balthasar Kehi. 2012. ‘Hamatak halirin: The Cosmological and Socio-Ecological Roles of Water in Koba Lima, Timor.’ Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 168 (4): 445-471. Pina-Cabral, João de. 1989. ‘L’heritage de Maine: Repenser les categories descriptives dans l’etude de la famille en Europe.’ Ethnologie française 19 (4): 329-340. Reid, Anthony and Henri Chambert-Loir, eds. 2002. The Potent Dead: Ancestors, Saints and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, and Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 2011. ‘What Kinship is (Part One).’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17: 2-19. Schefold, R. 2001. ‘Three Sources of Ritual Blessings in Traditional Indonesian Societies.’ Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 157 (2): 359-381. Smythe, Patrick A. 2003. ‘The Heaviest Blow’: The Catholic Church and the East Timor Issue. LIT Verlag, Münster. Sousa, Lúcio Manuel Gomes de. 2010. An tia: partilha ritual e organização social entre os Bunak de Lamak Hitu, Bobonaro, Timor-Leste. PhD Dissertation, Open University (Universidade Aberta). Stead, Victoria C. 2017. Becoming Landowners: Entanglements of Custom and Modernity in Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. University of Hawai’i Press. Honolulu. Taylor, Anne Christine. 1993. ‘Remembering to Forget: Identity, Mourning and Memory Among the Jivaro.’ Man (N.S.) 28: 653-678. Traube, Elizabeth. 1986. Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual Exchange Among the Mambai of East Timor. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Traube, Elizabeth. 2007. ‘Unpaid Wages: Local Narratives and the Imagination of the Nation.’ The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1): 9-25. Trindade, Jose ‘Josh.’ 2008. ‘Reconciling Conflicting Paradigms: An East Timorese Vision of the Ideal State.’ In Democratic Governance in Timor-Leste: Reconciling

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the Local and the National, edited by D. Mearns, 160-188. Darwin: Charles Darwin University. Trindade, Jose ‘Josh.’ 2012. ‘Lulik: The Core Values of Timor-Leste.’ In Peskiza foun Kona ba/Novas investigações sobre/New Research on/Penelitian Baru mengenai Timor-Leste, edited by Michael Leach, N. C. Mendes, A.B. da Silva, B. Boughton and A. da Costa Ximenes. 16-29. Hawthorn: Swinburne Press. Trindade, Jose ‘Josh,’ and Bryant Castro. 2007. Technical Assistance to the National Dialogue Process in Timor-Leste: Rethinking Timorese Identity as a Peacebuilding Strategy: The Lorosa’e-Loromonu Conflict from a Traditional Perspective. Dili: The European Union’s Rapid Reaction Mechanism Programme. Tsuchiya, Kisho. 2019. ‘Converting Tetun: The Colonial Missionaries’ Conceptual Mapping in the Timorese Cosmology and Some Local Responses: 1874-1937.’ Indonesia107: 75-94. Viegas, Susana de Matos. 2016. ‘Territorialidades e ambivalências: A co-habitação dos Fataluku com os missionários em Lautém (1947-1957).’ In Timor-Leste: colonialismo, descolonização, lusutopia, edited by Rui Graça Feijó, 139-158. Porto: Edições Afrontamento. Viegas, Susana de Matos. 2018. ‘Looking back into the future: temporalities of hope among the Fataluku (Lautém).’ In The Promise of Prosperity: Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste, edited by Judith Bovensiepen, 173-188. Canberra: Australian University Press. Viegas, Susana de Matos. 2019. ‘The Co-Presence of Ancestors and their Reburial Among the Fataluku (Timor-Leste).’ Indonesia 107: 55-73. Viegas, Susana de Matos and Feijó, Rui Graça. 2017. ‘Territorialities of the Fallen Heroes.’ In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations, edited by Susana de Matos Viegas and Rui Feijó, 94-110. London and New York: Routledge. Viegas, Susana de Matos and Rui Graça Feijó. 2018. ’Moving the Dead and Building the Nation: Martyrs in Timor-Leste.’ In Death on the Move: Managing Narratives, Silences and Constraints in a Trans-National Perspective, edited by Philip J. Havik, José Mapril and Clara Saraiva, 245-262. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Viegas, Susana de Matos and Feijó, Rui Graça. 2019. ‘Funerary Posts and Christian Crosses: Fataluku Cohabitations with Catholic Missionaries After World War II (Timor-Leste).’ In Crossing Histories and Ethnographies: Following Colonial Historicities in Timor-Leste, edited by Ricardo Roque and Elizabeth Traube, 177-202. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1992. From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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About the Author Susana de Matos Viegas is an Anthropologist and Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, where she holds a tenured position. She was President of the Association of Portuguese Anthropology (2006-2009). She has been a member of the Scientific Board of National Geographic: Portugal since 2001 and of the scientific editorial board of several journals, including (since June 2019) Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. She conducted fieldwork with the indigenous people Tupinambá de Olivença in Brazil and among the Fataluku in Timor-Leste. From 2003 to 2009, resulting from both the will of the Tupinambá and a government consultancy, she became the coordinator of the Report for the demarcation of the land of the Tupinambá of Olivença. Her research interests centre on lived experience in the study of personhood, kinship, place and territorial belonging, land, indigenous transformations, and historicity and ancestorship. Her regional focuses are Amerindian Peoples of Lowland South America and, since 2012, the Sunda Islands (Timor-Leste). Among her publications is the monograph Terra Calada: os Tupinambá na Mata Atlântica (7 Letras, Almedina/Rio de Janeiro/Coimbra 2007) and Transformations In Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations (Routledge 2017), edited with Rui Graça Feijó.

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Remembering the Martyrs of National Liberation in Timor-Leste Michael Leach

Abstract This chapter examines the way martyrs of the independence struggle are remembered in the independent nation of Timor-Leste. It examines the changing nature of definitions of martyrdom during the Portuguese and Indonesian colonial eras, and beyond independence, through an examination of changing patterns of memorialisation, commemoration, and cultural heritage. It also examines how the concept of martyrdom has becomes a site of struggles for off icial recognition in the postindependence state, with frequently strong distinctions between the type of state recognition afforded to military resistance veterans, and to civilian victims of human rights abuses. Keywords: cultural heritage, martyrs, veterans, memorialisation

Introduction This chapter examines the way martyrs of the independence struggle are remembered in the independent nation of Timor-Leste. It examines the changing definitions of martyrdom during the Portuguese and Indonesian colonial eras, and beyond independence, through an examination of changing patterns of memorialisation, commemoration, and cultural heritage. It also examines how the concept of martyrdom has becomes a site of struggles for official recognition in the post-independence state, with frequently strong distinctions between the type of state recognition afforded to military resistance veterans and to civilian victims of human rights abuses.

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch02

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In the pantheon of East Timorese nationalism, monuments to ‘martyrs’ of the national liberation are a major feature of the sacralised landscape. These form part of the cultural heritage of the independence struggle, and are one element of the ‘difficult memories’ (Leach 2009) associated with massacre sites, as well as places of political imprisonment, torture, and human rights abuses. Few post-conflict societies have experienced so profound a loss of life as Timor-Leste as a proportion of population, having suffered an estimated minimum 102,000 casualties during the Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999, along with forced population displacements and extensive nonfatal human rights violations through arbitrary detention, torture and rape (CAVR 2005, 43).1 A generation earlier, an estimated 60,000 East Timorese were killed in the course of the Japanese occupation of Portuguese Timor from 1942 to 1945. Monuments to martyrs of both occupations are present in the East Timorese memorial landscape, as well as to the short-lived but deeply divisive civil war in August 1975. In this regard, martyrs are also central to the story of evolving conceptions of political community in Timor-Leste. In Timor-Leste’s nation-building process, the difficult legacies of foreign occupation have been complicated by the distinct cultural and linguistic affiliations promoted by successive colonial regimes, political schisms within the former independence movement, a lack of justice for the victims of human rights abuses during the Indonesian occupation and, in 2006-2007, the brief but violent rise of regional tensions during the political-military crisis (Leach 2017). These fissures have complicated the process of nationbuilding, and the articulation of a unifying postcolonial national identity since independence was restored in 2002. The cultural heritage of the independence struggle, along with its conservation, is one element of this ongoing process of articulating cultural nationalism. The way martyrs to the national liberation are defined and recalled is central to this process. In examining these issues, this chapter discusses the colonial and postcolonial ‘layers’ of the cultural heritage landscape, analysing their competing visions of martyrdom, each associated with distinct conceptions of East Timorese identity. It then examines East Timorese nationalist conceptions of martyrdom, and their influence over the cultural heritage landscape since restoration of independence in 2002. In so doing, it examines an emerging dynamic between official recognition of sacrifices made during the occupation and popular or ‘bottom up’ attempts to gain state recognition of 1 CAVR’s estimate of the minimum total number of conflict-related deaths is 102,800 (±12,000). This figure includes both killings and deaths due to privation. The often cited figure of 180,000 is CAVR’s upper estimate of total conflict-related mortality.

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a family’s sacrifices. It also considers the way official distinctions between Resistance veterans and civilian victims inform public recognition of service and pension policies.

Nationalism and martyrs National martyrs have a special place in nationalist memory, with strong parallels to religious martyrs, as both make ‘blood sacrifices’ to a higher cause which transcends their own individuality. As Frank Wright (1988, 75) wrote, ‘nationalisms are not merely “like” religions, they are religions’. Reflecting Anderson’s notion of an ‘imagined’ national community, martyrs of the national liberation struggle embody the sense of ‘consanguinity’ or shared blood, spilled in the struggle for liberation which is fundamental to national sentiment, and helps to reinforce national unity. Though there were military, diplomatic and civilian clandestine dimensions to the 24-year campaign for independence from Indonesia, it tends to be the experience of military war which most readily imbues national sentiment with a ‘new depth of religious feeling, putting at its disposal ever-present saints and martyrs, places of worship, and a heritage to emulate’ (Mosse 1991, 7). In the commemoration of their sacrifice, martyrs are seen to offer a form of instruction to the nation, consolidating a sense of collective memory to be taken into the future. The figure of the martyr thereby becomes an exemplar of the ‘intrinsic nature of the nation for which he was willing to die’ (Gedik 2008, 35). For the relatives of national martyrs, official recognition can be critical not only to having their sense of loss acknowledged, but also to life chances, as the East Timorese state afford many opportunities to the relatives of those recognised as veterans’ relatives, including pensions and places for relatives in higher education institutions.

Commemorating martyrdom: ‘layers’ of cultural heritage In the case of Timor-Leste, distinct ideas of national ‘martyrs’ have been commemorated variously by Portuguese, Indonesian, and most recently nationalist East Timorese in attempts to consolidate competing colonial or nationalist projects of collective identity construction. As such, there are different historical ‘layers’ of commemorating martyrdom in the cultural heritage landscape, from both the Portuguese and Indonesian colonial eras, and even informal memorials to the short-lived civil war era of 1975. These

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layers are now overlaid with nationalist memorials, and this more recent layer contains its own symbolic contests over the definitions of martyrs of the national liberation. Broadly speaking, the nationalist commemoration of martyrs tends to emphasise the fallen military heroes over the youth and clandestine resistance (Leach 2009), and to actively commemorate both of these more ‘politicised’ elements of the Resistance over ordinary civilian ‘victims’ of the Indonesian occupation. In the post-independence era, there have therefore been political contestations over who is eligible to be seen as a veteran or martyr, and this category has frequently been distinguished from the concept of the ‘victim’ (see Kent 2012, 152; Kent 2019; see also Rothschild in this collection) and normally associated with a lower level of political activism or intent than the former categories. In the memorial landscape there is also a visible distinction between official state memorials to national martyrs and bottom-up ‘popular’ memorials organised at the local level. In the latter case, many families continue to struggle for the formal recognition of their lost relatives. Alongside symbolic recognition of suffering and loss, recognition as a martyr in the struggle for national liberation can also bring entitlement to a range of government schemes and programmes. There is, in effect, a ‘political economy of recognition’ in contemporary Timor-Leste (Leach, 2015a), discussed further below. This is part of a wider dynamic which Traube (2007) refers to as the ‘unpaid wages’ of the Resistance era: popular struggles for the recognition of individual and collective suffering during the occupation. These various colonial and postcolonial layers of cultural heritage in Timor-Leste represent contested attempts to reinterpret the past in ways which have suited, respectively, Portuguese, Indonesian, and nationalist ideas of East Timorese identity, and redefine the meaning of martyrdom accordingly. The built landscape of cultural heritage and monuments is one key element of this, and charts a changing history from ‘heroes of the Portuguese empire’, through neo-colonial ‘integration’ monuments of Indonesia, to the monuments of an independent state. Each layer of the memorial landscape of Timor-Leste exhibits this process of remembering the past in ways which ideologically buttress ‘contemporary’ political projects of collective identity construction.2 For example, Timor-Leste still has many Portuguese colonial monuments, including memorials and statues to early navigators or to various ‘heroes of the empire’. These are primarily dedicated 2 As Wiley (1994, 145) notes, collective identities commonly interpret the past as the linear ‘origin’ of the present political self or of a future self it is in the process of ‘becoming’ (see also Anderson 1983, 22-36).

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to metropolitan Portuguese but also prominently include monuments to loyal Timorese Liurai (kings) who fought or died ‘por Portugal’, either while helping to suppress indigenous rebellions or while fighting the Japanese occupation. Following the war, those East Timorese who actively fought the Japanese were hailed as ‘heroes of the Portuguese Empire’ or ‘martyrs for the fatherland’ (Ramos-Horta 1987, 25), most notably the Liurai of Ainaro, Dom Aleixo Corte-Real. As Molnar (2006, 335) notes, similar monuments to martyrs exist in Atsabe, to Liurai who ‘died in the service of Portugal’ during the Japanese occupation, notwithstanding especially strong local traditions of resistance to colonial rule. More generally, Portuguese colonial historiography and memorials emphasised positive relations with the mother country and the progress of ‘Portugalization’ – a colonial metaphor for a ‘civilizing’ mission involving the spread of Catholicism and the ‘pacification’ of periodic rebellions (Gunn 1999, 22-24) – and celebrated loyalty or sacrifice to the Portuguese colonial state. Of particular interest here are monuments remembering victims of the Japanese occupation, such as the prominent monument to the 1942 massacre of Portuguese troops in the town of Aileu, ‘Aos massacrados de Aileu’. With typical colonial focus, the largest of these memorials commemorate fallen Portuguese soldiers and officials, not the estimated 60,000 Timorese who died during the occupation. In other parts of Timor-Leste, smaller post-WWII Portuguese-era monuments can be found at crossroads, dedicated in their particular colonial logic ‘Aos mártires da ocupação estrangeira’ (To the martyrs of the foreign occupation). Indonesian-era monuments also reflect on the Portuguese colonial past. These typically sought to depict the forced integration of East Timor into Indonesia as a ‘return to the fatherland’ and portray elements of East Timorese nationalism against the Portuguese as consonant with Indonesia’s own anticolonial struggle against the Dutch (Gunn 2001, 10). For example, most major towns in Timor-Leste have Indonesian integration monuments which depict Dom Boaventura, an anti-Portuguese rebel Liurai of the early twentieth century, in traditional dress, breaking free from the chains of Portuguese colonialism. In Indonesian memorialisation, evident in most large towns in East Timor, Boaventura is rendered as the emblematic martyr to Portuguese colonialism. In this way, the Indonesian regime appropriated a key image of then nascent East Timorese nationalism and adapted it to an integrationist purpose, celebrating the forced integration as a triumph of Timorese anti-colonialism. As an example of this adaptation, where East Timorese traditional houses have four pillars, the integration monuments often have five-sided platforms,

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reflecting the five Indonesian citizenship principles of Panca Sila.3 Importantly, too, the Indonesian regime took pains to conserve certain sites as warisan nasional (national heritage), such as the nineteenth-century Portuguese jail at Aipelo where the surviving Boaventura rebels were jailed, preserved as a monument to the brutality of colonial era. By 2015, however, Timor-Leste had installed its own exhibition at the Aipelo site, reflecting directly on Portuguese-Timorese colonial relations and superseding the Indonesian integrationist memorialisation (see Leach 2015b, 2017). This was done, for example, by highlighting family links between Portuguese political deportees and some Timorese nationalist leaders, emphasising the complex intertwining of the two cultures over the long colonial era. In this way, a postcolonial reading of the martyred rebels was extracted from the neo-colonial Indonesian reading of brutal European colonialists. Similarly, celebrations of the centenary of the Boaventura Uprising in 2012 saw a new statue unveiled in Luak, Same. On Independence Day 2012, the new President, Taur Matan Ruak, struck a bipartisan note when he launched the statue, recalling that the now opposition party FRETILIN4 had visited Boaventura’s widow, who was then still alive, in 1974 (Presidency RDTL 2012). Coming at a time when relations between Timor-Leste’s two major parties were very poor, this observation signalled a nationalist reclamation of an important proto-nationalist figure previously used by Indonesian memorials. Here, it is possible to witness the serial connections between the ideology of the successive colonial regimes and the heritage conservation practices in each era (Logan 2003).

East Timorese nationalist cultural heritage The final layer of cultural heritage consists of East Timorese nationalist memorials reflecting on the Indonesian era, as well as the pain and trauma of the liberation struggle. For international visitors, the encounter with nationalist martyrs is immediate upon arrival at Presidente Nicolau Lobato airport. The airport commemorates a major nationalist figure who became Prime Minister in 1975, was later declared president of the RDTL, and was killed on 31 December 1978, ending the conventional phase of the war. This encounter is emphasised by the larger-than-life statue of Lobato at the 3 Panca Sila (Five Principles) is the official Indonesian ‘state philosophy’; these principles comprise monotheism, justice, unity, democracy, and social justice. 4 The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor.

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Figure 2.1 Nicolau Lobato statue, Dili

Photo: Nuno Alex

nearby Comoro roundabout. This particular statue also has an equivalent version in the district of Aileu. Nicolau Lobato is distinctive among the major nationalist martyrs in that his body is still missing, buried in an unidentified location by the Indonesian military. Though silence over his whereabouts is taken for granted at the official level, in the service of good relations, no one can mistake the semiotic intent of the sole international airport. The main road from Comoro to the centre of town was also renamed Rua dos Mártires da Pátria in 2015. Other important nationalist sites commemorating the Resistance highlight the distinctions between memorials to key military and political Resistance figures, and those to the civilian victims of the Indonesian occupation, though some overlap between the two categories is evident, especially in relation to the civilian clandestine resistance. Prominent among these post-independence sites are the Comarca Balide (Balide Jail), a former jail and interrogation centre; the ‘heroes monument’ to FALINTIL resistance fighters at Metinaro; and the Archive and Museum of the Resistance (AMRT). At a less official level, popular memorials remember the civilian victims of massacres in the lead-up to and aftermath of the 1999 referendum on independence, such as those in the Suai and Liquiçá churches. These newer nationalist sites are central to the process of forging a postcolonial national identity. Some, like the ‘Garden of Heroes’ cemetery

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at Metinaro, are designated as sacred spaces commemorating national martyrs, who are under permanent honour guard. Others, like the monuments to the victims of the Suai and Liquiçá massacres, recall traumatic events that took place in already sacralised spaces like churches, honouring the memory of victims who died sheltering from Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI) army forces or their proxy militias in churches or cemeteries. More recently, this has included a monument to the victims of the Santa Cruz massacre, erected in Motael in 2012. These difficult sites of cultural heritage are especially important in this process of articulating a nationalist view of East Timorese history and identity, and are intimately bound up with wider processes of national and international reconciliation. It is no accident that one of the key sites, the Comarca Balide, was home to the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste/ CAVR) until 2005, and has subsequently housed not only its records and the off ice of the Post-CAVR Secretariat, but also the new national institute of memory, the Centro Nacional Chega!.5

The Garden of Heroes Cemetery, Metinaro At the apex of East Timorese nationalist memorial sites, the impressive Garden of Heroes cemetery at Metinaro, dedicated to the fallen FALINTIL soldiers and to other martyrs of the independence struggle, is designed as a sacralised national site and is under permanent honour guard. Built close to the main Timor-Leste Defence Force (F-FDTL) barracks, the centrepiece of the site, facing the open sea, is an open platform monument with three flagpoles, designed to accommodate off icial ceremonies. The site also comprises a national memorial garden and natural reserve – to honour all the victims of the struggle for independence – a chapel, and ossuary houses, which initially contained the remains of several hundred FALINTIL fighters, at which visitors paid their respects. In more recent years, the Metinaro site has seen the establishment of the graves of hundreds of FALINTIL fighters, transferred from the ossuary houses or graves in other parts of the country. 5 In July 2017, the CNC, (Centro Nacional Chega!), was established as an independent institution in Timor-Leste in order to facilitate and monitor implementation of the recommendations of Timor-Leste’s Commission of Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation (CAVR) and the IndonesiaTimor-Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF). The CNC’s motto is ‘Through Memory to Hope’.

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The most significant additions are the graves of Xavier do Amaral, who became the first president of Timor-Leste during its short-lived independence in 1975 and who died in 2012, and the former youth clandestine resistance leader and RENETIL6 founder Fernando ‘Lasama’ de Araujo, who died in 2015. The absence of a grave for Nicolau Lobato, the location of whose remains is known only to the TNI, highlighted unresolved issues in the relationship with Indonesia and, for some, flaws in Timor-Leste’s approach to reconciliation with its former occupier (see, for example, Magalhães 2016). In 2005, the site was a major project of the Recovery, Employment, and Stability Programme for Ex-Combatants (RESPECT). Despite its success in establishing the Metinaro site, the programme would later attract controversy. One long-running debate saw dissident veteran-dominated groups, including the CPD-RDTL7, argue that their fallen comrades should be buried in their home districts (Aitahan Matak, interview with author 2005). In later years, this caused an evolution in the policy that saw smaller official FALINTIL memorial sites extended to all district capitals. Despite this, some families have preferred to construct their own local memorial sites to fallen veterans. These, too, were ultimately eligible for state funding. Such practices are evident in Lautem, with FALINTIL monuments built by locals that diverge substantially from national monuments in their messages, often including FRETILIN party symbols, with traditional objects and symbols integrated into the memorial construction (Feijó and Viegas 2014). It is of course critical to note in this context that modern commemorations of the dead in Timor-Leste occur within the deeply embedded ritual contexts of local traditions surrounding death (Arthur 2019, 91). These conflicts over the memorialisation of martyrs highlights a perennial tension in Timor-Leste between nation-building projects and the ongoing strength of local and regional identities based on language and ethnic groups. These tensions, evident in the crisis of 2006, touch the cultural heritage landscape just as they influence broader debates over national identity and history. These can also be seen in the tensions between the local recognition of martyrs, such as the village level monuments to those killed in 1999, and national processes of recognition, which are slower and more bureaucratic, but which bring official recognition and potential eligibility for a range of government schemes. 6 Resistência Nacional dos Estudantes de Timor-Leste (National Resistance of East Timorese Students) 7 Conselho Popular pela Defesa da República Democrática de Timor-Leste (Popular Council for the Defence of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste)

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Archive and Museum of the Resistance Housed in the former Portuguese-era courthouse in Dili, the Archive and Museum of the East Timorese Resistance (AMRT) opened in early 2006 and was expanded considerably in 2012 and 2013. In a more conventional museum style but with innovative exhibits, the museum differs from the Centro Nacional Chega!, discussed further below, in that its archives preserve contemporary documents, artefacts, and photos of the Resistance movement between 1975 and 1999, rather than subsequent victim testimonies. Supported by the Mario Soares Foundation and the Association of Resistance Veterans, the archives include the documentary collections of key Resistance leaders and FALINTIL brigades, as well as those of the clandestine front operating in towns, along with exhibits such as FALINTIL leader Konis Santana’s typewriter. The key exhibition is a series of 52 life-size panels on the history of the Resistance, with photos and interpretative text, ordered chronologically and thematically, with an accompanying catalogue in Tetum, Portuguese, and English. As one of the curators, José Mattoso, has argued, in a country in which some 40 per cent of the population are under 15 years of age, the collective history of the resistance in Timor-Leste ‘will remain a fact expressed by a fragile memory’ unless quickly preserved and recorded for future generations (Mattoso 2004). While it is an impressive exhibition, beautifully housed in the renovated court of justice, only three panels focus specifically on the key role of the youth- and student-dominated civilian resistance, who had their own sacred martyrs. As I will argue further, this lower level of recognition accorded to the youth contribution to the independence struggle is a feature of the cultural heritage landscape, and one that reflects the broader intergenerational ‘fault line’ in post-independence politics.

Comarca Balide: The Centro Nacional Chega! One of the most important repositories of national memories of the Indonesian occupation is the Comarca Balide, the former home of the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation and more recently the Centro Nacional Chega!. This site differs from the foregoing two sites in that the CNC’s mandated focus is on remembering civilian victims of the occupation and past human rights violations, rather than key Resistance figures and organisations. A former Portuguese colonial jail built in 1963, the site was used as an incarceration facility by several regimes, including

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the short-lived unilaterally declared Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste in late 1975. Employed briefly by the pro-independence party FRETILIN to house political prisoners after the civil war in 1975, the jail was then an Indonesian interrogation centre run by the notorious military police and intelligence organisations Kodim and Morem. The Comarca’s importance as a site of pain and suffering under successive regimes made it a symbolically compelling choice for the headquarters of the CAVR after independence Once the CAVR’s primary testimony collection activities were wound down in late 2005, the site was designated as a permanent memorial and archive for CAVR documents, including the thousands of victim testimonies. The initial proposal to rehabilitate the Comarca came from the association of ex-political prisoners (ASSEPOL) in 2000 and was adopted by the then nascent CAVR as an appropriate site to house the ‘human rights history’ of Timor-Leste. In 2002, a memorandum of understanding determined that the Comarca would become the Dili office of the CAVR for its mandate period, then stand as an archive under a long-term objective to ‘preserve the former Balide prison for future generations as a memorial to repression and as a centre for the promotion of human rights and reconciliation’. The Comarca building was ready for the formal opening of the CAVR hearings in February 2003. On 20 December 2005, at the end of the CAVR mandate period, the Comarca became a permanent memorial for the victims of human rights abuses in Timor-Leste and home to the post-CAVR technical secretariat, charged with disseminating the CAVR report and maintaining its permanent archives. The process of converting the Comarca site into a memorial and historical repository was conducted in consultation with UNESCO and other relevant international museums.8 For the next five years, however, the future of the CAVR report and associated institutions to monitor its recommendations, and a proposed victims’ reparations law, remained in limbo. Notably, the position of military veterans groups appears to have been responsible for the extended delays, according to domestic non-governmental organisations like Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR 2019, 2), which noted in its report Centro Nacional Chega!: Time to Focus on the Victims that ‘strong pushback by veterans against the draft law led to its eventual abandonment. Veterans wanted their needs to be prioritised and reacted negatively to the idea that victims from all sides of the conflict might be entitled to reparations’. Throughout 2010 and 2011, parliament 8 Including the Famine Museum in Ireland, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and the Port Arthur Museum in Tasmania.

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repeatedly delayed consideration of proposed laws on victim reparations and the establishment of a National Institute of Memory designed to ‘to promote, facilitate, and monitor the implementation’ of recommendations of the CAVR and the bilateral Indonesia-Timor-Leste Truth and Friendship Commission. In July 2017, after a decade of advocacy from victims’ groups and civil society (AJAR 2018), the Centro Nacional Chega! was established as an independent institution in Timor-Leste to facilitate and monitor implementation of the recommendations of both the CAVR report and the Indonesia-Timor-Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF). It is instructive to note that the breakthrough in funding occurred under Prime Minister Rui Araujo, the first to come from the younger generation of civilian clandestine resistance activists, rather than the older 1975-era generation of military and diplomatic resistance figures. The CNC has a mandate to ‘preserve the memory of Timor-Leste’s history for the period of 1974-1999, promote human rights through education and training, build solidarity with the survivors of human rights violations, prevent the recurrence of human rights violations, and foster a culture of peace.’

The Comarca as a Memorial The Comarca houses both standing memorials to victims of human rights abuses and other less conventional memorials, physically embedded in the architecture of the site. In the former category, the Santa Cruz room is the archive for the thousands of CAVR records collected during its mandate, its name recalling the site of the 1991 massacre of students which put the occupation of East Timor firmly back on the world stage. Back in the mid-2000s, another room housed the Suai Circle, a memorial to the victims of the Suai massacre during militia rampages in 1999, with photographs, traditional tais (woven cloth), and votive painted stones recalling individual victims. One innovative method of preserving the memory of human rights abuses is through the conservation of prisoner graffiti. In total, 65 graffiti are preserved in whole or in part, including one from a future CAVR commissioner imprisoned during the Indonesian era. Most graffiti are in Portuguese, and many express the simple remembrances of prisoners such as ‘Here lay Zeca’. Others mark extended periods of arbitrary imprisonment in the early years of the Indonesian occupation, such as one scratching in which a prisoner laments, ‘I spent my past in this cell’. Some show a sense of humour under adversity, such as one that declares, ‘[S]pecial cell for world leadership candidates’. Yet others are more disturbing, such

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as those found in the isolation cells under the main jail: ‘You tortured my body in the fetters of your empire’ – a line from the East Timorese nationalist poet Borja da Costa, who was killed by Indonesian forces in 1975. Some graffiti in the isolation cells record perhaps the last testament of political prisoners, such as one dated 10 August 1976, nine months after the Indonesian invasion, in which a list of names follows an etching on a wall: ‘In this cell of death were…’. The power of these graff iti lies in the fact that they are intensely personalised artefacts of a lived present of suffering rather than abstract, general, or reconstructed memories of the past. As the CAVR (2003) notes, these conserved graffiti remind the visitor of the wider function of the building as a memorial and historical repository of narratives. While the internal rooms of the Comarca have been renovated, the prisoner graffiti is conserved under plastic frames, deeper under the modern paint layers, where many were inadvertently preserved in later Indonesian times. By contrast, the isolation cells were left as they are, aside from the installation of lighting ‘so that visitors can see for themselves conditions in these “cells of death”’ (CAVR 2003). In more recent years, the CNC has focused explicitly on victims and survivors of human rights abuses under the Indonesian occupation, with groups like AJAR9 openly supporting the mandated focus, arguing that ‘[v]ictims and survivors are at the core of this institution; addressing their needs should be a priority for CNC’. Likewise, Secretary of the National Victims’ Association (NVA) Domingos Pinto De Araújo Moniz noted that ‘CNC was born because of the victims. Victims wanted to have a memory institution. They fought for it for years’ (AJAR 2019).

Massacre Sites: Suai and Liquiçá Some 2,600 East Timorese are estimated to have been killed by the TNI or their proxy militias in the violence leading up to and following the independence referendum in September 1999 (CAVR 2005, 44). The most notorious massacres of civilians took place in or around church sites, while the victims were seeking shelter. Many of these victims have been honoured at the district or village level, sometimes with outside assistance. For example, the monument to the two hundred victims of the Suai massacre was built 9 Other victim’s advocacy groups include the Timor-Leste National Alliance for an International Tribunal (ANTI) and Assosiasaun Chega! Ba Ita (ACbit).

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by people of the Covalima district with support from the East Timorese government, the governments of Ireland and the UK, and the UN Serious Crimes Unit. The bottom-up character of this memorial is notable, and highlights the different levels of memorialisation of the East Timorese dead, and popular practices of remembering martyrs (Leach 2009; see also Arthur 2019, 92-94). In examining the post-independence cultural heritage landscape of Timor-Leste, it is also important to look beyond the realm of formal monuments. In the grounds of the Suai church itself, local memorials, often family-made, offer simple remembrances of particular individuals killed on that day, including three priests. These include small plaques and name-plates. As these sites were already sacralised spaces, the church and local parishioners have exercised much of the responsibility for the less formal memorials of these tragic events. Similarly, the small but moving monument to the 60 victims of the Liquiçá church massacre was designed and constructed at the local community and parish level by those closest to the victims, marking the way local communities have memorialised their own martyrs. All over Timor-Leste, local memorials for those who died in the violence in 1999 may be found, organised at the village or community level. Indeed, there is scarcely a town above village size without one. Other more difficult sites are partly remembered, recalled by one side of the brief but bloody civil war in 1975 between FRETILIN and UDT (Timorese Democratic Union). For example, sites such as the Armazem (storehouse) in Aileu – used as a FRETILIN jail during the early and difficult years of Indonesian occupation when FRETILIN still controlled the hinterland – stir difficult and divisive memories in the town even today. Similarly, a small local memorial on the road to Same in central Timor, commemorating two victims of the civil war ‘barbarically assassinated by FRETILIN’, shows small signs of local dissent from official narratives of the cultural heritage landscape. This ‘whispered’ remembering of a difficult era highlights the unresolved legacies of the civil war. Despite some genuine efforts at reconciliation, including the CAVR process which covered the civil war period, these sites highlight aspects of East Timorese history considered inimical to the task of nation-building, if not to the wider process of reconciliation. They also suggest the boundaries of nationalist martyrdom, as those who died in disputes internal to the nationalist movement prove difficult to formally recall as part of a national sacrifice. The final level – and in some ways the most important – is the unintentional or ‘immanent’ cultural heritage landscape, consisting of the unrestored

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wreckage of houses and buildings burned or damaged by departing TNI and their militia in 1999. Alongside these ubiquitous sites, often still festooned with militia graffiti, are other unforgotten but abandoned sites, such as the Indonesian interrogation centre in Baucau, which until renovations in 2015 lay boarded up behind one of the main attractions of the area, the colonial era Baucau Pousada.

Cultural heritage as recognition Memorials and repositories of difficult national memories, like the Comarca, seek to make sense of the collective experiences of a people in ways that foster a sense of national unity and valorise the pain and trauma of all those who suffered in the struggle for liberation. An essential element of ‘nation-building’ is the cultural production of unifying narratives of collective identity and history. For these reasons, a certain level of popular legitimacy must support ‘official’ (constitutional or state-endorsed) narratives of cultural nationalism. However, the ‘national’ values and culture of the ‘imagined community’ may in fact privilege those of a dominant nationalist grouping and contribute to cultural and political conflict after independence. In this section, I employ a ‘recognition approach’ to examine how the nationalist cultural heritage landscape in Timor-Leste has valorised some contributions to the independence struggle more than others. Broadly speaking, a recognition approach examines the way distorted or inadequate forms of recognition may become important sources of motivation for political mobilisation and resistance (Honneth 1995, 138139). Perceived ‘disrespect’ to a group’s sense of self or to its traditions and values, or a perceived ‘misrecognition’ of its contribution to shared and valued social goals, such as national independence, may create the conditions for political conflict (Honneth 1995, 121-143). In Timor-Leste, as Traube notes, the notion of ‘unpaid wages’ for the suffering endured by the East Timorese people during occupation continues to ‘remind nationalist leaders that the nation was purchased with their blood’ (2007, 9). This form of ‘misrecognition’ has led to conflict, and may be seen as a major factor behind the 2006 political-military crisis. As I have argued elsewhere (Leach 2009, 2015b), a younger generation of resistance activists also felt misrecognised by some aspects of East Timorese cultural nationalism after independence, considering that their lives and educational experiences were undervalued, and their sacrif ices not as readily commemorated

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as martyrdom. Similarly, practices of cultural heritage commemoration since 2002 have frequently given priority to the military resistance over clandestine and diplomatic wings (Leach 2009).10 Indeed, since 2007, this has been such an overwhelming preoccupation of government that government pensions and infrastructure contracts to veterans now constitute a substantial feature of the annual budget of government, to the point where one might point to a ‘political economy of recognition’ (Leach 2015a). For victims’ groups seeking justice for the crimes of 1974-1999, the lack of recognition is even more profound. Victims Victims’ groups continue to be marginalised in political debate. Human rights groups such as the HAK Association (Hukum, Hak Asasi, Keadilan – Law, Basic Rights and Justice) and the Timor-Leste National Alliance for an International Tribunal (Aliansi Nasional Timor-Leste ba Tribunal Internasional – ANTI) continue to call for the CAVR recommendations to be implemented and for ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of All People from Enforced Disappearances (ANTI 2014). Organised at district, subdistrict and suku level all over the country, these groups had held a Victims’ Congress in 2009 in Dili which formed a national Victims’ Network. This group gathered monthly in front of parliament with banners that read ‘Bondia Deputadu, la bele haluha ita-nia promite’ (Good morning, Parliamentarians, don’t forget your promises’: Kent 2012, 197). Meanwhile, a proposed reparations law providing payments to victims of human rights abuses continued to divide parliamentarians, with questions raised over the priority entitlements of veterans, eligibility of pro-autonomy victims, concerns over double-dipping, and arguments over whether monetary reparations or memorialisation should be preferred (AJAR 2019; see also Arthur 2019, 89-91). One report suggested that the parliament would be more likely to support the building of memorials, and that the then President Taur Matan Ruak was not supportive of a Reparations Law (Harson 2014). The contrast between the experience of victims’ groups and of military veterans, in terms of state expenditures and recognition, was an instructive one. 10 A new group, Comite Orientador 25, has now been tasked under a 2017 government resolution with investigating the history of the clandestine movements and their contribution to the independence struggle. This project and similar efforts suggest advances in the history of the resistance which broaden in from the earlier priority to the military resistance.

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Veterans The politics of demanding recognition of contributions to the resistance or acknowledgement of suffering during the occupation has been the basis of many political claims on the state. As noted above, it may be argued that there is not only a politics of recognition, but also a political economy of recognition. In 2013, there were some 37,000 registered veterans, receiving annual pensions worth USD67 million, along with one-off payments worth USD62 million (La’o Hamutuk, 2013). Veterans are also frequently recipients of contracts under infrastructure, and of referendum funds, with emergency projects to veterans totalling USD78 million in 2010-2012, a figure set to increase by 4 per cent annually (ibid). These programmes represented a substantial feature of the 2013 budget at 5.8 per cent, exceeding both security sector and health expenditure, and had risen to 7.5 per cent by 2017. While veteran payments enjoy a high level of popular legitimacy, in part because they are considered to accord due recognition, some types of payments to veterans have drawn criticism.11 Other groups perceived to be less deserving than veterans have also benefitted from large infrastructure contracts. In more malicious forms, these include attempts by criminal gangs and conflict entrepreneurs to mimic recognition claims as a means of rent-seeking, based on the capacity to cause unrest and conflict (Scambary 2009; ICG 2013). The place of veterans in contemporary East Timorese nationalism was affirmed by Prime Minister Gusmão (2015) at an international conference on ‘Memory and National Identity’ at the Timorese Resistance Archive and Museum (AMRT) in Dili, describing it as a ‘core mission’ of the state to ensure that ‘the heroes of national liberation are honoured as an integral […] part of this collective memory that we are building […] and which strengthens our national identity’. Gusmão argued that resistance history ‘must be told, performed, witnessed, heard, read and most importantly not forgotten, since it represents much of what we are today’. In April 2015, a new Decree Law establishing the Council of the National Liberation Combatants was passed, creating a new consultative body to Government, recognising the ongoing role of former combatants establishing ‘peace and social stability […] and sustainable development’. A new National Veterans Day was created 11 La’o Hamutuk (2013) noted that some of the largest payments distributed in June 2012 (before the elections) were directed to ‘these warriors, genuine heroes of our independence, [who] deserve attention from the state, but we worry when this rectification is used to pay for party political promises’. La’o Hamutuk, ‘The National Impact of Benefits for Former Combatants’, BELUN Seminar 5 March 2013: www.laohamutuk.org/econ/pension/VetPension6Mar2013en.pps

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on 3 March, commemorating the reorganisation of the Resistance in 1981 (RDTL 2015). Two further national days were declared including ‘Memory Day’ on 7 December – the anniversary of the Indonesian invasion – and the Nicolau Lobato National Holiday, remembering the day of his death on 31 December 1978, and the end of the conventional military conflict. The same year saw the unveiling of a foundation stone for a future ‘National Monument to the War-Sacrificed’, to be known as the Eternal Flame (Chama Eterna; see Leach 2019). While these ongoing efforts to honour military veterans are widely supported in East Timorese society, the contrast with the extended delays over legislation enabling the CNC, and the abandoned legislative agenda for victim reparations was notable.

Conclusion Memorials to martyrs to the national liberation are key elements of an emerging cultural heritage landscape in post-independence Timor-Leste. These nationalist memorials sit atop a patchwork of older cultural heritage sites authored by several generations of colonial and nationalist elites, which serve as a reminder of Timor-Leste’s long and difficult history of occupation, resistance, and ultimately of national liberation. These different historical ‘layers’ offer competing visions of martyrdom aligned with different visions of the past in Timor-Leste – visions which still echo in the memorial landscape, recalling the distinct political projects of successive regimes. These encompass competing visions of martyrdom. For the Portuguese colonial era, martyrs who died ‘for Portugal’ were those ‘heroes of the empire’ who resisted the Japanese occupation. For the Indonesian era, with its integration monuments seeking to highlight imagined pre-colonial unities, the visual narrative was one of ‘reunification’ and of Asian resistance to European colonialism, subsuming the East Timorese struggle under the aegis of its own nationalist narrative. Its commemorated martyrs accordingly recall resistance to the Portuguese, embodied in statues of Dom Boaventura in most major towns in occupied East Timor. For East Timorese nationalists, monuments to martyrs recall the broad narrative of funu, or the struggle of a united people against consecutive colonial occupations. Each layer offers competing visions of East Timorese collective identity, its origins and its history. Behind the visual competition between layers, each has its own contradictions – and the East Timorese nationalist project is no exception. This chapter has examined some of the ways in which the concept of

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martyrdom has become a site of struggles for official recognition in the post-independence state, with notable distinctions between the type of state recognition afforded to Resistance veterans, and those afforded to civilian victims of human rights abuses. As the longstanding uncertainty over both the Comarca site and the future of the CAVR agenda from 2005-2016 demonstrated, cultural heritage policy is also linked with other political problems of the independent state: of reconciling good relations with neighbours with the continuing need for post-conflict justice, and the difficult place of civilian ‘victims’ in the national pantheon of Resistance martyrs, including those survivors still seeking state recognition of their own histories of sacrifice.

Bibliography Aditjondro, G. 1999. ‘Self-determination Under Globalisation: Timor Lorosae’s Transformation from Jakarta Colony to a Global Capitalist Outpost’. Paper presented to Protesting Globalisation: Prospects for Transnational Solidarity conference, Sydney, UTS, 10-11 October. Aliansi Nasionál Timor-Leste ba Tribunál Internasionál (ANTI). 2014. ‘Commemoration of the Liquisa Church Massacre on 5-6 April 1999: Families of the Victim Continue to Live with Uncertainty’, 4 April. Accessed 2 November 2015. http:// www.haktl.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Press-Release-Masakre-LiquisaENGLISH.pdf. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Anderson, B. 1993. ‘Imagining East Timor’, Arena Magazine 4 (April-May), 23-7. Arthur, Catherine E. 2019. Political Symbols and National Identity in Timor-Leste. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan. Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR). 2018. ‘First-Year Anniversary of the Centro Nacional Chega!: Keeping the Promise for Truth, Justice, and Healing in Timor-Leste’, 17 July. Accessed 4 April 2020. https://asia-ajar.org/2018/07/ press-release-first-year-anniversary-of-the-centro-nacional-chega-timor-leste/. Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR). 2019. ‘Policy Paper: Centro Nacional Chega!: Time to Focus on the Victims’, July. Accessed 4 April 2020. https://drive.google.com/ file/d/1MCvgtQhl5Fgpkpy8iq1evVOJELBwA8LO/view Assembly of the Portuguese Republic. 1997 [1976]. Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, Fourth Revision. British Broadcasting Corporation. 2002. ‘East Timor chooses political system’. BBC News, 9 February.

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CAVR. 2003. ‘Comarca: from colonial prison to centre for reconciliation and human rights’. Dili: CAVR. CAVR. 2005. Chega!: The Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste, Executive Summary. Dili: CAVR. Feijó, R. and Viegas. S. 2014. ‘Mártires e Antepassados: Notas de uma pesquisa em curso [Martyrs and Ancestors: Notes on a study in progress]’. Paper presented to the A Produção do Conhecimento Científico em Timor-Leste conference, UNTL, Dili 13-15 August. Fernandes, C. 2011. The Independence of East Timor: Multi-Dimensional Perspectives – Occupation, Resistance and International Political Activism, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Gedik, Esra. 2008. ‘Ideological Ambivalence of Motherhood in the Case of “Mothers of Martyrs” in Turkey’. Master of Science thesis, Middle East Technical University. Available: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.632.9146& rep=rep1&type=pdf Gunn, G.C. 1999. Timor Loro Sae: 500 Years. Macau: Livros do Oriente. Gunn, G.C. 2001. ‘The Five-Hundred Year Timorese Funu’. In Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia and the World Community, edited by R. Tanter, M. Selden and S. Shalom, 3-14. Sydney: Rowman and Littlefield. Gusmão, X. 2015. Speech by the Prime Minister at the opening session of the international conference on ‘Memory and National Identity’, organised by the Timorese Resistance Archive and Museum, 26 January. Accessed 4 April 2020. http://timor-leste.gov.tl/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/International-ConferenceMemory-and-National-Identity-26.01.14.pdf. Harson, S. 2014. ‘Slow Justice for Atrocity Victims in Timor-Leste’. UCA News, 23  December. Accessed 4  April  2020. http://www.ucanews.com/news/ slowjustice-for-atrocity-victims-in-timor-leste/72676. Honneth, A. 1995. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity. International Crisis Group (ICG). 2013. ‘Timor-Leste: Stability at What Cost?’ 8 May. Accessed 4 April 2020. http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/mediareleases/2013/asia/timor-leste-stability-at-what-cost.aspx. Kent, L. 2012. The Dynamics of Transitional Justice: International Models and Local Realities in East Timor. Abingdon: Routledge. Kent, L. 2019. ‘Veterans and the Politics of Citizenship in Timor-Leste’. In Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Timor-Leste, edited by A. McWilliam and M. Leach, 185-197. London and New York: Routledge. La’o Hamutuk. 2013. ‘The national impact of benef its for former combatants’. Accessed 9 June 2020. BELUN Seminar 5 March: www.laohamutuk.org/econ/ pension/VetPension6Mar2013en.pps.

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Leach, M. 2009. ‘Difficult Memories: the Independence Struggle as Cultural Heritage in East Timor’. In Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage’, edited by W. Logan and K. Reeves, 144-161. London: Routledge. Leach, M. 2015a. ‘The Politics of History in Timor-Leste’. In A New Era?: Prospects and Challenges for Timor-Leste, edited by S. Ingram, L. Kent and A. McWilliam, 41-58. Canberra: ANU Press. Leach, M. 2015b. ‘Remembering War and Occupation in Post-Independence TimorLeste’. In Heritage and Memory of War: Responses from Small Islands, edited by G. Carr and K. Reeves, 292-310. New York: Routledge. Leach, M. 2017. Nation-Building and National Identity in Timor-Leste. London and New York: Routledge. Leach, M. 2019. ‘The future of East Timorese nationalism’. In Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Timor-Leste, edited by A. McWilliam and M. Leach, 72-84. Abingdon: Routledge. Logan, W. 2003. ‘Hoa Lo: A Vietnamese Approach to Preserving Places of Pain and Injustice’. Historic Environment 17 (1), 27-31. Magalhães, Fidelis. 2016. ‘Where is Nicolau Lobato?’ Blogpost, 12 February. Accessed 4 April 2020. http://fidelismagalhaes.blogspot.com/2016/02/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html. Mattoso, J. 2004. ‘The Resistance Archives and National Identity’. Timorese Resistance in Documents. Dili: Mario Soares Foundation. Molnar, A. K. 2006. ‘Died in the Service of Portugal: Legitimacy of Authority and Dynamics of Group Identity Among the Atsabe Kemak in East Timor’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37, no. 2, 335-355. Mosse, G. I. 1991. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. New York: Oxford University Press. Presidency RDTL. 2012. ‘Remarks by H.E. President Taur Matan Ruak on the Commemoration of the Centenary of Dom Boaventura and the 37th Anniversary of the Proclamation of Independence Same’. 28 November. Ramos-Horta, J. 1987. Funu: The Unfinished Saga of East Timor. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press. RDTL 2015. Minister of State Government of Timor-Leste, ‘National Council of Combatants of National Liberation to be formally established’, Dili, 17 April. Accessed 2 November 2015. http://timor-leste.gov.tl/?p=11693&lang=en. Scambary, James. 2009. ‘Anatomy of a conflict: The 2006-2007 Communal Violence in East Timor’. Conflict, Security & Development 9 (2), 265-288. Silva, M. da. 2012. ‘Harii Monumentu 12 Novembru St. Cruz Sai Fali Estatua [Monument to 12 November Santa Cruz is instead a statue]’. Jornal Independente, 14 November. Traube, Elizabeth G. 2007. ‘Unpaid Wages: Local Narratives and the Imagination of the Nation’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1), 9-25.

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Wiley, N. 1994. ‘The Politics of Identity in American History’. In Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, edited by C. Calhoun, 130-149. Cambridge: Blackwell. Wright, Frank. 1988. ‘Reconciling the Histories of Protestant and Catholic in Northern Ireland’. In Reconciling Memories, edited by Alan Falconer, 128-148. Dublin: Columbia Press.

Interviews Aitahan Matak. Dili, 7 November 2005.

About the Author Michael Leach Michael Leach is a Professor in Politics and International Relations at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. He has researched and published widely on the politics and history of TimorLeste, including, most recently, Nation-Building and National Identity in Timor-Leste (Routledge, 2017) and (with Andrew McWilliam), The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Timor-Leste (2019). He is a co-founder of the Timor-Leste Studies Association (http://tlstudies.org/).

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Spirits Live Among Us Mythology, the Hero’s Journey, and the Supernatural World in a Community in Ataúro Alessandro Boarccaech Abstract This chapter analyses the relationship between beliefs in the spirits of nature and the dead and the conception of hero among the Humangili, a community located in Ataúro Island, Timor-Leste. For this purpose I discuss the concept of culture, the influence of Lisan, the notion of person, the symbolism of the given name, the meaning of physical death, the hierarchical system, the relationship between soul and body, and the impacts of adopting Christianity, while also presenting local stories and myths, the journey of the Humangili’s hero, the notion of order and social stability, as well as the perceptions about the supernatural world and its influence in the world of the living. Overall, the ideas about the meaning of hero are part of a complex system that contributes to the maintenance of dominant narratives about local customs, cosmogonies, values and hierarchies, the perception of individual and collective identity, and the feeling of stability and social unity. Keywords: heroes’ journey, notion of person, soul and body, mythology, world of the dead, Ataúro

In the cosmogony of the Humangili, a community located on the island of Ataúro in Timor-Leste, there is continuity between the living world and the world inhabited by the spirits of nature and ancestors. Physical death does not correspond to the end of individual existence, but only marks the separation between the immortal soul and the perennial and transient body. The Isik Runguk – the soul located in the head – once free from the body, can assume different forms and incorporate itself into other beings.

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch03

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One of the mythemes of the Humangili mythology is the belief that spirits maintain contact and interfere with people’s lives and the social dynamics of the community. Its all-embracing influence can be noted, for example, in curing diseases, in the intensity of rain, in conflict resolution, in the results of harvests and fish catches, in dreams, and in punishments for transgressions. Based on these premises, in this essay I aim to investigate some of the possible points of contact between the belief in spirits of nature and ancestors and the meaning of the hero among the Humangili. Reverence for ancestral spirits is not exclusive to the Humangili, but represents one of the distinctions of Timorese society, contributing to the diversity of the myths on origins, stories, and social practices. The multiple dimensions of the relationship between the living and the spirits have been widely recorded.1 Despite the possible similarities in customs and beliefs from one region to another, it is important to note that the relationship that the living establish with the dead forms part of a dialectical social construction, where the present and the past converse and negotiate meanings (Le Goff 1993; Oexele 1996; Schmitt 1999). Therefore, in order to understand the relationship that the Humangili establish with their dead, it is necessary to understand the context and the logic that govern their social organisation.2 With a volcanic origin and an area of 140.5 square kilometres, Ataúro is located 32 kilometres to the north of the city of Dili, the capital of TimorLeste – this is the distance between the port of Dili and the beach of Vila Maumeta, the administrative headquarters of Ataúro (Direção Geral de Estatísticas 2015). One of the six administrative posts of Dili, it has 10,105 residents,3 divided into five suku: Bikeli, Beloi, Vila Maumeta, Makili, and Makadade. The suku, according to Law 09/2016 (Jornal da República 2016), are territorial administrative units that form part of an administrative post and are, in turn, formed by villages, whose members are linked by family or traditional ties. The main means of transport between Ataúro and Dili are the local fishing boats. In addition to Tetun, four language variants are spoken in Ataúro: Rasua in Beloi and Bikeli, Raklungu in 1 Key authors include Forman 1980; Fox 1980; Duarte 1984; Traube 1986; Hicks 2004; Sousa 2010; Barnes 2011; Grenfell 2012; Trindade 2012; Paulino 2013; Boarccaech 2013; Población and Castro 2014; McWilliam, Palmer, and Shepherd 2014; Bovensiepen 2014a; Viegas and Feijó 2017. 2 My first contact with the Humangili was in 2008, and since then I have frequently visited and conducted studies on the community. The information presented here on the stories gathered from the Humangili was authorised by community leaders. 3 The numbers were provided in January 2019 by the director of the administrative post of Ataúro.

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Makadade, Hresuk in Makili, and Dua (also called Klunguvava) in Ili Timur. The Humangili, which is the name of the Makili community in Hresuk, inhabit the south-eastern part of Ataúro. According to information from the suku administration, 2,503 people currently live in the community, covering an area of approximately 9 square kilometres with irregular and mountainous geography. It is divided into four villages: Hatulela, Masilihu, Maulaku, and Maumeta. For its inhabitants, Humangili is the name of the land on which they live, and not a designation of their own social group. The meaning of Humangili has been lost over time, and even the older people are no longer sure of the origin of the name. In an exercise in etymological speculation, Huma may be a corruption or an archaic version of Ruma, which in Hresuk means ‘house’ (Malay and Indonesian, Rumah; Balinese, Umah; Tetum Térik and Galole, Uma), while Ngili could be the variation of the word Kngili, meaning ‘tickle’, or ‘calm’. Thus, Humangili can be understood as a ‘place of calm people’, or of those ‘who feel ticklish’ (in the sense that they are always smiling). This version corresponds to the self-image of the Humangili as being peaceful, as well as connecting to the Makili name which in Tetum Térik means ‘to feel ticklish’, or its Makilik variant of ‘who makes smile’ and ‘funny’. Since they do not have a specific word to identify themselves, they generally use the expressions ‘U Humangili’ (I am Humangili), ‘Humangili anak’ (child of Humangili) or ‘U mia ne Humangili’ (I live in Humangili). In this study, when I use the expression ‘Humangili’, I mean those people who recognise themselves and are recognised by others as members of the community.

Ancestors, stories of origin and behaviour patterns Humangili social dynamics are strongly influenced by the division of its members into 12 large kinship groups, each with its own ancestors, rules, customs, ceremonies, founding myths, leadership, laws, sacred sites, and spaces for agriculture and f ishing. These practices, rules, symbols and customs are also known as Lisan. The relationship between the family groups and their respective Lisan is complex, they are indissociable, intrinsic, and used as one of the diacritics to identify and differentiate the Humangili. 4 4 The expression Lisan is generally translated as ‘tradition’. However, Lisan has a fluid definition and works as both noun and adjective. For example, Lisan can be used to designate rituals, to solve domestic problems, for varied daily activities, for places and objects, for profiling people’s

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In addition, most extended family groups have subdivisions, and the Lisan also has branches. Only two groups have no subdivisions, the Mausera and the Rumamaru. The origin of the Mausera is controversial. Many of the local leaders claim that the patriarch Mausera was a foreigner who landed on the island after a shipwreck. However, the Mausera leaders claim that their ancestor was a Humangili who left the community in search of adventure and returned after some years. Currently, the Mausera, with less than 100 members, are the smallest group in terms of population size. To justify this, the Humangili often say that the Mausera had many female descendants and few men. This enriched the Lisan due to the transfer of goods from the family of the groom to the family of the bride during marriage. However, it has reduced the number of members, since the patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal organisation determines that women must move to the house and the Lisan of their husbands. The Rumamaru, on the other hand, were part of the Tutunopun in the past. The brothers Kolikose, Kirireti, and Kaireti formed a tripartite leadership. Kolikose, the older brother, pledged many of the family’s possessions to pay for his Kra’uk Sek’ngari and Kne Pipahe, which correspond respectively to the initial and final stages of the transfer of goods in customary marriage. His youngest brother Kaireti was disgusted and decided to step aside, thus creating his own Lisan. However, to this day the two groups perform various activities together and their members consider themselves siblings. Associated with their stories of origin or a significant event in which their ancestors supposedly participated, the characteristics of the Lisan are transferred to its members in the form of patterns of social behaviour and psychological profiles. Remembering and updating the local stories and myths becomes important because, among other purposes, these presently reaffirm values – in the sense that Weber (2015) uses the term – that guide the community. Myths constitute a historically determined system of communication (Barthes 1999) whose primary function is to reveal exemplary models of meaningful human actions (Eliade 1989), and according to Campbell (2010), they present four dimensions: mystical (affirming the mystery of existence), cosmological (explaining the reality and the origins of the world), sociological (supporting and validating a social order), and pedagogical (teaching to live and face the contingencies of life). personalities, for behaviour, for identifying the sacred and the profane and knowing right and wrong, to differentiate people and their families and, at the same time, to refer to the extended family and what connects people to each other in the same group. In this way, when I use the expression Lisan I am referring to all these meanings and forms of manifestation.

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Besides reaffirming respect for their ancestors, myths among the Humangili narrate the origins of the community and its heroic deeds and contribute to the sense of belonging while reinforcing the collective memory of the group. They are also used to justify the set of rules and the current social organisation. Honouring this legacy becomes an obligation of its members, while confronting this social organisation challenges the authority of the ancestors, who may be discontented and punish the living through illnesses, natural disasters, or even death. To illustrate this dynamic, I cite the Lulopun. Traditionally held as haughty and proud, they are responsible for the Serala Uran – rain ritual – and are holders of ancestral knowledge inherited directly from Lekitoko, the first Humangili, the founder of the community. The Hatauk, in turn, are considered valiant warriors. They are responsible for negotiating with other communities for the exchange of specific objects and food, as well as for leading the warriors during conflicts with other groups and for the internal security of the suku. In the past, some warriors from a community located in a mountain area near Dili, which had commercial contact with the Humangili, secretly entered their land to steal their animals and kidnap their women. Kurukeli, one of the patriarchs of Hatauk, saw the invaders and, after taking a moment to think what to do, decided to face them but was killed as they escaped. Upon learning of their father’s death, Kurukeli’s sons gathered men to attack their enemies and burned their houses and plantations, while killing almost all the warriors and rescuing the Humangili women. The Soluan, on the other hand, originated from the current municipality of Manatutu, located in the Eastern region of Timor-Leste. During a storm, their patriarch was thrown overboard and remained adrift for several days. Feeding on small fish, drinking rainwater and facing dangerous animals, he managed to survive and reach Humangili. His calmness in the face of danger, and his ability to analyse the situation and find solutions in adversity meant that the Eran (political leaders of the community) would be chosen among the members of his Lisan. Another Lisan, the Hnua Le’en, has as its patriarchs the brothers Mau-Hare and Kolikia, who were spontaneously born from within a hole in a place called Lehui Mau-Melin Nusa. They were born already knowing the technique of making the Opa (a bamboo basket used for fishing), and they had knives in their hands. Both were feeding on fish and Tua Putin (an alcoholic drink extracted from the fruit of the palmyra palm), and they looked to store the surplus for difficult times. By being skilled in the making of objects, their Lisan became one among those that were responsible for making the sacred statues representing the ancestors and the spirits of nature.

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Although the set of characteristics for each Lisan is generalised to its members, this can be perceived with greater emphasis among the Lelai’t (family group leaders), the Haha Opun (responsible for preserving stories and customs), the Mataplolon (mediators with the spirit world, sorcerers, and local doctors) and the elders of each Lisan and Rumanan.5 As the people age, take on leadership positions, or acquire some form of social prestige, these characteristics become more striking. In summary, according to the Lelai’t Menunu and Kurureti, the Humangili Lisan have the following characteristics: Hatauk or Hataur Opun: (to make + to respect / to fear + owners): considered loyal defenders and warriors, but ones who may want to take justice into their own hands. Hatudalas (stone + stack): often associated with builders; are people who work every day and who have a profile more associated with execution than planning. Hnelak (hole + pass): usually find solutions to any problem, there are no obstacles they cannot overcome. Hnua Le’en (hole + inside): are compared to ants, because they are forewarned, seek provisions, and keep them for difficult times. Luli or Lulopun (sacred + owners): have a haughty, proud profile, and are serene. They do not usually enter discussions because they think they are always right. Maule’ek (expel + hole): speak their minds, do not care if they will please others, untimely. By being spontaneous, sometimes they are misunderstood. Mausera (expel + raise / put out / reveal): are considered discreet, willing to listen to the opinions of others, and analytical, and when involved in disputes they do not exalt themselves and remain serene. Mautuda (expel + word / say / express / speak fast): tend to be authoritarian and intransigent, harsh on first contact with others, rarely go back on their decisions, but are loyal to their friends. Rumamaru (house + long / tall / high): smart and good traders, they manage to overcome difficulties and reverse unfavourable situations through dialogue. 5 For a more detailed analysis of the Rumanan (family groups and their respective customs and practices branches) and the influence of the Lisan on economic exchanges, conflict resolution, marriage agreements, spatial division of land and sea, formation of political alliances, adherence to Christian Churches, and interpersonal and social relations in general, see Boarccaech 2013.

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Soluan or Solun Opun (those who hold prisoners, prison owners): calm, reflective people, who like to be alone and think before making any decision; however, when they decide on something, they are rarely convinced otherwise. Tetoha (process of pile-driving in the making of metals): passionate, putting feelings before reason, which causes them to act first and then think about what they have done; they are easily irritable and have the tendency to provoke and bully. Tutunopun (mountain + owners): proud, practical, and determined, they hold firm positions, rarely go back on a decision, and are resistant to accepting contrary opinions.

Similarities, contrasts and multiple worldviews In addition to coming from the Lisan and the Rumanan, there are other influential factors – which also involve respect for ancestral spirits – in the characteristics of the Humangili. The attribution of a proper name in Hresuk is indicative of the possible qualities and limitations of an individual, besides assigning a role in the family group. The bestowing of a proper name is not only a juridical-legal procedure but also produces subjectivity and contributes to the notion of ‘I’, inserting us into a system of semioses, as well as connecting us with others – in the present and the past – by the expectations that precede the act of naming itself.6 For the Humangili, the ceremony of the Hrutu Ahas is performed a few days after birth. This ceremony used to take place in the Ruma Luli (sacred house) of the families, but since the 1980s it has gradually become more common to hold the ceremony in the home of the newborn’s parents. I followed some of the naming ceremonies conducted by different Lisan and Rumanan. This ceremony has a basic structure, which consists of the family’s Haha Opun tying a ribbon on the wrist of the newborn and the chanting of a song that slowly names the ancestors. Each family group has a set of specific names that are connected genealogically to them. At this time, according to the Humangili, the ancestral spirits are present and are 6 Among the Humangili, there are the ‘Christian names’ – which they use for baptism in the Church and the public register – and local names, which refer to customs and ancestors (Boarccaech 2013). For onomastic analyses and the function of the proper name in different contexts consult, among others, Strawson 1980; Viveiros de Castro 1986; Geertz 1993; Lacan 2003; Hugh-Jones 2006; Feijó 2008; and Viegas 2008.

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perceived by the child. Throughout the process, the adults remain silent in a show of respect. The choice occurs when the child reacts to one of the names uttered, for example by smiling, crying, or ceasing to cry. The child, on receiving the name, acquires the potential to represent the characteristics of that ancestor, that is, from the child’s name it is possible to deduce probable abilities and limitations. However, this will only be confirmed over time through the evaluation of their social behaviour, because throughout life the child will have to prove himself or herself worthy of that name and thus honour their ancestors. However, stereotypes can be softened in specific cases, based on interpersonal relations, individual behaviours, and on whether there is any intervention from the ancestral spirits. The story of the Lelai’t Menunu illustrates this dynamic. I met Menunu in 2008, when he claimed he was 109 years old. As a young man, Menunu had left home to go to the village of Berau, in Makadade suku. After some hours, people who had returned from Berau reported that they had not seen Menunu in the village or along the trail linking both communities. After a day without hearing from Menunu – the number of days may vary depending on who tells the story – his family decided to form a group to look for him. They found Menunu’s body on a stone near the sea. He was dead. After taking the young man’s body home, they began preparing for Rosi Pohoe (burial). The moment they deposited his body in the grave and began to cover him in sand, he opened his eyes and came back to life. Since then, Menunu has allegedly received mystical powers from the spirits of his ancestors and has become the most influential Mataplolon of the island, the most important Haha Opun, the Lelai’t of his Lisan and one of the richest men in all of Ataúro, wherein wealth is measured in terms of land, pigs, goats, corn, cassava, Kngohi (handmade fabric), and Osa Lolon (iron spears that can measure up to 2.5 metres). From Menunu’s achievements, the members of the Hatudalas – and especially their namesakes, or Kaek – were no longer seen as mere executors of tasks and good builders. They were now considered observers who were insightful, sensible, and equipped with the knowhow to solve problems. However, as I mentioned previously, this recognition is not automatic. It needs to be confirmed by the social performance of the individuals themselves. In this way, while these characteristics can be confirmed or refuted, new skills, defects, and social roles can also be included and transmitted to future generations. This brings us back to the concept of ‘person’. In Kant’s (2007 [1786]) philosophy, the ‘person’ is an autonomous entity, endowed with an ethical and moral conscience, who acts through their reason and will. On the other

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hand, Locke (2012 [1690]) affirms that the ‘person’ is a prerogative of man while attaining his capacities of a ‘thinking being’ endowed with reason and reflection. These rationalist and empiricist definitions, which start from the premise that only men could subdue their instincts by reason and the capacity for self-reflection, encounter difficulties when we approach social groups that attribute the capacity to desire, reflect, and analyse to animals, the spirits of the dead, and even the rain, the wind, the mountains, and so on. The category of ‘person’, which seems simple and everyday, becomes slippery when we try to give it a universal definition. As we can see in several studies on the notion of the person (see Meyerson 1973; Viveiros de Castro 1986; Harré 1998; Rose 1998; Mauss 2003; Strathern 2006; Foucault 2007), this concept may be associated with expressions such as ‘individual’, ‘subject’, or ‘self’, and apparently all human groups have an idea on the topic – even if it is diffuse or peripheral among their concerns. Perhaps the common denominator for the different understandings of the notion of person is its heuristic dimension, whose meaning has a contextual, temporal, and relational character. Among the Humangili, the word Lekmori may indicate a ‘person’ or ‘individual’. Both function as synonyms as they receive interchangeable meanings whose differentiation occurs in the context of the phrase in which they are used. However, the ‘person’ in its most comprehensive meaning – that is, the representative of a social group – and the ‘individual’, in its most reductive manifestation as being a unit differentiated from others, end up having the same ontological meaning. This is because the person/ individual is the result of multiple factors for the Humangili. Some of these factors include the customs and practices of their communities of origin, religious affiliations, places of birth and residence, biological aspects, mother tongue, social position, establishment of relationships with ancestral spirits, Lisan, familial relations, economic power, body type, life experiences, age, and gender. The individual/person – the singular in the midst of the collective – in an apparently paradoxical manner, has the responsibility to represent these characteristics while their individuality will be recognised, detached, or rejected as they perform the social logic and expectations of the group with more or less emphasis. According to local beliefs, the world of the living, the spirits of nature, ancestors, and animals present equivalent codes and social practices that are expressed through different languages. Thus, all these worlds would have people, ceremonies, sacred sites, houses, food, animals, and plants that can only be perceived through the understanding of their respective points of view. Among the Humangili, the codification of language and access

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to this point of view are achieved through similarity, where any contrast would be a hindrance. This occurs through the transmutation of bodies, by the incorporation of spirits, and by the sharing of customs, values, beliefs, rules, and social practices, among other phenomena. I call perspective view this process that leads to the other’s viewpoint, where individuals operate and move between multiple references that include the objective and the subjective, the natural and the cultural, the conscious and the unconscious, in order to recognise themselves and the environment around them (Boarccaech 2013, 202-218). Perspective view does not necessarily imply empathy or an effective understanding from the other’s point of view, but it can be a projection of one’s own world view where one tautologically interprets the events around oneself.7

Continuities and discontinuities The panoramic narrative presented so far may give the impression that the perception of the impact of the spirits on the lives of the living is homogeneous. However, there are nuances and tensions around the understanding of the influence of the spirits, as the Humangili are a heterogeneous community and present differences in religion, level of education, and access to consumer goods, among others. As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, the Humangili maintain a self-image of being peaceful, arguing that everyone in the community ‘was born here’, ‘thinks alike’, and that they prefer to resolve disputes through dialogue, never ‘removing the Pisun [a kind of machete] from the waist’. However, the Humangili stories refer to rituals of human sacrifice, wars, and genocides, such as the decimation of the Manroni suku, and the habit of cutting off the heads of their enemies (Boarccaech 2013). Over the years that I have been in contact with the community, I also noted that there are numerous cases of physical and verbal abuse, sexual abuse, robbery, disagreements among families across generations, and the depredation of common goods. There is the continued use of the ad hominem argument against perceived adversaries. Women with independent and disruptive behaviours are considered witches or encounter difficulties in getting married. Homosexuals feel coerced into marrying and having children. The mentally ill do not receive treatment and are hidden in the house. People trying to contact spirits or learn traditional 7 For other def initions of perspective see Viveiros de Castro 1996; Ortega y Gasset 1998; Nietzsche 2001; Vilaça 2005; Leibniz 2009.

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medicine without the permission of the Mataplolon and of the Lela’it of the Lisan are considered Ihmori’ik, or evil sorcerers and witches. Women who get pregnant without being married or who have suffered sexual abuse are considered ‘damaged’. There is resistance to and distrust of the Pena’e (Timorese of other locations) and of the Dai (foreigners). There is also a lack of cooperation with people who do not belong to the same family group. These are a few situations among others that are similarly common. The relationship between the adherence to Christianity on the one hand and local traditions on the other reflects these tensions. All Humangili declare themselves Christians, adhering to the Catholic Church or to the Assembly of God.8 Despite this, the Humangili maintain beliefs in the spirits of ancestors and nature, and the relationship between the two cosmologies is marked by exchanges, defined limits, and circumstantial compromises. We can observe this in the myth concerning the origin of the Humangili. According to Humangili mythology, the God Meromak created the sky, the earth, the moon, the sun, the sea, and all living species. In order to populate the earth, Meromak allowed Inarika, who had been born in the form of a fish, to become a pig and then a woman to marry Domateu, the first man. They had three children called Kutukia, Lekitoko, and Komateu. One day, while hunting, Lekitoko struck a bird with an arrow. Injured, the bird volunteered to be his wife and, with Meromak’s permission, became a woman, and their descendants were the original Humangili. Local leaders of the Catholic and the Assembly of God churches state that this and other stories are told to this day to preserve and honour the memory of their ancestors. However, many Humangili continue to believe in the local version of the creation of the world and humanity. According to Tuakela, a former leader of Catholic youth, Meromak and the biblical God are the same, and therefore there are no contradictions between the two narratives. The explanation is that at the beginning of creation, since there were few people, Meromak allowed the transformation of some animals to populate the earth. Another version on this subject indicates that this happened only after the flood described in the biblical episode of Noah. Although

8 Although Timor-Leste is mostly Catholic, Ataúro is predominantly Protestant. This happened after storms in the late 1970s caused landslides, destroying houses and plantations in the island. Announcing the end of the world, resident Protestant leaders from the Assembly of God called on the people to join their Church. Currently, according to the Ataúro’s administration, about 80 per cent of the population are members of the Assembly of God. The exception is Humangili, which has 2,085 Catholics and 418 Protestants. For an analysis of the process by which Christianity was adopted among the inhabitants of Ataúro, see Boarccaech 2013.

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Domateu’s story occurred in Humangili, according to Tuakela, life could have arisen elsewhere in different ways. The origins and intentions of the Nusa Opun Rare Opun, a generic term for the spirits of nature and ancestors, have also suffered the impact of the Humangili’s adherence to Christianity. For a part of the community, some of these spirits, previously held as powerful entities which could cause either harm or good, became demons. For example, the Hawa, a powerful entity living in the mountains, is nowadays associated with the Christian Satan. Even the spirits of the dead could be demonic manifestations disguised in the form of ancestors (Boarccaech 2013, 178). Here, we can see a semantic reorganisation after the adoption of Christian symbolism. The sign-objectinterpretant relationship tends to become complex where both cosmologies coexist, in a relationship that alternates between moments of separation and synchrony. Funerals also present this dialectic between the Christian universe and belief in spirits. Each Lisan has its own cemetery, which, depending on the number of members, are also separated by Rumanan. These sites have allegedly remained the same since the beginning of the community, and are considered sacred (see also Traube 1980, 1986; Clamagirand 1982; Hicks 1984; Friedberg 1989; Molnar 2006; McWilliam 2011; Bovensiepen 2014b; Viegas and Feijó 2017). I have followed some funerals and ceremonies on the days of the dead, when the Humangili silently walk towards their cemeteries to clean the tombs and pray for their ancestors. On one of these occasions, I went to the cemetery of the Hatudalas Lemenaru. There were some simply built, well-preserved concrete tombstones with crucifixes. However, most people congregated around a grave that was marked with a stone and nothing else. Kasata, one of the Catholic leaders and a direct descendant of the deceased, explained to me that one of the patriarchs of his Rumanan was buried there. According to him, there were no Christian decorations on the grave because his ancestor died ‘Gentile’. He said that Christianity came to the community long after his death. In a low voice and with some embarrassment, he said that they did not place any Christian adornments and retained it exactly as it was in the past in order to respect the spirits of the ancestors who lived there, to honour their customs and therefore continue to receive their protection. Another example is their behaviour while f ishing. Before entering the sea, the Catholic Humangili perform a small ceremony requesting the protection of the spirits so that they will give them a good catch and no accidents will occur. When they suffer a problem while f ishing or

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travelling between the island and Dili, they justify their misfortunes as being a punishment from the spirits for those who have done something wrong. The Protestants also perform this ceremony, but they state that they do so only to respect the customs. However, in 2017, Karakolik, an experienced sailor and one of the most prominent members of the Protestant community, suffered two accidents while piloting his boat on the Ataúro-Dili crossing. After the second accident, in which the boat capsized after leaving Humangili, he decided to build a new boat. He claimed that the previous boat was old, not very resilient, and therefore not stable enough to face the waves. A year later, in 2018, his new boat suffered a broken engine and had to be rescued on the high seas. A few days after that, Ro Opun (the owner of the boat), left home and attempted suicide by throwing himself into the sea, claiming to have been cursed by the spirits of his ancestors. After being rescued by his family, he was taken home and the Haha Opun and the Mataplolon of the Rumanan were called in to intervene. Feeling embarrassed and insecure, he decided that he would not pilot any more boats until he was forgiven by the spirits, and for several months, he stayed at his house without taking part in any community activity. During the inauguration of a Catholic chapel in Maulaku village, a few hours before the ceremony, the catechist Meharek went up the mountain to thank the ancestral spirits. According to Meharek, the Humangili are all Christians, God is stronger than any spirit, and the opening ceremony of the Catholic chapel was important because it was a ‘feast of the Church’. However, he added, ‘we cannot forget the grandparents’, because the ancestral spirits were the real owners of that land and ‘lived there before the construction of the chapel’ (Boarccaech 2013, 184). To mitigate possible logical contradictions and cognitive dissonances, the Humangili invoke the moderator system. This system is not an autonomous entity, but organises the different values, laws, signs, beliefs, and other systems that influence a given group, providing individuals with a set of ideas, heuristics, mental algorithms, and social practices within the available repertoire. These directly interfere in the formation and maintenance of their self-image and worldview, softening the contradictions, adjusting the individual logic to the group logic, as well as encoding the plurality of semioses into intelligible and predictable binary patterns (Boarccaech 2013, 2018). This favours a sense of stability and control, alleviates fears of the ‘different’, and contributes to social adjustment.

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The hero’s journey and the supernatural world The notion of hero is one of the factors that contribute to this idea of stability and unity of local customs and beliefs. In the Hresuk lexicon, the words Asu Pai’n and Hunu Opun signify a brave, courageous, fearless warrior, and can take on the variation hero. Although commonly interchangeable and used as synonyms, Asu Pai’n is a more generic semantic expression and describes the brave and strong warriors. On the other hand, the Hunu Opun are the warriors that demonstrate bravery and strength during a war. The word Erói (Tetun language, assimilated from the Portuguese herói) is in turn commonly used to designate leaders of the Resistance against the Indonesian occupation (1975-1999) who died in combat.9 According to the Lela’it Kalisuk, all these expressions can be used to designate ‘hero’, as long as we are referring to a warrior who has shown courage and strength and died in combat – which may be war with other groups, an individual confrontation with an enemy warrior, or while confronting supernatural beings – while defending his land, his people, and the values and customs of his ancestors.10 From this logic, I have suggested to some Humangili – at different times – the following mental exercise: there are two men who are equally brave, strong, and skilful warriors. These men fought side by side in the same war against an enemy suku. During the confrontation, they demonstrated bravery, killed several enemies, helped many comrades, and defended their land. However, one of these men died during the combat and the other, although wounded, returned home. In light of this scene, I asked if both could be considered heroes. The answer, unanimous, was ‘no’. Only the man who died during combat could be considered a hero while the other, who survived, would be a valiant warrior, a ‘defender’ or ‘veteran’. With a different group, I asked if Xanana Gusmão, Ramos-Horta, Mari Alkatiri, Francisco Guterres Lú Olo, and Taur Matan Ruak – some of the main names in the Resistance against the Indonesian occupation and important figures in the current Timorese political scene – could be considered heroes.11 The 9 The word in Tetun asuwa’in is also used to designate warrior (in general terms) and those who died in combat during the Indonesian occupation. 10 Most of the stories about the ‘heroes’ refer to wars with other communities. The Humangili express the concern that these stories may trigger revenge from former rival groups. This rationale is related to the logics of revenge, which in Timor-Leste can extend through generations until they are fulfilled. 11 Participants in the first exercise included 16 men, of whom five were between the ages of 30 and 40; eight were between 41 and 50; and three were between 51 and 60. In the second exercise,

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response was identical to that of the previous group. These leaders, though important, were not seen as heroes because they did not die in combat.12 The underlying idea is that warriors who die in combat had completed their life-cycle in the visible world and had been called by the ancestral spirits to join them in the supernatural world. Death in combat was their fate – that is, it was already ‘determined by the spirits’ even before the confrontation took place. It is therefore deemed an honour to perish in combat, as it means that the ancestral spirits recognise the individual’s bravery and approve of the way they lived. Thus, the Humangili hero is the protector of their land, the memory of the ancestors, and the values and customs of the community.13 However, there is one important detail. It is not enough to show courage and to have died in battle. The hero also needs to have been a leader, the commander of his group, and the warrior that others followed and admired during his lifetime. In the Humangili social hierarchy, everyone has a predefined role and the transmission of power primarily occurs in a hereditary manner. To use Bourdieu’s expression in his studies on symbolic power (2006), there are several fields of power relations, whose members submit to a specific set of rules. Among the Humangili, we can observe the fields of the Lela’it, Haha Opun, Mataplolon, Catholics, Protestants, generational, gender, Lisan, Rumanan, and so on. Interference between these fields is not welcome and can lead to misunderstandings. Thus, the leaders of the hereditary hierarchy system would be either the sons or nephews of, or chosen directly by, the previous leaders. The warriors who lead their groups do so not only because they are skilled and courageous, but also because they have been given this function on account of their membership of specific families and power groups. In this way, the idea that heroes should demonstrate leadership and command their groups also reinforces the existing social structure.

20 people participated, all men: seven between 30 and 40 years; four between 41 and 50 years; six between 51 and 60 years; and three over 60 years. 12 Nevertheless, four participants commented that some of the leaders mentioned in the activity could be considered heroes when they die. According to them, this is because some of these political leaders would continue to f ight to protect the people and the nation from internal and external enemies who want to cause conflict or social disorganisation, or exploit Timor-Leste. 13 In the Humangili stories we can find other characters that we can consider ‘heroes’ (wise person, wizard, anti-hero, politician, adventurer, and so on). However, here I am analysing the conception that the Humangili have about the meaning of the ‘hero’.

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Mythical stories and the very act of remembering are not devoid of power relations. The different groups that dispute space and leadership try to impose their own narratives and versions of the facts on each other, thereby contributing to the creation and maintenance of a collective memory. According to Halbwachs (2013), collective memory is formed within social groups that end up influencing their own memory in determining how, where, and what/who will be remembered, by constantly updating and reconstructing the past. In the same vein, Pollak (1989, 1992) says that there is a framework of memory wherein some memory images are highlighted to the detriment of others. This contributes to the fact that the relationship between the learned and the lived – especially with regard to great events and wars – is always updated, causing a deformation and reinterpretation of the past. These disputes are in line with what Wittgenstein (1994) called language games. For Wittgenstein, the meanings attributed to anything – objects, people, supernatural entities, animals, plants, and so on – are part of a complex set of interests involving customs, rules, motivations, historical contexts, individual and group goals, and linguistic repertoire, among other factors. In a social group marked by oral tradition, with a rigid hierarchical system which gives only a few people the right to narrate ancestral stories, the control, selection, and alteration of the remembered stories also falls to favoured individuals. Incidentally, one of the factors that give prominence to the Haha Opun is the number of stories they know about the other Lisan (Boarccaech 2013). Considering this, it may not be by chance that currently most Humangili heroes belong to one of three groups: the Hatudalas, one of the Lisan responsible for coordinating the Mataplolon and the Lisan of origin for the main political and Catholic Church leaders since at least the late 1970s; the Hatauk, the Lisan of the warrior leaders by custom, who comprise a majority of the leaders of the Protestant Church and the second political force of the community today; and the Tutunopun, one of the oldest Lisan and the most populous, the guardians of the sacred objects of Lekitoko, responsible for preserving most of the sacred sites, and one of the Lisan that leads the work of the Mataplolon as historical allies of the Hatudalas. Ataúro was used both by the Portuguese and the Indonesians as a prison island. This, along with it being a small territory and difficult to access, contributed to it not having off icially reported conflicts between the guerrillas and the Indonesian army. However, the islanders knew what was happening and some joined the resistance against the Indonesian occupation. While speaking with Ketilihu, a 62-year-old man and brother of a former guerrilla who died in 2007, about clashes with the army and the

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pro-Indonesian Timorese militia, he commented that people who die in a war could be considered martyrs. The people who suffer for their people, he said, need to be remembered. But he cautioned that care must be taken, because someone who died while carrying water to the guerrillas cannot be considered a martyr like those who died in combat or were tortured and killed. The Lela’it Kurureti, also commenting on the Indonesian occupation, says that now everyone wants to have a martyr in the family, to be a veteran or child of a veteran, in order to gain free access to the public university and to obtain compensation and government contracts. A little excited, he said that a lot of people make up the fact that they helped just to take advantage of the benefits provided by the government 14 . As I have observed, the Humangili heroes are men and warriors who held leadership roles. They descended from important families in the community hierarchy, and they died in combat. On the other hand, martyrs are those who suffered and died in combat but who didn’t have a relevant hierarchical role.15 Extrapolating a little from the Humangili context, ideas of the characteristics of heroes and martyrs, coupled with generational power struggles, the existence of groups competing for prevalence over the official narrative, conceptions of the roles of women and youth in society, and the rigid hierarchical structure, may be some of the reasons that led to the lack of recognition of women and the youth who participated in the resistance during the Indonesian occupation.16 After physical death, the Humangili are judged by the Council of the Elders at a location in their own suku called Suli Nian Suli Nan. The ancestral 14 This is an example of language games and narrative disputes among the Humangili. Tensions over the meaning of hero (and martyr) were reinforced by the government’s benefits for veterans and their families. These disputes and mistrust go beyond the possible benefits received, but also involve issues of honour, power, hierarchy, symbolic and cultural patterns for personal and social recognition, the system of reciprocity between families, among others. 15 Despite this official version presented by the Humangili, the semantic limits of the expression martyr are still flexible and remain open to multiple narratives. In conversations with Timorese of other localities, the use of the word martyr appears in a diffuse form. Amongst those people, some do not associate martyr with hero; while, for others, martyr and hero would have the same meaning, but with hierarchical differences according to the type of participation in the Resistance and the cause of death. Some people defined martyr as everyone who died during the Indonesian occupation; and some don’t know how to define martyr. This may be associated with the lack of a broad and open debate in society about the Resistance era, and disputes caused by individual interest and diverging political groups. In addition, the Statute of Combatants of the National Liberation (Jornal da República 2006), martyr is defined as everyone who died as a result of their participation in the resistance between 15 August 1975 and 25 October 1999. 16 On the recognition of women and the youth in the Resistance, see among others Cristalis and Scott 2005; Leach 2009; Fernandes 2011; Loney 2012; Kent 2012.

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spirits evaluate whether the person respected the local customs during their life. If they are considered ‘good’, the person can live with their ancestors, but if they are judged to be a person who has disregarded the cultural codes of the community, they go to live in Lumera, a place situated in the south-west of the island, and lead a life of eternal suffering in the midst of fire. The heroes also pass through the Council of Elders, but this is a formality, for they have already been accepted by the ancestral spirits. The figure of the hero can be understood as an archetype (Jung 2008) whose manifestation is subject to social tensions that vary in time, space, and from one social group to another (Kothe 2000; Bettelheim 2009). His general characteristics include confronting death (literal or symbolic) and the ability to sacrifice himself to achieve a common good. Based on the path of the hero proposed by Campbell (2018), the journey of the Humangili hero would have the following phases: common life, that is, the daily life before starting the adventure; the call of the adventure, that is, conflict and war; reticence, that is, a change in routine and plans, marked by the phrase ‘I do not know what the future holds and what to do’; supernatural help, that is, having the ancestral spirits to protect or give strength to face enemies; ordeal, that is, facing danger and powerful enemies, resisting torture, and making difficult choices; reward, that is, the hero confronts death and receives recognition for his bravery; way back, that is, the spirit of the hero returns to his homeland to finally join the ancestral spirits; and return, that is, the hero begins to intervene with the dynamics of the living by helping them or punishing their transgressions. According to this logic, the body of the hero, and of any person, must be buried in the same soil as their ancestors. The entire process of burying the dead, the care for their graves, the ceremonies to honour them, the demonstration of respect among families, the physical environment, architecture, and objects used are part of a complex system of signification. Any change in this system needs to consider the prevailing subjectivities, codes, power struggles, and values, for not to be buried in the land of your ancestors can be considered a dishonour for the living and the dead. When burial occurs elsewhere there is the fear that the hero’s spirit may become angry because it feels disrespected, or even that it may refuse to return to its homeland, thus getting lost and becoming estranged from its ancestors. Caring for the dead has a private dimension, in that each family must preserve the tomb and the sacred sites, and perform ceremonies for their dead. It also has a collective dimension in that they must treat the tomb as a place of pilgrimage and demonstration of power by enhancing the size of tombs, providing adornment, attending to the

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number of people participating in the ceremonies, and ensuring a means for other families to show respect by reinforcing reciprocal ties. When the living cannot bury their dead, the social, psychological, and emotional cycles of the previously established semioses can change. Moreover, the living who do not bury their dead are considered ‘weak’ and disrespectful of local customs. Another inconvenience is that burying the dead in distant places involves additional travel and financial expenses, thereby altering the dynamics of both undertaking a pilgrimage and taking care of these places. The perception of the hero is connected to the logic and worldview that exists in Humangili society. In this sense the Humangili hero works as a signifier that represents certain values related to ethics, morality, honour, behaviour patterns, right and wrong, spirituality, identity and collective memory of the community. In addition, the hero does not dispute the status quo, does not challenge the authorities, but reinforces the established values and updates local beliefs. The hero, while introducing new technologies and heuristics to the community’s way of life, does not necessarily create a new way of being in the world. When changes occur, they are disguised as continuity and affirmation of the culture, which among the Humangili means the set of practices and beliefs considered autochthonous and inherited from ancestors. Difference and contrast, which are an integral part of the social dynamic, are generally considered subversive and viewed as undesirable, prompting the need for repression, rejection, or adjustment to local logic. To grant visibility to multiple narratives, giving voice to the several actors involved and reflecting on the existing power relations can make the debate more complex and inclusive, thus being one possible path to continuously nurturing and respecting the richness of the local culture while promoting social change.

References Barnes, Susanna. 2011. ‘Origins, Precedence and Social Order in the Domain of Ina Ama Beli Darlan’. In Land and Life in Timor Leste: Ethnographic Essays, edited by Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube, 23-46. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Barthes, Roland. 1999. Mitologias. Translated by Rita Buongermino and Pedro de Souza. 10th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil. Bettelheim, Bruno. 2009. A psicanálise dos contos de fadas. Translated by Arlene Caetano. São Paulo: Editora Paz e Terra.

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Boarccaech, Alessandro. 2013. A diferença entre os iguais. São Paulo: Porto de Ideias. Boarccaech, Alessandro. 2018. ‘Perceptions of Women in Timorese Society’. Diálogos Journal 3, no. 3: 178-207. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2006. O Poder Simbólico. São Paulo: Bertrand Brasil. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014a. ‘Words of the Ancestors: Disembodied and Secrecy in East Timor’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20 (1): 56-73. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014b. ‘Paying for the Dead: On the Politics of Death in Independent Timor-Leste’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15 (2): 103-122. Campbell, J. 2010. As máscaras de Deus: mitologia criativa. São Paulo: Palas Athena. Campbell, J. 2018. O herói de mil faces. São Paulo: Pensamento. Clamagirand, Brigitte. 1982. Marobo Une société ema de Timor. Paris: SELAF. Cristalis, Irena; Scott, Catherine. 2005. Independent Women: The Story of Women’s Activism in East Timor. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR). Direção Geral de Estatísticas. 2015. Timor-Leste em números. Dili, Timor-Leste. Duarte, J.B. 1984. Ritos e Mitos de Ataúro. Lisbon: Instituto de cultura e língua portuguesa. Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Mito e Realidade. Translated by Pola Civelli. São Paulo: Ed. Perspectiva. Feijó, Rui Graça. 2008. ‘Língua, nome e identidade numa situação de plurilinguismo concorrencial: o caso de Timor-Leste’. Etnográfica 12 (1): 143-172. Fernandes, C. 2011. The Independence of East Timor: Multi-Dimensional Perspectives – Occupation, Resistance and International Political Activism. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Forman, S. 1980. ‘Descent, Alliance and Exchange Ideology among the Makasae of East Timor’. In The Flow of Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia, edited by J.J. Fox, 152-177. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Foucault, Michel. 2007. A história da sexualidade v. 2: o uso dos prazeres. Rio de Janeiro: Graal Editora. Fox, J.J. 1980. The Flow of Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Friedberg, Claudine. 1989. ‘Social Relations of Territorial Management in Light of Bunaq Farming Rituals’. Rituals and Socio-Cosmic Order in Eastern Indonesian Societies, edited by C. Barraud and J.D.M. Platenkamp, Bijdragen tot de Tall-, Land- en Volkenkunde 145 (4): 548-562. Geertz, Clifford. 1993. ‘Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali.’ In The Interpretation of Cultures, 360-411. London: Fontana Press. Grenfell, Damian. 2012. ‘Remembering the Dead from the Customary to the Modern in Timor-Leste’. Traversing Customary Community and Modern

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Nation-Formation in Timor-Leste, edited by Damian Grenfell, Local-Global: Identity, Security, Community 11: 86-108. Halbwachs, Maurice. 2013. A Memória Coletiva. Translated by Beatriz Sidou. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Ed. Centauro. Harré, R. 1998. The Singular Self. London: Sage. Hicks, David. 1984. A Maternal Religion: The Role of Women in Tetum Myth and Ritual. Monograph Series on Southeast Asia, Special Report 22. Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University. Hicks, David. 2004. Tetum Ghosts and Kin: Fertility and Gender in East Timor. 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Hugh-Jones, Stephen. 2006. ‘The Substance of Northwest Amazonian Names’. In The Anthropology of Names and Naming, edited by Gabriele vom Bruck and Barbara Bodenorn, 73-96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jornal da República. 2006. Lei n. 3/2006 de 12 de abril. Estatuto dos Combatentes da Libertação Nacional. Parlamento Nacional, series I, no. 7. 12 April 2006. Jornal da República. 2016. Lei n. 09/2016 de 8 de julho. Lei dos Sucos. Parlamento Nacional, series I, no. 26 A. Jung, C.G. 2008. Os arquétipos e o inconsciente coletivo. Petrópolis: Vozes. Kant, Immanuel. 2007 [1786]. Fundamentação da metafísica dos costumes. Translated by Paulo Quintela. Lisbon: Edições 70. Kent, Lia. 2012. The Dynamics of Transitional Justice. Abingdon: Routledge. Kothe, Flávio. 2000. O herói. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Ática. Lacan, Jacques. 2003. Seminário 9 – A identificação (1961-1962). Recife: Centro de Estudos Freudianos do Recife (Publicação não comercial). Le Goff, Jacques. 1993. O nascimento do purgatório. Lisbon: Estampa. Leach, M. 2009. ‘Difficult Memories: The Independence Struggle as Cultural Heritage in East Timor’. In Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage’, edited by W. Logan and K. Reeves, 144-161. London: Routledge. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 2009. Monadologia e outros textos. São Paulo: Hedra. Locke, John. 2012 [1690]. Ensaio sobre o entendimento humano. Translation, introduction and notes by Paulo Garrido Pimenta. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. Loney, Hannah. 2012. Women’s Activism in Timor-Leste: A Case Study on Fighting Women. Peskiza foun kona ba Timor-Leste: New Research on Timor Leste/Proceedings of the Timor-Leste Studies Association Conference, Centro Formação João Paulo II, Comoro, Dili, Timor-Leste. Mauss, M. 2003. ‘Uma categoria do espírito humano: a noção de pessoa e a de “eu”’. In Sociologia e Antropologia, 369-397. São Paulo: Cosacnaify. McWilliam, A. 2011. ‘Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, New Series 17: 745-763.

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McWilliam, A., L. Palmer, and C. Shepherd. 2014. ‘Lulik Encounters and Cultural Frictions in East Timor: Past and Present’. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 25: 304-320. Meyerson, I. 1973. Problèmes de la personne. Paris: La Haye, Mouton. Molnar, A.K. 2006. ‘Died in the Service of Portugal: Legitimacy of Authority and Dynamics of Group Identity among the Atsabe Kemak in East Timor’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37 (2): 335-355. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2001. A Gaia Ciência. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Oexele, O.G. 1996. ‘A presença dos mortos’. In A morte na idade media, edited by H. Braet and W. Verbeke, 27-78. São Paulo: USP editora. Ortega Y Gasset, Jose. 1998. ‘Verdad y Perspectiva’. Obras Completas. 3rd ed., vol. II. Madrid: Alianza. Paulino, Vicente. 2013. ‘Céu, Terra e Riqueza na Mitologia Timorense’. Veritas, Revista científica da Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e 1: 103-129. Población, Enrique Alonso, and Alberto Fidalgo Castro. 2014. ‘Webs of Legitimacy and Discredit: Narrative Capital and Politics of Ritual in a Timor-Leste community’. Anthropological Forum 24 (3): 245-266. Pollak, Michael. 1989. ‘Memórias, esquecimentos, silêncio.’ Revista de Estudos Históricos 2 (3): 3-15. Pollak, Michael. 1992. ‘Memória e identidade social’. Revista de Estudos Históricos 5 (10): 200-212. Rose, N. 1998. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, Jean Claude. 1999. Os vivos e os mortos na sociedade medieval. São Paulo: Editora Schwarcz. Sousa, Lúcio. 2010. An tia: partilha ritual e organização social entre os Bunak de Lamak Hitu, Bobonaro, Timor-Leste. PhD diss., Universidade Aberta, Lisbon. Strathern, Marilyn. 2006. O gênero da dádiva. Campinas: Editora Unicamp. Strawson, P.F. 1980. Escritos lógico-linguísticos. Os Pensadores, São Paulo: Abril Cultural. Traube, E.G. 1980. ‘Affines and the Dead: Mambai Rituals of Alliance’. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 136 (1): 90-115. Traube, E.G. 1986. Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual Exchange among the Mambai of East Timor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Trindade Jose ‘Josh’. 2012. ‘Lulik: Valor Fundamental Timoroan Nian’. In Peskiza foun iha Timor Leste, Proceedings of the Communicating New Research on Timor-Leste Conference, Comoro, Dili 30 June – 1 July 2011, edited by Michael Leach et al., 16-29. Melbourne, Swinburne Press. Viegas, S.M. 2008. ‘Pessoa e individuação: o poder dos nomes entre os Tupinambá de Olivença (sul da Bahia, Brasil)’. Etnográfica 12 (1): 71-94.

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Viegas, S.M., and R.G. Feijó, 2017. ‘Territorialities of the Fallen Heroes’. In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste. Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations, edited by Susana de Matos Viegas and Rui Graça Feijó, 94-110. London and New York: Routledge. Vilaça, Aparecida. 2005. ‘Chronically Unstable Bodies: Reflections on Amazonian Corporalities’. Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (3): 445-464. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1986. Araweté: Os Deuses Canibais. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editores. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1996. ‘Os pronomes cosmológicos e o perspectivismo ameríndio’. Mana 2 (2): 115-144. Weber, Max. 2015. Metodologia das Ciências Sociais. Translated by Augustin Wernet. 5th ed. São Paulo: Cortez; Campinas: Editora da Universidade de Campinas. Wittgenstein, L. 1994. Investigações filosóficas. Petrópolis: Vozes.

About the Author Alessandro Boarccaech is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, semiotician, and doctor of anthropology. He has worked in planning and implementing public policies for social inclusion and mental health with governmental and non-governmental institutions, including United Nations agencies. He is an Associate Researcher at the Centre for Studies on Religion at UFRGS/Brazil, and currently is a Visiting Professor at the Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e (UNTL), where he coordinates the Centre for Research in Culture and Society, and edits the Diálogos Journal of the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences. His books include Os Eleitos do Cárcere, A Diferença entre os Iguais, and the Dictionary Hresuk-Português, among others.

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‘Sempre la’o ho ita’ Ancestral Omnipresence and the Protection of the Living in Timor-Leste Bronwyn Winch Abstract With the power to impact people’s lives in any number of ways, the ancestors play a prominent role in ensuring (or in some cases, jeopardising) the safety and well-being of their living descendants. This chapter explores a range of different forms and practices of protection, risk mitigation, and methods of managing anxiety and dread. This includes an examination of items imbued with protective powers; rituals and prayers conducted to receive ancestral blessings and protection; and rituals aimed at identifying which transgressions or inadequate ancestor veneration have caused problems. These ongoing acts of exchange and engagement will be examined in the context of the ‘everyday’, as well as at more specific instances of heightened occasions of insecurity, violence and conflict. Keywords: vernacular security, landscape, omnipresence, protection, exchange, hamulak

In 2016, I travelled with my colleague, Juvita, to visit her family in UatuCarbau, a sub-district in the eastern municipality of Viqueque. It was the annual celebration of Loron Matebian1 (All Souls’ Day) and I had been invited 1 Arguably one of the most significant days of the year for most East Timorese people, (almost) everyone will return to their village of origin, visit their ancestral sacred house and their knua rate – their familial grave site – and pay respect to their ancestors. In preparation for this day, people will be busily cleaning graves. As part of the day itself, people will bring and light candles, as well as lay flowers – considered food for the dead – in addition to laying other consumable items such as cigarettes or biscuits, and there will be the ritual preparation and sacrif icial offering of livestock.

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch04

116 Bronw yn Winch Figure 4.1 Familial grave-site for Knua Baduria, Uatu-Carbau (Viqueque)

Photo: Bronwyn Winch

by one of her uncles to attend. He told me that it would be important for my research. While most of her family reside in the two adjoining villages of Irabin De Cima and Irabin de Baixo in Uatu-Carbau, we stayed overnight at Juvita’s mother’s home in Loiulo, a village much closer (although still several hours’ walk) to their uma lulik (sacred house), located further inland at the foot of Mount Matebian. Early in the morning we began our walk up the hill, but not before everyone had prepared their baskets of offerings – candles, flowers, and packets of cigarettes. The first stop was the knua rate (ancestral grave-site) of Juvita’s mother’s side, knua Baduria.2 The atmosphere was peaceful, casual, and there appeared (to me at least) to be very little formality. Children were running around, selfies were being taken, others were busily tidying graves – sweeping dead leaves and rubbish and removing old offerings before lighting new candles for the day. Then there were people navigating their way around with what appeared to be an extremely accurate memory of which graves to stop at and place offerings. As I stood there, one of the uncles came up to me and explained that no matter where a person dies, whether in Dili, America, or Australia, 2

The term knua refers to a person’s ancestral house of origin.

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it was imperative that the body be brought back to the knua rate, to be buried alongside the generations of other ancestors. If this was not done, there would be big problems (problema bo’ot) for the entire family, such as illness and untimely deaths (mate laos destinu). He finished by saying that the land is lulik (sacred).3 Before I could ask whether it is the presence of the ancestors that makes it lulik, or something historically or ecologically specific about the physical landscape, he was called away by another family member. I had the feeling it would have been both of those answers, given how intimately connected the spirits and power of the dead and nature are. After this, we continued our journey up the hill to the much larger uma lulik to which Juvita belongs – knua Watubita (based on patrilineal-descent membership) – where the main celebrations and rituals were to be held. We made our way through a much larger knua rate where numerous people were similarly leaving offerings, before climbing steep rock formations up to the uma lulik where many more people were gathered chatting, drinking coffee, and eating. Family members explained to me that the flowers being laid as offerings represent food for the ancestors, and that the biscuits, cigarettes, and gold coins, which I had seen children and adults alike place on graves, are imbued with the power and good wishes of the spirit of the deceased over the course of the day, to be taken away later by the living either to be carried or consumed. The purpose of Loron Matebian, one aunt explained, is to ‘say hello’ to one’s ancestors and pay your respects, to let them know that you are still always thinking of them. In return, the ancestors are reminded to keep the living in their minds also, and to ‘watch over us’ (tau matan ba ami). Several days later, Juvita and I were back in Irabin De Cima sitting by the local river, Mota Irabere. I had a long list of questions for her as I tried to understand the fluidity between the living and the ancestral domain: ‘Are the living and the dead in separate domains?’, ‘Do people consider them separate?’, ‘When and how do the dead appear to the living?’, ‘Are the ancestors always around us?’ As Juvita tried to explain to me, there was no definitive answer to these questions; it depended on the person, the place, and the circumstances. What she did say, however, was that there are different planes of activity – human, nature, and ancestors – with the latter two constituting ‘mundu seluk’ (another world). These two were 3 The term lulik translates to sacred, prohibited, taboo. It is frequently used to describe places or objects, and as a ‘potent energy’ that has the power to animate. Importantly, the term is also frequently associated with danger that people must engage with cautiously. For a more detailed description of lulik¸ see Trindade (2012) and Bovensiepen (2014).

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mostly unseen by the living, however the impacts and ramifications of each world constantly reverberated across one another. The title of this chapter, Sempre lao ho ita, is a phrase I commonly heard in Timor-Leste, and it is in reference to a particular worldview that sees one’s ancestors as always watching and always with you, even if, for most of the time, you are unable to see them. It is a phrase used to refer to the protective, guardian qualities of the ancestors, but also their more retributive powers, should you upset them or transgress certain rules or obligations expected of you. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I will be focusing on the benevolent rather than malevolent characteristics of ancestral omnipresence. I use the term ‘ancestral omnipresence’ to refer to a state of being in which the dead exist in an ‘all-seeing, all-knowing and all-pervasive capacity’ (Swancutt 2008, 853). In this chapter, I argue that when considering the lived experiences of security in contemporary Timor-Leste, we must recognise the power that the dead have over the living. This is evidenced by the imperative that many East Timorese feel to maintain positive relationships with their ancestors. These ongoing practices of reciprocal exchange between the living and the dead is a significant aspect of how many East Timorese seek to ensure their safety and well-being, identify and mitigate risk, and manage anxiety and dread in their daily lives. The practices of reciprocal exchange between the living and the dead that I speak of in this chapter focus on ancestral veneration, predominantly through two methods: firstly, through formalised, communal ritual at specific occasions (such as Loron Matebian, rice and corn harvesting – sau batar – or other events such as a family member moving away for work or study); secondly, through the more mundane, everyday communication that occurs between people and ancestors. This chapter is divided into three sections in which I draw from narratives and observations collected across two sites (urban Dili and rural Viqueque) in Timor-Leste over 2016-2017. 4 4 During this period I conducted PhD f ieldwork examining the different ways in which people experience and produce security, as well as identify insecurity and risk, in their daily lives. Participants included ritual elders, community leaders, martial and ritual arts group members, teachers, and any other community members across the two sites I was working in who were interested in contributing. In these interviews, I initially asked a range of questions, such as ‘What kind of things in the community make you feel safe?’, ‘When you are travelling away from home or outside of your community, what kind of things do you do to make sure you remain safe?’, ‘What kind of things do you use or put around the house to protect from bad things?’ These questions then prompted a wider range of examples and scenarios that the participants would be asked to share further on.

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I begin by making an argument for paying attention to vernacular security in the context of contemporary Timor-Leste, situating my empirical analysis more broadly within the discipline of critical security studies. I use the term ‘vernacular security’ as first introduced by Nils Bubandt (2006) (of which I will expand on further in the following section) in reference to the specific ‘security speak’ used by participants. Next, I discuss the security ramifications of ancestral omnipresence in terms of protection of bodily integrity and harmful disturbances to daily life. For many East Timorese, gaining ancestral protection through offerings and veneration provides for both an objectively experienced and existential sense of security. Building on this, I make the argument that rituals of exchange, centred on sacrificial worship, imbue material objects with protective powers, and when such objects are carried or ingested they enable the amplification and extension of ancestral reach beyond one’s origin lands. This means that the protective object acts as a vessel of ancestral omnipresence. Having this understanding of one’s ancestors’ ability to be ever-present and exert tangible influence – as reflected in the Tetum phrase sempre lao ho ita – can contribute to a person’s sense of confidence when navigating potential insecurity and risk wherever they may travel. By making these claims, I demonstrate how the dead extend their power and influence over the living world through material objects such as protective amulets or charms (biru or kakaluk).

Oinsa sente seguru iha moris bain-bain? The spiritual landscape and feeling safe in daily life This chapter is underpinned by a broader claim regarding a gap in conventional security studies. Namely, we must create a more inclusive space for theoretically and empirically engaging with the myriad practices of security that exist across different social, historical and cultural contexts, as well as discursive understandings and experiences of such practices. Within the field of critical security studies, there is growing criticism of the core categories and assumptions used by academics and researchers since they are ‘a product of European history’ (Seth 2009, 336). Scholars such as Bilgin (2010, 615) argue that the ‘historical absence […] of non-western insecurities and approaches has been a “constitutive practice”’ shaping ‘both the discipline, subjects and objects of reality in different parts of the world’, resulting in the perpetuation of a ‘western-centric trajectory’ of security studies. Moreover, these Western, Euro-centric categories of understanding and ways of seeing are often ill-suited in their analytical applicability and relevance to the

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social, historical, and cultural contexts of locations labelled the ‘Global South’ or the ‘periphery’ (Seth 2009). These arguments about the absence of focus on the ‘everyday realities’ in the local contexts of communities has led to a ‘turn toward the vernacular’ in security studies. As defined by Nils Bubandt in 2006, vernacular security refers to the ‘diversity of the ways in which different people and communities conceptualise security and security threats’ (Jarvis 2018, 108). This means focusing on how people ‘construct and describe experiences of security and insecurity in their own vocabularies, cultural repertoires of knowledge and categories of understanding’ (Croft and Vaughan-Williams 2017, 11), and the different processes and methods used by people and communities in perceiving, coping with, and responding to incidents or situations of insecurity and violence (Luckham 2017, 112). In other words, we must pay attention to the ‘lived worlds’ and ‘lived experiences’ of the people and communities being researched, and what this means for how people feel and know is central to understanding vernacular security (Viegas and Feijó 2017, 15). Accordingly, it is important here to establish how the community members I spoke with discursively expressed security, as well as insecurity; that is, how people answered when asked what kinds of things contribute to them feeling safe or unsafe in their home, community, and when travelling, and whether they use or carry anything to protect themselves. Participants’ responses frequently included stories and examples of their ancestors and rai nain (spiritual custodians) impacting their well-being and livelihoods (both positively and negatively). Forms of insecurity identified by participants included threats to bodily integrity and mental health, as well as threats to quality of life. In regard to the latter, access to education, bountiful rice and corn harvests, and getting a good job were frequently mentioned as issues for which people would invoke the assistance of their ancestors, either to pre-empt or mitigate a specific threat, or just as part of a general blessing. Participants used terms such as proteje (protect), ajuda (help), defende (defend), and salva/salvasaun (save) when they spoke about the kinds of affective power that their ancestors could exert over them in order to mitigate risk. Risks and threats were often described broadly, using the vocabulary of susar (difficulties), terus (suffering), buat a’at (bad things), tauk (fear) and problema (problems). Indeed, when asked what they needed protection against, often people’s initial answer would be buat hotu (all things). For instance, when discussing ancestors and protection, it was common to hear phrases like the following: ‘if you do this or carry this’ then ‘buat a’at labele kona’ (bad things won’t ‘touch’ you), ‘ema hanoin a’at la kona ita’ (people’s

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bad intentions won’t ‘touch’ you), ‘ema tiru labele kona ita, tuda labele kona ita’ (people who shoot at you or throw things at you, it won’t penetrate your body), or ‘ema labele estraga feto arbiru deit’ (people won’t be able to ‘damage’ women – with damage used in reference to sexual assault). In addition to physical security, when asked about what things made them sente seguru (feel safe) or la seguru (not safe), people spoke about social relations. For instance, being angry at one another (hirus malu) or there not being hakmatek (calm, stability) in uma laran (within the home/family). This was discussed both in terms of the potential for conflicts to erupt into physical violence, as well as the social and spiritual ramifications of having unresolved conflict or problems, whereby consequences can span several generations. In contemporary Timor-Leste, I argue, paying attention to the vernacular perceptions and experiences of security means engaging with the centrality of the spiritual landscape. The concept of ‘spiritual landscape’ has been gaining momentum across the disciplines of anthropology and sociology, particularly in the context of studies of communities in Southeast Asia (e.g. Allerton 2009, 2013; Bovensiepen 2009, 2012, 2014).5 Dewsbury and Cloke (2009, 696) define spiritual landscapes as being constituted by ‘sets of relations between bodily existence, felt practice and faith in things’; they refer to ‘embodied practices of being in the world, including ways of seeing but extending beyond sight to both a sense of being that includes all senses and an openness to being affected’. I treat the spiritual landscape in Timor-Leste as intersecting domains of relational space which greatly influence the ways in which the people engage with and view the world (Winch 2017). This landscape consists of geographical features (mountains, rivers, caves, rocks, soil, etc.) as well as the co-existence of the living with what some people refer to as ‘incorporeal’, ‘invisible’, or ‘unseen’ forces (or energy). Broadly, I identify four actants6 inhabiting the spiritual landscape: i. Christian God (Maromak); ii. Spirits of the ancestors (beiala sira, matebian sira, avo-sira); 5 Also see Endres and Lauser’s (2011) edited collection Engaging the Spirit World: Popular Beliefs and Practices in Modern Southeast Asia. 6 I have taken this term from Latour’s work on actor-network theory, where an actant can ‘literally be anything provided it is […] a source of action’ and where ‘agency is not limited to human beings but may also be found in material objects, works of art, landscapes or rituals’ (Latour 1996, 373). Furthermore, agency is attributed to everything on the basis that it is defined as the intentionality and capacity for action, with this action being the exertion of power or production of an affect (Giddens 1984).

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iii. Spiritual custodians of the land (rai-nain) and the life-giving force residing within all elements of nature (espiritu natureza); iv. The still-living. The interaction (actions, intentions, and enforced prohibitions) between these actants generates lisan – customary rules and regulations governing relationships between people, people and nature, and the living with the dead – and lulik (as mentioned before, a quality denoting sacredness, potency, power, or prohibition). Furthermore, the overlapping and permeable boundaries between these domains inhabited by the above four actants create mutually reinforcing, interdependent relationships of negotiation, reciprocal exchange, and corresponding social obligation, where the actions and intentions of one actant can reverberate across the others. Grenfell (2012, 231) refers to this as the ‘conflation of the living, ancestral, spirit and natural world, instantiated […] through lulik objects and customary law’. On the premise of this understanding, the affective power of the ancestors has myriad important ramifications for the lives of the still-living. Only by acknowledging and including the agency of the ‘dead’ and the ‘unseen’ into the social enquiry of security production in Timor-Leste do we achieve a relevant, realistic understanding of security in the context of contemporary Timor-Leste.

The securing components within rituals of exchange As stated by Kent and Feijó in the Introduction, relationships of exchange between the living and the dead are an important aspect of social and ritual life in Timor-Leste.7 More broadly within anthropology and sociology, there is a long history of scholarly attention paid to practices and rituals of exchange, and the accompanying impacts on social life. Pryor and Graburn (1980, 215), for instance, write that much of the theorisation of reciprocity is tied to notions of social stability, that it can serve as a ‘cohesive force’ as well as override conflict. The failure to fulfil the moral obligation of reciprocating can destroy social and political relationships between people and groups (Muckle and Tubelle de González 2019, 231). Situating this within a discussion of security production, I focus on one particular purpose of relationships of reciprocal exchange, that is, the invocation of ancestral power and protection intended to mitigate risk and prevent harmful disturbances to daily life 7

See work by authors such as McWilliam (2011), Traube (1986) and Trindade (2015).

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(whether these are physical, psychological, or related to certain factors such as food security or access to resources) and, conversely, how the failure to reciprocate or a transgression of arrangements leads to vulnerability and insecurity.8 Flows of exchange in Timor-Leste are situated within a broader cosmological worldview, wherein people understand and interpret phenomena and events – particularly problems – through a lens of balance. Failure to maintain a harmonious balance between and across the spiritual landscape – that is, between the living, the dead, and nature – makes people and their families vulnerable to illness, disasters, misfortune, and even death. The cosmology of balance, specifically the necessity of a harmonious socio-cosmic balance, and the associated flows of exchange impact myriad aspects of daily life: from agriculture and management of natural resources, to marriage alliances and funerary rites, to conflict resolution, war, and politics. These are well-established areas of enquiry.9 Here I draw from a long-standing area of sociological and anthropological enquiry in my application of the concept of exchange, particularly Mauss’s work (1954), which emphasises reciprocity 10 and the moral elements of transfer (obligation). Where Mauss’s definition of ‘gift-exchange’ is pertinent to this chapter is in his identification of a ‘system of sacrifice’ (or ‘contract sacrifice’). This occurs between the living and the dead or the gods, where the sacrifice intended for the latter is in exchange for their generosity to the living, as well as assistance in removing bad or evil aspects in their lives (Mauss 1954, 21-22). What I refer to in this chapter as the process of reciprocal exchange involves the act of giving, suffering, or abstaining (such as from food or water), in order to receive benefits in one’s own life; the gifts involved in these acts include material objects as well as the gift of one’s time, effort, or respect (Muckle and Tubelle de González 2019, 231). The specific benefits that I speak of refer to ancestral powers of protection in the context of navigating and mitigating insecurity and risk in daily life. 8 Kent (2011, 422), for instance, writes that adhering to lisan, the rules prescribed by the ancestors, is essential to maintaining order and social life and that ‘trespasses against the rules are perceived as contravening this “order”, which is likely to disturb the spirit world, leading to an imbalance’ resulting in the dead ‘wreaking havoc on the living in the form of sickness or natural death’. 9 See for instance, Babo Soares (2003, 2004), Hicks (1939, 2012) Hohe and Nixon (2003), Trindade (2011), and Traube (1986), as well as several articles in Fox’s edited collection (1980) The Flow of Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia. 10 Reciprocity is here understood as the the balance of goods and services exchange between involved parties (Pryor and Graburn 1980, 233).

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This reciprocal arrangement embodies ‘non-economic bonds that unite participants exchanging but also extends the social debt [obligation] that gifts promote’ (Hoffer 2016, 175). Empirically in Timor-Leste, this non-monetised form of exchange is comprised of three key components. Firstly, the practice of hamulak, which was described to me as the ‘cultural’ or ‘animistic’ form of prayer, as distinguished from reza, the Catholic prayer to God or saints. Hamulak involves a family member – usually a ritual elder (depending on the circumstance and objective) – communicating with either the spirits of the dead or with the espiritu natureza, or rai-nain, most often for the purposes of planting and harvesting, opening or closing certain sites or buildings, to cure illness, part of funerary rites or wedding ceremonies, asking for permission or assistance and, as mentioned in the introduction, during the important celebration of Loron Matebian. Secondly, as part of ritual exchanges, a sacrificial offering is made in return for ancestral (or other forms of spiritual) assistance, protection, or permission. Such offerings would usually be in the form of livestock but may also include gold coins, cigarettes, coffee, or tua (local alcohol). Aside from these material offerings, another frequently traded offering from the living to the dead would be to abstain or suffer – such as to go without food or water (in some instances, I was told of prohibitions regarding sexual intercourse). This form of sacrifice was mostly described in reference to hamulak to nature (as opposed to ancestors) in return for special powers or abilities. When it came to this, people used the Indonesian term bertapa, which was explained as a form of meditation and which in English directly translates into the English term asceticism, ‘severe self-discipline and avoiding all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons’ and ‘the practice of the denial of physical or psychological desires in order to attain a spiritual ideal or goal’.11 This was most commonly practised by guerrilla fighters during the war against Indonesia, who would hamulak and carry out bertapa in order to receive special offensive or defensive powers – such as invisibility or imperviousness to bullets – or to empower an object to become biru (protective amulets), as I discuss further below. The third and final component of this non-monetised exchange is the subsequent co-consumption of material goods at the end of the sacrificial ritual, in order to ingest (into the body) or imbue (into the object) the returned power, force, spirit, and ‘blessings’ from the ancestors. Of this ‘transformative action’, Tusinski (2016, 19) writes that ‘the preparation and co-consumption 11 Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/asceticism, viewed 3 January 2019.

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of food’ brings the ancestor spirits and the consumer into ‘spatio-temporal co-presence […] lending support and protection against illness, danger and trouble – something like a non-individuated ancestral guardian angel’. As part of my use of the term ‘ancestral omnipresence’, I draw from Tusinski’s explanation that the ‘use, possession and transportation’ of objects such as bua malus (betel nut) acts as a ‘sensory sign of presence […] bringing forth the body and blood of the normally invisible and distant ancestors to endow the living with their protective powers and favour’ (2016, 21). As explained by one community member in Uatu-Carbau, the animal is killed and becomes a vessel for the ancestors to channel their spiritual power and ‘blessings’ into, after which those participating in the ritual then consume the sacrificed meat. In doing so, participants ingest their ancestors’ power into their physical bodies, which then goes ‘everywhere with them’: Before you kill the animal, you mention (temi) your ancestors and you say that you are killing and sacrificing this food for them. Then afterward, once they have eaten, you take it and eat it. The significance of that is that you are taking their grace (grasa), their assistance (ajuda), their blessing (bensa). (Participant 19)

This form of ritual of exchange is conducted in situations such as illness or if there is a problem or conflict in the family that needs to be resolved.12 This participant stated that in addition to livestock, people could use bua-malus, tua, cigarettes, or coffee: ‘you put the item there, mention their name and hamulak and then together with the dead you drink. This is like them giving their energy, putting it in the drink to help you’ (Participant 19). The process was described and explained to me in similar way by a lia nain (ritual elder) in Dili.13 Temi naran has an important performative function in vernacular security in Timor-Leste.14 Translated directly, it means ‘to mention names’, 12 In these cases, the situations were described as familia hirus-malu (family members angry at one another), uma-laran la hakmatek (the home is not peaceful) or the more ambiguous problema ho uma-laran (problems in the home/family). 13 ‘I do it with betel nut or meat. These things are presented to the ancestors, who will take the spirit of the animal but in return “empower” the food. You eat it, and then you get better’ (Participant 1). 14 Although it is important to note that only certain members would know the full names of ancestors and so it may be that certain people would only be able to mention the names of the ancestors collectively, rather than specif ic individual ancestors spanning back several generations.

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however to temi naran in prayer or ritual invocation functions as setting the parameters for the participating actants, communicating where or who the power or security request is being channelled to and from.15 It is not uncommon for families to request to priests that the names of recently deceased family members or other ancestors be mentioned during mass on Sundays, as this is one of the ways in which people can show their respect to the dead. This public display of veneration constitutes an act of offering that, in turn, acts as a reminder to the dead that their living descendants are still thinking of them, calling on them to remember to ‘watch over’ them. A descent group’s uma lulik is widely recognised as a central aspect of social and ritual life in Timor-Leste. Discursively and symbolically, the sacred house represents the important connections and relationships that people must continue to maintain within their kinship group – to both living and dead members. Membership directs flows of exchange, reciprocity, and obligations to be fulfilled (McWilliam 2005). In terms of vernacular security, it is an important source of one’s sense of safety and well-being for many East Timorese. When asked what contributed to their sense of safety, participants would often respond ‘their uma lulik’. By this they were referencing their membership within a familial group and the security benefits this conferred upon them, such as spiritual protection, as well as the customary regulations they would live their life by, which governed their relationships, thereby acting as a form or system of security governance. In terms of physical infrastructure, the uma lulik is an important site of security production in the sense that it is where important rituals of reciprocal exchange are conducted, as well as housing sacred family heirlooms which hold the power of the ancestors. The uma lulik is like the centre, where we can strengthen the house’s offspring. It is a place for us to hamulak and to make lulik. For example, when I am going away somewhere, I need to go to my uma lulik and the leader will place the lulik object on my head which transfers the powers of my ancestors so that I don’t get sick, people don’t do bad things to me, and I don’t experience any disasters or problems. (Participant 34)

In the above quote, the participant is talking about the chief elder of his uma lulik bringing out one of the sacred objects (sasan lulik), such as a sword, 15 In some interviews where people explained how a curse would be enacted, the phrase temi naran was a defining feature of the act, designating the perpetrator and the victim(s).

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belak,16 kabuak,17 or other items of jewellery, to name just a few.18 By placing it on the person’s head as part of the ritual, the leader is transferring the power from the object and the ancestors into the still-living person. As I have demonstrated in this section, relationships of reciprocal exchange between the living and the dead, specifically in the form of ancestral veneration, have tangible ramifications for the safety and well-being of the living. It is not uncommon for East Timorese to say that if the ancestors feel as if they have been forgotten or not properly acknowledged, the living risk backlash and punishment. The ancestors will send to their descendants a reminder of their obligations, sometimes gently through a dream or, in more extreme circumstances, a punishment such as illness, infertility, or death.

‘Sira tau-matan ba ami’: The protective qualities of ancestral omnipresence I ask my ancestors in the other world to secure my body and my life. If I am travelling I will pray to them: ‘I am going to this place and I ask that you help ensure that my voyage goes well, that I will not get sick or die, that I will not meet with any misfortune, that I will get to my destination safely. Show me the bad things through a miracle or a sign so that I will know not to go near or enter that place.’ Then as a way of thanking them, I give them something. Then they will come to you in your dreams and tell you which roads or places are dangerous, they can show you which places have strong spirits so that you are prepared and know where you need to make an offering, and so you know which places you can’t use or take anything from. (Participant 24) I ask my ancestors to always be with me. In my body or in things like when I carry bua malus wherever I go. […] It is through your faith, and your prayers to your ancestors that they bestow their spirit and force into you, into the object. You can’t see it, but it is always with you, sitting with you, travelling with you, eating with you, drinking with you. (Participant 1)

16 A silver disc worn around the chest symbolising the sun and representing authority (Antoulas and Antoulas 2015, 65). 17 A traditional brass headdress with different symbols (also representing qualities such as strength or authority). 18 For a more extensive and detailed description of ethnographic artefacts in Timor-Leste, see Antoulas and Antoulas (2015).

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As the two above quotes demonstrate, ancestral protection can come in the form of pre-emptive warnings through dreams, as well as through spiritual accompaniment of the living. This understanding of ancestral omnipresence is a key component of whether people feel safe, and how confident they feel in facing potential threats and uncertainty as they go about their daily lives. This understanding of the ancestors as an omnipresent force is best captured by phrases such as sempre lao ho ita (always with you) and sira tau-matan ba ami (they are watching over us), which were commonly echoed throughout most of my conversations with participants. In a conversation with a group of elderly gentlemen, one man explained the significance of hamulak at one’s uma lulik: You won’t get sick. When you go to places, people won’t be able to do bad things to you. But you really need to hamulak and ask them: ‘I don’t want the car to hit me; I don’t want the motorbike to hit me. You will save me. If I go near somebody with bad intentions, they won’t hit me or kill me.’ And then the ancestors will listen and help you. Their spirit goes with you, to keep you safe until you return. (Participant A, Group Interview 31)

This form of guardianship – not only keeping a watchful eye over the living but stepping in and intervening should an incident occur (or even if there is an intention of harm from another party that has not yet been acted upon) – occurs in a general, ongoing sense, as the above quotes demonstrate. Guardianship is also, however, of further importance at specific or heightened points of danger and insecurity, during which immediate and direct ancestral assistance is ritually requested through a sacrificial offering. This is discussed by one female participant in relation to what has become known as the 2006 ‘crisis’:19 During the 2006 crisis in Dili, some people would come down and attack us. They would bring gasoline to set our houses and school on fire. The 19 The 2006 crisis in Dili initially broke out as a split within F-FDTL over accusations of discrimination against the Loromonu (those from the western districts) by the Lorosa’e (those from the eastern districts), triggering wider violence and competition between factions within the nation’s security apparatus. This supposed ‘Easterners versus Westerners’ ethnic divide was mirrored in disturbances across Dili involving youth groups and creating divisions within communities. This is a simplified explanation of the crisis, which many argue was brought on by already escalating tensions extending far beyond the split within the F-FDTL. For a more detailed description, see reports such as Rethinking Timorese Identity as a Peacebuilding Strategy: The Lorosa’e-Loromonu Conflict from a Traditional Perspective by Trindade and Castro (2007).

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elders went down to the creek to conduct a ritual asking for help from the ancestors. They prayed (hamulak), gave offerings – sacrificing goats and pigs – and asked: ‘Close the road so that the people outside of Marinir cannot enter. Be our security at the entrance so that people are too scared to enter.’ And then truly, when the people tried to cross the boundary [airport runway], they would see all of our ancestors and the rai nain standing tall, like police and military. Holding guns. Everyone saw this. (Participant 36)

This participant lives in the aldeia of Beto Tasi (Marinir), Comoro, in urban Dili. Geographically, it is a somewhat vulnerable site, being relatively cut off from the rest of the city and with only one road in and out, passing across the airport runway (except for a shortcut through the bed of the Comoro river, passable only in dry season). On this specific occasion, the ancestors were requested to physically appear and intervene in order to secure the lives of the residents in Beto Tasi. Additionally, this participant said that the same ritual was conducted in 1999 after the vote for independence, to stop pro-Indonesian militias from entering into the aldeia. As stated already, ancestral omnipresence refers not only to the capacity of the dead to exert presence and a watchful eye, but also to their intentions and actions across space and distance. Given that the risk and uncertainty associated with travel – particularly locations never previously visited – was a frequently cited source of insecurity for many of the people that I spoke with, then, ancestral omnipresence is an important aspect when considering security production in the context of Timor-Leste. Despite the souls of the ancestors being anchored to the land of their descent group’s sacred house, their capacity for coterminous presence with the living is an important feature of how the dead continue to have influence and power over the security of the living. It contributes greatly to a person’s sensibilities in navigating and mitigating risk. As Juvita’s uncle explained, burying all deceased family members on the land of their origin was imperative to the security of the living, with immense ramifications should this not happen. However, the dead could also gain mobility through rituals of exchange with the living.

‘Ita uza buat ruma atu proteje ita nia a’an?’ Ancestral omnipresence through protective objects It is widely known that in Timor-Leste, bua malus is an important material as well as social aspect of people’s daily lives and ritual practices. Its use

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as a protective object was referenced in almost every single conversation I had over the course of my fieldwork, functioning as an ingestible, chewed food-item as well as an object carried by people such as in their wallet or bag. As one participant in a group interview explained, the bua malus was like taking the ancestors with you: ‘You can go on a boat, you can go on an aeroplane, it’s like the ancestors watching over you, and it’s like your passport.’ One of the other gentlemen added to this saying: ‘You can go to the east [of Timor] or you can go to Oecusse, and everything will be fine. Taking the bua malus is like taking the ancestors with you so you don’t come into any difficulties or problems’ (Group Interview 31). Although the bua malus was the most commonly discussed as a form of protection from the ancestors, others also spoke of biru (or kakaluk), protective amulets which could be imbued with power from the ancestors or nature. There was, however, some variance in attitudes toward the use of these objects, with some people saying they were reserved for wartime and thus not needed in moris bain-bain (everyday life). An additional factor when considering the way biru was discussed in my conversations with people is that there is a lot of secrecy regarding these objects. Only a small handful of people felt comfortable discussing whether they personally had biru, and in some instances those that did talk about using biru said that they received it from someone else and thus did not know what specifically it was comprised of (in terms of which herbs and powders).20 Furthermore, some biru can lose their potency or power if they are discussed by their owners, shown to others or even photographed, and so their power is wound tightly within maintaining secrecy (Antoulas and Antoulas 2015, 94). In an interview with one former village chief, he referred to one of the commonly discussed functions of biru to cool (halo malirin) or change a person’s bad and harmful intentions (troka hanoin): Because of the biru from my uma lulik, I trust that nobody will ever kill me. For example, you could be planning to kill me but I will be able to sense that there is a problem coming. So we could still meet on the road, or you could enter my house but then from this [pointing to object] you 20 Additionally, my positionality as female outsider may have limited the extent to which people were able to or felt comfortable showing information about such objects. For these reasons, while I would always ask about ‘buat ruma atu proteje aan’ (objects used to protect yourself) or the term biru, I would never push the matter further if it was clear it was not gaining any traction with the participant. Moreover, it was often only in instances where I would bring the term up or ask the question specifically that people would say they use protective objects, otherwise leaving it unsaid.

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will no longer have anger toward me, you won’t kill me. Because your internal feelings and intentions have changed. (Participant 22) I use this to defend myself. I could be passing through a sacred site and it will ensure that I am not vulnerable to suffering. If someone tries to fekit [curse] me, it won’t affect me. The power of this object comes from your uma lulik, your ancestors. […] Before we would also use them during war. (Participant 12)

Similarly, in another interview a participant described the ancestors as ‘protectors’ that could travel on your person in the form of biru. He used the example of his uncle and older brother who were resistance fighters during the Indonesian occupation: We put the bark and the powders into our body, and then it is like the ancestors accompanying you everywhere when you face hardship or difficulties. Like my uncle and older brother who were in FALINTIL. They were shot at but even then would not die. Or people would attack them with a machete but it would leave no wound on their body. (Participant 34)

Here, Participant 34 speaks of the particular ingredients harvested from the surrounding land of one’s sacred house, usually by a specific elder who has specialised knowledge of these things and what is required in order to mobilise or harness forsa (ancestral protection) in them.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that in contemporary Timor-Leste, the ancestors are an important source of protection for their living descendants, and that ongoing relationships of reciprocal exchange between the living and the dead are one of the key ways in which the living identify and mitigate risk and threat in their daily lives. The increasingly prominent critique being put forward in security studies is that conventional security theory, discourse, and practice do not capture the complexities and realities of everyday life in sites typically located in the global periphery. This is due to two reasons. Firstly, the analytical categories created within security studies are borne out of Western, Euro-centric categories (Seth 2009) and thus are inadequate in their relevance and applicability to contexts that fall outside of those domains. Secondly, for the most part, we continue to fail to acknowledge

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worldviews and different ways of being and practice that we deem illogical, irrational, or backward, such as the agency of spirits. In this chapter, I have shown that in contemporary Timor-Leste, the dead continue to play an extremely active and prominent role in ensuring the security of the living. I have demonstrated how ancestral omnipresence, and the related use of special objects (bua malus, biru, sasan lulik) considered to be imbued with ancestral power and force, provide people not only with a sense of being ‘watched over’ and taken care of, but have very tangible impacts in terms of stepping in to assist in times of danger and insecurity. This applies equally during daily routines within the domestic sphere, school, work or farming, for specific occasions of travelling away overseas, or at heightened points of violence such as in a wider conflict like the 2006 crisis.

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Croft, Stuart, and Nick Vaughan-Williams. 2017. ‘Fit for Purpose? Fitting Ontological Security Studies “into” the Discipline of International Relations: Towards a Vernacular Turn’. Cooperation and Conflict 52 (1): 12-30. Dewsbury, John David, and Paul Cloke. 2009. ‘Spiritual Landscapes: Existence, Performance and Immanence’. Social & Cultural Geography 10 (6): 899-919. Endres, Kirsten, and Andrea Lauser. 2011. Engaging the Spirit World: Popular Beliefs and Practices in Modern Southeast Asia. New York: Berghahn. Fox, James, and Marie Jeanne Adams. 1980. The Flow of Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Grenfell, Damian. 2012. ‘Modernising Timor-Leste: Moving beyond Ideology’. In Proceedings of Timor-Leste Studies Association’s Communicating New Research on Timor-Leste Conference Dili, 30th June-1st July 2011, edited by Michael Leach Nuno Canas Mendes, Antero B. da Silva, Bob Boughton, and Alarico da Ximenes Costa, 209-214. Melbourne: Swinburne University Press. Hicks, David. 2004. Tetum Ghosts & Kin: Fertility and Gender in East Timor. 2nd ed. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Hicks, David. 2012. ‘Compatibility, Resilience and Adaptation: The Barlake of Timor-Leste’. Local-Global (11): 124-137. Hoffer, Lee. 2016. ‘The Space between Community and Self-Interest: Conflict and the Experience of Exchange in Heroin Markets’. In The Economics of Ecology, Exchange and Adaptation: Anthropological Explorations, edited by Daniel Wood, 167-196. Emerald, Bingley. Hohe, Tanja, and Rod Nixon. 2003. Reconciling Justice: ‘Traditional’ Law and State Judiciary in East Timor. New York: United States Institute for Peace. Jarvis, Lee. 2018, ‘Toward a Vernacular Security Studies: Origins, Interlocutors, Contributions and Challenges’. International Studies Review 0: 1-20. Kent, Lia. 2011. ‘Local Memory Practices in Timor: Disrupting Transitional Justice Narratives’. The International Journal of Transitional Justice 5: 434-455. Latour, Bruno. 1996. ‘On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications.’ Soziale Welt 4(4): 369-381. Luckham, Robin. 2017. ‘Whose Violence, Whose Security? Can Violence Reduction and Security Work for Poor, Excluded and Vulnerable People?’ Peacebuilding 5 (2): 99-117. Mauss, Marcel. 1954. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge. McWilliam, Andrew. 2005. ‘Houses of Resistance in East Timor: Structuring Sociality in the New Nation’. Anthropological Forum 15 (1): 27-44.

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McWilliam, Andrew. 2011. ‘Exchange and Resilience in Timor-Leste’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17 (4): 745-763. Muckle, Robert, and Laura Tubelle de González. 2019. Through the Lens of Anthropology: An Introduction to Human Evolution and Culture. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pryor, Frederic, and Nelson Graburn. 1980. ‘The Myth of Reciprocity’. In Social Exchange: Advances in Theory and Research, edited by Kenneth Gergen, Martin Greenberg and Richard Willis, 215-237. New York: Plenum Press. Seth, Sanja. 2009. ‘Historical Sociology and Postcolonial Theory: Strategies for Challenging Eurocentrism’. International Political Sociology 50 (1): 1935-1950. Swancutt, Katherine. 2008. ‘The Undead Genealogy: Omnipresence, Spirit Perspectives, and a Case of Mongolian Vampirism’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14 (4): 843-864. Traube, Elizabeth. 1986. Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual Exchange among the Mambai of East Timor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Trindade, Josh. 2012. ‘Lulik: The Core of Timorese Values’. In Proceedings of Timor-Leste Studies Association’s Communicating New Research on Timor-Leste Conference Dili, 30th June-1st July 2011, edited by Michael Leach Nuno Canas Mendes, Antero B. da Silva, Bob Boughton, and Alarico da Ximenes Costa, 2-29. Melbourne: Swinburne University Press. Trindade, Josh. 2016. ‘Relational Dimensions within Timor-Leste Customary Society’. In Proceedings of Timor-Leste: The Local, The Regional and the Global Conference Dili, 9th-15th July 2015, edited by Sarah Smith, Nuno Canas Mendes, Antero B. da Silva, Bob Boughton, Alarico da Ximenes Costa, Clinton Fernandes and Michael Leach, 239-243. Melbourne: Swinburne University Press. Trindade, Jose, and Bryant Castro. 2007 Technical Assistance to the National Dialogue Process in Timor-Leste – Rethinking Timorese Identity as a Peacebuilding Strategy: The Lorosa’e-Loromonu Conflict from a Traditional Perspective. Dili: European Union’s Rapid Reaction Mechanism Programme. Tusinski, Daniel. 2016. ‘Fates Worse than Death: Destruction and Social Attachment in Timor-Leste’. Social Analysis, 60 (2): 13-30. Viegas, Susana de Matos, and Rui Graҫa Feijó. 2017. ‘Introduction: Exploring Cohabitations in Timor-Leste’. In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations, edited by Susana de Matos Viegas and Rui Graҫa Feijó, 1-42. Abingdon: Routledge. Winch, Bronwyn. 2017. ‘“La iha Fiar, La iha Seguransa’: The Spiritual Landscape and Feeling Secure in Timor-Leste”’. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 2 (2-3): 197-210.

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Interviews Personal Interview. Participant 1, Bebonuk (Dili municipality), 29 February 2016. Personal Interview. Participant 12, Irabin de Baixo (Viqueque municipality), 12 May 2016. Personal Interview. Participant 19, Irabin de Cima (Viqueque municipality), 15 May 2016. Personal Interview. Participant 22, Irabin de Cima (Viqueque municipality), 16 May 2016. Personal Interview. Participant 24. Irabin de Baixo (Viqueque municipality), 25 May 2016. Personal Interview. Participant 34, Colmera (Dili municipality), 21 November 2016. Personal Interview. Participant 36, Beto Tasi (Dili municipality), 29 November 2016. Personal (Group) Interview 31. Participant A, Tibar (Dili municipality), 16 September 2016.

About the Author Bronwyn Winch is currently completing her Doctor of Philosophy at RMIT University in Melbourne and also works as a member of the Timor-Leste Research Program. Her research and publications are situated within the field of critical security studies, specifically vernacular security where the focus of social enquiry are the everyday experiences of risk, threat, and safety that are contextualised within local forms of knowledge and practice – particularly in post-conflict, post-colonial sites. She is particularly interested in how people’s and communities’ relationships with spirits and the landscape, and the associated socio-cultural beliefs and practices, intertwine to impact security production and its conceptualisation within that space.

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Unfulfilled Peace Death and the Limits of Liberalism in Timor-Leste Damian Grenfell Abstract This chapter makes two intersecting arguments that demonstrate the implications of the liberal peace on local efforts to address the consequences of war. Firstly, a liberal peace aims to create conditions that tend to miss ways in which peace is pursued locally, especially with regards to the veneration of the dead. A liberal peace promotes a secular, nationally constituted community with a centralised state and market economy, an approach that fails to comprehend the importance of local expressions of spirituality. This does not mean, however, that the dead are irrelevant to liberalism, though an examination of why this is the case leads to the second key claim that, somewhat paradoxically, accounts for illiberal trends in the state in Timor-Leste. Keywords: liberal peace, cognate community, Timor-Leste, death, martyr, custom

The United Nations-sanctioned intervention in Timor-Leste in 1999 occurred at a time when liberal peacebuilding efforts were in the ascendancy around the world. The end of the Cold War resulted in a UN Security Council far less encumbered by superpower rivalry, leading in turn to a sharp rise in the number and scale of peace interventions (Paris 2004). As did Kosovo the same year, Timor-Leste symbolised the apotheosis of liberal interventionism as the United Nations Transitional Authority in Timor-Leste (UNTAET) became the territory’s governing authority. UNTAET was granted sovereign power and tasked with creating the political and economic structures to enable the transition to national independence. In response to the violence and devastation wrought by the vacating Indonesian military and militia,

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch05

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the approach of UNTAET – alongside other donors, state agencies, and civil society organisations – continued broadly along the same trajectory as earlier interventions as peace was imagined in liberal terms (Richmond 2006, 292; Richmond 2008, 186-189; Selby 2013, 57). While UNTAET formally closed when Timor-Leste became an independent nation-state in May 2002, subsequent UN missions continued until the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) ended in 2012. While this final withdrawal signalled a confidence in the consolidation of the East Timorese state, there are limits to the extent to which this may be understood as the attainment of peace per se. In Timor-Leste, local customary and religious beliefs are often extremely important in terms of understanding what constitutes a good and peaceful life (moris diak and moris hakmatek) for people. While it is true that both religious and customary beliefs may be acknowledged by international actors and the emergent state, rarely does this occur to a degree that permeates the ‘peace process’ beyond cosmetic, tokenistic, or instrumental recognition (Grenfell 2015). Rather, by and large the liberal peace is implemented as if filling a void rather than recognising in any coherent manner that significantly different approaches to peace may exist. In this chapter, both liberal and locally embedded expressions of peace will be examined so as to delineate their distinct approaches to death, particularly as they relate to the martyrs of the war with Indonesia. In everyday vernacular, martir in Timor-Leste refers to those who died violently as a consequence of combat (see the chapters by Roll and Kent in this collection). However, in this chapter the use of ‘martyr’ also extends to include those who died of starvation and illness caused by conflict-related deprivations (see Viegas, this collection). By focusing on martyrs, this chapter makes two intersecting claims. Firstly, it argues that a liberal peace sets in place key institutional forms, practices, and sets of social relations that in many respects do not acknowledge or adapt to local needs in terms of the attainment of peace. As such, East Timorese are frequently left to their own devices to generate a form of peace that is meaningful locally. There are exceptions to this, however, and an examination of these leads to the second key claim: that the advancement of a liberal peace without sufficient recognition of local contexts can partially account for the emergence of illiberal forms of governance in Timor-Leste. In other words, and perhaps counterintuitively, a liberal peace has set the conditions for the emergence of illiberalism as the state has evolved since independence. In order to substantiate these claims, the first section of this chapter argues that liberal peacebuilding has four key dimensions that focus on

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negating the risk of future and unnatural deaths: the creation of democratic political process, the introduction of market economics, the consolidation of the nation, and the institutionalisation of secularism in the state. For a liberal peace, the already-dead present limited value, tending to gain recognition only as a way to buttress the consolidation of a social contract between the still-living. In contrast with liberal interventionism, the second section argues that there are different forms of peace embedded in everyday practices, and particularly in Catholic and customary rituals. In these practices, the prevention of death is not the key concern. Rather, the veneration of the already-dead is the priority. It is argued that these local conceptions of peace are grounded in a ‘cognate community’, a concept that will be explored in more detail in the chapter but which is in short seen to be a community that comprises both the living and the beiala sira (ancestral spirits). The third section argues that the pursuit of a liberal peace without a meaningful engagement with local priorities has resulted in an increasing illiberalism in the state while also complicating further the pursuit of local forms of peace. In other words, the liberal peace may not always result in a liberal state, or at least it may lead to one where liberal values are unevenly embedded and narrow at particular moments. The three sections together argue that a liberal peace not only fails to answer to forms of peace that are important to people in an everyday context, but when implemented without recognition of other approaches can lead to forms of illiberal governance as the new state emerges.

A liberal peace and the still-living Following the intervention of the International Force East Timor (INTERFET) to secure the territory in September 1999, in late October UNTAET was given the mandate for the ‘overall responsibility for the administration of East Timor’ (United Nations 1999). Designated by the UN as a ‘non-governing territory’, UNTAET was empowered to exercise legislative, executive, and judicial authority. The mission’s mandate concentrated sovereignty in the hands of the UN Transitional Administrator – leading to Timor-Leste being labelled the ‘UN Kingdom’ (see, for example, Chopra, 2000) – as UNTAET began the process of creating political and social structures that would shape the transition to East Timorese sovereign control. These efforts broadly conformed to a liberal peace where ‘a universalist understanding […] legitimates a broad swath of contested means deployed directly and indirectly in the process of intervention’ to ‘ultimately create peace’ (Richmond 2004, 140).

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The first section of this chapter argues that a liberal peace is directed towards creating a set of enabling conditions to secure the ‘still-alive’ from unnatural death. Preservation of individual life is central to liberalism just as the death of citizens through violence represents its ultimate failure. This is not the only way to understand liberalism, but on questions of mortality it is evident that, while not able to erase death per se, the focus always appears to pull back towards the preservation of life. In the case of Timor-Leste, in the transition to a society based on a liberal peace, the dead of war are drawn on either when they are of instrumental value (as discussed later in this section) or as illiberal dimensions of the new state comes to the fore (returned to in the third section). Either way, recognising martyrs in their own right is not a primary objective within the ‘broad swath of contested means’ that rather coalesce around four key dimensions in order to preserve existing life. As the first of the four dimensions examined here, the transformation of a despotic and violent regime to a democratic system of governance is very often taken as sine qua non in achieving a liberal peace (Chandler 2010, 138; Sabaratnam 2013, 206). This liberal-democratic state-building effort can be surmised in Weberian terms as a centralised system of governance that claims the legitimate monopoly over the use of violence in the name of protecting the human rights and lives of its subjects. The state’s use of violence is legitimated by protecting the lives of its own citizens. In this idea of the state, a social contract divests citizens of certain rights and social divisions are absorbed into Parliament via the creation political parties (symbolised for instance in the Westminster system, where in Parliament the opposition and government are seated an inch more than the sum of two sword lengths apart). Reflecting the importance of the state within a liberal peace, UNTAET concentrated enormous resources in the creation of a new republican and democratic system of governance. A constitution, the formation of political parties, democratic elections to form a Constituent Assembly (and in turn the first Government), a Parliament, a Presidency, the creation of a public service, support for civil society, judicial systems emphasising equality before the law, and the promotion of human rights were all variously put in place under the UNTAET regime (Ingram 2012, 6; Ingram 2018, 366). Each of these mechanisms can be justified within an internal logic of what is important to liberalism and associated ideas of peace: human rights, representation, liberties, equality, accountability, participation, transparency, checks and balances, and so forth. However, the motive underpinning and linking each of these is the protection of existing individual life, the achievement of which is the foundational responsibility and primary means of legitimation

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for the liberal state. Conflict is accepted as part of social life but becomes sanitised as the use of violence is disincentivised. This is not to say that the state is entirely uninterested in the already-dead, which is a point returned to shortly. Rather, the argument is that the state as imagined through the lens of a liberal peace remains focused on preserving the life of its living citizens by negating the prospect of violent conflict. As an extension of the discussion regarding state-building, secularism is the second dimension of the liberal peace examined here. According to Appleby, the role of secularism in peacebuilding is accounted for by a history of suspicion of Christianity’s influence over the state (Appleby 1999, 2-3). In the post-Cold War era this suspicion has been compounded as religion has often been understood as a cause for conflict in sites as varied as Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and the Balkans. As such, religion continues to be largely structured out of peace and state-building efforts. In Timor-Leste, even though the conflict was not driven by religious difference, the creation of a new state took on the typical liberal traits of defending the religious rights and liberties of citizens while maintaining a clear distinction between state and religion. The Constitution – while recognising the role of the Catholic Church in the independence struggle – ensures that all expressions of faith ‘are free in their organisation and in the exercise of their own activities’ as long as such activities are within the law (RDTL 2002, Section 12). The secularism of the state is therefore instituted so as to protect the still-living by ensuring that the religious and spiritual interpretation of death and life is a private act protected as individual choice, in turn diminishing the likelihood of the state being undone by religious sectarianism. The third dimension of the liberal peace is capitalism. Economic relations are often recalibrated in post-conflict transitions, with peace understood as a dividend of market capitalism as it generates wealth, alleviates poverty, and in the way of allocating limited resources (World Bank 2011). In Timor-Leste this has led to the introduction of financial systems, material infrastructure geared towards export production, educational reform, currency and legal reform (particularly of land and labour), credit schemes, and the introduction of systems of tax and development activities aimed at increasing the productive base of society (Wallis 2018, 254). Capitalist market relations are often advocated as a means of reducing conflict in the belief that they will generate the wealth necessary to secure existence and also prevent conflicts triggered by scarcity. The prevention of death is rarely acknowledged in discussions of economic liberalisation, though the introduction of market economics remains typically justified as a way to

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reduce conflict, violence, and social turmoil, and is therefore at one level directed towards the fulfilment and preservation of existing life. While rarely acknowledged in analysis, the consolidation of the nation is an important element of the liberal peace and the fourth dimension relevant to this discussion. One of the first tasks for INTERFET in 1999 was to secure the border with Indonesia and, with UNTAET, to regulate the return of refugees (Ingram, 2012). Such an act is taken as fundamental in the consolidation of a new nation in terms of limiting possible threats (i.e. of militia based in West Timor crossing the border). Moreover, the nation provides a way of territorially determining who is and who is not within its sovereign control for the purposes of controlling and regulating the population (laws, taxation, internal security) as well as mobilisation in terms of national identity (see Leach, this collection). In terms of a liberal peace specifically, the significance of consolidating a nation is that a designated territory provides a liberal state with one key way for determining citizenship (i.e. those born into it), regulating who has a ‘right’ to participate in political and economic life, the protection of whose liberties the state guarantees, and in effect who falls within and beyond the social contract. These four dimensions of the liberal peace – the emphasis on the formation of a democratic state, the secularity of state institutions, the emphasis on market economics, and the importance of consolidating the nation – are each valued in terms of the prevention of future death. However, this argument does not yet account for why martyrs of war feature regularly within liberal states. In Timor-Leste there are constant examples of the state valorisation of martyrs, including national holidays in their name, grand statues of deceased leaders, and cemeteries and ceremonies to ensure the dead are not forgotten. There are different arguments in explain this, though the most immediately relevant argument here is that when state veneration of martyrs occurs it does so for the same reasons already discussed, namely for the prevention of future unnatural deaths. Twenty years on from 1999 and stories on the nightly news in Timor-Leste of independence commemorations are punctuated by stories that show the ongoing collection of the remains of martyrs. We are told time and again, and from place to place, that it is important that the dead are not forgotten. It has been a continuous trope but with different possible meanings. Indeed, not forgetting is essential for a liberal peace, but in this case remembering is not for those who have died but for those who are alive. To return to UNTAET and the years of transition to national independence, there were early significant moves to resurrect the dead via the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation (CAVR). The purpose for the Commission

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was broad reaching; representative samples of the entire population were used to create a narrative of shared national understanding, the value of human rights and liberties instilled, and the legitimation of the new state by distinguishing it from the colonial past. Again, the dead are remembered in order to secure the still-living. While the transitional justice process integrates the living via shared narratives, it is not just memories that serve the liberal transition. Corpses, too, attain political value. As discussed in an interview with a lawyer with the Serious Crimes Unit in 2004, the dead become temporary subjects within systems of forensic governance as evidence in the prosecution for human rights abuses. Generally speaking, when INTERFET found a body they would do a cursory crime scene analysis, if there was a forensic pathologist there they’d generally speaking make a report, and bearing in mind the bodies were probably still fleshed when INTERFET were here, so they would then arrange for their burial, and in fact a lot of bodies were buried in, for want of a better word, mass graves identified by number and interned in Dili here, and then most of those bodies have since been re-exhumed and forensically analysed. Files taken, files made up on those individuals, and then the individuals returned where identification was established to the families. And when it comes to murders, at the end of ’99 the family already buried those bodies so they are ones where we’d go back out and exhume them with their consent, and then do a forensic examination and return those bodies again to the families for reburial. (Lawyer, Serious Crimes Unit, 2004)

Here the dead gain value by their role in the issuing of warrants. The body is drawn into processes that are accumulatively central to the establishment of a liberal peace, in this case as an attempt to end cultures of impunity while seeking prosecution to prevent new abuses. Nevertheless, once the body’s value is appropriated and ‘files are made’, the still-fleshed corpse is returned to the still-living relatives. Its value has been expunged. It has been argued in this first section that a liberal peace is significantly oriented towards the protection of the still-living, as explored across the dimensions of democratic state-building, secularism, market economies, and the consolidation of the nation. The dead appear – in narratives as well as in corporeal form – to serve the living. This, however, is to focus on the liberal peace in the context of the creation of a new political order. In contrast, the next section turns to forms of peace generated through ‘cognate communities’ that have been interrupted by war rather than created in

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response to it, and in turn considers the way the dead have intrinsic value as embedded in their relationship with the still-living.

Cognate communities and the reproduction of peace Moving forward two decades from the violence and destruction of 1999, the retrieval of the remains of martyrs, their reburial, and the reconstruction of graves remains a common practice across Timor-Leste. In one example from early 2019, extended familial networks rehabilitated 33 long dilapidated graves in Lolotoe (located in Bobonaro municipality on the border with West Timor). The graves were for relatives who had died as a result of warfare across the early phase of the Indonesian occupation, from illness and starvation during the 1980s and 1990s, as well as several who had passed away in the post-independence period. Given that the deaths had occurred during the Indonesian occupation or in the direct aftermath, the original graves had been extremely basic and ritual requirements had not been fulfilled. Plans for rehabilitating these graves were hastened when children in the family continued to fall ill, as this was taken as a signal that ancestral spirits were unhappy at being forgotten. Graves that had been marked by an oval of rocks were turned into cement structures with Catholic crosses, with the lia nain (a customary elder, ‘keeper of the word’) asking the dead to care for the living now that they had a good ‘home’. Tais (a piece woven cloth) was laid under the cement, representing a claim over the origin of the bodies. A chicken was killed for each grave of a woman and rooster for each man in to alert the spirits of the rehabilitated graves (fieldwork, Lolotoe April and November 2019). This example from Lolotoe is unremarkable to the extent that similar acts continue to occur across Timor-Leste on a regular, though typically unnoticed, basis (Bovensiepen 2014b; Kent 2016b, 43; Viegas and Feijó 2017, 104-105). It is argued in this second section that such acts – including the rehabilitation of graves, the locating of remains, and the undertaking of ritual – represents a pursuit of a peace as generated via what is referred to here as a ‘cognate community’. The term ‘cognate’ is used to describe a form of community that is characterised by consanguineal and affinal relations that incorporate the living and the ancestral spirits of the dead.1 1 See also Palmer (2015, 11-12). Here the form of community is understood as overlapping with but not necessarily mapping identically onto those counted within any particular sacred houses. For example, even within a single uma lulik, the living will not always recognise the same lineage with regards to ancestors, given past migration between uma lulik.

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Whereas the liberal peace discussed above is understood to concentrate on preventing future death through the creation of a particular political order, here the argument is that cognate communities represent a continuing form of community where the dead are treated as having an intrinsic value in the reproduction of peace. Setting the two in counter-distinction is not to say that a liberal peace is not important to East Timorese; it may well resonate at particular levels of society and at particular times. However, it is important to recognise here that more than one approach to peace can exist, and the form examined here remains of great significance to many people. In the brief narrative from Lolotoe above, the deceased are actants that continue to have agency and an ability to influence the lives of the still-living. The lack of recognition – through not building and not tending graves, an incorrect or non-performance of ritual and related obligations, or forgetting the dead – can result in ancestral retribution.2 Such reprisals demonstrate that within a cognate community threat does not reside in the relationships between the still-living, but rather in the relationship between the ancestor spirits and the still-living. Just as a failure of recognition means spirits remain lost and cannot be at peace, spirits can ensure that the living do not live peacefully either (see Winch, this collection). Relations between the living and dead are thus characterised as mutually dependent. To borrow liberal concepts, it is as if the cognate community narrows the social contract to kin and kind and yet expands it to encompass the living and the dead. The objective of peace is met via ritual acts that draw on Catholic beliefs as well as custom, in a form of cohabitation (Viegas and Feijó 2017). So visually dominant are Christian symbols in funerary practice in TimorLeste that one could be forgiven for thinking that they represent the full breadth of beliefs relating to death. Whether single graves at the front of homes, small groups of graves grouped together, or larger cemeteries in Dili, Catholic symbols are prevalent throughout. The cross is virtually ubiquitous at the head of graves, tiled images of Nossa Senhora (the Virgin Mary) and of Saint Anthony are extremely common, and small statues of angels as well as written prayers frequently adorn graves. There may be a mass in church prior to burial (in the larger cemeteries in Dili mass will be given at a chapel in the cemetery grounds), a priest will often be asked to bless the grave and the body of the deceased, and large black crosses (cruz metan) in cemeteries enable the still-living to pray for deceased relatives buried afar. Key dates on the calendar include the crucifixion and resurrection of 2 In one interview, people spoke of having to follow lisan so as to end illness in the living caused by the disgruntled spirits of those that had lived 11 generations earlier.

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Christ at Easter, his birth at Christmas, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day (known locally as Loron Matebian), where the living return to rehabilitate and clean graves and pray to the spirits of their dead. While the graves themselves outwardly tend to be dominated by Christian emblems, the act of burial very often occurs alongside rituals that reflect customary beliefs (often referred to as tradisional, kultura, lisan, or kostume).3 These beliefs, and the associated obligations, rituals, and roles are associated with a sacred house, known variously as an uma lulik, uma lisan, or uma bo’ot. Lulik refers to a practice, site, or object that is deemed ‘sacred’ or ‘taboo’, or as a kind of force that can ‘create and destroy life’ (Bovensiepen 2014a, 121-122; Winch 2017, 200). Lisan, by comparison, tends to refer to customary regulations expressed through ritual and obligation as they relate to the relationship between the living and the dead, and to nature. While there may be broad similarities within various ethno-linguistic groups in Timor-Leste (for instance in marriage practices), East Timorese tend to quickly explain that lisan is unique and exclusive to a particular uma lulik. Customary rituals following death therefore vary across Timor-Leste, though they often involve the gathering of extended family networks, the exchange of material goods (for instance tais) and animals, the consumption of betel nut, and the killing of animals, with hamulak (a kind of prayer by the still-living) ensuring that the newly deceased spirits are able to locate the spirits of related ancestors. In the year following the funeral, rituals typically include some or all of the following: firstly, ‘bitter flowers’ (aifunan moruk) and ‘sweet flowers’ (aifunan midar) in the weeks following death, with ceremonies held at 40 days, 100 days (three months), and six months. Later, at the one-year anniversary, people take off the black cloth or clothing (kore metan) that they have worn to demonstrate they are in mourning, a point that, as one interviewee in Quelicai describes, typically requires a significant level of resources from within that cognate community. All of the family will come back to be present, from the wife-givers’ side to the wife-takers’ side, so that everyone can take off the black pieces of cloth from their bodies or their arms or heads; all of the family will take these to the grave-site, and everyone will give their congratulations to the family of the deceased that have mourned over this time [the 12 months prior] and they will gather together and kill pigs and cows, cook goat meat, invite all of the family for a big party with lots of joy to show that

3

Kostume is Tetun for custom or habit.

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the year of mourning for the dead has now finished. (Interview, Quelicai, August 2018).

The killing of pigs and cows mentioned here is representative of a kind of ritual economy that relies on deeply embedded forms of reciprocity where the numbers and kinds of animals, along with other items of exchange, are based on conventions that dictate obligations within and between families and must be strictly adhered to. While this is only a superficial summary of rituals following the death of a person, it nevertheless indicates both the ways custom and religion cohabit, as well as the levels of resources that are drawn on to fulfil such practices. In contrast to the orientation to the future within a liberal peace, peace discussed in these terms occurs when equilibrium is brought to the relationship between cognate living and dead. In other words, the bringing of a cosmological balance between the ancestral domain and the still-living is achieved through acts of mutual care (see Viegas in this collection). As Babo Soares (2004) writes, for many East Timorese it is essential to keep this equilibrium between the material world of the living and the sacred world: Among the Timorese, this real-life/non-physical life is translated into their view of the world, their cosmology and the world where they live (Fox 1989), whereby the secular is inhabited by living things and the cosmos by the sprits and the ancestors (Traube 1986: Hicks 1972). For life to proceed there should be a balance between the two worlds. Failure to observe appropriate rituals leads to an imbalance, which might result in negative consequences to those living in the secular world. In customary thinking, the failure of the harvest, starvation, illness, floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters are believed to be the result of the disequilibrium. (Babo Soares 2004, 22).

Living life in a sustainable and meaningful way, being in good health and living a fortunate life, is secured through the continuation of social relations across the living and the dead. Peace in these terms is understood not just as an absence of threat. It is also inclusive of a sense of resolution that allows people to live a good life without the burden of unfulfilled obligations, and enables the ancestral spirits to find solace. This expression of peace stands in almost polar opposition to the liberal peace in various ways: the concentration on institutionalising the means to peace in the liberal state is juxtaposed with the embedding of peace in everyday practice; a liberal peace focuses on the prevention of death while

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instrumentalising the already-dead, whereas peace generated through a cognate community sees the dead as having intrinsic value and being in need of care; the secularism of a liberal peace reduces the possibilities for recognising the significance of alternative forms of peace, while market economics sit in profound contradistinction to the intergenerational reciprocity required in the fulfilment of ritual exchange. And importantly, a liberal peace is seen as a way to transition conflict-ridden societies away from the reoccurrence of violence, while the forms of everyday peace discussed here exist independently of war. For instance, this peace is generated through communities whose origins pre-date not only the Indonesian occupation but at times even Portuguese colonialism (fieldwork, 2018, 2019). However, in terms of the final point of comparison here, this is not to say that the achievement of an everyday peace is not dramatically disrupted by war. The massive numbers of war dead from the Indonesian occupation have had a profound effect on the ability to achieve peace through cognate communities, and as such the next section will discuss the dynamic between liberal and everyday forms of peace in order to understand the longer-term effects on both.

From a liberal peace to an illiberal state While the need for a proper burial and ritual remains a constant in or outside of war, the need for locating the remains, undertaking a secondary burial, and the rehabilitation of a grave can take on greater significance when a person has died violently. In such instances, the spirits of the dead are often understood as restless and more dangerous to the living (Sakti 2013, 243; see also Sakti in this collection), and in the case of their unnatural death in war, the effects potentially reverberate on the still-living (see Traube, 2007). And yet, in the wake of war, the importance of ritual recognition undertaken by the living heightens at the same time as it becomes harder to fulfil obligations. For one thing, knowledge of the location of temporary burials from during the war is often lost as a consequence of subsequent deaths and social dislocation. And in the devastation of the post-independence period, the material obligations for ritual are exhausted at the same time as the living are dealing with an unnatural increase in mortality due to war. In other words, there are more spirits to appease and their appeasement is more important, at the same time as there are fewer resources available to do so. Just as the violent nature of the death impacts the need to placate the spirits, the idea of fulfilling these obligations begins to shift, as death in

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war is framed as being of benefit to the nation while the cost (and threat) is carried by the still-living within a cognate community. In other words, someone may have died in the name of the nation and yet it is the cognate kin and kind that bear the cost of ceremonial obligations, and the risks if these are not met. A nation itself cannot pay, but a state can in its name, and as such people look beyond their familial relations and to the political order that has emerged since independence. The pursuit of everyday approaches to peace, as outlined in this chapter, would have previously had little to gain from a colonial state (Portugal) or an occupying state (Indonesia). This is not just because of the violence perpetrated by each respectively, but also because the rule was seen as exercised by outsiders. In the case of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste however – where a war for independence has led to the alignment of sovereign power, people, and territory – the requirement of ritual creates a need for resources while the emergence of the idea of a liberal state provides a pathway for fulfilment. Not only is the new state occupied by East Timorese who largely share an appreciation for the importance of the peace generated through cognate communities, but their position in the state is at least ostensibly legitimated on the basis of representing the needs and interests of the population. Moreover, across its various constitutional governments since independence, the state elite have for a long time been dominated by veterans and independence activists who are now the benef iciaries of independence, and as such are seen as owing a direct debt to their comrades who perished. And lastly, in the context of the destruction following 1999, the state is seen to be a site where wealth and resources are concentrated. This context might suggest that the state is well placed to ensure that such needs are accounted for, and has an interest in doing so: memorialisation, locating the dead, forensic testing, and grave building may have made for an inclusive East Timorese state, one that is able to gain legitimacy by differentiation not only from past oppressors, but also from UNTAET. However, rather than advancing an encompassing approach to mourning the dead, to venerating and supporting the living as a whole for all of those lost, the treatment of martyrs has emerged as one example of an illiberal form of governance. To understand this argument, however, it is important first to return to the state as it was initially imagined in liberal terms in order to comprehend its illiberalism in practice. The territory that would become Timor-Leste was treated as a tabula rasa by UNTAET, a political void to be filled, a point that has been variously returned to in analyses over the last two decades (Brown and Gusmão 2009,

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64). All of the ‘building’ that took place – the state, the nation, the peace, the human security, the development and so forth – was largely assumed to be occurring in a vacuum. However, as discussed in the previous section, other ways of understanding, of interpreting, and of being were continuing and reassembling following independence, albeit beyond the peripheral vision of the ‘UN Kingdom’. Not realising, actively dismissing, or failing to adapt to the existence of significant alternative forms of peace created a dynamic where a new political order was formed without understanding the kinds of demands that might come to be made of it. This in turn created tensions that became evident (even to outsiders) through moments of political crises. When Timor-Leste was beset by internal conflict between 2006 and 2008, the response of the international community was a renewed intervention to contain the violent deviation from the liberal peace (Brady and Timberman 2006; Curtain 2006). It was not uncommon, however, for East Timorese at this time to see the crisis as a result of indulging in the benefits of independence while failing to demonstrate due recognition of the martyrs of war (Trindade and Castro 2007, 18; fieldwork and personal correspondence 2006-2007; Viegas and Feijó 2018; see also Traube 2007, 18, 21). Such a political crisis is an example of ‘disequilibrium’ – to draw from Babo Soares – as the dead had returned to menace the living. To settle the ‘restless and unatoned bones’ (Sephton 2019) of the dead would require following customary and religious obligations (halo tuir). Rather than provide this remedy, however, tension emerged as the state was seen to prioritise not the dead but the needs of the still-living. As one example of this, the following quote demonstrates the tensions created as support was provided to internally displaced peoples (IDPs) during the 2006-2008 crisis: Why did the Government attend to the crisis of 2006 so urgently, especially those that packed their stuff and ran to join others as IDPs? Those people were not affected by that but they simply packed all their belongings and joined the IDPs and not just that, but they also had good treatment from the Government. We felt like those from 1975 till 1999 didn’t have any value. (Robbins 2010, 91)

‘[T]hose from 1975 till 1999’ refers to the martyrs of the war with Indonesia and reflects a tension that resonates with the arguments of the first two sections of this chapter: that the new state gives preferential treatment to the still-living while the locally grounded pursuit of peace largely remains unsupported. It is also telling that in this quote there is tension over how

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resources from the state are being allocated, even while the expectation of state assistance appears otherwise assumed. However, rather than having set in place mechanisms to allay or even symbolically address the demands on the state to widen the basis for recognition and inclusion, the response of the state since has become increasingly illiberal as a hierarchy of martyrdom has emerged. To elaborate on these points further, as of 2019, there remains no single monument to the civilian victims of the Indonesian occupation of TimorLeste. Monuments marking the site of massacres have been built in various sites, often through a combination of local activism and assistance from different national and international organisations (Kent 2019, 190, 197). However, many other sites remain unmarked and unacknowledged, resulting in an unevenness in the veneration of the dead that can be accounted for in at least two ways. 4 Firstly, state elites have made a series of interventions into communities at the cognate level based on political connections and personal interests. Such interventions have been made, for instance, with the transfer of cash to communities, access to resources gained via connections at elite levels, or the endorsement of veterans who have become politicians since independence (Viegas and Feijó 2017, particularly 102-103). This has meant that monuments and graves to the dead have appeared in relatively unsystematic ways, for instance being put up in one village on the basis of such connections but not in another where these connections did not exist, even though circumstances were otherwise very similar. The second pattern relates to how the state has far more systematically supported the burial of former veterans in the Garden of Heroes cemetery in Metinaro. This cemetery was built into the hill close to the barracks of the military, with the land terraced, a monument built at its crest, along with a new building to house the remains of early political leader Francisco Xavier do Amaral (with a vacant grave waiting for the still unlocated remains of independence leader Nicolau Lobato). Eligibility for burial is tightly controlled (Viegas and Feijó 2017, 101) while the site remains immaculate thanks to the small team of gardeners and cleaners. The Metinaro Garden 4 In this context, the Centro Nacional Chega! (CNC) has become the closest approximation to a state-sanctioned form of memorialisation, created by decree through the Council of Ministers though maintaining autonomy from the state. The CNC occupies the same building as the CAVR had and is mandated ‘to preserve the memory of Timor-Leste’s history for the period of 1974-1999, promote human rights through education and training, build solidarity with the survivors of human rights violations, prevent the recurrence of human rights violations, and foster a culture of peace’ (AJAR 2019).

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of Heroes has been replicated in various municipalities across the country where the remains of veterans are housed firstly in an ossuary prior to burial within the cemetery’s walls. The state sponsored relocation and reburial of remains of veterans has established clear hierarchies in terms of state recognition. These exist firstly between martyrs as former combatants and those who were civilians. Then there are hierarchies within the ranks of deceased veterans, most closely seen in terms of those who either were in a leadership position, as well in terms of gender (Kent 2016a, 52, 58-59). The resources allocated towards these burials are not insignificant in the context of Timor-Leste, nor are the potential benefits to still-living relatives of social status and access to pensions. Such a selective approach to martyrs, however, can be surmised as illiberal in that it represents the selective use of political power and resources for elite agendas as opposed to approaching the need for veneration of the dead with a commitment to equity, transparency, and care for all those within the affected population. Rather, as a state led by former combatants, veneration has either occurred in their own image (by building statues and monuments to former leaders) or where, through their own public position, they are able to generate the resources required to fulfil the obligations of their own cognate communities (Viegas and Feijó 2017, 105; see also Feijó in this collection). In contrast, for civilian martyrs the still-living relatives have had to utilise what means are available to them. As with the example of Lolotoe and countless others, resources are deployed from within cognate communities and without any outside assistance. For the most part, people have needed to find their own way to identify bodies; through dreams and customary ritual, or through processes of identifying clothing, belongings, and the location of the initial burial site (Blau, this collection; Kent, this collection; fieldwork, 2018-2019). Where it is not possible to locate a body, a rock from the location of death is often used as a substitute (Robbins, 2010; fieldwork 2019) as the spirits are called (bolu), while for others the need to collect remains has meant they have collected bones without knowing exactly of their origin in the hope that they include relatives (Robbins, 2010). Potential sites of mass burial – such as for those who died from starvation and disease across the late 1970s – are often at best only known locally (personal correspondence 2018; fieldwork 2019) and have not been recorded or memorialised in any systematic way. Even for veterans, rather than being interred in state-run cemeteries, very often their remains are stored in community-level ossuaries that, in sites

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such as Quelicai and Laga, each house hundreds of deceased combatants (and in the case of Quelicai, the remains of civilian martyrs). While coffins and flags may have been provided by the state, these ‘unatoned bones’ remain caught in tensions between local and national priorities (fieldwork 2018, 2019). Since the state focuses exclusively on veterans, rather than all martyrs per se (civilian and military), material resources and symbolic recognition incentivise contestation. Control of remains by the still-living acts as a challenge to state narratives and an attempt to expand the basis for recognition (see Kent, this collection). As already suggested, the illiberalism of the state with regards to the veneration of martyrs is partly accounted for by the fact that the new state has been so dominated by former combatants who seek to reproduce the hierarchies that embed their place in the nation’s history. Combatants fought for Timor-Leste and thus their deaths are deemed to be most deserving of recognition. Of the implementation of the liberal peace in Timor-Leste, Ingram writes that ‘while outside actors can seek to influence the formal rules of the game, local political culture will determine how the game is played’ (Ingram 2018, 365). While UNTAET may have set the rules for the formation of and competition between political parties, post-independence Timor-Leste has been invariably shaped by those in a position to claim political authority, particularly veterans, and occupy the highest level of state. As a further point, the creation of a liberal state in post-conflict contexts is likely to fail in terms of meeting the level and complexity of demands upon it, irrespective of who occupies key positions. Built in the aftermath of war, the avenues by which a liberal state typically builds legitimacy – such as participation, care, protection, and redistribution – are constrained by the very material conditions in which that state emerges. The scale and magnitude of devastation, and the sheer numbers killed and missing, make it more likely for a new state to narrow the care for the dead to those deemed most central to its formation. As with the Kore Metan Nasional discussed in the Introduction to this collection, it may not always be the self-interest of elites that determines how expectations are managed. Rather, it may more simply be that the task is beyond that of a state that has been formed in the wake of devastation and not always with the infrastructure required even to expend what funds are available to it (Porter and Rab 2010, 4-9; see also Bishop 2012). In other words, to fulfil expectations, especially those unseen by UNTAET implementers, would have taken a very different approach to state-building in the transition to independence.

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Concluding reflections To conclude by drawing together the arguments of military elitism and the conflict context, the final argument here is that the emergence of illiberalism – manifest in the selective treatment of martyrs – stems in no small part from the initial objectives of the liberal peace. Even when it is evident that the state provides care for the dead two decades after independence, it does so with a considerable focus on the conditions of the still-living. Where, for instance, the bodies of dead veterans are buried not with their kin and kind, but in new cemeteries, formalised and regulated, this can have the effect of preventing ritual custom at that site. Even the burning of candles – essential to lighting the way for the beiala sira – is prohibited in the Garden of Heroes cemetery so as to keep the graves ‘clean’ (candles can be lit at the cruz metan instead). Participation in such acts of regimentation again see the dead not as having an intrinsic value, but as entities that are useful for the creation of a political order that valorises some sacrifices over others. Those who choose burial of deceased veterans in cemeteries do so with the loss of ready access to the resources required to build a grave, while those who bury on ancestral lands as part of the reproduction of cognate communities lose the material support and social status afforded by state recognition. In the end, liberalism is for life and political structures implemented in liberalism’s name cannot ‘see the dead’. The vast majority of martyrs – especially civilians who died as a consequence of war – are written out of the social contract, with one possible consequence being the emergence of illiberal hierarchies amongst the living.

Bibliography Appleby, Scott. 1999. The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence and Reconciliation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR). 2019. Centro Nacional Chega!: Time to Focus on Survivors’ Policy Paper, July 2019. Accessed 4 April 2020. https://asia-ajar.org/2019/07/ centro-nacional-chega-time-to-focus-on-survivors/ Babo-Soares, Dionisio. 2004. ‘Nahe Biti: The philosophy and process of Grassroots Reconciliation (and Justice) in East Timor’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 5 (1): 15-33. Bishop, Jo-Anne. 2012. The National Recovery Strategy: A Review of the Process, Results and Lessons Learned. Dili: Ministry of Social Solidarity.

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Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014a. ‘Lulik: Taboo, Animism, or Transgressive Sacred? An Exploration of Identity, Morality and Power in Timor-Leste’. Oceania 84 (2): 121-137. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014b. ‘Paying for the Dead: On the Politics of Death in Independent Timor-Leste’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15 (2): 103-122. Brady, Cynthia, and David Timberman. 2006. The Crisis in Timor-Leste: Causes, Consequences and Options for Conflict Management and Mitigation. A report for USAID Timor-Leste, Joint USAID-AUSAID conflict vulnerability assessment, Dili. Brown, M. Anne, and Alex Freitas Gusmão. 2009. ‘Peacebuilding and Political Hybridity in East Timor’. Peace Review 21 (1): 61-69. Chandler, David. 2010. ‘The Uncritical Critique of Liberal Peace’. Review of International Studies 36 (S1): 137-155. Chopra, Jarat. 2000. ‘The UN’s Kingdom of East Timor’. Survival 42 (3): 27-39. Curtain, Richard. 2006. ‘Crisis in Timor-Leste: Looking Beyond the Surface Reality for Causes and Solutions’. SSGM working papers No. 2006/1, Canberra: Australian National University. Grenfell, Damian. 2015. ‘Rethinking Governance and Security in Timor-Leste’. In A New Era?: Timor-Leste After the UN, edited by Sue Ingram, Lia Kent, and Andrew McWilliam, 169-186. Canberra: ANU Press. Ingram, Sue. 2012. ‘Building the Wrong Peace: Reviewing the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) Through a Political Settlement Lens’. Political Science 64 (1): 3-20. Ingram, Sue. 2018. ‘Parties, personalities and political power: Legacies of Liberal Peace-Building in Timor-Leste’. Conflict, Security & Development 18 (5): 365-386. Kent, Lia. 2016a. ‘After the Truth Commission: Gender and Citizenship in TimorLeste’. Human Rights Review 17: 51-70. Kent, Lia. 2016b. ‘Sounds of Silence: Everyday Strategies of Social Repair in TimorLeste’. Australian Feminist Law Journal 42 (1): 31-50. Kent, Lia. 2019. ‘Transitional Justice and the Spaces of Memory Activism in TimorLeste and Aceh’. Global Change, Peace & Security 31 (2): 181-199. Palmer, Lisa. 2015. Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, Environmental Governance and Development, Routledge: New York. Paris, Roland. 2004. At War’s End: Building Peace after Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porter, Doug, and Habib Rab. 2010. ‘Timor-Leste’s Recovery from the 2006 Crisis: Some Lessons’. World Development Report 2011: Background Case Note. Washington DC: World Bank. República Democrática de Timor Leste (RDTL). 2002. Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste.

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República Democrática de Timor Leste (RDTL). 2011. Timor-Leste Strategic Development Plan: 2011-2030. Richmond, Oliver. 2004. ‘The Globalisation of Responses to Conflict and the Peacebuilding Consensus’. Cooperation & Conflict 39 (2): 129-150. Richmond, Oliver. 2006. ‘The problem of peace: understanding the “liberal peace”’. Conflict, Security and Development 6 (3): 291-314. Richmond, Oliver. 2008. ‘Liberal Peacebuilding in Timor-Leste: The Emperor’s New Clothes?’ International Peacekeeping 15 (2): 185-200. Robins, Simon. 2010. ‘An Assessment of the Needs of Families of the Missing in Timor-Leste’. Report for the PRDU. York: The University of York. Sabaratnam, Meera. 2013. ‘Avatars of Eurocentrism in the Critique of the Liberal Peace’. Security Dialogue 44 (3): 259-278. Sakti, Victoria. 2013. ‘“Thinking Too Much”: Tracing Local Patterns of Emotional Distress After Mass Violence in Timor-Leste’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 14 (5): 438-454. Selby, Jan. 2013. ‘The Myth of Liberal Peace-Building’. Conflict, Security & Development 13 (1): 57-86. Sephton, Rene. 2019. Finding Peace Amongst Restless and Unatoned Bones: A Dialogue on Bumuntu from The Democratic Republic of Congo, PhD diss., RMIT University. Traube, Elizabeth. 2007. ‘Unpaid Wages: Local Narratives and the Imagination of the Nation’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1): 9-25. Trindade, Jose, and Bryant Castro. 2007. Technical assistance to the national dialogue process in Timor-Leste – Rethinking Timorese identity as a peacebuilding strategy: The Lorosa’e-Loromonu conflict from a traditional perspective. European Union’s Rapid Reaction Mechanism Programme, Dili. United Nations Security Council. Resolution 1272 (adopted 25 October 1999). New York. Viegas, Susana de Matos, and Rui Graça Feijó. 2017. ‘Territorialities of the Fallen Heroes’. In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations, edited by Susana de Matos Viegas and Rui Graça Feijó, 94-110. London and New York: Routledge. Wallis, Joanne. 2018. ‘Is “Good Enough” Peacebuilding Good Enough? The Potential and Pitfalls of the Local Turn in Peacebuilding in Timor-Leste’. The Pacific Review 30 (2): 251-269. World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development. Washington DC: World Bank. Winch, Bronwyn. 2017. ‘La iha fiar, la iha seguransa: The spiritual landscape and feeling secure in Timor-Leste’. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 2 (2-3): 197-210.

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Interviews Interview with Lawyer (Anon). Serious Crimes Unit, Dili October 2004. Interview with community member (Anon). Quelicai, August 2018.

About the Author Damian Grenfell is lecturer and researcher at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He has been undertaking research in Timor-Leste since 2003 and manages the Timor-Leste Research Program (timor-research.org) based at the University. His research focuses on identity in the context of conflict and violence.

6

The Politics of Loss and Restoration Massive Bad Death in the Oecussi Highlands Victoria Kumala Sakti Abstract This chapter engages with the after-effects of the Bobometo village massacre in Oecussi on the lives of surviving family members and the social and cultural world in which they live. Focusing on the dead and their ongoing relations with the living, it explores the multiple ‘lives’ and potencies of the ‘bad’ and political dead and their interplay. Based on cross-border ethnographic research, this chapter explores how these dynamics shape new forms of relatedness between the living and the dead, the local and the state, and within family networks now separated across the borderlands. It discusses what acts of remembrance for the conflict dead can tell us about the politics of loss and restoration in the aftermath of massive violence and bad death. Keywords: bad death, borderlands, kinship, martyrs, restoration, Oecussi

Introduction On a village hilltop in the southern highlands of Oecussi, an enclave of Timor-Leste, lies a cemetery that holds both local and national significance. More than 80 civilian victims of a massacre that took place during the post-ballot violence in 1999 are buried here. Weathered wooden crosses mark the rows of identical graves, shaped to resemble the motif of the country’s national flag.1 They face a memorial, on which the names of the 1 I carried out multi-sited ethnographic research in the years 2010, 2011, and 2015, amounting to f ifteen months’ stay altogether. During the f irst two lengthier stays, I observed that the graves in the cemetery were identical in form and made of grey cement, with a small triangle

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch06

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victims are engraved under an arch that reads ‘garden of heroes cemetery’ in the Indonesian language. The memorial also displays the signature of Xanana Gusmão, leader of the Resistance movement against the Indonesian occupation and the nation’s first elected president, who inaugurated the site. Every year on the anniversary of the massacre (9 September) and on the commemoration of the Santa Cruz massacre in Dili, local residents and dignitaries gather at this place to remember the dead.2 They pay tribute not only to their war dead but also to the hundreds of thousands of East Timorese who perished under the 24-year Indonesian occupation (19751999).3 Altogether, the site creates an atmosphere of sacredness, of sacrifice, and, thereby, of dignified deaths. Outside of official remembrance dates, the cemetery is secluded. Villagers avoid going near there and the main gate is usually shut. Only family members of the massacre victims visit the graves of their dead. For these families, the cemetery is more than just a site of remembrance. It is a site of continual negotiation and contestation. They go there to perform ancestral rituals with the aim of keeping the dead’s malicious threats at bay. Indeed, the victims died what is widely considered among East Timorese societies, as well as in other parts of the world, a ‘bad death’. The ‘unnatural’ way in which the victims died is believed to have rendered their spirits dangerous to the living. While ancestors, duly honoured, are believed to provide protection and prosperity to their descendants and future generations, spirits of the bad dead are thought to ‘pollute’ their blood (Bovensiepen 2014, 116). In contemporary Timor-Leste, interpretations related to the conflict-dead are multiple and coexisting. For local residents of Bobometo village, from where the massacre victims originally came, and for their surviving family members, dealing with the echoes of violence in everyday life often means engaging closely with the discourses, practices, and politics surrounding the dead. The conflict-dead of this massacre, however, do not inhabit a singular personhood. Rather, they evoke different identities and can encompass aspirations of political recognition, financial compensation and restoration. During fieldwork, I was intrigued by my interlocutors’ capacity to articulate rising from a rectangular base. As the sun moves westwards, the triangle would cast a shadow, smartly creating the illusion of two overlapping triangles that are on the East Timorese flag. 2 The Santa Cruz massacre took place in Dili on 12 November 1991. The majority of the victims were East Timorese youths, leading to the commemoration of the massacre as the national youth day. 3 The findings of the Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação (CAVR) Final Report, published in 2005, estimate a death toll of 102,800-183,000 civilians killed due to conflict-related causes during the 1975-1999 Indonesian occupation (CAVR Executive Summary 2005).

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these different lives, and thus the ambiguous quality of the conflict-dead, with relative ease. The living can speak of and celebrate the dead as martyrs and heroes (pahlawan, I.), while, at the same time, referring to them as victims (vitima, T., kolban, M.). 4 In the same breath, people can speak of the dead victims in terms of their violent and untreated deaths, and see their spirits as disruptive to social life. In this chapter, I explore the multiple ‘lives’ and potencies of the conflictdead in Oecussi, and their interplay. I examine the interconnections between people’s discourses, practices, and politics surrounding the bad dead and memories of past conflict. Specifically, I explore how these dynamics shape present forms of relatedness between the living and the dead, the local and the state, and within family networks. The chapter aims to show how a focus on the ongoing relations and exchange between the living and the political bad dead can reveal the transformations taking place on the social and familial levels across geographical space, political landscape, and time. Following this introduction, I provide a brief background to the village massacre and the accompanying local perceptions related to the dead victims. I then go on to discuss how bad death has been conceptualised in other societies and is pertinent to the lives of Oecussi communities. I explore these issues in the case of the Elu family. Like many East Timorese families after the massive displacement in 1999 and subsequent (and still incomplete) repatriation, the Elu family consists of members who have returned to and are living in their places of origin, or elsewhere, in Timor-Leste, as well as in the Indonesian side of the border among the now established East Timorese diaspora. I will explore the ways they navigate and fulfil the demands of the spirits of the bad dead within Timor-Leste’s contemporary political landscape. The chapter then closes by discussing what acts of remembrance for the bad dead can tell us about the politics of loss and restoration in the aftermath of massive violence and bad death.

The Bobometo Village Massacre5 The sequence of events that culminated in a gruesome village massacre in the Oecussi highlands began in the early morning of 8 September 1999. Just 4 My interlocutors often incorporated Meto (M.), Tetun (T.) and Bahasa Indonesia (I.) in their speech. All italicised foreign words are thus noted accordingly. 5 In official documents, such as in Geoffrey Robinson’s (2003) report to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the CAVR Executive Summary

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as villagers were preparing firewood to boil water or to feed their animals, around two hundred local militias from Oecussi’s Sakunar group, accompanied by members of the Indonesian security forces, launched their attacks. They targeted the hamlets (aldeia, T.) of Tumin, Quebesilo, Nonquican, and Nibine in the Bobometo village near the border with Indonesia (Robinson 2003). Armed with machetes and firearms, local militiamen, primarily from the neighbouring village of Passabe, rampaged and terrorised the Bobometo villagers. They torched houses and looted cattle and food supplies, causing the majority of the population to flee to the mountains or over the border to Indonesia (a region that I refer to here as West Timor). These attacks took place only four days after the referendum result was announced and were part of the Indonesian military’s retaliation act against Timor-Leste’s ultimate vote to separate from Indonesia. The hamlets attacked were known as pro-independence strongholds, such as in Bobometo, and the 82 massacre victims were leaders and supporters of the East Timorese Resistance Party (CNRT).6 Militiamen rounded up all villagers they could find and forced them across the border to the Indonesian town Imbate. A selection process ensued: they were made to register at the sub-district office and were divided into groups according to age, level of education, and hamlet of origin. Later that night, a group of young men with better than average education from the villages of Quebesilo and Tumin were singled out and bound together in pairs, with their hands tied behind their backs (Robinson 2003, 234-236). Families of victims who spoke with me recalled with a sense of helplessness the horrifying moment they saw men with guns taking away their kin into the darkness. Militiamen told the families that the victims were being taken to ‘school’ and would be returned home. In reality, they were marched back across the river into Timor-Leste to a place called Nifu Panef, near the village of Passabe. There, the victims were ordered to line up along the river bed. Minutes after midnight, on 10 September, the attackers hacked and shot the young men to death. The following morning, around one hundred men from the Passabe village were forced to bury the bodies in a nearby site (2005), the village massacre in the Oecussi highlands is known as the ‘Passabe Massacre’. It is named after the village where most of the local militias were from and the closest village to where the killings took place. Local residents of the Bobometo village commemorate the massacre by referring to it as the ‘1999 Bobometo and Bob-Uf Massacre’. This name centres more on where the victims originated. 6 Twelve other pro-independence supporters were killed en masse in the village of Maquelab, on the north coast of Oecussi, on 20 October 1999. The massacres of the Bobometo and Maquelab villagers were amongst the many incidents of mass killings in Timor-Leste that year.

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called Teun Lasi (Robinson 2003, 234-236). Bobometo villagers who went searching for the victims after the night they were taken away witnessed the sight of blood and dead bodies all over the river. My interlocutors’ stories about the 1999 violence illustrate what became remembered at the collective level. For instance, the gewang leaves used to tie up the victims and the way in which victims were bound together were always mentioned on occasions when people talked about the massacre. Bobometo residents would highlight the brutality of the way the killings took place by saying that the victims were ‘killed like animals’. The significance of this narrative is further reflected in the safekeeping of the gewang strands and the victims’ clothes – found in Teun Lasi, where they were initially buried – as a form of memorial. Also, the fact that the victims were largely younger men in their productive years, some of whom were already parents and would thus leave children fatherless and women widowed, further marks the extraordinariness of the killings. As a result, my interlocutors describe such killings as not only inhumane, disrupting social, political, and economic relationships, but also prompting immediate spiritual danger to the living.

Violent, bad, and political deaths Deaths of this nature and scale result in massive disruption in the Bobometo community’s social and cultural fabric (Sakti 2013). These are deaths that ‘occur out of place – away from home and kin – and deaths that occur out of time, to the young and strong’ (Faust 2006). Drew Faust argues that a massacre of civilians ‘represents the most unnatural and disruptive death of all’ (Faust 2006, xi). This view does not dispute local beliefs held by the predominantly Meto-speaking communities in Oecussi, which categorise sudden and violent deaths as ‘bad’, in contrast to ‘good deaths’ (Fox 1973; Forman 1980). The latter describes the situation when the person dies following natural causes (such as illness) or has enjoyed longevity and died surrounded by loving family members. In spatial terms, a good death is referred to as occurring ‘inside’ (maet nanan), while a bad death is treated as ‘outside (or male) deaths’ (maet mone) (McWilliam 2006). Spirits of the bad dead are considered dangerous because they did not receive proper funeral rites that would allow them to find their way to the afterlife. When death occurs, people usually follow culturally-determined mortuary rituals to ease the living and the deceased in the drawn-out process of death (Robben 2017). The end of this course is the ultimate separation

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between the living and the dead. Robert Hertz ([1905-1906] 2017) referred to this final stage as the ‘secondary burial’, where the soul has detached from the deceased and the living is no longer obligated to mourn the dead. In the case of bad deaths, however, mortuary rituals become severely disrupted – so much so that Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid, in the context of Indonesia, write that those who died a violent death ‘do not dwell in the land of the dead’ and are ‘excluded from the system of exchange that links the living and the dead’ (Chambert-Loir and Reid 2002, xix). Although they do not claim that this applies everywhere, their point corresponds to Andrew McWilliam’s work on death rituals among a Meto-speaking community in West Timor, in which he writes that the spirits of the bad dead are seen as ‘wandering outside and [therefore] must be treated in ritually prescribed ways to render them spiritually harmless’ (McWilliam 2006, 110). The harms affecting the living include infertility, infant mortality, illness, and death. It is said that the dead continue to haunt the living, demanding that they attend to the undesirable effects arising from bad deaths. Heonik Kwon’s important study in post-war Vietnam (Kwon 2006) highlights the revival of ancestral practices aimed at ameliorating the suffering of ghosts. He argues that it is they – the spirits of civilians killed violently during the war – who suffer the most. Building on his work, Judith Bovensiepen (2014) demonstrates, in the context of an Idate-speaking community in Timor Leste, how the pain caused by a bad death does not stop at the deceased. Rather, it extends to the relatives both of those who have died and those responsible for the death, specifically in the form of ancestral punishment. In the context of Oecussi, the conflict-dead of the massacre died not only a violent death, but also a political one. Their deaths transpired within the dramatic events across Timor-Leste that resulted in the country’s independence. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the important role dead bodies play in legitimising political regimes (Stepputat 2014; Verdery 2000). In addition to the narratives of danger to the living and future generations ascribed to bad and violent deaths, dead bodies of political and national struggles can serve as potent symbols during turbulent times (Verdery 2000). Specifically, states build on the formalisation of national narratives and annual commemorations of the political dead – whatever form they may take – to strengthen the (re)constitution of national identity and the creation of political communities. The Introduction to this edited volume has laid out that Timor-Leste’s successive governments have explicitly called for the valorisation of those who participated in the resistance, as well as the ‘rendering of tribute to the national heroes’ (Leach 2002). This includes tribute to martyrs; ‘those

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who died directly or indirectly due to their participation in the struggle for the national liberation’ (Feijó and Kent, this volume; also see Viegas, this volume). As this paper progresses, I demonstrate how in the case of the Bobometo massacre, surviving families invoke the different lives of the conflict-dead – as martyrs, dangerous spirits, and victims – interchangeably and in ways that, as distinct from Chambert-Loir and Reid’s observation, quite deliberately focus on the relations between the living and the bad dead.

Implications for the living One way of honouring the dead is by providing them with a proper burial. However, in the immediate aftermath of violence in Oecussi, families of the victims had no dead bodies to bury. They exhumed the mass graves in Teun Lasi one year after the massacre and sent the bones to Dili for cleaning and identification. It was only after the bones were reassembled for each victim and sent back to Oecussi in coffins that the families were able to perform the funeral. Along with Oecussi residents and The TimorLeste Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation (CAVR – the Portuguese acronym), they took the dead bodies to the local church for a Catholic mass before bringing them to the designated site for burial. There, they sacrificed a large quantity of pigs and goats for the ceremony as part of the mortuary ritual of ‘eating with the dead’. Senhor Jose Ote, Oecussi district’s CAVR commissioner, described this event as deeply moving, where collective wailing did not stop even after the bones were laid to rest (personal communication, 14 May 2010). The burial did not mean the end of the surviving families’ mourning period. Neither did it imply the curbing of spiritual threats from the bad dead. For the Meto-speaking population in Oecussi, the dead had to be ‘replaced’ – a local notion in which the action or payment thereof is usually incumbent upon those who caused the bad death to the deceased’s family and origin (lineage) house. Essentially, it represents the compensating of the house’s loss of person and is separate from typical mortuary payments that must be resolved between marriage-created alliance groups of the deceased to settle the latter’s house membership upon death (see also Bovensiepen 2014). Here, my interlocutors would speak of the dead as ‘victims’ (kolban, M.), whose deaths were unwarranted and, as result, must be compensated. The act of paying for the dead in this context relates to what locals describe as tahakeb nitu (M.), which refers to the family’s aspirations of ‘making the dead rise (or stand up) again’.

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In the case of this massacre, as with other mass killings and serious crimes across Timor-Leste during the 1999 post-ballot violence, the militiamen and Indonesian security forces responsible have stayed in Indonesia and refused to pay for their past crimes. Customary practices typically put in place to help societies deal with such tragedies have been largely disregarded. This neglect results in a massive scale of untreated bad deaths and unfulfilled mortuary rites, rupturing the social and cultural frame. In 2010 and 2011, when I first carried out fieldwork in Oecussi, families of the massacre victims engaged in discourses and practices that centred on fulf illing delayed mortuary rituals and payments related to tahakeb nitu. Specifically, families of victims demanded compensation from the Timor-Leste state, grounding their claim in the fact that their loved ones died for the nation’s liberation.7 They formed a victims’ group and sent representatives on an overnight ferry to Dili to speak directly with Xanana Gusmão about their grievances, invoking a language of entitlement attached to the conflict-dead. At the same time, they emphasised their grass-root efforts in their explanation as to how the state’s monthly financial support for victims’ families came about. These monthly payments are known as ‘survival pensions’ for the victims’ widows and families and are made by the state as a form of martyr valorisation. In Lia Kent’s and Kate Roll’s chapters in this volume, they respectively discuss these pensions as ‘martyr pensions’ and in relation to Article 9 of the 2006 Statue of the National Liberation Combatant, which states that ‘National Liberation Martyrs shall be all militants of the struggle for national independence who have perished or disappeared between 15 August 1975 and 25 October 1999 as a result of their participation in that struggle’. At the time of my fieldwork, people referred to the pensions as ‘victim money’ (luit kolban, M.) to indicate the unfulfilled obligation related to the victims’ bad death. They also describe those who died in the massacre as martyrs and heroes, simultaneously rather than opposingly, in line with the state discourse on martyr pensions.8 The payments ran in parallel with veteran pensions (paid to former FALINTIL resistance fighters), and were distributed through the district office of the Ministry of Social and Solidarity (MSS). At the time of research, these pensions amounted to a little over USD 200 per month, which one 7 These demands were previously addressed to the perpetrators and their origin village, as well as to the Indonesian state, to no avail. Therefore, the victims’ families shifted their calls for compensation to the Timor-Leste state. 8 This semantic issue also goes on to show that the term ‘victim’ does not always carry a negative and passive connotation and instead can be used in an empowering sense.

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couple noted was well above what the local teacher earned. Importantly, families of the massacre victims saw these payments as a way to finally fulfil their debt to the dead. The process of obtaining these pensions, however, was not easy. Families who spoke with me reported their frustration in dealing with a lack of transparency regarding the payment distribution. Some people started receiving the pensions as early as 2008, while others were still waiting for their turn in 2010.9 Every other week, family members from this latter group would descend on Pante Makassar, Oecussi’s main town, to check on the progress of their pensions or submit additional data and necessary paperwork. To deal with the frustration of delayed promises from the State, families mobilised their networks to carry out ancestral rituals to appeal for the dead’s assistance in removing possible hindrances to the process. They lit candles and offered sacrifices of chickens or pigs on different graves of their deceased members, including on those of the bad dead, to appease the dead’s growing impatience and inform them of the situation. The dead, in other words, mobilised the living to finalise delayed mortuary obligations. In the following section, I demonstrate how one family navigated the demands of the bad dead from their new settlement in West Timor and across re-established national borders. I also discuss the broader significance that may be entailed in their discourses, practices, and politics surrounding the dead.

Navigating the multiple lives of the bad dead and memories of past conflict If they [militias] killed our children, those victims, we have to receive back their inu [ancestral beads], money, cows and noni [old Dutch coins]. This is the price to make them stand up [tahaek] again!

An older Meto woman said these words to me while clutching her own inu that she wore around her neck. I had asked her about the significance of a bad death payment. The creases on her forehead deepened as she told me about how their family, unlike other neighbouring families of the massacre victims, had still not received the payment promised by the government 9 Categories were put in place to determine how the pensions were distributed. Widows or families who lost their main provider, for example, started receiving the pensions earlier than others.

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to the victim’s next of kin. This conversation took place in 2010, after we had met during an All Souls’ day commemoration at the Bobometo hero’s cemetery. She was there with some other members of the Elu name-group (or ‘family’).10 Among them were Mak Domi11 and two of her young sons. They had crossed into Oecussi (Timor-Leste) from West Timor (Indonesia) through informal and traditional paths, carefully avoiding border posts, to carry out rituals for the dead in their ancestral land. The Elu family had gathered at the heroes’ cemetery that day to light candles and offer sacrifices at the graves of two of their members who died in the massacre. For the year that followed this gathering, they focused their attention and efforts on obtaining the martyr pensions. Mak Domi joined the rest of the Elu family in Oecussi to represent both herself and her husband, whom I call Pak Elu. He has severe physical immobilities, which impair his ability to travel back to their origin hamlet to which most of his clan members have returned after Timor-Leste’s independence. In 1999, Pak Elu and his immediate family, along with nearly 240,000 other people, fled from militia violence in Timor-Leste to neighbouring West Timor. His health began to deteriorate around the time his extended family repatriated back to Timor-Leste, and thus he decided to stay. He was also entitled to Indonesian government pensions for having worked as a school teacher during the occupation period. In his view, this gave him better means to sustain his family than if they were to return. In West Timor, primarily in the small towns along the borders between Indonesia and Timor-Leste, there is a significant number of East Timorese who choose to stay for good. Many of them remain because they have family members implicated in past serious crimes committed in Timor-Leste during the 1999 referendum violence. People are generally afraid to come back lest they be prosecuted and socially excluded by former neighbours. Geographical distancing has thus become a way groups navigate and deal with unresolved conflict in relation to legal and social repercussions. Neither Timor-Leste nor Indonesia have shown any real intent of resolving past serious crimes or implementing the recommendations published by the 10 By ‘family’, I refer to the term’s extended understanding, which for the Meto encompasses members of their name group, which in the Meto language is referred to as kanaf. The kanaf is inherited from the father. This means that members of a name-group share a common origin from the same (male) ancestor, who is identified by the term uf (or ‘trunk’). In this family’s case, they share the name Elu and are members of the same ume (house) kanaf. 11 Informal and endearing term for ‘mother’ in Indonesian, while Pak can be used to refer to ‘father’ or ‘mister’ in the Indonesian language.

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final reports of the CAVR and the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF). Consequently, one of the longer-term effects of massive violence in 1999 has been the geographical separation of families across national borders, who are left to deal with the legacy of violence and mistrust on their own terms.12 For those who now make up the East Timorese diaspora in West Timor, their continued displacement does not diminish the desire to remain connected, one way or another, to their families back home and to their ancestral lands. This includes fulfilling the need to care for the dead and their graves. In my conversations with families in West Timor, it was the dead back home who drew them to visit significant places and call for their attention. The dead would appear through dreams and manifest in different forms of illnesses and hardship. I regularly visited Mak Domi and Pak Elu in their new settlement, and I listened to numerous stories they, as well as other members of the diaspora, told me about the translocal practices they perform to care for their ancestral home (Sakti 2017). They explained Mak Domi’s visit back home to join the ritual at the cemetery that day as being driven by fear of what might arise from the dead’s growing impatience concerning unfulfilled mortuary payments. Pak Elu told me not to look too far for an example, and pointed to his own paralysis to explain the importance of taking care of the dead and their ancestors. He, as well as his family back home, has attributed his illness to ancestral punishment for past negligence. For Mak Domi, undertaking the arduous journey and taking part in the ancestral ritual was important, as it showed that they care for the dead and for members of their name-group (kanaf, M.), despite now living across the border – particularly, as Pak Elu pointed out, as the government had already started distributing monthly pensions for martyrs while their dead members have waited for proper treatment of their deaths for too long. Their ‘lives’ in the afterlife must ‘go on’. Local narratives on Meto mortuary culture in the highlands hold that the dead continue to ‘work on gardens’ (meop lele) in the afterlife. The dead’s surviving family members must provide them with the necessary resources to tend: animals and seeds. Thus, the animals typically sacrificed during the celebration marking the final separation between 12 The legacy of mistrust draws on a simplified narrative that generally assumes those who stayed in West Timor and never returned permanently to Timor-Leste voted against independence, or were complicit in some capacity in ‘pro-Indonesian/autonomy’ campaigns, or were thought to be themselves part of the militias who perpetrated the killings and other atrocities in 1999 (Sakti 2017, 463).

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the living and the dead (talaes nitu)13 are gifts for the dead to tend to in the afterlife. Similarly, paddy and corn seeds (pemfini aimfini) are given to the dead in these celebrations to grow in their gardens in the afterlife. As the dead continues to have agency, Pak Elu imagined their pressing demands: ‘When will I get my share? I don’t have any seeds to grow or animals to tend. I have nothing here. Do you plan to use them for yourself and I get nothing?’ On the other side of the border, where the heroes’ cemetery is located, Pak Elu and Mak Domi’s relatives shared similar concerns. They were particularly absorbed in the effort of obtaining the ‘victim money’. They went down to Oecussi town every week to seek out information at the office of the MSS. Pak Elu’s younger uncle and his wife would then send them news about any development or further hindrances. Although Pak Elu was never able to be there personally to help, he would worry from afar and could discuss possible solutions with other family members for hours on end. He would organise the gathering of in-kind contributions and be engrossed in ritual preparations via text messages. Short text messages (SMS) and phone calls intensified along with ancestral requests for rituals to be carried out. It was in this back and forth communication that the Elu family, on both sides of the border, discussed and planned for further actions with the aim of accelerating the process of receiving the victim money. Mak Domi, in particular, had to travel readily for these rituals. Pak Elu and Mak Domi in West Timor spoke of a sense of urgency whenever it came to helping the family across the border in Oecussi to prepare for rituals or to help with paperwork. When I asked why that was, Mak Domi would say it was because of adat, or customary obligations.14 Pak Elu, on the other hand, would emphasise the particularly violent nature of the victims’ death and the fact that the dead had waited a long time for their mortuary rituals and payments to be fulfilled. Meanwhile, their family in Oecussi would emphasise the martyrdom and heroism of the victims to explain why the state must compensate their loss. They ascribed these different interpretations to the needs and potency of the dead. In turn, the 13 The ‘wife-giving’ group (atoni amaf ) are responsible for organising and providing the resources for this ritual. In exchange, their wife-takers pay the nakaf – final payment of the human value on earth. Once the nakaf has been paid, all debts and obligations between the alliance groups are resolved. One interlocutor explained this as ‘drawing a line in the sand’. The celebration of talaes nitu can be postponed for many years until both wife-givers and wife-takers are ready. 14 Adat (or lisan in Tetun, or alat in Meto) is an expression used throughout Indonesia, and to some extent Timor-Leste, for particular sets of traditions and customary law that govern the way of life of specific groups of people.

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dead’s multiple lives shape the living’s practices and relations with the dead and among each other. Pak Elu’s family in Oecussi eventually received the long-awaited ‘victim money’ in 2011. The payments helped them fulfil delayed mortuary rites, which in turn helped ameliorate the dead’s suffering, as well as provided financial support for the surviving family. Throughout the year in which I oscillated between Oecussi and West Timor, visiting members of Pak Elu’s families in both sites, I observed how they worked together in prioritising the needs of the dead. At the same time, I sensed that there were also different needs of the living that were being fulfilled through their discourses, practices, and politics related to the bad dead. I attend to these in more detail in the following section.

Rearranging and restoring the past in familial relations In Ghosts of Memory, Janet Carsten (2007) reflects on the potentiality that memories of the past may hold in everyday forms of relatedness. She reminds us that familial memory of loss is not only about depletion and pain, but also opens the paths to creative processes of rearrangement of the past, and of regeneration. Memory work in this sense can be seen as a restoration of disjunctures of the past, or may be side-stepped by the vivid assertion of alternative scenarios of social engagement against the perceived restrictions and impositions of normative familial life. (Carsten 2007, 16)

The Elu family showed perseverance as they attended to the needs of their bad dead across national borders and through the protracted process of obtaining the martyr pensions. However, the sense of urgency in their discourses and actions did not seem to be exclusively about performing normative familial and cultural duties, nor was it just about avoiding ancestral wrath. I observed something more to it. If dead bodies animate the politics of the state as much as the living, I argue, we can particularly see this unfolding within familial relations. Conflict-divided families, such as the Elu, experience geographical distance in ways that allow translocal practices to continue on the basis of ongoing bonds. However, unresolved grievances in the past, and particularly in this case the memory of serious crimes and the legacy of mistrust, create disjunctures in present-day relations.

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Through narratives of kinship obligation and ancestral punishment, which familial memory of loss and the ongoing connection between the living and the dead produce, Pak Elu and Mak Domi were able to take part in cross-border family gatherings and rituals for the dead. They gained the opportunity and space to recalibrate and restore relationships strained by past conflict, distance, and time. Family gatherings and rituals carry a social function in the making and remaking of society, a point which Victor Turner importantly made in 1969. Following the incorporation of loss in kinship memory, this regenerative quality of family rituals plays an important role in the restoration of relationships among the living and between the living and the bad dead. There is a sense of communitas in these gatherings that can give family members who are otherwise socially and spatially marginalised ‘a state of equality, comradeship and common humanity, outside of normal social distinctions, roles and hierarchies’ (Olaveson 2001, 93). For Pak Elu and Mak Domi, who live among the East Timorese diaspora and, thereby, experience everyday discrimination and marginalisation by the host population as well as people in the homeland due to their status, the sense of belonging and comradeship – even momentarily – hold special significance (see also Sakti 2017; Damaledo 2018).

Competing for ‘ownership’ of the dead As people and families engage in the micropolitics of loss and repair in their acts of remembering and ‘claiming’ the dead, so does the state on a much broader scale. The latter celebrates the conflict-dead in Timor-Leste through annual commemorations and memorials, as well as symbolic and material forms of recognition. Through formal practices of remembering, the TimorLeste state incorporates the massacre victims in Oecussi into the nation’s new collective memory. Accordingly, their efforts of claiming ownership of the dead overlap with those made by surviving families and communities at grass-roots level. In the events involving formal commemorative practices, these intersections manifest in the ambiguous quality of the dead. Thus, for example, amid the sacred atmosphere formal commemorations induce, transformations occur in local notions of the victims’ bad deaths to include ideas of sacrifice and dignity. It is at these events that families tell their government to pay the dead’s dues. In my visit to the Oecussi highlands in 2015 and, more recently, to the Elu family in West Timor in 2019, as well as in our long-distance conversations in between, I gained an appreciation of how their family network rearranged

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the past and restored different strands of relationships across borders. State martyr pensions indeed provided the necessary financial support for resolving delayed mortuary payments, as well as the Oecussi family’s everyday economic needs more generally. However, this does not mean that the past is resolved entirely. The loss of lives in such brutal fashion becomes incorporated in the collective memory of the group. Ruptures in communal relations thus become evident in cultural barriers preventing future unions through marriages between residents of Bobometo village, particularly families and descendants of the massacre victims, and people coming from the origin village of the perpetrators. The living must honour this barrier, which can only be removed through ritualised practice and upon the dead’s consent. The dead exert their agency in keeping local communities within safe distance from one another. At the same time, I suggest that we can see the establishment of new forms of social practice after massive violence and bad death as not only how communities remember the past, but also how they claim ownership of the potent dead. This chapter opened with a description of a village cemetery in the highlands of Oecussi. The sacred uniformity depicted at that time, however, changed in 2015. This change occurred in parallel with district-level and national government plans to ‘gather’ the dead in official state Garden of Heroes cemeteries (see Kent’s chapter in this volume). In Oecussi, a plot of land by the coast of Pante Makassar, within the Special Economic Zone area, had been prepared for this purpose. The bodies of all martyrs who died in different village massacres and other killings for the nation’s liberation across Oecussi were to be exhumed and reburied here. The state’s relocation plans for the dead bodies thus challenged the aspirations of surviving families and local communities to keep the cemeteries closer to home, in their current locations. In their refusal to exhume the bones of their loved ones, families of the victims solidified their ownership of the bodies by cementing bright coloured tiles on the graves and individualised them with pictures of the deceased or of Jesus Christ. The act of refurbishing graves is a part of East Timorese mortuary tradition and signals the living’s ongoing love and care for the dead (see Figure 6.1). Meanwhile, government plans for placing dead bodies in strategic locations reflect on what Katherine Verdery describes as the ‘symbolic efficacy’ of bodies. She argues that ‘bodies have the advantage of concreteness that nonetheless transcends time, making past immediately present’. The ‘corporeality’ of bodies makes them an important tool of ‘localizing a claim’ as well as to build political communities (Verdery 2000, 27-28). The symbolic meaning is significant to the state as well as to the surviving families.

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Figure 6.1 Revamped Graves

Photo: Victoria K. Sakti

At the entrance of the intended new location of the cemetery, a set of pillars make up an imposing gate that reads ‘Garden of Heroes and Martyrs cemetery’ (Jardim dos Herois e Martire da Patria in Portuguese). Inside this gate and across the scenic surroundings, the plot of land remained empty, overgrown and deserted. A friend of mine commented on how this was just another example of infrastructural projects the government did not thoroughly discuss with the local communities. The graves in the Oecussi highlands no longer lay in uniform shape. This does not imply, though, that the meanings people ascribe to the dead’s martyrdom and sacrifice have lessened. Rather, it hints at the dead’s ambiguous quality as well as the competing ownerships of the dead. The refurbished and personalised gravestones may also hint at experiences of fulfilled cultural and familial obligations that turned the threatening spirits of the bad dead into benevolent ones, while bringing them back into culturally valued practices and memories of relatedness.

Concluding thoughts What does a focus on the dead tell us about the enduring wounds caused by a village massacre and their effects on the lives of surviving family members and the social cultural and political worlds in which they live? This

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chapter shows how people articulate issues related to the violent political dead through spirit idioms and the rhetoric of martyrdom and heroism. The consequences arising from the dead’s multiple identities weave into the intimate spaces of kinship ties, shaping relations between the living and the dead, as well as national narratives of the past. I argue that exploring the complex interplay between these different layers can offer a rich analytical resource for understanding the politics of loss and restoration in the aftermath of massive violence and bad deaths. For the Meto, as across Timor-Leste, obligations to the dead mobilise groups connected through marriage and are traditionally viewed as repayments for life made between marriage-created alliance groups and by the living to the dead. Meto mortuary practices, like other East Timorese societies, emphasise the importance of fulfilling the death payments as they symbolise the family’s ultimate tribute to the dead’s human dignity during her/his lifetime on earth. My ethnographic material shows how this process is complicated by the nature of the massacre victims’ deaths – categorised as bad deaths – and the larger political context that surrounds the myriad unresolved conflicts attached to these bad deaths. The discussion on traditional mortuary practices related to bad deaths points to the ambiguous ways the massacre victims are remembered and perceived. On the one hand, they are seen as civilian victims (kolban) of brutality, whose loss of life must be symbolically replaced (through tahakeb) and financially compensated. On the other hand, they are spoken of and commemorated as heroes (pahlawan, I.) and martyrs, whose deaths liberated the nation. I have discussed how both narratives coexist within the national imagination of contemporary Timor-Leste without cancelling each other out. Families of massacre victims oscillate between the two narratives with relative ease, as both are embedded in the same ‘idiom of reciprocity’ in which ‘whoever suffers to bring something forth must be repaid’ (Traube 2007, 9). The chapter also shows how after mortuary debts are settled, politics over the dead bodies continue. Competing claims over ownership of the bodies, in the form of the Timor-Leste government’s plans to centralise the district’s heroes cemetery, indicate the potency of certain dead bodies over others. Nevertheless, the dead’s symbolic efficacy does not belong to the state exclusively. Rather, local communities also utilise it as a way of establishing what happened in the past and strengthening group identity. Situating bad deaths from a local occurrence in the larger national discourse of resistance results not only in the centralising of collective memories, but also in the understanding of new social forms of commemoration, political hegemony, and exclusion.

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Robben, Antonius C.G.M. 2017. ‘Death and Anthropology: An Introduction’. In Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader, edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben, 2nd ed., 1-16. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Robinson, Geoffrey. 2003. East Timor 1999 Crimes against Humanity. A Report Commissioned by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Dili and Jakarta: HAK Association and ELSAM. Sakti, Victoria Kumala. 2013. ‘“Thinking Too Much”: Tracing Local Patterns of Emotional Distress After Mass Violence in Timor-Leste’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 14 (5): 438-454. https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2013.826733. Sakti, Victoria Kumala. 2017. ‘Im/Mobile Subjects: Identity, Conflict and Emotion Work Among East Timorese Meto Diaspora’. Social Identities 23 (4): 462-477. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1281469. Stepputat, Finn. 2014. ‘Introduction’. In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by Finn Stepputat, 3-11. Human Remains and Violence. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Traube, Elizabeth. 2007. ‘Unpaid Wages: Local Narratives and the Imagination of the Nation’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1): 9-25. Verdery, Katherine. 2000. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and PostSocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press.

About the Author Victoria K. Sakti is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany. She holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, a MA in Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Essex, UK, and a BA in Psychology from Atma Jaya Catholic University, Indonesia. Her doctoral research was a multi-sited ethnography of social trauma and repair in Timor-Leste and Indonesia. She grounds her approach in psychological anthropology, with research interests including emotion, memory, forced migration, social relations, resilience, justice, and reconciliation. Her new research examines the experience of ageing in protracted displacement, within and across borders, among older East Timorese diasporas in Indonesia. Her work has been published in academic journals such as The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology and Social Identities, as well as in interdisciplinary edited volumes.

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Death Across the Borderand the Prospects of Improved People to People Relationships Andrey Damaledo

Abstract The chapter explores the meanings of death among East Timorese who are living in Indonesian West Timor. It particularly focuses on death and transnational relationships, as increasingly East Timorese in West Timor are opting to transfer the deceased across the border to be buried in their home villages in Timor-Leste. At the same time, however, there are other East Timorese who insist on burying the dead permanently in West Timor. This phenomenon, the chapter argues, demonstrates not only the enlivening ties between people and the dead but also the prospects of death rituals for improving relationships between East Timorese divided by violent conflicts, past atrocities, forced displacement, different political allegiances, and nation-state boundaries. Keywords: East Timorese, Indonesia, death, displacement, resettlement, reconciliation

This chapter explores the meanings of death among East Timorese who are living in Indonesian West Timor. Scholars focusing on the socio-political life of East Timorese society have given different explanations of how East Timorese treat and attribute meanings to death. They have pointed out how death involves obligations of social network that extend beyond kinship boundaries (Bovensiepen 2018); that death is essentially part of the life cycle that functions to reaffirm social relations (Bovensiepen 2014); that the dead possess a power to influence the lives of the living (Viegas 2019; Grenfell 2012, 2015; McWilliam 2008, 2011; Bovensiepen 2009; Hicks 2004;

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch07

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Traube 1986); and that the still-living can manipulate the dead for numerous social and political outcomes (Kent and Feijó in this volume). While all of these approaches capture the complex arrangements and multiple meanings of death in the lives of East Timorese in Timor-Leste, this chapter advances an argument for the potency of death in the lives of East Timorese in Indonesian West Timor. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in West Timor between October 2012 and October 2013 and my subsequent intermittent visits to West Timor and Timor-Leste between January 2017 and May 2019, I will focus my analysis on death and transnational relationships, because increasingly East Timorese in West Timor are opting to transfer the deceased across the border to be buried in their home villages.1 At the same time, there are other East Timorese who insist on burying the dead permanently in West Timor. This phenomenon, I argue, demonstrates not only the enlivening ties between the living and the dead but also the prospects of death rituals for improving relationships between East Timorese on different sides of the island of Timor. My argument is informed by the seminal work of anthropologist Robert Hertz and I begin the chapter with a discussion of Hertz’s idea of death as a process of social transformation. I then move on to analyse recent trends in funerals of East Timorese in West Timor and explore how they reflect changing kinship relationships, ethno-linguistic affiliations, and geographical boundaries. The following sections explore the emerging trend of corpse transfer across the border and the politics of death as it unfolds among the former pro-autonomy leaders. The final section of the chapter focuses on death and place-making efforts.

The body, the spirit, and social relationships The way people treat their dead very much depends on the way they think about the body, the spirit, and social relationships. Robert Hertz (1960) introduced this idea in his analysis of funeral rites among the Dayak people in Indonesia. According to Hertz, when a person dies, the deceased’s body, the deceased’s soul, and the bereaved family play changing roles that evoke 1 In West Timor, I visited a total of four camp sites and 19 resettlement areas of different East Timorese groups. In Timor-Leste, I visited East Timorese in Dili, Laga (Baucau), and Laclubar (Manatuto). In these visits I participated in and observed various activities, celebrations, and rituals including three marriages, a birthday, a graduation, three mortuaries and funerals, a youth Christmas gathering, multiple community association meetings, and cultural performance. My research in Timor between 2018 and 2019 was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP19K20546.

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moral and social obligations. In this sense, Hertz argued that death is not exclusively a biological reality but a social affair because it exemplifies some of the key values, beliefs, and ideas of the society (Hertz 1960, 27). To develop his argument, Hertz focused his analysis on the Dayak ritual of double burial, which he divided into the intermediary period and the secondary burial. In the intermediary period, the Dayak will temporarily store or bury the dead body and provide care and respect as if the deceased were still alive. During this period, the Dayak also believe that the spirit of the deceased remains near the corpse and watches over the still-living family members. The still-living have to perform rituals to care for the corpse and the spirit that often set the family apart from society. They wear distinctive clothes, become subject to a series of taboos, and are often prohibited from leaving their homes (1960, 38). Hertz noted that the intermediary period ends when the corpse has fully decomposed and the bones have dried. This will then be followed by the second and final burial ceremony. In contrast to the intermediary period, the secondary burial serves to initiate the dead person into the realm of the ancestors. If the intermediary period represents a transition, the secondary burial signifies a new journey and a transformation of a person’s social identity, and therefore a kind of rebirth in the afterlife. The transformation occurs not only in the deceased but also in the spirit and in the still-living. In this period, the spirit of the deceased is no longer perceived as a threat to the still-living. And the stillliving can resume their social routines and reintegrate into the society. As Hertz (1960, 86) put it: For the collective consciousness death is in normal circumstances a temporary exclusion of the individual from human society. This exclusion effects his passage from the visible society of the living into the invisible society of the dead. Mourning, at its origin, is the necessary participation of the living in the mortuary state of their relative, and lasts as long as this state itself. In the final analysis, death as a social phenomenon consists in a dual and painful process of mental disintegration and synthesis. It is only when this process is completed that society, its peace recovered, can triumph over death.

From Hertz’s analysis we can learn that death is not an instantaneous event but a social process of transformation. From the way people care for the corpse, perform rituals to appease the spirit, and engage in rituals to conclude the period of mourning, death has the potency to transform the social identity of the deceased as well as the still-living. It is this process of

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transformation that I adopt as my analytical framework in the following discussion of death events among East Timorese in West Timor.

Death and the transformation of kinship As a social phenomenon, death has brought transformation to the lives of East Timorese in West Timor in many ways. First and foremost, death has become a venue for people to expand their kinship relationships. In her study of the Idate people in the East Timorese district of Manatuto, Bovensiepen (2018) has pointed out how death involves obligations of social networks that extend beyond kinship boundaries. For East Timorese in West Timor, such extension has moved beyond kinship to ethno-linguistic boundaries. This was made evident to me when, in mid-2013, I joined an East Timorese community in Naibonat village to offer condolences to one of their members who had just passed away. Most East Timorese in Naibonat were part of the Indonesian military or the pro-Indonesia militia groups during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. In the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the East Timor referendum in August 1999, they joined the Indonesian military evacuation and fled to the neighbouring half of the island, Indonesian West Timor. Upon their arrival, they were directed into temporary shelters built around the army compound in Naibonat village. Most of them have remained there ever since and currently there are more than 5,000 East Timorese living in the village. The departed man, a retired army personnel, was originally a Baikenu speaker from the Oecussi enclave of Timor-Leste. He was a former border patrol officer during the late Portuguese colonial. Following the Indonesian occupation, he was recruited into the Indonesian military and stationed in Manatuto region throughout his career. During my fieldwork I became aware that when an East Timorese in West Timor dies, it usually takes two to three days of delay before the burial. During the delay, the corpse is dressed in suits (or for a woman, formal kebaya dress with tais sarong) and laid on a decorated bed frame. The corpse is often placed in the living room at the house of the deceased where family, friends, and close relatives will sit by its side, day and night, and greet the guests who come to offer their condolences. In the nighttime, people will play guitars and sing songs that are mostly of a religious nature to comfort the mourners. This is often accompanied by other forms of entertainment such as card, dice, and board games, as people stay late into the night.

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In Naibonat, if those inside the house consist of mainly family members, outside the house funeral participants involve a more mixed assortment of people. At the funeral of the retired army personnel I attended, the person in charge of spreading the news of the death and organising the construction of semi-permanent tarpaulin marquees to accommodate guests was a Makasae speaker from the Baguia region of Baucau. The person in charge of mobilising the youth to clean up the surrounding area was a Fataluku speaker from Lautem. During the funeral, the person who addressed the guests on behalf of the family was a Waima’a speaker from Vemansse. The person responsible for the gravesite was another Makasae speaker from Quelicai. And the people who carried the coffin to the gravesite were Galolen speakers from Manantuto. As the case of this funeral demonstrates, death has led to a more expansive understanding of kinship obligations among East Timorese living in West Timor. The Galolen speakers, for example, had the obligation to carry the coffin because they recognised the long military service of the departed man in Manatuto during the Indonesian occupation. The Makasae speakers drew on their military comradeship with the deceased to build the marquees as well as organising the gravesite. In some cases, this pattern has been reproduced to mediate new alliance with the West Timorese. For instance, in Atambua, near the border with East Timor, I have witnessed how some West Timorese recognised their obligation to provide coffins for East Timorese funerals (paying in instalments without interest whenever money available) because their ancestors originally came from East Timor in the distant past.

Transporting the dead across the border Death among East Timorese in West Timor does not only influence social relationships within the diaspora communities. It also resonates deeply across the border among East Timorese in Timor-Leste. That is why people are increasingly opting to transport the newly dead across the border to be buried in Timor-Leste. The practice of transporting the dead began in 2004 when a private transport company, Timor Travel, modified a minibus that had previously carried passengers into a minivan to carry dead bodies. The company charged IDR1.5 million (approx. USD107) to carry a dead body in a coffin, accompanied by a maximum of eight family members, from Kupang to the border. This service was popular because it provided an opportunity for East Timorese in West Timor to perform funerary ritual

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in their home village in Timor-Leste. In the ensuing years, with demand for the service increasing, the public hospital in Kupang District extended their pre-existing ambulance service to deliver deceased East Timorese to the border. The hospital ambulance carries fewer passengers but is more affordable than Timor Travel because it only asks people to pay for fuel. Sometimes it even offers a free service. Indonesian political parties that provide free ambulance services have also offered similar services to the East Timorese.2 The association of East Timorese community in Indonesia (UNTAS) followed the political parties and provided their own ambulance service.3 One issue for families, however, is that these ambulance services only deliver the dead body to the border. Families from Timor-Leste need to provide their own transport to get the dead body from the border to their home village. Another option to transport the dead body is by renting a private pick-up truck. This is more expensive compared to the ambulance service, but it can take the dead body directly across the border to a family’s home village in Timor-Leste. Currently, it costs around IDR7 million (approx. USD511) for an inclusive service that covers the driver’s meal, fuel and payments at the border. As more options become available, more East Timorese choose to transport their dead across the border rather than burying them in West Timor. Regardless of which method of transport is chosen, it usually takes one to two days of coordination and preparation of administration requirements involving families from both sides of the border before they can transfer the dead body. I witnessed this process when, in August 2018, I visited East Timorese in Kupang who were preparing to send three dead bodies to East Timor. ‘Arranging transport for the dead’ an elder in Kupang explained, ‘is not necessarily about delivering a corpse across the border. It is a process of restoring family unity.’4 The process starts with at least one family member from Timor-Leste travelling to West Timor to act as a representative for 2 In Indonesia, political parties have recently initiated an ambulance service for the community. But without paramedics and installed medical equipment, this service is not about emergency medical response and treatment. Rather, it is merely about transporting people to the nearest medical facilities. 3 Uni Timor Asuwain/UNTAS was originally an East Timorese political organisation formed to reject the results of the referendum. Without the support of the Indonesian government, UNTAS’s political activism faded quickly but remained extant until late 2000. Since then, UNTAS has gone through ongoing internal divisions and has renewed its focus on social and welfare issues affecting East Timorese in Indonesia (see Damaledo 2018). 4 Author’s interview, Naibonat village, August 2018.

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the transport. Simultaneously, the family in West Timor will prepare three letters – one for the village government where the deceased resides, one for the local Catholic Church, and another one for the Consulate General of Timor-Leste in West Timor, informing them of the family’s intention to transport the dead across the border. Essentially, the letter should outline the details of the representative from Timor-Leste and a copy of his/her valid passport should be attached. After the letters are written, families on both sides of the border will work on the transport arrangements. Families in the east will prepare people and vehicles that will wait at the border. Those in the west will initially try to get the hospital ambulance service. If it is not available, they will generally look for a private pick-up truck. Arriving at their home village, both families will share their cultural responsibilities to conduct a proper funeral ritual to reunite the dead with the ancestors. This process can take as little as a few days or up to two weeks, depending on the family. Transporting the newly dead facilitates families from both sides of the border to set aside their political differences and work together. However, the test of family unity commonly comes towards the end of the funeral process when a large crowd from various backgrounds attends the ceremony. As an elder in Kupang further recalled: Some people say, ‘Why would we bury the body here if they have been siding with and living in Indonesia throughout their life?’ or ‘we have no place for them here after they decided to move to Indonesia.’ When we are taking the dead person’s stone into the ancestral house, [some people say] ‘we have no more stone for them’ or ‘the stone had actually been removed to Indonesia [and that’s where the dead should be buried].’5

Despite such potentially ostracising comments, many East Timorese have worked together to transport their loved ones who passed away in West Timor to be properly buried in Timor-Leste. This is another illustration of the potency of death to transform the relationships between East Timorese in West Timor and Timor-Leste. In this case, death provides an opportunity for family members to coordinate and share their f inancial resources. Different political allegiances and nation-state geographical boundaries that divided the family in the first place might persist. But transporting the dead is a common family project that navigates these differences. This is further exemplified in the funeral when the family reunites for mutual 5

Author’s interview, Naibonat village, August 2018.

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obligations. Essentially, for East Timorese involved in these processes, death demonstrates how family triumphs over politics.

Temporary burial and transition The process of transporting the dead has consequences in terms of reuniting East Timorese families divided by nation-state boundaries and political allegiances. In doing so, it also illustrates how the dead body influences the formation of social relationships between the family and the society. The way the family stand together in the face of potential ostracisation from society shows that the social and political identity of the dead remains fully intact as long as the body is fully intact. Yet, as I now discuss, it is a completely different case if the dead has undergone a transition period or a temporary burial. In some of these cases, the dead are considered ‘not fully dead’. In May 2019, I visited East Timorese communities in Baucau district and it was interesting to hear that not only were people aware of recent death events among their families in West Timor, but they had, in one way or another, paid their contribution to the funeral ceremonies. People in Baucau also recognised that the burial of their dead family member in West Timor was not final. ‘They are just temporarily buried there’, one claimed. This statement is reminiscent of another death event I attended among the Baucau people in Kupang in 2013. The departed man was a Makasae speaker in his mid-forties from Quelicai area of East Timor district of Baucau. As soon as he passed away, a Quelicai elder from the community informed the families in Quelicai and discussed the funeral processes. Families in Quelicai demanded a proper homecoming and burial in Quelicai because the deceased was the oldest son in the family. The wife, however, insisted that her husband should be buried in Naibonat, West Timor, because his youngest son, who passed away few years back, had been buried there and therefore he had to be with his son. It was not until the second night that families on both sides of the border reached consensus on the final resting place of the deceased. ‘We finally agreed with the family in Quelicai,’ the elder said, explaining that ‘the corpse is not yet dead, he is just sick.’ Noticing my confusion, the elder later explained that the man had physically lost his life but socially he was not yet dead because he was buried in West Timor. This is what Hertz (1960, 81) was hinting at when he said that ‘the brute fact of physical death is not enough to consummate death in people’s minds: the image of the recently

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deceased is still part of the system of things of this world, and loses itself from them only gradually by a series of internal partings’. The next day, they buried the man next to his son in a public cemetery in Naibonat village. After the funeral I was informed that many East Timorese buried in Naibonat public cemetery were not yet dead. The East Timorese from Baucau recognised the recently deceased as still part of the living world and they symbolically represented this in their parallel ritual speech by saying, ‘we give them a spoon they receive, we give them a plate they receive.’ The speech signifies that the deceased are living beings with agency to respond to the still-living and an ability to undertake daily routines such as eating. In other words, East Timorese buried in West Timor were temporarily laid to rest and they will ultimately be made dead when they have been transferred to their home village in Timor-Leste. The temporary burial of East Timorese in West Timor has two main features that influence social relationships between East Timorese on both sides of the border. Firstly, similar to the process of delivering the dead discussed in the previous section is the capacity of these burials to reconnect families and repair rituals and cultural obligations that have been disrupted due to different political allegiances, or displacement and resettlement in Indonesia. ‘When someone dies and is buried in West Timor,’ an elder explains, ‘families on both sides [of Timor Island] hold the responsibility to organise the funeral until the final reunion with the ancestors.’ These cultural obligations depend on the social and political significance of the deceased. At the very least, a representative from the family in Timor-Leste will come to attend the funeral. The person will usually stay for another couple of days after the burial before returning home carrying the pillow used to hold the corpse when it laid on the platform during the mourning period, or a personal item belonging to the deceased. In the ensuing months, the family from Timor-Leste is also required to contribute to a series of gatherings organised by the family in West Timor. Depending on the family, after the funerals East Timorese are often involved in multiple rituals to remember the dead including Aifunan Moruk (usually one week after the funeral), Aifunan Midar (usually one week the Aifunan Moruk), the fortieth day,6 Hasai Metan Ki’ik (usually three months after the funeral), and Hasai 6 The fortieth day gathering is often related to the Ascension Day in Christianity, where Christ ascended to heaven on the fortieth day after his resurrection. In the gathering, the mourning family will carry flowers and candles to the church to be blessed by the priest in the Eucharist service. After the service, the family will take the consecrated flowers and candles to the grave sites. The gathering concludes when the family return home for eating and drinking in commensality.

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Metan Boot (usually six months after the funeral). Finally, after a year, the Kore Metan ritual to end the mourning period will be performed, again involving families from both sides of the border. If the first feature of East Timorese temporary burial reconnects the family through shared obligations, the second feature highlights the transformation of their social identity. Through the cultural category of ‘not fully dead’, East Timorese demonstrate that temporary burial in West Timor is a transitory stage that is part of a sequential journey to the realm of the ancestors. During this transition, the family will wait until the body has decayed before they dig the grave. Of more than five hundred East Timorese graves in Naibonat, for example, the remains of around 50 bodies have been excavated and taken home to be buried in Timor-Leste. The trunk of a banana tree will be buried to replace the remains. After the excavation, people will clean the bones before they are put into a small coffin. The changing form of the body from flesh to bones and the process of cleansing the bones represent the purification process that eventually transforms the identity of the dead. As an elder whose role is to organise bone excavation in Naibonat explains, ‘When people decide to dig up the bones of a [deceased] family [member] and take them home, people in East Timor no longer recognise them as pro-Indonesia. No. These are the bones of our family.’ It appears that temporary burial and the decomposition of flesh into bones transforms the social identity of the dead from past political affiliation with Indonesia to future affiliation with the ancestors, and therefore facilitates a renewed relationship between the still-living East Timorese in West Timor and Timor-Leste. The duration of temporary burial depends on discussions amongst the still-living about the next funeral ritual. The fact that many East Timorese in West Timor choose a basic soil-covered grave with a simple wooden cross as a marker, rather than raised concrete slabs and bases for monuments covered by polished tiles or attractive religious symbols, suggests that there are more secondary burials in Timor-Leste to come.

Powerful dead and the still-living If some East Timorese focus on transporting the corpse across the border or burying the dead temporarily in West Timor, others decide to bury their dead permanently in West Timor. This is particularly evident when it comes to the deaths of prominent leaders, including leaders of former pro-Indonesian militia groups. For example, the last serving Governor of East Timor during

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Figure 7.1 East Timorese in West Timor carrying bones of family member for reburial in Atabae, Timor-Leste

Photo: Anato Moreira

the Indonesian occupation, Abilio Soares, was buried in the Indonesian Garden of Heroes cemetery in Kupang. Abilio was a controversial East Timorese leader known in Timor-Leste for his legacy in erecting the statue of Cristo Rei at the end of the Fatumaca peninsula in Dili, but also for his suspected role in the militia groups’ violence prior to and after the 1999 referendum. In 2002, the Indonesian Ad Hoc Human Rights Court found him guilty of committing human rights violations in East Timor and sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment. His appeal was rejected by the High Court a year later and he was sent to the Cipinang prison in Jakarta. Having served a year in the prison, Abilio was released in November 2004 after his judicial review was accepted by the Indonesian Supreme Court. He returned to West Timor and passed away in June 2007 after battling colon cancer for two years. His obituary, narrated by the former spokesperson of the pro-autonomy militia group, began: The Indonesian military identified him as a traitor, who in 1980 deserved gruesome torture as one of his toes was pressed with a weighed-in chair because of his efforts to prevent the execution of former Falintil guerrilla fighters who surrendered by recruiting them to be part the Department of Public Works where he was the Head at that time. The Indonesian

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government might also recognise him as a violator of East Timorese human rights that deserved punishment and imprisonment. (Araujo 2007)

From the Indonesian government-imposed labels and descriptions of suffering that portray Abilio as victim in the East Timorese conflict, the account shifts to the way East Timorese in Indonesia perceive Abilio as their hero, and how Abilio’s selfless undertakings have impacted the lives of many East Timorese. The obituary continues: For us, the East Timorese in Indonesia, in Timor-Leste, and in overseas, Abilio has always been our hero, our father, our teacher and our guardian angel. Abilio saved many Fretilin supporters who were captured by and/ or surrendered to the army. Knowing that these people were to be killed, Abilio, in his role as the Head of the Department of Public Works in East Timor between 1980 and 1990, immediately recruited them as workers in his department and saved them. He has also risked his life defending many pro-Indonesia East Timorese who were accused by the army as double agents (kepala dua) and killed. In 1992, as the Governor of East Timor, Abilio took an unpopular policy and invited Bishop Belo of Dili to come with him to meet President Soeharto and demanded the status of special autonomy for East Timor, a request that was categorically denied. Abilio also tried develop the economy and created more jobs for East Timorese by opening the salt industry in Manatuto, as well as the mineral water and textile industry in Dili. Between 1989 and 1999, as the conflict in East Timor intensified, Abilio always tried to reconcile the pro-Independence supporters and pro-Integration supporters. His official residence has been the place where these two opposing parties met and negotiated. (Araujo 2007)

Having reconstructed the dead’s life experience, the author provides his personal testimony, drawing on his personal experience of working with Abilio: As Abilio’s official personal interpreter between 1997 and 1999 I accompanied Abilio in his most private meetings with foreign ambassadors and international dignitaries. I can testify that Abilio never made any complaints about Indonesia [and pro-Independence East Timorese] to the foreigners. One thing he always asked the diplomats, was to help East Timor avoid at referendum that would potentially bring about a civil war. (Araujo 2007)

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Araujo’s memorial to Abilio Soares moves from the outsider’s perspective to the insider’s view; it shifts from the past to the present and from the collective to the personal. The narrative effectively reconstructs the dead’s past experience to highlight the themes of pain, suffering, sacrifice, and selflessness. These themes resonate with the lives of many East Timorese on both sides of the border who feel themselves to be victims of the conflict. The transnational relevance of the narrative is also exemplified by the overarching claims that Abilio, throughout his life, had saved the lives of many pro-Independence East Timorese and did his best to prevent East Timorese from killing each other. Although Abilio had served a year in Cipinang prison for human rights violations in East Timor, the still-living developed a narrative that transformed his identity from a villain to a hero, assigning him a political importance that they expect to be recognised not only among East Timorese in Indonesia but also in Timor-Leste. Two years after Abilio’s death, another prominent East Timorese leader, João Tavares, the former Bupati of Bobonaro District, who was also recognised as the top leader of all the militia groups, passed away and was buried in the Garden of Heroes cemetery in Atambua. As in the case of Abilio Soares, themes of sacrifice and solidarity were echoed during the funeral to justify the dead’s heroic deeds. Emphasis was placed on his long service as the Bupati of Bobonaro district, his determination in defending Indonesia’s national interest during the occupation, his leadership role in managing different pro-Autonomy militia groups and political factions during the lead-up to the referendum, the sacrifice he made by moving to Indonesia after the referendum and, finally, his insistence on living among his fellow East Timorese on the outskirts of the border town of Atambua (Wibisono 2009). The way the still-living recount the life histories of the dead has transformed the political identities of the dead. In late December 2018, for instance, Prabowo Subianto, former commander of Indonesia’s Special Forces with long military service in East Timor, visited the grave site of João Tavares during his campaign for the Indonesian presidential elections, and reiterated his exemplary struggles to attract sympathy from potential East Timorese voters.7 Furthermore, being buried permanently in the Indonesian Garden of Heroes cemetery demonstrates that these leaders’ struggles have been properly recognised. The veneration of the former East Timorese pro-Indonesia leaders effectively changed the identity of the dead from villains to heroes. Themes 7

Prabowo Subianto also attended the funeral of Abilio Soares in Kupang in 2007.

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of sacrifice, suffering, service, and solidarity were used to justify their final resting place in the Indonesian Garden of Heroes. Politically, this veneration reinforces Indonesian appreciation of the East Timorese who struggled to support Indonesia during the occupation of East Timor, something many East Timorese currently living in West Timor have always longed for. Socially, and particularly among the East Timorese in West Timor who followed these leaders, the permanent burial of these leaders embodies a social belonging to West Timor. As many East Timorese said to me, ‘our leaders’ grave sites here [in West Timor] symbolically represent our new social identity. I can now stay here, die here and be buried here too.’ This does not mean that these dead leaders have agency to bless their followers who will bury their loved ones in West Timor. Nor do they have the power to inflict harm on those who decide to transport their dead and bury them in their home village in Timor-Leste. The political and social potency of these dead leaders is symbolic and its efficacy depends on the way in which the still-living manipulate it.

Permanent burial and resettlement Of course, with complex East Timorese cultural and political groupings, not all East Timorese will automatically follow the path of their leaders. East Timorese permanent grave sites are not as numerous as temporary grave sites. However, the above discussion also suggests that permanent burial in West Timor could lead to subsequent claims for belonging, and eventually permanent resettlement. In this final section, let me provide an example of an East Timorese group in Belu District who decided to stay there partly because they found out that their elders have been permanently buried there. In mid-September 1999, more than two hundred households of East Timorese from Holarua area of Ainaro District arrived in West Timor and immediately sheltered in refugee camps in the Sukabitetek and Naitimu area of West Tasifeto, around 30 kilometres southwest of Atambua. After staying in the refugee camps for nearly four years, in 2003, they attempted to find land to settle. The locals informed them that a couple of ‘Manufahi [East Timorese] elders’ had lived in the area in the past but that they had died and were buried there. The group finally found the grave sites and used them to claim their relationship to the area. The locals agreed to the claim but only gifted the land for a period of 10 years. When I visited the area in 2013, the 50 East Timorese households living in the area had nearly finished the term of their stay. When I asked them what they would do at

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the end of this period, one of their senior members responded, ‘We also have our predecessors who lived, died and were buried here. We belong here.’ The permanent grave sites serve as an initial marker for East Timorese to claim their relationship to the land, which led to the change in the initial agreement with the locals from a limited period to an unlimited period of stay. Only one condition remains: the East Timorese should never sell the land to other people. As it turns out, at the time of writing, the East Timorese remain in the area.8 In addition to place-making, the permanent burial of East Timorese in West Timor has created new sites for family reunion. This is particularly evident on All Souls’ Day, when East Timorese from Timor-Leste come to visit the grave sites of their loved ones in West Timor. In other instances, East Timorese who visit West Timor for other purposes often try to make time to pay a visit to the grave sites.

Conclusion The chapter has explored the multiple meanings assigned to the dead among East Timorese in West Timor. I have made the case that death, in many ways, has the potency to transform the social and political relationships of the still-living. In particular, death can potentially reunite East Timorese families that have been separated by violent conflicts, nation-state boundaries, and different political allegiances. In September 2019, the Timor-Leste government implemented a visa-free policy for Indonesian citizens entering the country. This policy allows East Timorese in West Timor to visit Timor-Leste for funeral rituals, fulfil their social obligations, and avoid angering the ancestors’ spirits. But it is worth noting that because of their past atrocities there are many East Timorese in West Timor who are reluctant to return and physically participate in the funeral of their families in Timor-Leste. It remains to be seen how increasing access and mobility to cross the border influences East Timorese relationships in the future. But if we are guided by the way they have worked together to transport the dead and ensure they are properly buried in Timor-Leste, one thing is likely to remain for the East Timorese on both sides of the border: when it comes to death, family trumps politics.

8 For detail ethnographic accounts on this people and other East Timorese in West Timor, see Damaledo 2018.

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References Araujo, Basilio. 2007. ‘Telah Pergi Pahlawanku Abilio Jose Osório Soares’. Timor Express, 27 June 2007. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2009. ‘Spiritual Landscapes of Life and Death in the Central Highlands of East Timor’. Anthropological Forum 19 (3): 323-338. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014. ‘Paying for the Dead: On the Politics of Death in Independent Timor-Leste’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15 (2): 103-122. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2018. ‘Death and Separation in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste’. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Death edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben, 59-70. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Damaledo, Andrey. 2018. Divided Loyalties: Displacement, Belonging and Citizenship among East Timorese in West Timor. Canberra: ANU Press. Grenfell, Damian. 2012. ‘Remembering the Dead from the Customary to the Modern in Timor-Leste’. Local Global 11: 86-108. Grenfell, Damian. 2015. ‘Of Time and History: The Dead of War, Memory and the National Imaginary in Timor-Leste’. Communication, Politics and Culture 48 (3): 16-28. Hertz, Robert. 1960. Death and the Right Hand. Translated by R. Needham and C. Needham. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Hicks, David. 2004. Tetum Ghosts and Kin: Fertility and Gender in East Timor. 2nd ed. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. McWilliam, Andrew. 2008. ‘Fataluku Healing and Cultural Resilience in East Timor’. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 73 (2): 217-240. McWilliam, Andrew. 2011. ‘Fataluku Living Landscapes’. In Land and Life in TimorLeste: Ethnographic Essays, edited by Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth Traube, 61-86. Canberra: ANU E Press. Traube, Elizabeth. 1986. Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual Exchange among the Mambai of East Timor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Viegas, Susana. 2019. ‘The Co-presence of Ancestors and Their Reburials among the Fataluku (Timor-Leste)’. Indonesia 107 (April): 55-74. Wibisono, Kunto. 2009. ‘Mantan Panglima Pejuang Integrasi Timtim Meniggal Dunia’. Antara, 9 June 2009.

Interviews Interview with East Timorese Community Elder. Naibonat Village, West Timor, August 2018. Various interviews with East Timorese community in Sukabitetek and Naitimu. West Timor, September 2013.

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About the Author Andrey Damaledo is a Lecturer at the Graduate Program of Theology at Artha Wacana Christian University in Indonesian West Timor and Affiliated Assistant Professor at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) at Kyoto University, Japan. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from The Australian National University (2016) and an MA in Advanced Development Studies from the University of Queensland (2009), both as an Australian Award scholar. He was the recipient of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Allison Sudradjat Prize. He was also awarded the Ann Bates Prize 2017 for producing the most outstanding PhD thesis on Indonesian studies at ANU. He is the author of Divided Loyalties: Displacement, Belonging and Citizenship among East Timorese in West Timor (ANU Press 2018). His research focuses on migration, conflict and reconciliation, border issues, development planning and public policy. He is now embarking on a new research on Indonesian migrants in Timor-Leste.

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Working for the Living and the Dead Challenges Associated with Personal Identification from Skeletal Remains in Timor-Leste Soren Blau Abstract Forensic science and medicine play a critical role in human identification, with the underlying premise being that ‘the truth’ can be empirically and objectively obtained. This chapter explores some of the approaches to exhumation and identification undertaken in Timor-Leste and discusses some of the complexities associated with scientific reason and the notion of the construction of ‘forensic truth’. The difficulty of establishing personal identification from skeletal remains in Timor-Leste is discussed in the context of large numbers of missing persons, the fact that atrocities took place in multiple locations over a 24-year period, and the fact that there is limited local forensic capacity. In addition, the ways in which the process of identification is understood is discussed in light of different notions of ‘truth’, highlighting the political, social, and ethical complexities at play. Keywords: human identification, skeletal remains, forensic science and medicine, exhumations, mass graves, missing persons

[F]orensic knowledge is not simply making an ‘objective’ contribution to an array of practices upon which humanitarianism is predicated, but is also, and sometimes unwittingly, making powerful and unpredictable incursions into social and political life. – Moon 2013, 151 Are two objects ‘the same’ or ‘different’? That depends on your frame of reference. – Cole 2009, 242

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch08

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Introduction: human identification and the role of forensic science and medicine The identification of a deceased person involves attributing a correct name to the body. Individual identification is important not only because it contributes to restoring some dignity to the dead, but also because it is usually required by surviving family and friends (the living) to initiate mourning and traditional death rituals, and ultimately to facilitate acceptance of the loss. In many contexts, formal identification is also a legal obligation necessary to facilitate, for example, settlement of estate and/or inheritance, or the right of the remaining partner to re-marry. Identification may also be required to aid in effective investigation of the death, including prosecution. Forensic science and medicine play a critical role in human identification. The application of scientific and medical knowledge and methodology to the resolution of legal problems is based on the premise that the truth can (sometimes) be empirically and objectively obtained. For this reason, forensic science and medicine have played a pivotal role not only in the prosecution of individuals who commit crimes (Moon 2014; Tuller 2015; Klinker 2009; O‘Brien 2010) but also in the identification of the dead in a range of contexts including long-term missing persons, war dead, following disasters, human rights investigations (Kirschner 1994), and individuals of historic interest (Blau 2020). The process of how, exactly, human identification is undertaken depends on both the context of the death and the condition and preservation of the body. While most recently deceased individuals will be visually identifiable, in cases where the integrity of the body is disrupted (for example, as a result of fire, an accidental or intentional traumatic event, or simply the fact that the individual is not located for a long period of time and is therefore skeletonised), other scientific methods of identification may be required (Blau 2020). Forensic science and medicine, including forensic anthropology, have typically played a prominent role in the identification process when the deceased person is in an advanced state of decomposition (whether as a result of intentional or accidental actions), the premise being that ‘bones don’t lie’ (Guntzel 2004). While forensic activities (including exhumations and the analysis of human remains by a range of experts) seek to construct a ‘forensic truth’, it is increasingly understood that the impact of forensic activities and the extent to which results are accepted is contingent on the context in which the work is undertaken, and the findings presented. Consequently, there are different perceptions of science both by international courts (Ziegelbecker 2017) and by families of the missing,

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most notably due to different frames of reference and therefore how people understand and establish the ‘truth’ (Blau et al. 2011). In addition, while the work performed by forensic and medical experts is technical and scientific, the results often have strong political consequences (Doretti and Burrell 2007). Thus, the ways in which the results of forensic science and medicine are obtained and an identification supported will depend on how they are embedded in the wider historical, social and political context (Moon 2013; Ziegelbecker 2017). This chapter examines some of the approaches to exhumation and human identification undertaken in Timor-Leste. Forensic medical practitioners assume that identification of a deceased person, once confirmed scientifically, is absolute. However, as this chapter demonstrates, the complexities associated with the processes and the way the findings are understood and accepted by families of the missing highlight the importance of taking into account the context in which identification is requested (if at all) and undertaken. In the case of Timor-Leste, large numbers of missing persons, a lack of resources and expertise in forensic practice, and an animist belief system all contribute to the complexities associated with seeking to construct a ‘forensic truth’.

The dead in Timor-Leste: exhumations and identifications During the 24 years of Indonesian occupation (1975-1999), tens of thousands of people went missing or were among the disappeared whose fate remains unknown. It is estimated that 102,8001 individuals, the majority of whom were civilians, were killed or died as a result of starvation, displacement, interpersonal fighting in the mountains, arrest by Indonesian forces, or mass violence such as massacres (CAVR 2005). In many countries that have experienced conflict, when peace is re-established and democratic processes put in place, exhumation and identification of the deceased typically play an important role in addressing humanitarian concerns and the needs of justice (Stover et al. 2003; O‘Brien 2010; Ferrándiz and Robben 2015; Jerez-Farran and Amago 2010). In the case of Timor-Leste, when independence was gained in May 2002, families began to want answers to questions regarding the fate of their loved ones. Not surprisingly, the ability to locate the bodies of

1 Other f igures appear in the literature – see for example Barbedo de Magalhães 1996; Kleemeyer 1997; Saul 2001).

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the missing was and continues to be seen by many Timorese families as important (Robins 2010, 52). From the time the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) was established on 25 October 1999, and following independence in May 2002, a number of mechanisms were put in place to investigate the issues of disappeared persons, massacres, and identifying the locations of possible mass graves. These included the Serious Crimes Unit (SCU); the Commission for Reception Truth and Reconciliation, (referred to by its Portuguese acronym, CAVR); and the Indonesia-Timor Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF), as well as work undertaken by the Timor Leste Defence Force, an international forensic team (Blau and Fondebrider, 2010), and the work of individuals. The Serious Crimes Investigation Team (SCIT) was established by the United Nations (UN) in 2006 (it was previously the Serious Crimes Unit, which was established in June 2000 and operated until May 2005). The SCIT had a forensic team which was tasked with dealing with deaths that occurred between 1 January and 25 October 1999, following the vote for independence (‘Timor Massacre Victims Exhumed,’ BBC, 12 January 2008; Eckhard 2000; Reiger and Wierda 2006). The SCIT undertook over 250 exhumations (UNMIT 2008; UNTAET 2002). The details regarding exactly how (if at all) identifications were achieved are unknown. Similarly, the Indonesia-Timor Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF), which ran from August 2005 to July 2008, focused on establishing the truth about the various acts of violence leading up to and immediately following the Popular Consultation in East Timor in 1999. The CTF did not undertake any physical exhumations, but as part of its document review it made reference to three exhumations undertaken in Nusa Tenggara Timor to recover the bodies of victims of alleged mass murder in Suai, as described in the Report of the Commission of Inquiry (KPP HAM) appointed by the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM). There is, however, little detail available regarding the extent of these operations and what happened in terms of identification of the deceased (Mangkoedilaga et al. 2008). The CTF made no recommendations to pursue exhumation as part of legal or humanitarian processes (Hirst 2009). The CAVR ran from July 2001 until the completion of the final report in November 2005. The CAVR was mandated to establish the truth regarding human rights violations in Timor-Leste between 1974 and October 1999. However, unlike many truth commissions, where exhumations are a significant aspect of the work (Hayner 2013), the CAVR did not actively request exhumations. The Commission focused on attempting to obtain an accurate

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number of deceased through a retrospective mortality survey (involving a random survey of Timorese households to investigate the numbers of individuals who died during the Commission’s mandate period) as well as developing a graveyard census database (which involved the collection of data obtained from public cemeteries in Timor-Leste: Silva and Ball 2006). There was also a widespread exhumation programme conducted by the Timor Leste Defence Force (F-FDTL) to retrieve the bodies of those who died fighting during the Indonesian occupation. For example, in August 2009, the remains of 443 individuals (referred to as ‘martyrs’) were buried at the Garden of Heroes cemetery at Metinaro, east of Dili (‘Veterans’ 2009; Leach 2009). Although not a formal mechanism, between 2008 and 2009 a series of exhumations at Hera and Tibar were undertaken by the International Forensic Team (IFT)2 as part of an Australian Government-funded capacity building programme3 for police and hospital mortuary staff in aspects of human identification. Following a significant amount of investigative work by the IFT and the Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste (PNTL), 20 single clandestine graves were located at Hera with 16 of the individuals being positively identified (Blau and Fondebrider 2010). In addition, a series of mass graves were located at Tibar. Sadly, none of the individuals recovered from these graves have, to date, been identified. While the majority of exhumations have been either state-sponsored or undertaken by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), there have also been cases of individuals undertaking exhumations. For example, the Resistance leader and parliamentarian Cornelius Gama (known as ‘L7’) founded the Sagrada Familia which has been very active in exhuming hundreds of bodies of Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor (FALINTIL) fighters who were killed and buried in the jungle while under his command (Myrttinen 2014). These remains are placed in ossuaries, which have been constructed in all district capitals, but with no formal identification (Kinsella and Blau 2013; see also Kent in this volume). The politics associated with human identification are aptly highlighted by the decision in many contexts to focus efforts and resources on identifying individuals of historical and/or political importance, rather than investing 2 The author of this chapter was a co-director of the International Forensic Team (IFT) which was formed through collaboration between the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM), a statutory body created by the VIFM Act (1985) in the state of Victoria in Australia, and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, Equipo Argentino de Anthropologia Forense (EAAF), a non-governmental organisation existing under the laws of the Republic of Argentina. 3 The views in this article do not reflect those of the Australian Government.

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in identifying the thousands (often hundreds of thousands) of missing individuals (Blau 2020). In Timor-Leste, significant attention has been given to attempting to locate and identify the remains of Nicolau dos Reis Labato, Timor-Leste’s first prime minister, who was killed (and allegedly beheaded) by Indonesian military following their invasion of Timor-Leste in 1975. In December 2003, human skeletal remains were discovered by workmen digging in the yard of the then East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and thought to be those of Nicolau Lobato because there was no associated skull (Jolliffe 2004). Various forensic tests ordered by the Timorese government were undertaken on the poorly preserved skeletal remains (Murdoch 2009; Murdoch 2010; Everingham 2010). While there is continued interest in locating and identifying the remains of Lobato (Barker 2018), to date no identification has been confirmed. Despite public appeals to the Indonesian government (but relatively little push from the Timorese government) for information on the whereabouts of Lobato, Indonesia has been reticent to provide such details (Myrttinen 2014). There is no doubt that this lack of information has been a significant contributing factor in the inability to locate not only the remains of Lobato but also the remains of numerous other dead in Timor-Leste. In addition to human remains being frequently located as a result of redevelopment and construction (‘Australians Called in to Help Identify East Timor Bodies,’ The Daily Telegraph, 13 July 2012), hundreds of exhumations have been undertaken in Timor-Leste through the combined efforts of the mechanisms and programmes outlined above, resulting in the accumulation of thousands of human skeletal remains in various locations including hospital mortuaries (UNTAET 2000; Kinsella and Blau 2013). While locating and recovering the deceased in Timor-Leste has been pursued to some degree, the local and international political support to pursue formal identifications has, to some extent, been limited. It has been argued that the lack of energy directed to identification pertains to political sensitivities related to both the role played by Indonesia in civilian deaths but also the accountability of guerrilla forces for killings of East Timorese (Myrttinen 2014). Consequently, identification has been undertaken in a variety of ways. In some cases, bodies recovered by the SCU were visually identified by relatives despite being badly mutilated (‘Timor Massacre Victims Exhumed,’ BBC, 12 January 2008). As discussed above, visual identification is routinely undertaken in many forensic medical institutes (Hill 2006) as well as following disasters (see for example, Lynch and Black 2011; Iino and Aoki 2016). In a controlled setting with the appropriate explanations provided by professionals, visual recognition as part of an identification process may be

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appropriate. However, there are many situations where visual identification is no longer possible (for example, when the individual is fully skeletonised), or is deemed inappropriate (for example, when the individual is heavily traumatised or decomposed). This is largely because it may be deemed too upsetting (Chapple and Ziebland 2010) and creates the potential for mis-identifications (Panella 2011; Allen 2018; ‘Man, Presumed Dead, Returns Home a Year After Family Cremated Wrong Body,’ Japan Today, 13 June 2018). In other cases investigated by the IFT in Timor-Leste, alleged recognition of clothing was enough for families to claim a set of human remains (Kinsella and Blau 2013). While the uniqueness of a particular item of clothing may seem to support an identification, the potential for individuals to borrow and/ or swap clothing significantly limits the reliability of an identification based only on recognition of attire. In some contexts, personal effects (including clothing) may be used to establish an hypothesis about identity, after which additional methods of testing are undertaken (Thompson and Puxley 2006). The ‘gold standard’ of identification according to Western criteria calls for scientific methods to be employed which, depending on the context, may include the comparison of records taking during life (ante-mortem data such as fingerprints, DNA profiles, and/or dental records) with those collected from the deceased person (post-mortem data). In Timor-Leste, formal scientific identification (including the use of forensic anthropology and DNA profiles) was achieved in a small number of cases following the investigation of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre (Blau and Fondebrider 2010). Other less traditional approaches to identification have also been undertaken in Timor-Leste and highlight the continued influence of animism on the everyday lives of Timorese (see Kent in this volume). While there is a deep commitment to Catholicism, which was adopted as a major component of emerging East Timorese national identity in opposition to the Muslim, Indonesian-speaking conquerors (Millo and Barnett 2004), the spirit and human world in Timor-Leste are intertwined (Grenfell 2012; Myrttinen 2014). Many Timorese continue to believe in witchcraft (Pollanen 2004; Wright 2009) and have spiritual needs which derive from a long tradition of animist culture. In terms of identification this resulted in a practice that involved taking blood from a relative of the missing person and dropping it onto the recovered bones, which allegedly permitted confirmation of whether the bones come from a relative of the one whose blood was used in the test (Robins 2010, 51). There are also examples of cases where dreams influenced aspects of identification. During the work undertaken by the IFT dreams were often referred to during interviews with families while collecting ante-mortem information. The dreams related to where bodies were located in graves

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(see (Sully 2018) or identification. In one example a family reported two brothers missing. While one skeleton recovered by the IFT produced a DNA profile, complexities associated with interpreting the result of DNA from siblings (that is, an inability to discriminate between siblings) and the limited anthropological data meant it was not possible to determine which of the family’s sons had been recovered. A final conclusion was made by the father, who reported that his eldest son had appeared to him in a dream indicating his remains would be found. The use of dreams as a principal channel for communication by the dead to the living to indicate the location of the body so the deceased can be provided with a proper burial is not unique to Timor-Leste (Hagerty 2018). From a Western perspective, the notion of dreams to assist in identification may be considered challenging because such an approach does not meet scientific standards. Is has been argued that standardisation provides a path to objectivity (Thompson 2015), and therefore science is perceived as being rigorous, independent, objective, and rational. Alternatively, it has been argued that the notion that science is objective and free from the constraints and values of broader society is false, as science is a socially constructed discipline based around the attitudes and desires of the broader (predominantly Western) community (Moon 2013). While there is no doubt that forensic evidence has proven to be extremely powerful in many contexts, the potential for subjective assessment to influence the ways in which forensic evidence is interpreted – both in legal (Willmore, 1998) and humanitarian (Blau et al. 2011) settings – has also been raised (Cole 2009; Edmond 2015; Holdren and Lander 2016). In other situations in Timor-Leste, no attempt at individual identification was made at all. In the case of individuals interred at the Metinaro cemetery, exhumations and subsequent reinterments were carried out by the FDTL based on information from families about the location of their relatives. The deceased were reinterred in individual named graves without any scientific methodology or formal identification of the human remains. Essentially, bodies were transferred from graves to the cemetery without thorough scientific documentation.

Discussion There are several explanations for the apparent willingness of Timorese authorities and citizens to accept exhumations and interment of remains in the absence of scientific identification. While the theory of the process

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of identification is easy to describe and has been well documented (Black et al. 2011; Blau and Hill 2009; Milroy 2005), in reality, the circumstances and context in which death occurs can significantly impact the identification process, both in terms of the promptness and the definitiveness of the results (Fondebrider 2002). For example, the identification of multiple deceased persons following a disaster or periods of conflict is resource intensive and often takes a significant amount of time. Consider, for example, the fact that following over 300 separate bushf ires in the state of Victoria, Australia that occurred in little over a week in 2009, it took three months to identify 173 people while at the same time daily coronial cases were still being undertaken (Cordner et al. 2011). While there were multiple deaths in numerous locations, identifications were carried out in a context where there is robust infrastructure, including a state-of-the-art institute of forensic medicine to undertake post-mortem examinations and tests, and a well-resourced police service to collect ante-mortem data. In addition, there was significant pressure from the community (and hence the government)4 for identifications to be completed in a timely fashion in order for bodies to be returned to family members. In contrast, not only did the ‘disaster’ which occurred in Timor-Leste take place in multiple locations over a 24-year period of time and involve a large number of deaths, but the infrastructure and technical forensic knowledge required to locate and identify deceased persons there is limited. For example, there is a small mortuary located at the Hospital Nationale Guido Valladeres in Dili, but it has limited capacity for the examination and storage of human remains. Moreover, while some of the local police (Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste) have basic forensic training, there are no forensic specialists (such as forensic anthropologists or forensic geneticists) in Timor-Leste. Such factors play a significant role in the extent to which identifications can be achieved (Blau in press; Blau 2016). Furthermore, while there is no doubt that families with missing relatives are desperate to locate and know the fate of their loved ones, Timor-Leste has not had a dedicated family movement pressuring the government for answers (Myrttinen 2014). This is in contrast, for example, with countries such as Sri Lanka and Argentina. In Sri Lanka, which has the second largest reported number of enforced disappearances (according to the UN) after Iraq, women with missing relatives continue to protest until they get answers from the government (Ambrose and Yeo 2018). In Argentina, following the return 4 See also Black et al. 2011 for examples of disasters where the pressure to rapidly identify the deceased are discussed.

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to democracy in 1984 after seven years of military dictatorship, there was a significant push from civil society, specifically the grandmothers of the missing, who established a movement for the recovery of their missing loved ones. The continued pressure from the Grandmothers of the Plazo de Mayo on the Government of Argentina ultimately resulted in the formation of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) and widespread government support for ongoing large-scale identifications (Fondebrider 2016; Crossland 2002). While it is possible to be critical of scenarios such as Metinaro, where bodies were buried without identification, examples of institutional incompetence provide some insight into why families may have little confidence in Western approaches to identification. Take, for example, an account of a family who provided approval to the SCU for exhumation of a body from a temporary grave. In this case, the body was separated from the head (because after the initial burial, village dogs had twice dug up the grave, scattering body parts in the nearby scrubland). Soon after the SCU had exhumed the body, the relatives located a skull which was placed in the home of a relative. After receiving no communication from the SCU for over a year, the family went to Dili to be told there were no records or formal identification of the remains. The SCU had, in effect, lost the body. A dream led the family to a specific grave which, when opened, contained the skeletal remains of at least three individuals. The reasons why three individuals were positioned in one grave was not clear. Because the SCU could not positively identify any of the remains and the return of the wrong remains would mean the family would continue to be plagued by bad dreams, the family demanded the return of the personal belongings of their relative. The SCU provided these items and the case was considered closed (Kammen 2015). Distrust in government and/or law enforcement systems can result in distrust in the results reported from agencies. In such cases, families often rely on evidence they can visually recognise, like personal effects, to confirm an identification (as discussed above). The family and friends of a missing loved one must be convinced, not told, that their loved one has been identified in order to establish trust and confidence in the outcomes (Latham and Strand 2018). Identification of deceased persons as understood through the lens of forensic science and medicine is based on the location and evaluation of evidence – a term derived from the Latin videre (to see), meaning ‘to make visible’. Traditionally, formal scientific identification has been prescribed by Interpol and pursued according to Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) guidelines, which advocate the use of fingerprints, DNA, or dental records to achieve a positive identification (Interpol 2014). However, as the complexity of identification in cases of mass fatalities is acknowledged, forensic

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practitioners increasingly recognise the importance of thinking about different ways to respectfully manage the dead because identification may not immediately (if ever) be possible (Cordner and Tidball-Binz 2017). In many countries that have experienced periods of political, religious, and/or ethnic violence, there are countless cases of human remains that have been exhumed or recovered but remain unidentified. This is certainly the case in Timor-Leste (Adamek 2004), and there continues to be limited local capacity to undertake formal anthropological and DNA analysis. While Timor-Leste has competing development priorities including housing, education, health, security, and trade, the lack of attention given to scientifically locating bodies as a means of accounting for human rights violations (Saul 2001), whether for legal or humanitarian purposes, remains an issue (Brown 2004). The reality is that Timorese continue to grieve and search for the missing (Walsh 2016). The ethical dilemma, therefore, is whether the proactive recovery of human remains – some may argue disturbing bodies (Crossland and Joyce 2015) – in such contexts is warranted, given that the likelihood of formal scientific identification is low. Such decisions, however, have to be considered in light of the fact that the ability to return physical remains to Timorese families is an imperative for surviving family members and the broader community, given the strong belief in the power of the spirits of the deceased (Grenfell 2012, Babo Soares, 2004; Bovensiepen 2018). Ossuaries, as constructed at Metinaro (but found in every district Garden of Heroes), highlight a powerful need for those who survived the 24 years of Indonesian rule: a collective need to memorialise FALINTIL soldiers and their sacrifice to the national struggle for independence.5 The focus on the collective rather than the individual highlights a complex social and political issue: is it better to focus resources on individual identification that provides closure for relatives (where the body serves as evidence of the individual) or, in the context of limited resources, disregard personal identification and acknowledge a national ‘contribution’ (the dead as evidence of national sacrifice)? Consequently, it may be argued that the Metinaro cemetery is a form of nation-building (Leach 2009). The state and the sacrifice for the national liberation of Timor-Leste (Grenfell 2012), rather than the individual person, is the focus. This was highlighted by the symbolic funeral held at the cemetery in August 2009, marking the tenth anniversary of the referendum. 5 Ossuaries have also been used in contexts such as Rwanda where, following the 1994 genocide, the investigation of mass graves resulted in the creation of crypts within memorial houses where thousands of bones, divided by approximate anatomical type, were stored. Individuals were rendered anonymous (Major 2015).

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In the case of the Metinaro reburials, there were no reported issues associated with the lack of individual identification of human remains. There were some tensions arising from the need for government compensation for families of the fighters and the need for fallen comrades to be buried based on their local and regional identities (Leach 2009). While the majority of graves at Metinaro have the name and rank of the deceased person recorded on the headstone, how such distinctions could be made without individual identification was, however, not addressed. The treatment of the dead at Metinaro may indicate a confluence of technical difficulties associated with identification, limited resources, and an alignment with a nationalist communitarian culture in which a different approach to identification was taken. Alternatively, such exhumations may be viewed as simply being a government effort to aid the reintegration of ex-combatants, given several serious problems that exist with the army (de Almedia 2017; Knezevic 2005). In both interpretations, the use of the dead to contribute to the needs of the living is clear (see also Bovensiepen 2014; Verdery 1999.)

Conclusion The handling of human remains and the decision to identify deceased persons (or not) following the period of conflict in Timor-Leste is steeped in political, social, and ethical complexities where different agendas are at play. In all contexts, the dead impact on the living. On a personal level, individual family members want to f ind and identify the body of their missing relative in order to put the spirits at rest. As Grenfell states, ‘For all the things that could be given priority in the wake of such trauma and destruction, for this girl it was the collection of her parents’ bones that was most important’ (Grenfell 2012, 96). Politically, the search for missing persons raises questions of accountability for both Indonesia, whose security forces were responsible for the majority of conflict-related disappearances, and members of the Timorese independence movement, including the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN) and FALINTIL fighters (Kinsella and Blau 2013). Legally, there are issues for the international community as regards its opportunity – or, some may argue, its obligation (Blau and Fondebrider, 2010) – to facilitate transitional justice mechanisms, in which exhumations can play a signif icant role (as seen in other contexts such as Guatemala, the Solomon Islands, and numerous other countries: Verdery 1999; Rosenblatt 2015). Scientifically, for the individual forensic scientists involved in the search and identification

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process it could be argued that there are humanitarian obligations associated with using their skills to protect and restore the dignity of the dead, document human rights violations, and help families who otherwise would not have the capacity or skills to undertake identification, as well as potential legal obligations to record evidence of the cause and manner of death. It has been argued that the manner in which a nation cares for its dead is a ‘hallmark of civilization’ (Cordner 1998), and that the principles, practice, and guidelines relating to the management of the dead are inherently related to the dignity of the dead (Cordner et al. 2016). However, the dignity of the living cannot be disregarded and it must be taken into account whether or not family members actually want their loved ones exhumed and identified (Latham and Strand 2018). It has been argued that the claims of victim’s relatives, regardless of the context, are the same: to find out what happened to their loved ones. While this may be the case, the context in which these claims are addressed and identifications pursued, and the impact of cultural and religious (spiritual) practices on understandings of life, death, and notions of truth, cannot be forgotten (Fondebrider 2015, 31). The issues raised in this chapter highlight some of the complexities associated with scientific reason and the notion of the construction of ‘forensic truth’, and why identification cannot be viewed simply as an inquest of data. It is critical to understand the context in which identification is requested (if at all) and undertaken.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Stephen Cordner for the comments he provided on a draft of this chapter.

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Anon. 2000. ‘Timor Massacre Victims Exhumed’. BBC, 12 January 2008. Accessed 6 December 2018 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/599044.stm Anon. 2005. Chega! The Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation, Timor-Leste. The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR). Accessed 29 March 2019. www.cavr-timorleste.org. Anon. 2009. ‘Veterans’. Accessed 4 April 2020. http://easttimorlegal.blogspot. com/2009/12/timor-minister-of-social-solidarity.html. Anon. 2012. ‘Australians Called in to Help Identify East Timor Bodies’. The Daily Telegraph, 13 July 2012. Accessed 17 January 2019. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/bones-of-72-people-found-in-east-timor/ story-fnddckzi-1226425818896. Anon. 2018. ‘Man, Presumed Dead, Returns Home a Year After Family Cremated Wrong Body’. Japan Today. 13 June 2018. Accessed 18 January 2019. https:// japantoday.com/category/national/Man-presumed-dead-returns-home-ayear-after-family-cremated-wrong-body. Babo Soares, Dionísio. 2004. ‘NaheBiti: The Philosophy and Process of Grassroots Reconciliation (and Justice) in East Timor’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 5 (1): 15-33. Barbedo de Magalhães, Antonio. 1996. ‘East Timor: A People Shattered By Lies and Silence’. Accessed 8 May 2020. http://www.ci.uc.pt/timor/silence.htm. Barker, Anbe. 2018. ‘East Timor’s Latest Attempt to f ind the Body of its First Prime Minister Nicolau dos Reis Lobato’. ABC News, 21 February 2018. Accessed 21 January 2019. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-21/new-push-to-find-exeast-timor-pm-dos-reis-lobartos-body/9468250. Black, S., G. Sunderland, L. Hackman, and X. Mallet, eds. 2011. Disaster Victim Identification: Experience and Practice. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Blau, Soren. 2016. ‘Missing Persons Investigations and Identification: Issues of Scale, Infrastructure, and Political Will’. In Handbook of Missing Persons, edited by S. Blau, 191-206. Basel: Springer. Blau, Soren. 2020. ‘Forensic Human Identification: An Australian Perspective’. In Humanitarian Forensic Science: Interacting with the Dead and the Living, edited by S. Blau, 593-602. London: Wiley and Sons. Blau, Soren. In press. ‘Our Resilient Bodies: The Role of Forensic Science and Medicine in Restoring the Disappeared to History’. In Book of the Disappeared: The Transnational Quest for Justice, edited by J. Heath and J. Zahedi. University of Michian Press. Blau, Soren, and Luis Fondebrider. 2010. ‘Dying for Independence: Proactive Investigations into the 12 November 1991 Santa Cruz Massacre, Timor Leste’. The International Journal of Human Rights 15 (8): 1249-1274.

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Center for Transitional Justice. Accessesd 27 March 2019.https://www.ictj.org/ sites/…/files/ICTJ-TimorLeste-Unfinished-Truth-2009-English.pdf. Holdren, J., and E. Lander. 2016. Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Accessed 4 September 2017. https://obamawhite- house.archives.gov/sites/default/files/ microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_foren- sic_science_report_final.pdf. Iino, Morio.and Yasuhiro. Aoki. 2016. ‘The Use of Radiology in the Japanese Tsunami DVI Process’. Journal of Forensic Radiology and Imaging 4: 20-26. Interpol. 2014. ‘Interpol Disaster Victim Identification Guide’. Interpol Working Group on Disaster Victim Identification. Jerez-Farran, C., and S. Amago, eds. 2010. Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame. Jolliffe, Jill. 2004. ‘East Timor Digs Up Past in PM’s Garden’. Sydney Morning Herald, 17 January 2004. Accessed 21 January 2019. http://www.smh.com.au/ articles/2004/01/16/1073878032757.html. Kammen, Douglas. 2015. Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kinsella, Naomi, and Soren Blau. 2013, ‘Searching for conflict Related Missing Persons in Timor-Leste: Technical, Political and Cultural Considerations’. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 2( 1): 1-14. Kirschner, R.H. and Hannibal, K.E. 1994. ‘The Application of the Forensic Sciences to Human Rights Investigations’. Medical Law 13: 451-460. Kleemeyer, Adam. 1997. ‘The Case of East Timor: Twenty Years of Genocide and Denial’. In Genocide Perspective 1: Essays in Comparative Genocide, edited by Colin Tatz, 1-32. Sydney: Center for Comparative Genocide Studies, Macquarie University. Klinker, Melanie. 2009. ‘Forensic Science Expertise for international Criminal Proceedings: An Old Problem, a New Context and a Pragmatic Resolution’. The International Journal of Evidence and Proof 13: 102-129. Knezevic, N. 2005. Timor-Leste: Background Paper on Human Rights, Refugees and Asylym Seekers. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Protection Information Section. Accessed 27 March 2019. https://www.refworld.org/ pdfid/4240091d4.pdf. Latham, K.E., and R. Strand. 2018. ‘Digging, Dollars, and Drama: The Economics of Forensic Archeology and Migrant Exhumation’. In Sociopolitics of Migrant Death and Repatriation, Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, edited by K.E. Latham and A.J. O’Daniel, 99-114. London: Springer. Leach, Michael. 2009. ‘Difficult Memories: The Independence Struggle As Cultural Heritage in East Timor’. In Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with Difficult Heritage, edited by K. Reeves and W. Logan, 144-161. New York: Routledge.

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Lynch, M., and S. Black. 2011. ‘The Aberfan Colliery Disaster, October 21, 1966’. In Disaster Victim Identification: Experience and Practice, edited by S. Black, G. Sunderland, L. Hackman, and X. Mallett, 9-19. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Major, Laura. 2015. ‘Unearthing, Untangling and re-Articulating Genocide Corpses in Rwanda’. Critical African Studies 7 (2): 164-181. Mangkoedilaga, B., Babo Soares, D., Widjojo, A., Valadares Critovao, C. J. J., Loeis, W., Guterres Lopes, A. L., Ali, A., de Sousa Guterres, F., Petrus Turang, M.and das Neves Raimundo Alves, J. 2008. Final Report of The Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) Indonesia-Timor-Leste. Accessed 27 Mach 2019. http://ctf-​r i-tl.org/. Millo, Yiftach.and Barnett, Jon. 2004, ‘Educational Development in East Timor’, International Journal of Educational Development, 24 (6): 721-737. Milroy, Chris. M. 2005. ‘Principles of Identification’. In Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine, edited by J. Payne-James, R. Byard, T. Corey, and C. Henderson, 213-215. London: Elsevier. Moon, Claire. 2013, ‘Interpreters of the Dead: Forensic Knowledge, Human Remains and the Politics of the Past’. Social and Legal Studies, 22 (2): 149-169. Moon, Claire. 2014, ‘Human Rights, Human Remains: Forensic Humanitarianism and the Human Rights of the Dead’. International Social Science Journal, 65 (215-216): 49-63. Murdoch, Lindsay. 2009. ‘Bones Gathering Dust in NT May Be of Timorese Hero’. Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 2009. Accessed 13 February 2012. www. smh.com.au/world/bones-gathering-dust-in-nt-may-be-of-timorese-hero20091227-lgay.html. Murdoch, Lindsay. 2010. ‘Anger at Skeleton Test Delays’. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 2010. Accessed 21 January 2019. http://www.smh.com.au/world/angerat-skeleton-test-delays-20100311-q1mj.html. Myrttinen, Henri. 2014. ‘Claiming the Dead, Defining the Nation: Contested Narratives of the Independence Struggle in Postconflict Timor-Leste’. In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by F. Stepputat, 95-113. Manchester: Manchester University Press. O‘Brien, Eadaoin. 2010. ‘The Contribution of Forensic Anthropology to International Criminal Justice: Mass Grave Exhumations Conducted by United Nations International Criminal Tribunals’. Irish Journal of Anthropology 13 (2): 52-63. Panella, Michael. J. 2011. ‘Death Investigation Liability of Medical Examiners and Coroners’. Journal of Legal Medicine 32 (4): 449-481. Pollanen, Michael. S. 2004. ‘Alleged Lethal Sorcery in East Timor’. Forensic Science International 139 (1): 17-19. Reiger, C.and M. Wierda. 2006. The Serious Crimes Process in Timor-Leste: In Retrospect. International Center for Transitional Justice.

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Robins, Simon. 2010. An Assessment of the Needs of Families of the Missing in Timor-Leste. York: Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit. Accessed 8 May 2020. http://simonrobins.com/Robins-Needs_of_families_of_the_Missing_in_Timor.pdf. Rosenblatt, Adam. 2015. Digging for the Disappeared: Forensic Science after Atrocity, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Saul, Ben. 2001. ‘Was the Conflict in the East Timor “Genocide” and Why Does It Matter?’ Melbourne Journal of International Law 2: 477-522. Silva, Romesh., and Patrick. Ball. 2006. The Profile of Human Rights Violations in Timor-Leste, 1974-1999. Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group. Stover, Eric., William.D. Haglund, and Margaret Samuels. 2003. ‘Exhumation of Mass Graves in Iraq: Considerations for Forensic Investigations, Humanitarian Needs, and the Demands of Justice’. Journal of the American Medical Association, 290 (5): 663-666. Sully, Andrew. 2018. Spirits of Tasi Tolu, Documentary film. Acesssed 21 January 2018. https://player.vimeo.com/video/250049253. Thompson, Tim. 2015. ‘Deconstructing the Ideal of Standardisation in Forensic Anthropology’. In Disturbing Bodies: Perspectives on Forensic Anthropology, edited by Z. Crossland and R.A. Joyce. Santa Fe, School for Advanced Research. Thompson, Tim., and A. Puxley. 2006. ‘Personal Effects.‘ In Forensic Human Identification: An Introduction, edited by T. Thompson and S. Black, 365-77. London: CRC Press. Tuller, Hugh. 2015. ‘Identification Versus Prosecution: Is It That Simple, and Where Should the Archaeologist Stand?’ In Disturbing Bodies: Perspectives on Forensic Anthropology, edited by Z. Crossland and R.A. Joyce, 85-101. Santa Fe, School for Advanced Research. UNMIT. 2008. UNMIT Newsletter 2. Serious Crimes Investigation Team, UNMIT. Accessed 24 December 2009. http://unmit.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid =1972&ctl=Details&mid=2297&ItemID=3921 UNTAET. 2000. East Timor Update. UNTAET. Accessed 29 March 2019 https:// reliefweb.int/report/indonesia/east-timor-update-april-2000. UNTAET. 2002. Justice and Serious Crimes, Fact Sheet 7. UNTAET Press Office. Accessed 15 April 2010. http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/ etimor/fact/FS.htm. Verdery, K. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press. Walsh, Patrick. 2016. After 10 Years, CAVR Report Still Resonates in Timor-Leste and Around the World. International Centre for Transitional Justice. https://www. ictj.org/news/10-years-cavr-report-timor-leste-truth.

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About the Author Soren Blau is the Manager of Identification Services and the Senior Forensic Anthropologist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Forensic Medicine at Monash University, Founding Fellow Faculty of Science, The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, and recipient of a Churchill Fellowship (2013). Soren is also currently the Chair of the Forensic Anthropology Technical Working Group (National Institute of Forensic Sciences, Australia) and a member of the INTERPOL Disaster Victim Identification Pathology and Anthropology Sub-Working Group. In addition to publishing peer reviewed journal articles and numerous book chapters Soren co-edited the Handbook of Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology and co-authored An Atlas of Skeletal Trauma in Medico-Legal Contexts. Soren undertakes domestic forensic anthropology casework and has undertaken consultancies for the International Criminal Court (ICC), Justice Rapid Response (JRR), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Soren has participated in the recovery and analysis of human remains from archaeological and forensic contexts in numerous countries and has delivered training to forensic practitioners and related stakeholders in Australia and overseas.

9

Remembering the Dead in Post-Independence Timor-Leste Victims or Martyrs? Amy Rothschild

Abstract How have the estimated 102,800 Timorese who were killed or otherwise died as a result of the Indonesian occupation been remembered in Timor-Leste’s post-independence period? While Timor-Leste’s state has remembered the deceased through a lens of heroism and martyrdom, international human rights institutions in Timor-Leste, such as the CAVR, have remembered the deceased through a lens of victimhood. The chapter compares and contrasts the state’s framing of the dead as heroes and martyrs with the CAVR’s framing of the dead as victims and asks why the state’s framing has come to dominate in the present day. This chapter is based on data from over three years of work and research in Timor-Leste, spanning the years 2002-2013. Keywords: hero(es), martyr(s), victim(s), veteran(s), human rights, CAVR

Introduction An estimated 102,800 Timorese were killed or otherwise died as a result of the 24-year Indonesian occupation and preceding Timorese civil war (CAVR 2006, 6:3).1 How have these individuals been remembered in TimorLeste’s post-independence period? Scholars of Timor-Leste have focused on two main frameworks for remembering the war dead in Timor-Leste. On the one hand, the deceased have been remembered by and incorporated 1

I discuss the problematic nature of this estimate below, in the section ‘Counting death’.

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch09

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into familial units as ancestors; on the other hand, the deceased have been incorporated into the new nation state as heroes and martyrs.2 This chapter examines a third framework for remembering the dead in postindependence Timor-Leste. Put simply, if families of the deceased have remembered the war dead through a lens of ‘ancestorship’ and the Timorese nation-state has remembered the deceased through a lens of heroism and martyrdom, international human rights and transitional justice institutions in Timor-Leste have worked to remember the deceased through a lens of victimhood. In Timor-Leste’s immediate post-independence period, multiple human rights and transitional justice institutions were established inside Timor to help the new nation make sense of the violent Indonesian past. This article will examine the way one such institution – the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste/ CAVR) – has worked to frame the Timorese war dead as victims. It will then compare and contrast this framing with the Timorese State’s presently dominant framing of the dead as heroes and martyrs. The chapter proceeds as follows. I begin with background on historical, global trends in remembrance of the war dead, so as to situate the case of Timor-Leste theoretically. This section includes information on remembrance of the Timorese war dead during the Indonesian occupation. I then turn to the case of post-independence Timor-Leste. After analysing the CAVR’s truth-seeking work and considering which dead were counted, how they were counted, and why, I turn to the present-day dominant statepromoted framing of the dead as heroes and martyrs. I compare and contrast the CAVR’s framing of the dead with the state’s framing of the dead and conclude by analysing why the latter framing has come to dominate in the present day. This chapter is based on data from over three years of work and research in Timor-Leste, spanning the years 2002-2013. From 2002-2003 I worked at the CAVR as a human rights lawyer;3 from 2008-2013 I conducted approximately two years of ethnographic research in Timor-Leste for my PhD 2 I discuss the relationship between and the relative interchangeability of the categories or terms ‘hero’, ‘martyr’, and ‘veteran’ in present-day Timor-Leste below, in the section ‘The Timorese nation state and the war dead’. 3 I worked at the CAVR as legal counsel (with outside funding from the Center for Civil and Human Rights at Notre Dame Law School and from a Howard Holtzmann Yale Law School Fellowship). My work involved ref ining the CAVR’s human rights database and conducting human rights training for members of the CAVR’s truth-seeking team. I also conducted a literature review of occupation-era Amnesty International reports about Timorese political prisoners.

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dissertation on collective remembrance of the violence of the Indonesian occupation. 4

Global trends in war dead remembrance Engaging with the past is one of the main ways that individuals and groups acquire and reshape identities (Olick and Robbins 1998, 122). Nation states in particular have long constituted and legitimated themselves through the employment and even construction of historical narratives of the past. The power and resources of nation states have enabled dominant forces within states to promote official narratives of the past which appropriate and silence subnational memories and identity discourses, working to ‘soldier a multiplicity of personal, local, and regional historicities and transform them into a unitary, national time’ (Alonso 1988, 126). Pasts involving violence and suffering have been deemed particularly useful in strengthening shared identities, including national identities (Zarecka 1994, 58; Bellah et al. 2007, 153). It is here that the war dead, the ultimate symbols of violence, come into play. The deaths of those killed in war have traditionally been framed as ‘heroic,’ with soldiers said to have ‘sacrificed their lives for the sacred purpose of protecting the nation’ (Kwon 2008, 103). While the category of the ‘heroic dead’ has arguably been a feature of all modern nationalisms, it has been particularly central to certain forms of anticolonial and postcolonial nationalisms. During independence struggles, a reappropriation of history from the coloniser – one that typically includes turning deceased ‘terrorist’ or ‘insurgent’ guerrilla soldiers into heroes or martyrs – serves as a form of resistance in and of itself (Khalili 2007, 18). In the postcolonial context, the heroic dead become incorporated into historical narratives of resistance to colonial rule, working to legitimate the new nation state and its leaders, often former guerillas themselves. As the historian Jay Winter has argued: ‘intrepid chronicles of Resistance’ centred around the figure of the resistance hero can be ‘useful in the revival of the political culture of countries humiliated by occupation and collaboration’ (2006, 27). Yet there have been recent challenges to the nation state’s traditional appropriation of the war dead as heroes for purposes of nation state building. As scholars from a range of disciplines have pointed out, the last 50 years or 4 My PhD was in anthropology. My main period of fieldwork took place from 2011-2013. I spent an additional stint in Timor in 2007 after my time at the CAVR but before beginning my PhD, observing the 2007 elections and teaching English.

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so have seen a turn from the heroes of history to its victims (Neiman 2010; Winter 2006). A major factor precipitating this turn was increased interest in and remembrance of the Holocaust, beginning in the 1960s (Winter 2006). Another cause has been a worldwide increase in the number of civilian war deaths. The global turn toward victims is both reflected in and furthered by the rise of the international human rights and transitional justice regimes. Indeed, one of the main goals of truth commissions, the prime symbol of transitional justice, is to respond to victims’ needs (Hayner 2001, 8). In some ways Timor-Leste serves as an exemplar of the theorised global turn toward victims. Beginning in the 1980s, Timor’s Resistance movement shifted its emphasis from armed struggle and the revolutionary language of anticolonialism, toward nonviolent protest and the language of universal human rights. As Timorese Resistance leaders and international activists increasingly presented the situation of Timor-Leste to the international community as a human rights problem, rather than as an anticolonial struggle for liberation, Timorese – including those killed during the occupation – were increasingly framed as ‘innocent, suffering victims’ of human rights violations (as opposed to as anticolonial heroes). The goal, which was ultimately attained, was to encourage international intervention into Timor. In many ways, the immediate post-independence focus on victims in Timor, a focus exemplified by the work of the CAVR, can be seen as an extension of this earlier occupation-era shift. However, Timor-Leste also serves to complicate claims of a global shift toward victimhood. The dominant narrative of the past in Timor-Leste’s present day is a narrative of heroic resistance to Indonesian rule centred not around the figure of the victim, but around the figure of the veteran, hero, or martyr. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, the victim category is actually devalued in present-day Timor-Leste (Rothschild 2017). I will examine this “reverse shift” – from victims back to heroes – in the Conclusion. I turn now to an analysis of the CAVR’s immediate post-independence framing of the past and the deceased in a narrative of violations and victimhood.

The CAVR, international human rights, and the war dead On 13 July 2001, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), then the sovereign power of Timor-Leste, formally established a truth commission in Timor-Leste, the CAVR, to attempt to deal with Timor-Leste’s bloody past. The CAVR concluded on 31 October 2005 with the handing over of its final 2,800+ page report, Chega!, to the Timorese

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government and the international community. In fulfilling its mandate, the CAVR produced the first official post-independence historical narrative of Timor-Leste’s recent past, and the first official framework for remembering those who were killed during the occupation and civil war. What was this narrative and how did it work to frame the deceased? Counting death The CAVR’s first and arguably main task was ‘inquiring into and establishing the truth regarding human rights violations which took place in the context of the political conflicts in Timor-Leste between 25 April 1974 and 25 October 1999’ (CAVR 2006, 2:2). The CAVR’s narrative thus centred around the human rights violations (and violations of international humanitarian law) experienced by Timorese during its mandate period.5 The commission focused on nine main groups of ‘fatal’ and ‘nonfatal’ violations, or violations that did and did not result in death. The two main categories of fatal violations were death due to famine and death due to unlawful killings and disappearances.6 Different truth commissions examine different kinds of truth and employ different methods to tell these truths. What kinds of truths about past violations did the CAVR attempt to tell and how did it attempt to tell them? One of the main truths which the CAVR attempted to tell was what John Roosa has termed a ‘truth by […] numbers’ (2007, 574). The CAVR produced nation-wide statistical and demographic data on the fatal and nonfatal violations at its centre. While the CAVR only analysed statistical patterns of nonfatal violations, the commission sought to uncover the total number of fatal violations that occurred during its mandate period. To find this number or produce this statistic, the CAVR brought in a Silicon Valley firm, Benetech, to add to the CAVR’s primary source of information on the violations at its core, information which came from the thousands of statements that CAVR staff had taken from Timorese across the country regarding their experiences of violence under Indonesian rule.7 Benetech conducted a ‘retrospective mortality survey (RMS)’ of 1,396 households in 5 The CAVR def ined ‘human rights violations’ as including violations of international humanitarian law (2006, 2:4). 6 The CAVR assumed the ‘disappeared’ to be deceased. The CAVR (2006, 6:2) grouped famine and displacement together in its analysis, noting that while ‘displacement is not necessarily a fatal violation, it is nonetheless closely linked to both conflict-related and famine-related fatalities.’ 7 Information from these statements was entered into the ‘human rights database’ mentioned above in footnote three.

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139 neighborhoods throughout Timor-Leste, and a ‘graveyard survey’ that collected approximately 327,000 grave records (CAVR 2006, 6: 5). The CAVR ultimately declared that at least 102,800 Timorese perished as a result of conflict-related deaths during its mandate period; approximately 18,600 died by killing and 84,200 died due to hunger and illness (CAVR 2006, 6:3). Scholars have questioned these statistics and the extra time and money the CAVR spent to produce them.8 As Roosa has pointed out (and as the CAVR itself conceded), during the period of mass death in Timor-Leste in the mid-to-late 1970s, entire families and even entire neighborhoods perished – the random sampling of households that the RMS conducted was therefore necessarily weighted toward households that had survived intact or with few losses.9 In addition, the graveyard survey did not include the deaths of people who were not buried in a properly marked grave inside a graveyard; many victims had not been buried this way. Roosa has argued that despite Benetech’s attempts to compensate for these limitations, the CAVR’s death toll results were neither precise nor conclusive (2007, 576). The number of deaths due to hunger and illness, and thus the total number of deaths, were only minimum estimates; the CAVR concedes that there could have been as many as 99,100 more deaths by hunger and illness (CAVR 2006, 2: 13). Roosa notes that before the CAVR report many people had used the figure of 200,000 as a death toll estimate.10 The figure was not based on solid evidence and could be ‘wildly inaccurate’. While one can now state with certainty that at least 100,000 East Timorese died because of the occupation and civil war – indeed, this very chapter opens up by citing this statistic – this finding is ultimately insignificant as it ‘entails no revision of what was already commonly accepted’ (2007, 576). Why did the CAVR spend so much extra effort to produce death statistics that ultimately added so little to the conversation?11 One obvious answer is the CAVR’s desire to be seen as authoritative by presenting what is felt or seen to be an undeniable or objective truth (Roosa 2007, 580). Indeed, the CAVR had been tasked specifically with presenting ‘factual and objective 8 Scholars have also critiqued the CAVR’s production of other (not death-related) quantitative data, noting, for example, that the statements from which the data was primarily drawn didn’t come from a statistically representative sample (Roosa 2007, 572). 9 A large percentage of the overall deaths in Timor-Leste during the occupation occurred between 1975 and 1980. 10 My research reveals that the 200,000 figure is still used frequently today, both inside and outside of Timor. 11 Of course, one could argue that the CAVR could not foresee that the overall numbers of deaths it found would be so low.

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information’ (CAVR 2006, 2:1); numbers or quantitative statistical data are viewed by many as the height of factual objectivity. Notably, many other truth commissions, including the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), have been critiqued for producing a positivistic truth that rests on the assumption that the only knowledge that matters is that which can be counted or measured (Wilson 2003, 375). Whose deaths count? It is likely that the ultimate death toll produced by the CAVR was low because of the difficulties of accounting for the deaths of the many Timorese who died from hunger and illness in the 1970s. What other kinds of deaths were included or excluded from the CAVR’s final death toll and its other statistical analyses of fatal violations, as well as from the CAVR’s additional dealings with death? In other words, which kinds of deaths were remembered or highlighted by the CAVR and its work, and which kinds of deaths were forgotten or obscured? A notable aspect of the CAVR’s truth-telling work was that it included investigation of human rights violations committed by parties on all sides of the conflict: the CAVR not only investigated violations committed against Timorese by Indonesian forces, it also investigated violations committed against Timorese by Timorese forces, including by Timorese Resistance groups.12 In investigating violations committed by Timorese forces, the CAVR necessarily dealt with and recognised the victims of these violations. The deaths of Timorese who were killed by Timorese forces, including 12 Intra-Timorese violence includes violence committed by Timorese political parties both during and after the almost three-week civil war preceding the occupation (during which an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 Timorese died) (CAVR 2006, 3:8). It also includes intra-Resistance violence that occurred during the occupation. Most of the intra-Resistance violence occurred in the late 1970s, when much of Timor’s population, including members of Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (or FRETILIN) and other civilians, lived in the mountains with Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste (or FALINTIL) f ighters in ‘bases of support’ within ‘liberated zones’ outside of Indonesian control. The violence was largely a result of disputes within FRETILIN over what to do with the civilian population in the bases of support. Some FRETILIN leaders wanted civilians to surrender and resettle in town, so as to relieve pressure on FALINTIL; others argued that surrender was treason. The second group dominated and began carrying out detentions, torture, and summary executions of members of FRETILIN whom they termed reactionary or traitors for advocating surrender (CAVR 2006, 5:21-22). The CAVR concluded that 29 per cent of the approximately 18,600 unlawful killings and enforced disappearances of Timorese that took place during its mandate period were perpetrated by forces aff iliated with Timor’s Resistance movement (2006, 6:17).

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by Resistance groups, were joined together with the deaths of Timorese who were killed by Indonesian forces in the CAVR’s final death toll. The CAVR recognised the deaths of Timorese killed by Timorese forces in other aspects of its work as well. For example, the CAVR’s public hearing on massacres, which took place from 21-23 November 2003, included testimony by 17 survivors or witnesses.13 Seven of those who testified told stories of massacres committed against Timorese by Timorese forces (four of these massacres had been committed by Resistance groups).14 In explaining its decision to examine human rights violations committed by parties on all sides of the conflict – and thus to recognise those Timorese harmed or killed by Timorese forces in addition to those harmed or killed by Indonesian forces – the CAVR positioned the idea of ‘justice in war’ against the idea of ‘justice of war.’ It asserted that international humanitarian law mandates that ‘even those who are fighting a just war may only use just means to achieve their aims. The same set of rules on how war may be waged applies equally to all parties to a conflict’ (CAVR 2006, 2:12). The CAVR’s attempt to provide equal (or at least proportionate) recognition of the deaths of Timorese killed by Indonesian and Timorese forces helped the CAVR to appear objective and thus authoritative; it also helped the CAVR to appear ‘apolitical’. The CAVR’s desire to appear apolitical, or separate from Timor’s Resistance movement, can be linked, among other things, to the CAVR’s mandate to foster reconciliation among Timorese, regardless of former political positioning. Another notable aspect of the CAVR’s truth-telling work was its attempt to move beyond the traditional human rights focus on violations of political and civil rights, to the exclusion of violations of social and economic rights. In this vein, the CAVR went to lengths to highlight the mass deaths that occurred in Timor-Leste as a result of hunger and illness in the late 1970s. As noted above, these deaths, even if undercounted, were joined together with deaths caused by executions or direct killings in the CAVR’s final death toll. Beyond this, the CAVR designated ‘famine’ (and the linked violation of forced displacement) as its own category of violation, and afforded famine its own public hearing. The CAVR additionally highlighted the deaths of Timorese who succumbed to hunger and illness by labeling the period from late 1977 to 1979, peak years of starvation in Timor-Leste, the ‘greatest humanitarian tragedy in Timor-Leste’s history’ (2006, 3:83). 13 The CAVR held eight public hearings. 14 I include violations committed by FALINTIL during the civil war in the category of violations committed by Resistance groups.

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While many more Timorese died during the occupation as a result of hunger and illness than as a result of killings, at the time of the CAVR’s operations these deaths had been underrecognised in the international community. One reason is their timing in the 1970s, when Timor-Leste was closed to the outside world. Another reason is that deaths by famine are often seen to be an unfortunate side-effect of a natural event or disaster. The CAVR made it clear that this was not the case in Timor-Leste – that there was nothing inevitable about the famine deaths of the 1970s. Chega! asserted: ‘It was not the case that food could not have been made available to the people who needed it. Instead those people were positively denied access to food and to its sources’ (2006, 7.3:7-8). If the CAVR went out of its way to recognise Timorese who died at the hands of Timorese forces in addition to Timorese who died at the hands of Indonesian forces, and to recognise Timorese who died as a result of hunger and illness in addition to Timorese who were killed outright (or disappeared), some Timorese deaths went relatively unrecognised by the CAVR. The deaths of Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de TimorLeste (or FALINTIL) guerilla soldiers were not included in the CAVR’s data on fatal violations, including in its final death toll; nor were these deaths included in the CAVR’s other treatments of killings. As the CAVR noted, under international humanitarian law armed combatants are legitimate targets in war (CAVR 2006, 2:12). The victims at the centre of the CAVR’s report, including the victims of fatal violations, were ‘primarily civilians or noncombatants’ who were ‘not directly involved in the armed struggle’ (2006, 6:21). The CAVR counted and otherwise investigated ‘unlawful killings’ (my italics); most killings of FALINTIL soldiers were considered lawful. The dead as (suffering) victims With its focus on human violations, the CAVR implicitly framed those who experienced violations as victims – those killed during the occupation were either victims of unlawful killings (or disappearances) or victims of famine. Yet in line with its specific mandate to ‘[assist] in restoring the dignity of victims’ (2006, 2:2), the CAVR’s use of a victim framework was also explicit. The CAVR declared its commitment to victims frequently. It asserted its intention to be ‘the voice of the victims’ (2006, 10:2) and vowed to ‘[prioritise] the interests and perspectives of victims and survivors’ (2006, preface: 2). It noted that support to victims was a core principle of all of its programmes (2006, 10:2) and stressed that the individual statements on violations were all taken from human rights victims (or witnesses). The CAVR’s activities

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backed up and bolstered its rhetoric. The CAVR’s first public hearing, the ‘Victims’ Hearing,’ was devoted to victims. The CAVR also held 52 local public victims’ hearings throughout the country as well as six three-day healing workshops for victims. While the CAVR’s focus was on surviving victims, the framework of victimhood clearly encompassed the war dead as well. Again, this framing was implicit and explicit: in terms of the latter, the CAVR specifically referenced and listed ‘victims’ of specific killings. In accordance with the therapeutic ethic that underlies most truth commissions (see Moon 2009; Shaw 2005), the CAVR framed the victims at the centre of its work within a specific discourse of suffering and healing. It asserted, for example, its goal to be a voice for victims ‘who had for so long been unable to express the suffering that they had experienced’ (2006, 10:2) and noted that Chega! was written with a spirit of ‘deep compassion for those who have suffered the most’ (2006, preface: 5). The CAVR declared the healing of victims’ suffering to be one of its main goals, central to the very question of ‘why Timor-Leste chose to address its difficult past’ in the first place (2006, preface: 1). Here I should note that while the CAVR defined victims as ‘primarily civilians’ who, moreover, ‘[have] suffered harm […] as a result of acts or omissions over which the Commission has jurisdiction’ (2006, 10:4), informally the CAVR extended victimhood to all Timorese. The CAVR proclaimed that ‘we are all victims’ (2006, 11:35). It also noted that ‘on some level, all East Timorese people and the society as a whole were victims of the political conflicts of 1974-99’ (2006, 10:18). Remembering death: for what and for whom? For what purposes did the CAVR remember the past, and for whom? Scholars such as Elazar Barkan (2000) and Andreas Huyssen (2003) have argued that the increased global focus on victims of war, discussed above, signifies a larger shift in traditional forms of collective memory. While memories of ‘heroes’ or ‘martyrs’ are linked with the nation state and the political project of nation-building, memories of ‘victims’ are linked with the global or international community and with questions of human rights, justice, and morality. Do these claims play out in the case of the CAVR’s remembrance of the Timorese war dead through discourses of victimhood? On the one hand, any assertion that a focus on the victims of war necessarily entails a move away from the nation state is clearly false. All truth commissions are intimately and often self-consciously engaged in nation-building. Indeed, Chega! explicitly points out that one of its goals was ‘to focus on the past for the sake of the future […] of Timor-Leste’

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(2006, preface: 2). The CAVR engaged in nation-building, among other ways, through its production of nation-wide statistical data on violations that occurred during its mandate period. This data worked to link all Timorese who suffered or died as a result of the civil war and occupation into a national historical narrative of violations and suffering victimhood. Notably, Timorese who suffered or died during the CAVR’s mandate period were incorporated into this national narrative despite the reality that not all those who experienced violations did so as a result of their work with the Resistance movement or because of their desire to achieve a future independent Timorese nation state. On the other hand, the CAVR did aim to build a particular kind of nation state – a nation state centred around the values and aims of international justice and human rights. The CAVR asserted its hope that examining Timor-Leste’s history of suffering would ‘deepen and strengthen the prospects for peace, democracy, the rule of law and human rights in [Timor-Leste]’ (2006, preface: 2). It noted that it aimed to remember the past in order to achieve a non-repetition (or a ‘never again’) of violence within Timor-Leste (2006, 11:7, 37).15 More significantly, the CAVR asserted its desire to delve into Timor-Leste’s past not only for the sake of TimorLeste but also for the sake of the international community, arguing that ‘the international system […] has much to learn from the experience of Timor-Leste’ (2006, preface: 2). If the CAVR hoped to use knowledge of Timor-Leste’s bloody past to prevent future violence in Timor-Leste, it also intended to use this knowledge ‘to ensure that Timor-Leste’s experience is not repeated in other situations’ (2006, 11:2). The CAVR worked to incorporate all Timorese victims into a national historical narrative of suffering. By positing that knowledge of Timor-Leste’s past could be useful for the international community – and by submitting Chega! to the international community and aiming several recommendations at the international community – the CAVR also worked to incorporate the nation’s violent past, including its war dead, into a global historical narrative of political violence and genocide spanning space and time. In this way, the work of the CAVR’s does indeed serve to back up assertions by scholars such as Barkan and Huyssen that discourses of victimhood are linked with the strengthening of a global community, and with an emergent supranational collective memory centred around questions of human rights and justice. 15 Non-violence, of course, is a central tenet of the modern human rights regime (Meister 2012).

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The Timorese nation state and the war dead I turn now from the work of the CAVR to the dominant present-day narrative or framework for remembering the Indonesian past and the deceased in Timor-Leste. This narrative is a state-promoted nationalist narrative of past resistance to Indonesian rule, centred around the categories of the veteran, hero, and martyr, categories that are often used interchangeably, with the obvious caveat being that the martyr category applies only to the deceased.16 I begin by discussing key elements of this narrative and its central categories. I then compare and contrast this narrative’s framing of the dead as heroes and martyrs with the CAVR’s framing of the dead as victims. Hierarchies of heroism The basis of the resistance narrative and its central categories can be found in Article 11 of Timor-Leste’s Constitution, entitled ‘Valorisation of Resistance’. Article 11 asserts that Timor-Leste’s State ‘acknowledges and values the historical resistance of the [Timor-Leste] People against foreign domination and the contribution of all those who fought for national independence’. It also declares that ‘the State shall ensure special protection to war-disabled, orphans and other dependents of those who dedicated their lives to the struggle for independence and national sovereignty, and shall protect all those who participated in the resistance against the foreign occupation’ (Constituent Assembly 2002). The most inclusive discourse of past resistance to Indonesian rule in present-day Timor-Leste involves the claim that everyone in Timor-Leste fought for or contributed to Timor-Leste’s liberation – that ‘everyone made war’ (ema hotu hotu halo funu). A corollary to this discourse, one that parallels the CAVR’s informal attribution of victimhood to all Timorese, is that all Timorese who were alive during the occupation are heroes (if not veterans) and that all those who died as a result of the occupation are heroes or martyrs. For the most part, however, the terms veteran, hero, and martyr are applied more narrowly to persons whom the Timorese State declares were part of Timor-Leste’s more formal Resistance movement, a movement consisting of former FALINTIL guerrilla soldiers, as well as civilian members of the clandestine and overseas diplomatic fronts. Accordingly, these are the 16 Another caveat is that the hero category is sometimes applied more broadly than the veteran and martyr categories, because ‘veteran’ and ‘martyr’ are official government designations, while ‘hero’ is not.

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Timorese who receive valorisation and recognition for their past resistance activities in Timor. In September 2002, Timor-Leste’s government established two commissions to identify and register living and deceased members of FALINTIL. In 2004, it established a separate commission to identify and register living and deceased clandestine members involved in the civilian resistance.17 On 13 March 2006, Timor-Leste’s Parliament passed the Statute of National Liberation Combatants. Popularly referred to during the time of my fieldwork as the ‘veterans’ law,’ the 2006 Statute formally defines veteranhood and martyrdom. To be declared a veteran, one needs to have ‘militated’ or ‘participated’ in the struggle for independence for at least three years. Martyrs, meanwhile, are defined as ‘all militants of the struggle for national independence who have “perished” or “disappeared” as a result of their participation in the struggle’ (Statute of the National Liberation Combatants 2006). The 2006 Statute also lays out the terms of recognition for veterans and martyrs in the form of payments, medals, and other benefits (in the case of martyrs, concrete or material forms of recognition are afforded to relatives of the deceased). The vagueness of the definitions of veteranhood and martyrdom in the 2006 Statute – a result of, among other things, the reality of Timor-Leste’s long, messy, and popular struggle for independence, in which an amorphous and ever-changing civilian resistance front dwarfed the armed guerrilla front in size and scope of activity – has resulted in fierce debate in TimorLeste about who is a ‘true’ or ‘real’ veteran or martyr and who should be recognised by the government as such. Discourses of ‘false veteranhood’ and ‘false martyrdom’ abound. These debates aside, the implementation of the 2006 Statute, followed by the beginning of the distribution of pensions in 2008 to those deemed veterans and to family members of those deemed martyrs, has resulted in a clear, state-endorsed hierarchy of heroism in Timor. Simply put, those deemed by the state to have participated in Timor’s Resistance struggle receive more recognition and valorisation than those not deemed to have participated. This ranking applies to the deceased as well as to the living. The hierarchy of heroism in present-day Timor-Leste continues beyond this binary however. While the 2006 Statute officially gives equal treatment 17 By 2007 these commissions had recognised 38,337 ex-combatants, of whom 39 per cent were deceased, and 36,806 civilians, of whom 10 per cent were deceased (The World Bank 2008, 17-18). In 2019 the Government decided to check the validity of the claims of all those who were receiving veterans’ pensions – a total of 124,690 people (Lusa, 8 October 2019).

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to former members of all three fronts of Timor’s Resistance,18 in reality, former members of FALINTIL are generally considered more heroic and receive more recognition than former members of the clandestine front, who in turn are considered more heroic and receive more recognition than former members of the diplomatic front (Kent and Kinsella 2015).19 Former members of FALINTIL have been able to more easily register as veterans than former members of the clandestine front;20 former members of FALINTIL also receive additional benefits not afforded to former members of the clandestine front (or the diplomatic front). Additional evidence of the positioning of former members of FALINTIL at the top of a hierarchy of heroism in Timor-Leste is how the term ‘veteran’ is applied in everyday use in Timor-Leste. In interviews and in public discourse during my fieldwork period, the esteemed veteran label was often applied only to former members of FALINTIL. Again, this hierarchy of heroism applies to the deceased as well as to the living, so that former deceased members of FALINTIL are generally considered more heroic than deceased members of the clandestine front. Indeed, an additional piece of evidence regarding the ranking of the fronts and their members is the state’s unequal treatment of the bodies of deceased members of the Resistance. Timor-Leste’s State has placed priority on finding and burying the remains of former members of FALINTIL as opposed to the remains of former members of the clandestine front (or the remains of other civilians). This form of recognition is particularly significant as properly burying the dead is a critical practice in Timor-Leste, linked to the central role that the deceased play in Timorese social life as ancestors (see Hicks 2003; see also Viegas this volume). Deceased heroes versus deceased victims (and dying for independence) The currently dominant state-promoted narrative of past resistance, with its central categories of veteran, hero, and martyr, serves to highlight the 18 In terms of recognition, the Statute declares that total time spent in the Resistance is more important than the particular front in which one served. 19 In Rothschild (2015), I argue that the extreme valorisation of those who participated in the peaceful 1991 Santa Cruz demonstration (preceding the Santa Cruz massacre) is a significant exception to this general rule. 20 According to the 2006 Statute, to qualify as a veteran one needs to prove past ‘exclusive dedication’ to the Resistance. Due to the very nature of clandestine resistance most former members of the clandestine front have had difficulty proving this dedication (Kent and Kinsella 2015, 217).

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deaths of different Timorese than the CAVR’s human rights narrative of past violations, with its central category of victim. The CAVR narrative worked to recognise the deaths of all civilian Timorese who perished as a result of the occupation and civil war, however those Timorese were killed (whether they were murdered directly or died as a result of famine). While the CAVR’s linking of victimhood with civilian status meant that the CAVR didn’t highlight the deaths of FALINTIL combatants who died during the occupation, the CAVR’s victim category otherwise made the past political stance or resistance activity of Timorese who died as a result of the conflicts irrelevant. By contrast, the state’s resistance narrative makes past resistance activity the most important factor in determinations of which deaths deserve recognition. The resistance narrative works to afford the greatest recognition to the deaths of former members of FALINTIL, the ultimate symbol of the Resistance in Timor-Leste (and the only group of Timorese deemed by the CAVR as non-civilian). With a focus on the deaths of those who were part of the formal Resistance movement, the resistance narrative, unlike the CAVR narrative, largely obscures the deaths of Timorese who were killed by Resistance forces, including during the spate of intra-Resistance violence in the 1970s; it also largely obscures the deaths of the massive number of Timorese who perished as a result of famine in the 1970s. The state’s category of hero-martyr is ultimately much narrower and more exclusive than the CAVR’s category of victim, serving to highlight the deaths of far fewer Timorese.21 The resistance narrative also works to give different meaning to the deaths of the deceased. In accordance with the therapeutic ethic discussed above, the CAVR framed the victims at the centre of its work within a specific discourse of suffering (terus or susar); veterans, heroes, and martyrs in present-day Timor-Leste are defined instead by their past experiences of struggling (luta). While suffering and struggling are of course interrelated, overlapping concepts, the concept of struggle is more obviously agentive than the concept of suffering: part of the common definition of ‘to struggle’ is ‘to make efforts’; part of the common definition of ‘to suffer’, on other hand, is ‘to undergo or to be subjected to’ (see definition of ‘suffer’ n.d.; 21 In Rothschild (2017), I discuss the gendered nature of victimhood and veteranhood in present-day Timor-Leste, in that victims are coded female while veterans and heroes are coded male. This distinction holds when these categories are applied to the deceased. The state’s category of hero-martyr thus serves to highlight the deaths of male Timorese and to obscure the deaths of female Timorese.

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definition of ‘struggle’ n.d.). Timorese veterans define themselves and are defined by others not by their past experiences of hardship, but by their past intentional actions or agency – by what they did during the war. This same kind of agency is applied to deceased veterans or martyrs. The deaths of those deemed heroes or martyrs in Timor-Leste are essentially presented as intentional; the individuals in question are said to have sacrificed themselves for independence, the nation, or liberation. During my fieldwork, an informant who disagreed with a man’s decision to bury his veteran son in the family’s rural community, as opposed to in the national Garden of Heroes cemetery, explained to me: ‘that person didn’t die for their family, they didn’t die because they were a thief, they died for the nation’. At the 2011 and 2012 commemoration ceremonies of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, participants carried banners or wore tee-shirts that bore the faces and names of family members who had been killed in the massacre. Declarations next to the names or faces proclaimed: ‘He died, he sacrificed, for our independence’; and ‘Your body and bones were lost in the war and your blood spilt for the beloved land’. Relatives of the deceased often projected even more agency onto the deceased by framing these slogans as coming from the deceased themselves. One banner included a photo of a massacre victim and the declaration: ‘My whole life I gave to the people and beloved land of Timor’ (my italics). A slogan on a tee-shirt next to a picture of another massacre victim gave voice to him and others by declaring: ‘Our death, your lives, our sacrifice, your independence’ (my italics). During an interview that I conducted in September 2012 with Gregorio Saldanha, the leader of the demonstration on 12 November 1991 that preceded the Santa Cruz massacre, Saldanha similarly emphasised the past agency – including the past action and intention – on the part of those killed in the massacre. Saldanha made material the somewhat formulaic and abstract nationalist declarations described above, explaining: People went with a specific struggle, the youth went there with a specific struggle, with good preparation, good organisation, they went with sincerity and with seriousness for the struggle, with their courage, and they were shot dead. It is important that it wasn’t a sudden struggle, it wasn’t that the Indonesians just went and shot them, but they took concrete action and many people died.

Notably, the CAVR does not project a similar past agency onto the deceased at the centre of its work. The CAVR emphasised that the deaths of Timorese that occurred during the civil war and occupation could have a positive

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Figure 9.1 Santa Cruz commemorations. Banner reads ‘My whole life I gave to the people and beloved land of Timor’

Photo: Amy Rothschild

effect in terms of preventing more deaths – that there was purpose in remembering the deceased and their deaths. Yet the deceased themselves were not imbued with purpose as such. In other words, the deceased at the centre of the CAVR’s work – the ‘victims’ of ‘fatal violations’ – did not die as a result of sacrifice but ‘due to human rights violations’ (CAVR 2006, 11:37). The CAVR instead largely attributed past agency (albeit of a negative kind) to the perpetrators of human rights violations, to those who caused Timorese suffering and death. This agency was attributed in the form of legal responsibility and culpability.

Conclusion: from heroes to victims to heroes? Why has a narrative of past resistance that frames Timorese as veterans, heroes, and martyrs largely displaced an immediate post-independence narrative of past violations that frames Timorese as victims? The CAVR

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was explicit about its purposes for remembering the violent Indonesian past and those who suffered and died during this period. Timor-Leste’s leaders have been much less open about their reasons for remembering the occupation and promoting a narrative of past heroic resistance centred around the valorised categories of veterans, heroes, and martyrs. Indeed, in an effort to refute claims for past justice for crimes from the Indonesian occupation, Timor-Leste’s leaders have argued that Timorese should just put the past behind them, thus obscuring the realities of their own intensive engagement with the past.22 Lack of transparency aside, there are multiple reasons that Timor’s leaders, largely veterans themselves, have promoted a narrative of past resistance centred around the valorisation of veterans, heroes, and martyrs. A glorification of past resistance serves to justify elite veterans’ rule by contributing to the belief that veterans are worthy of having political power. More specifically, as I have argued elsewhere, Timorese leaders and political parties grant or promise to grant benefits to veterans or family members of martyrs in exchange for concrete political support (Rothschild 2017).23 Timor-Leste’s leaders have arguably also worked to promote a narrative of past resistance in order to dampen calls for justice for crimes from the Indonesian era. In this vein, a narrative of past resistance has been used to displace a narrative of past violations and victimisation because of the latter narrative’s links with calls for victims’ rights and punitive justice. Simply put, if those who suffered or died during the struggle are heroes or martyrs as opposed to human rights victims, there is no need to pursue justice for their suffering or deaths. That one narrative is meant to displace the other narrative is evidenced by the way that state officials have contrasted the two narratives and their central protagonists – the victim and the hero-martyr – as if they were self-evidently mutually exclusive. Referring specifically to the war dead, the former FALINTIL General Major Mau Buti declared in 2002 that: ‘We should not talk about victims of war in Timor-Leste. Those who died are not victims of war, but heroes because they won’ (cited in The World Bank 2008, 4). Questions of nationalism and national identity are also relevant here. As discussed above, resistance narratives centred around the category of 22 For thoughtful analysis of the turn by Timor-Leste’s leaders away from efforts to secure punitive justice for past crimes, see Kingston (2006) and Webster (2007). 23 Veterans can offer their direct support to specific politicians and parties; because of their status and organisation in various veterans’ groups, they can also act as ‘middle men’ between candidates or parties and local constituencies, working to mobilise voters.

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the heroic dead have traditionally played a critical role in anticolonial and postcolonial nationalisms. Several factors specific to the case of Timor-Leste have arguably made this narrative and category especially appealing (or at least more appealing than a narrative of suffering victimhood centred around the category of the victim). One factor is the newness of a shared Timorese national identity. As numerous scholars have pointed out, there was little shared national identity at all in Timor-Leste before the Indonesian occupation; it was the occupation that first give rise to a Timorese identity (Anderson 1993). Winter argues that ‘intrepid chronicles of Resistance’ can be ‘useful in the revival of the political culture of countries humiliated by occupation and collaboration’ (Winter 2006, 27). These ‘chronicles’ are no doubt particularly useful when the post-occupation political culture and national identity is not being revived but is essentially being created anew. The particular nature of Timor’s struggle for independence is also significant here. Before beginning my main period of my fieldwork in Timor, I had theorised that the successful employment by Timor’s Resistance movement of the practices and discourses of human rights might make the Timorese State likely to embrace the CAVR’s human rights narrative of past victimhood even after the CAVR closed its doors. In hindsight, I see that the reverse just might be true. The state’s promotion of a narrative of past resistance – and the fairly widespread acceptance or promotion of this narrative in Timor-Leste – can be seen not only as a reaction to the ‘humiliation’ of the Indonesian occupation (to use Winter’s word), as well as to the ‘humiliation’ of previous centuries of Portuguese rule, but also to Timor-Leste’s existential need for help from the international human rights community during the occupation.24 Arguably, it is also a reaction to the way in which this help was elicited and procured – the international community only intervened in Timor-Leste after accepting the narrative of agentless, suffering victimhood that had been promoted by Timor-Leste’s Resistance leaders and international solidarity activists. I end this chapter by noting that remembrance takes place in present-day social, political, and economic circumstances. While a historical narrative of past resistance that frames Timorese as veterans, heroes and martyrs has largely displaced an immediate post-independence narrative of past violations that frames Timorese as victims, the balance of power between the two narratives could shift. The resistance narrative could lose 24 Another relevant factor here is the post-independence influx of international actors into Timor-Leste and the power and neocolonial behavior of some of these actors (see Chopra 2002, 981).

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some of its potency when Timor-Leste’s veteran leaders, who have been largely responsible for the promotion of this narrative and have reaped such benefits from it, give up their mantle of power (either willingly or otherwise).25 Other events, such as the recent establishment of Timor-Leste’s new Memory Institute for victims, Centro Nacional Chega!, could serve to strengthen the CAVR-promoted narrative of past victimisation and bring the category of victim back into focus, as applied to both the living and the deceased. These predictions aside, what is clear is that the two main historical narratives of victimhood and resistance in Timor-Leste, with their two central categories of victim and hero-martyr, will remain key competing frameworks for classifying the Timor-Leste war dead in the foreseeable future. Also clear is the significance of these narratives and their central categories, in that their usage will continue to influence everything from who benefits in the present, to conceptions of Timorese national identity, to the question of whether justice for the war dead will ever be attained.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank everyone who gave comments on the draft of this chapter that was circulated at the Timor-Leste Studies Initiative Virtual Workshop in June 2020.

References Alonso, Ana Maria. 1988. ‘The Effects of Truth: Re-Presentations of the Past and the Imagining of Community’. Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1): 33-57. Anderson, Benedict. 1993. ‘Imagining East Timor-Leste’. Arena Magazine 4. Accessed 2 May 2015. http://www.ci.uc.pt/Timor-Leste/imagin.htm. Barkan, Elazar. 2000. The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. 2007. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

25 There was a step in the direction of the former when Xanana Gusmão voluntarily left his post of Prime Minister in 2015.

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CAVR. 2005. Women and the Conflict. Accessed 28 April 2015. http://www.cavrtimorleste.org/en/chegaReport.htm. CAVR. 2006. Chega! Accessed 28 April 2015. http://www.cavr-Timor-Lesteleste. org/en/chegaReport.htm. Chopra, Jarat. 2002. ‘Building State Failure in East Timor-Leste’. Development and Change 33 (5): 979-1000. Constituent Assembly. 2002. Constitution of the Democratic Republic of TimorLeste-Leste. Dili. Hayner, Priscilla. 2001. Unspeakable Truths. New York and London: Routledge. Hicks, David. 2003. Tetum Ghosts and Kin: Fertility and Gender in East Timor-Leste. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Huyssen, Andreas. 2003. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Berkeley: Stanford University Press. Kent, Lia, and Naomi Kinsella. 2015. ‘The Veterans’ Valorisation Scheme: Marginalising Women’s Contributions to the Resistance’. In A New Era?: Timor-Leste-Leste after the UN, edited by Sue Ingram, Lia Kent, and Andrew McWilliam, 213-224. Canberra: ANU Press. Khalili, Laleh. 2007. Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kingston, Jeffrey. 2006. ‘Balancing Justice and Reconciliation in East Timor’. Critical Asian Studies 38 (3): 271-302. Kwon, Heonik. 2008. Ghosts of War in Vietnam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meister, Robert. 2012. After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights. New York: Columbia University Press. Moon, Claire. 2009. ‘Healing Past Violence: Traumatic Assumptions and Therapeutic Interventions in War and Reconciliation’. Journal of Human Rights 8 (1): 71-91. Neiman, Susan. 2010. ‘Victims and Heroes’. Paper presented at The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, University of Michigan. Olick, Jeffrey K., and Joyce Robbins. 1998. ‘Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory’ to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’. Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1):105-140. Roosa, John. 2007. ‘How Does a Truth Commission Find out What the Truth Is? The Case of East Timor-Leste’s CAVR’. Pacific Affairs 80: 569-580. Rothschild, Amy. 2015. ‘Democratization of Perpetration: Human Rights, Transitional Justice and Memories of Resistance in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste’. Conflict and Society 1 (1): 92-108. Rothschild, Amy. 2017. ‘Victims versus Veterans: Agency, Resistance and Legacies of Timor-Leste’s Truth Commission’. International Journal of Transitional Justice 11 (3): 443-462.

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Shaw, Rosalind. 2005. ‘Rethinking Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Lessons from Sierra Leone’. Accessed 24 January 2017. http://www.usip.org/publications/ rethinking-truth-and-reconciliation-commissions-lessons-sierra-leone. Statute of the National Liberation Combatants. 2006. Accessed 11 December 2015. http://www.jornal.gov.tl/lawsTL/RDTL-Law/RDTL-Laws/Law-2006-03.pdf. STRUGGLE. n.d. Accessed 27 April 2018. https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/struggle. SUFFER. n.d. Accessed 20 November 2017. https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/suffer. Webster, David. 2007. ‘History, Nation and Narrative in East Timor’s Truth Commission Report’. Pacific Affairs 80 (4): 581-591. Wilson, Richard. 2003. ‘Anthropological Studies of National Reconciliation Processes’. Anthropological Theory 3 (3): 367-387. Winter, Jay. 2006. Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the 20th Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. The World Bank. 2008. Defining Heroes: Key Lessons from the Creation of Veterans Policy in Timor-Leste-Leste. 45458. Accessed 2 July 2015. http://documents. worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/09/10526689/def ining-heroes-key-lessonscreation-veterans-policy-Timor-Leste-leste#. Zarecka, Iwona Irwin. 1994. Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Interviews Gregorio Saldanha. Dili, Timor-Leste, 27 September 2012.

About the Author Amy Rothschild is an Assistant Professor of sociolegal studies in the Department of Politics at Ithaca College. She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego and a JD from Yale Law School. Her dissertation on remembrance of the violence of the Indonesian occupation of Timor is entitled Victims and Veterans: Memory, Nationalism, and Human Rights in Post-Independence Timor-Leste. It is based on over three years of work and research in Timor beginning in 2002, when she worked at Timor-Leste’s Truth Commission as a human rights lawyer. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Transitional Justice, Conflict & Society, and the edited volume Fieldwork in Timor-Leste. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including a Charlotte

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W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, a Dan David Prize Scholarship, a Global Conflict and Cooperation Dissertation Fellowship from the University of California, a President’s Dissertation Writing Fellowship from the University of California, a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, and a University of California Pacif ic Rim Advanced Graduate Research Fellowship.

10 Gender, Agency and the (In)Visibility of the Dead and the Wounded Henri Myrttinen

Abstract The off icial memorialisation in Timor-Leste of those who died in the struggle for independence has been a visibly masculine one, giving pride of place to those men who died in the armed struggle. This has been replicated at the private level, with new memorials to fallen exFALINTIL family members being erected across the country. While this memorialisation of fallen heroes is understandable, it invisibilises many other victims – women across the board and those of diverse gender identities, unarmed men, those on the ‘losing’ side, as well as the wounded and disabled. Apart from causing grief and concerned to loved ones, these invisibilisations hide the messy complexities of the occupation and undermine the state’s own claims of establishing an inclusive narrative. Keywords: gender, militarised masculinities, women, invisibilisation, memorialisation, narratives

Introduction Two decades after the last Indonesian troops pulled out of Timor-Leste, at a point in time when the average East Timorese citizen has been born several years after independence, the fallen dead of the 1975-1999 struggle are visually more present than ever before. The valorisation of the heroes and martyrs of the independence struggle has been made official state policy. New, massive statues have been erected in Dili to commemorate dead leaders of the independence movement and the wounded demonstrators of the Santa Cruz massacre of 1991, and heroes’ cemeteries have been built

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch10

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for the unearthed remains of fallen FALINTIL (Forças Armadas para a Libertaçao Nacional de Timor-Leste – the armed wing of the East Timorese independence movement) fighters (cf. Leach 2017 and Leach, this volume, for a broader discussion of official memorialisation processes, national identity, and state-building). In parallel with these state-led efforts, families have used their increased incomes to build elaborate and very visible graves for family members who died during the struggle – especially for those who participated in the armed struggle. As discussed in the Introduction to this book, this trend in private commemorations has been so great that the central government felt the need to intervene through the nation-wide Kore Metan Nasional. The dead heroes of the independence struggle are also routinely evoked in political speeches, especially as an admonition to the younger generations born after independence, who are now demographically in the majority. Death, however, is not the great equaliser in Timor-Leste. Certain dead are memorialised more than others, and some are almost completely forgotten. The visibly and invisibly wounded and disabled, meanwhile, receive scant attention. The public memorialisation (or lack thereof) of select dead is always a social and political act, and one which in Timor-Leste helps construct the national historical narrative of the now-independent country. The commemoration and remembering of the dead are also very much gendered acts, and both reflect and reinforce the broader gendered dynamics of the society and politics of the living. While other factors such as class, ethnicity, and political affiliation or social capital also play a role in who gets memorialised, I argue that gender is by far the most salient one. Men tend to gain pride of place as if by default, be it as heroes, villains, or victims, regardless of their age and class if they are suitably agentic, in part because they are able and expected to embrace agency in the public sphere more than women in the first place. Women may be recognised, but only under exceptional circumstances, in spite of their visible and invisible achievements, which are often essential to the processes that see men become visible agents of history. Those transcending the gender binary, such as trans or intersex persons, are often invisibilised completely. Furthermore, those deemed to have been on the ‘losing’ side, as well as the victims of the intra-Timorese political violence that erupted in 2006 and continued until 2008, remain largely invisible.1

1 Although the attempted assassination of the then president José Ramos-Horta on 11 February 2008 led to a sharp decline in violence, there have been further flare-ups between disgruntled

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The memorialisation trends in Timor-Leste are not unique to the country, but rather follow a global pattern: armed, dead men of action, primarily from the ultimately victorious side, take centre stage in the public sphere and dominant historical narrative. As others have argued as well (e.g. Cunha 2016; Kent 2016; Sakti 2018), these trends have real life implications as to who is and who is not seen as part of the heroic story of the nation and thus worthy of privileged treatment. While there is nothing wrong with celebrating heroic agency and tragic sacrifice, this narrow focus leaves little space for open discussions about the inevitable messiness of war and occupation – of lived, painful experiences of inevitable compromises, of less-than heroic acts, of despair and societal mistrust. This chapter examines some of the visibilisations and invisibilisations of what I term the political dead in public spaces in Timor-Leste, as well as the invisibility of the wounded and disabled, from the perspective of gender. By the ‘political dead’ I mean people who died because of political violence and/or were publicly active in the political sphere, as opposed to people who are primarily commemorated privately. The chapter will examine the broader societal and political implications (including for the construction of a hegemonic national historical narrative based on these processes) of public memorialisation on the one hand, and invisibilisation on the other. Lastly, it will also explore emerging spaces for alternative narratives. The dead have agency beyond the symbolic and political value of the actual event of their deaths and memorialisation. Besides being the objects of private and public social and political projects of the living, the dead in Timor-Leste are also agentic in their own right, though again with differences between them (Myrttinen 2014). They can, for example, be summoned and asked to intervene in the world of the living, but can also act on their own, bringing misfortune to the living if their needs and demands are not properly appeased and looked after (Bovensiepen 2014, 2015; Viegas 2019; Sakti 2018, 172). The restless spirits of the dead which are ‘wandering outside […] must be treated in ritually prescribed ways to render them spiritually harmless’ (McWilliam 1997, 110). The communication with as well as the veneration and appeasement of ancestral spirits mostly happens in the private sphere or at the communal level. As discussed below, it tends to be only with particularly eminent deceased persons, such as Nicolau Lobato or Dom Boaventura, that their evocation becomes a more public and political matter.

veterans’ groups and the state which have led to deaths, and sporadic fighting continues to have lethal consequences often, especially between martial and ritual arts groups.

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Commemorating victorious men of action If one enters Timor-Leste by air, upon leaving Dili International Airport one soon encounters a massive, socialist realist-style statue of a uniformed man with an assault rifle, which stands at a major roundabout. This is a statue of Nicolau dos Reis Lobato, after whom the airport is also named. He was the first prime minister of the self-proclaimed Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste in 1975 and, upon the invasion of the territory by Indonesian forces, the leader of the armed resistance. He was killed in 1978 and the fate of his bodily remains is unclear. He is posthumously celebrated as one of the ‘Greats’ of the armed independence struggle, along with the late Nino Konis Santana and the over-arching figure of post-independence politics, Xanana Gusmão. The importance of Lobato and of his physical remains can be seen in the sustained efforts of successive governments of Timor-Leste, who have lobbied the Indonesian government – unsuccessfully – for the return of his remains for reburial in native soil and/or for more information on the whereabouts of the remains. These efforts stand in contrast to the inaction and reluctance of successive East Timorese governments to press the Indonesian government on civilian deaths and disappearances. Beyond the symbolism of returning Lobato’s remains and giving them a dignified burial, and thus contributing to the process of defining the nation (cf. Verdery 1999), Lobato is also seen by some as a ‘potent dead’ with agency in his own right (cf. Chambert-Loir and Reid 2002). Not all, for example, believe in his (complete) death, and his messiah-like return was asked for and imminently awaited at a village gathering I attended during the height of the 2006-2008 crisis (Myrttinen 2014), a sentiment also shared by the leader of at least one of the main oppositional pressure groups in the country (Scambary 2019). Further into town, at a roundabout between Audian and Mercado Lama, stands a statue of Francisco Xavier do Amaral, the first president of the country and proclaimer of the short-lived independence in 1975. Close to the port of Dili, in front of the church in Motael, stands another new statue to the victims of the Indonesian occupation. It depicts a wounded, unarmed, civilian man being propped up and attended to by another civilian man. This monument is in commemoration of the victims of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, when Indonesian forces opened fire on peaceful protesters who were marching from Motael Church to the Santa Cruz cemetery, during which more than 250 people died.2 2 Stylistically, the new statues commemorating Lobato, do Amaral and the Santa Cruz massacre are reminiscent of socialist realism of the 1950s to the 1970s.

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The massacre became a pivotal event for the East Timorese independence movement. This is in part because it was caught on film and the smuggled footage was broadcast abroad, raising the international profile of a then almost forgotten struggle. Unlike most of the memorialised heroes in Timor-Leste, however, the wounded man depicted in the statue, Leví Bucar Côrte-Real, did not die and the statue remains an anomaly in the East Timorese visual memory-scape in other respects as well. Specifically, it depicts a person who is both wounded and an unarmed civilian, rather than an armed FALINTIL guerrilla or political leader. However, the two men depicted do fulfil two other common criteria of memorialised people in Timor-Leste, related to agency and gender. As protestors, both CôrteReal and the man attending to him both chose to actively take part in the march to Santa Cruz cemetery, thus marking them as active agents rather than passive victims. Also, like the vast majority of those memorialised, in particular through monuments and statues, they are men.3 In addition to the well-known and iconic men who have had public monuments erected in their memory, numerous families of fallen former freedom fighters across the country have also invested in often very visible individual graves. Some of these have been embellished with concrete statues or reliefs, others have plaques, and many incorporate the national flag and that of the FALINTIL, and sometimes also of the FRETILIN party, in the memorial. The statues and reliefs of the fallen men – and as far as I have been able to find such graves, it has been exclusively men – mostly show them in uniform and with assault rifles in hand, sometimes standing to attention and sometimes in the midst of combat action. They are thus depicted in poses stereotypically associated with military masculinity, rather than more mundane poses. As with most official statues (apart from the Motael memorial), they are not depicted as being wounded in battle. These graves and memorials have been erected after independence and thus often many years after the deaths occurred, as they would have been impossible to commission under Indonesian rule. It also only became financially possible to invest in statues, especially the more elaborate ones, once money became available in the post-independence economy (Viegas 2019). On the official, state level, the remnants of the fallen men of the Resistance have also been given public places of rest in the Garden of Heroes in Metinaro for the higher profile dead, as well as in district-level ossuaries for the less prominent fallen (see also Kent, this volume, and Leach, this volume). 3 As discussed by Michael Leach (this volume), the monument is not wholly uncontroversial among the survivors of the massacre.

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These official places of remembrance, however, do not include visualisations by means of statues as in the case of several of the private memorial sites. These official commemoration practices for the fallen FALINTIL have been contested by the veteran-focused pressure groups CPD-RDTL (Conselho Popular pela Defesa da República Democrática de Timor-Leste) and Sagrada Familia. Their objections have not been so much about whether the dead should be memorialised but where and by whom – and who ultimately should ‘own’ the narratives linked to the remains (Myrttinen 2014). It is however not only the (male) heroes of the 24-year struggle against Indonesia who have been memorialised post-independence. In the mountain town of Same, there is a statue to the memory of Dom Boaventura, who led the 1912 uprising against Portuguese colonial rule. He also features on the East Timorese one-dollar coin, underscoring the dead hero’s continuing potency. This potency and salience of the anti-colonial hero to the modernday national narrative, and his status as a ‘potent dead’, was also underscored when his spirit was invoked by the late Major Alfredo Reinado to allegedly help him become invisible and thus escape Australian Special Air Service forces in 2007 (Myrttinen 2014; Nygaard-Christensen 2012). However, the dead are not only remembered through statues and heroes’ cemeteries, but are also routinely evoked in political speeches – especially by the older, male politicians and office holders, including the military and police. The dead – in particular the fallen FALINTIL – and their sacrifices to the nation are held up as an example and as an admonishment to the living. Implicitly, and at times explicitly, this is also a rebuke to younger generations who are thus cast as not having sacrificed, of having it ‘too easy’, and importantly not yet being eligible to take up positions of societal and political power (Myrttinen 2014).

Absences and invisibilisations In this section, I will briefly cover some of the numerous categories of East Timorese who have mostly been left out of the national narratives and visible commemorations of the struggle for independence and nation-building: women, those on the pro-Indonesian side, the victims of the 2006-2008 crisis, as well as the wounded and disabled. Arguably, civilian casualties of the independence struggle as a whole are largely sidelined in the national historical narratives, beyond a more generalised statement of widespread suffering, and the attempts of civilian victims of 1975-1999 to get recognition and compensation have stalled. This has been due in large part to opposition

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from FALINTIL veteran groups and politicians close to them, who have insisted on veterans’ needs and pensions being prioritised and attended to before civilian victims’ needs can be considered (Kent 2012). 4 Given that the primary, direct civilian victims have struggled to gain recognition, it is not surprising that those affected less directly have struggled even more. These include the family members of the disappeared or the dead, and care-takers of victims or survivors of violence, be it of armed conflict or torture and incarceration. Given societal gender norms and expectations, it is often women who bear the brunt of this labour. Women The most obvious publicly unrecognised dead of the independence struggle are women, who do not feature in statues and memorials, though occasionally (e.g. on International Women’s Day) old photos showing female FALINTIL guerrillas are recycled for public campaign posters. Civilian women – and for that matter, most civilian men – who died between 1975 and 1999 are either subsumed under the unspecif ied category of the overall 180,000 or more civilian deaths of the conflict, and/or are remembered privately by their families. Women victims are remembered as part of commemorating larger groups of victims, such as at the memorials to the Liquiçá and Suai church massacres (Leach, this volume) or the memorial to two Canossian Sisters, a priest, and a Japanese journalist killed in Lautem. A partial exception in this respect is Rosa ‘Muki’ Bonaparte, the founder and first secretary-general of the women’s wing of the FRETILIN, the Organização Popular da Mulher Timorense (OPMT – Popular Organisation of Timorese Women), who was killed by Indonesian troops in the first days of the December 1975 invasion.5 Although the Rotunda Rosa Bonaparte in the Mandarin neighbourhood of Dili is dedicated to her, this is little-known and easily overlooked, unlike the imposing statues dedicated to men (Loney 2012). As discussed below, she is also featured in the political street art of the East Timorese artist Tony Amaral. As a commemorated figure, she both confirms and defies the gendered politics of memorialisation: as the 4 The author’s interviews with veterans’ rights activists also brought to light other concerns which are not always articulated publicly, such as that pro-Indonesian East Timorese civilians might also get compensation and/or that former FALINTIL might be explicitly or implicitly accused of crimes (see also Kent 2016 and Ottendörfer 2013). 5 For more on her life and brief but notable political career, see Smith (2019).

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only woman commemorated, she breaks into the masculine-dominated pantheon of memorialised heroes However, she is also someone who is a ‘woman of action’ and was on the ultimately victorious side, even if she was targeted for death almost immediately at the beginning of the occupation, possibly due to Indonesian state paranoia specifically over left-wing women activists (cf. Wieringa 2011). Moreover, although she is commemorated, it is very much at the margins of memorial politics, underscoring women’s broader social and political marginalisation.6 The invisibility of women who lost their lives in the struggle is part of a broader pattern of sidelining and rendering women’s agency and contributions to the independence struggle invisible, both to society and to history in Timor-Leste. This marginalisation of women has been as pointed out, for example, with regard to women veterans, women’s experiences of war-time sexual violence, women’s experiences of the independence struggle more broadly, women in the political sphere, and the comparative invisibility of past women rulers in historical narratives (Cristalis and Scott 2005; Hägerdal and Kammen 2017; Harris Rimmer 2010; Kent and Kinsella 2015; Niner 2011; Rodriguez Tchailoro 2019; Smith 2019). Although there are somewhat tokenistic inclusions of women, such as through the few photos of armed female FALINTIL guerrillas, the broader roles played by women are largely absent from the official history of the nation. This includes the roles of women as participants in and supporters of the armed and unarmed resistance (but also of the opposite side), women as victims and survivors of violence in public and private spheres, and women as loved ones of the fallen or assumed and unpaid carers of the wounded. This invisibilisation has occurred in part due to the greater value given in the national narrative to the armed struggle of the FALINTIL as compared to the unarmed clandestine movement. While some women did take up arms, the latter movement was perhaps up to 60 per cent women (Cristalis and Scott 2005, 39), though most formal positions were held by men. Teresa Cunha (2016, 46) sees these invisibilisations as part of a historical narrative based on a ‘profoundly patriarchal vision of virile heroes and warriors’ in which ‘women […] remain largely invisible’. 6 The space commemorating Rosa ‘Muki’ Bonaparte is also much less prominent than, for example, the main avenue or the Dili airport named after Nicolau Lobato or, for that matter, the National Park named after Nino Konis Santana. However, few people in Dili actually use the official street names but rather use more colloquial names or navigate using well-known landmarks – both of which differ for locals and ex-pats (cf. Myrttinen 2016).

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The ‘opposing’ side A further group not receiving recognition, in spite of the official TimorLeste government policy of an inclusive and all-encompassing historical narrative, are those East Timorese who fought on or politically supported the Indonesian side to one degree or another. The lack of recognition is politically not surprising, given the history of the struggle and especially the atrocities committed by pro-Indonesian militias before, during, and after the 1999 independence referendum, and resonates among parts of the political elite and the broader population (Kent 2016; Ottendörfer 2013). Nonetheless, the exclusion has rankled among those who feel that they are not part of the hegemonic historical narrative and attendant forms of memorialisation. The most obvious group excluded are the former pro-Indonesian militia and their supporters residing in Indonesian West Timor. They feel unable to return to be buried in their ancestral land or to perform the necessary rites for their own dead ancestors, causing spiritual unease among them (Damaledo 2018, and in this volume; Myrttinen 2011a; Sakti 2018). While the East Timorese supporters of Indonesian rule are not publicly commemorated, in a slightly bitter twist of irony, the Indonesian occupiers are, in at two ‘heroes’ cemeteries’ (taman makam pahlawan) – one close to Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili and one near Lauhata, Liquiçá district (see also Leach, this volume). It is, however, not only the former pro-integrationists in West Timor who feel excluded from the straightforward narrative of the heroic independence struggle. Across the country, families and communities have historically aligned themselves with groups that were either in direct opposition to, or to some degree in conflict with parts of the independence movement, often due to local dynamics. As Leach (this volume) points out, there are occasional memorials to victims of FRETILIN violence, but for the most part the memories of inter-East Timorese strife and its victims – be it during the colonial period, the Japanese occupation, the civil war of 1975 between FRETILIN and the União Democrática Timorense, or even more so the Indonesian occupation – are airbrushed out of the official historical narrative and public memorialisations. However, as authors such as Judith Bovensiepen (2015), Janet Gunter (2007), Douglas Kammen (2015), Andrea Molnar (2010), and James Scambary (2019) point out, these local histories of conflict and death are seldom forgotten at the community level and play into current tensions and violence.

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Victims of the 2006-2008 ‘Krize’ and concomitant violence Another group of violent deaths which go largely unremembered publicly are the perhaps one hundred or so who died in the violence that gripped Dili in particular during the ‘Krize’ (Tetum, ‘crisis’) of 2006-2008. The ‘Krize’ erupted in April-May 2006, and its immediate catalyst was the protest by around 600 soldiers against alleged discrimination in the armed forces based on their geographical origin (i.e. whether they originated from the western districts of the country), which led to their sacking. The protests escalated, leading to a breakdown in the security forces, which in turn precipitated fighting between various factions, including martial and ritual arts groups.7 The initial stage of fighting in April-June 2006 led to the deaths of 37 people and to approximately 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), or 10 per cent of the nation’s population, fleeing their homes in Dili. The violence also led to the resignation of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and the arrival of a new, militarily robust peacekeeping mission. While the violence ebbed slightly after June 2006, sporadic but often intense fighting between different martial and ritual arts groups, as well as peacekeepers, continued in various parts of Dili but also in Baucau and several locations in the central highlands, leading to over 100 deaths by early 2008 (Myrttinen 2011a and Scambary 2019). The political crisis also persisted as a number of disgruntled ex-soldiers continued their armed protest under Major Alfredo Reinado. The crisis came to a dramatic head – and an end – on 11 February 2008. On the morning of that day, there was an assassination attempt against then President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, and Major Reinado was shot dead at Ramos-Horta’s house. The end of the political krize led to a marked decrease but not an end of the violence and tensions between pressure groups of various stripes – veterans’ groups, ritual and martial arts groups – both among themselves and between them and the state. The state approach has been one of carrots and sticks, with sticks including an armed crackdown on CPD-RDTL and Sagrada Familia as well the shooting of dissident ex-veteran Paulino Gama (Mauk Moruk) in 2015, and the banning of the three largest martial arts groups – Kera Sakti (Sacred Monkey), KORK (Kmanek Oan Rai Klaran – Wise Children of the Land), and PSHT (Persaudaraan Setia Hati Terate – Brother-/ Sisterhood of the Sacred Lotus Heart).

7 For a detailed examination of the events in March-June 2006, see United Nations (2006) and Scambary (2019) for a broader examination of conflict drivers.

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While this violent political crisis is, of course, not itself part of the struggle for independence, it was a seminal and crucial moment for the young nation-state. It laid bare multiple fissures in society, which in part pre-dated the independence struggle, in part were the outcomes of how the occupation and struggle played out, and in part were related directly to actions taken by the political leadership but also from the ground up in the post-independence period. Importantly for this chapter, these included tensions around who was and who was not included in the narrative of the independence struggle. This was a direct triggering factor for the crisis in 2006, as soldiers from the west of the country felt that the contributions of those from the western regions were not being given proper respect.8 This issue was also a key driving factor for CPD-RDTL, Sagrada Familia, and Mauk Moruk. The lack of engagement with the crisis, its drivers, and its legacies once the dust had settled in the aftermath of 11 February 2008 can on the one hand be seen as contributing to stability, but on the other hand also mean that underlying issues remain unresolved and may resurface. The exceptions to the lack of remembrance of the krize are a memorial to the police officers killed in the first days of violence in 2006 in downtown Dili and a shrine to the Virgin Mary outside the house of Ramos-Horta, commemorating the 2008 assassination attempt. In a sense, these two memorials bookend the crisis years with one of the first and one of the last violent events of this period. While the details of both of the commemorated events, especially the 2008 assassination attempt, remain somewhat controversial, what is not in doubt is that both events were male-dominated and it was men who died and were wounded. Much like the krize itself, its victims have faded or disappeared from public discourse in the subsequent decade. Of Reinado, the man who so captured the political imaginary of the country for two feverish years, little is said publicly, though upon probing in interviews I carried out in 2019, I found he is not forgotten (cf. Myrttinen 8 The Indonesian invasion of Timor-Leste in 1975 had already begun prior to the proclamation of independence, with Indonesian troops and pro-Indonesian Timorese forces, in part drawn from Apodeti and UDT supporters, occupying western parts of the territory (including Batugade, Balibo, Bobonaro, and Maliana) as part of Operasi Flamboyan. Nine days after the declaration of independence, the main Indonesian invasion, Operasi Seroja, began with an assault on Dili. The progress of the Indonesian armed forces was slow and the FALINTIL were able to hold on to some territory, particularly in the east, around Mount Matebian, until November 1978. The areas around Matebian were also a temporary home to thousands of East Timorese civilians under FALINTIL protection. Although Indonesian advances were also slow in the west and resistance fierce (e.g. around Mount Taroman), the longer resistance around Matebian and its place in the historical imaginary have led to the Resistance in the eastern parts playing a more central role in the historical narrative.

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2011a, Nygaard-Christensen 2012). One of the few visible remnants of the man is a fragment of fading graffiti on a wall by the beachside boulevard in Dili, written in his praise a decade ago. Although the krize has passed, and the violence has ebbed, it has not disappeared entirely. Martial and ritual arts groups that played a key role in those years remain active, in spite of bans, and continue to engage in lethal violence. This has led to new form of memorialisation of the recent dead by martial arts groups, drawing on formats similar to those of fallen guerrillas. At least two, PSHT and KORK, have also begun erecting, collecting money, and paying for ‘hero’ graves for some of its dead (male) members (e.g. in Atabae for a KORK member, and in Maubisse and Maliana for PSHT members) that very visibly show their organisation’s logo and in one case ideological phrases, echoing the use of FALINTIL symbols on ex-combatants’ graves.9 Wounded and disabled As mentioned earlier, the Motael memorial to the Santa Cruz massacre is exceptional in as much as it thematises and visibilises wounding and vulnerability rather than death or heroically defiant stances. On the whole, however, the visibly and invisibly wounded and disabled victims of the conflict remain largely invisible in the public discourse of the independence struggle. This also applies to the otherwise celebrated FALINTIL veterans, who have had little recourse to medical and psycho-social support services, but who at least receive more recognition than civilian victims (Myrttinen 2011b). The lack of a visible memorialisation of the war wounded and disabled, in particular of those with invisible disabilities (e.g. loss of sight or hearing, shrapnel or bullets lodged in the body, mental and emotional disorders) caused by the war, as contrasted with the hypervisibility of fallen fighters, especially men, is not particular to Timor-Leste but is rather something of a global phenomenon. Furthermore, as in many other societies, the impacts of violence-related disabilities have not been comprehensively studied from a gender perspective, for example in terms of direct impacts of disability on East Timorese men and women’s sense of living up to dominant expectations of masculinity and femininity or gendered expectations of care work. 9 The use of language here is interesting, with some FALINTIL graves using Portuguese for the more political narrative on the commemorative plaques, and Indonesian in the case of PSHT, even though the latter inscriptions are from the second half of the 2010s, over 15 years after Indonesian stopped being the official language.

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Limited space for alternative narratives The dominant visualisations of the dead in Timor-Leste are thus unambiguous and heroic, if tragic ones. They mostly depict able-bodied men of action, who rose up against Portuguese or Indonesian domination, and feed into what Victoria Kumala Sakti (2018, 121) terms the valorisation of resistance as an ‘emotional regime,’ and demand the public ‘rendering of tribute to the national heroes’ (Leach 2017). This dominant public narrative def ines the straightforward, teleological, male-dominated national historical narrative of how independence was attained, building on centuries of struggle and devoid of painful complexities and of the messiness of co-optation and collaboration, let alone internal strife between East Timorese. These memorials and the dominant narrative also implicitly define whose roles in this historical trajectory are worthy of being remembered, who is considered part of this narrative and who is not, and prescribe the ways in which the past is remembered and commemorated (Sakti 2018, 139). There have, however, also been limited attempts at creating spaces for counter-narratives. The most ambitious of these projects is arguably OPMT’s memorialisation project seeking to collect women’s experiences of war, resistance, and occupation, which at the time of writing was in its final stages (see also Kent 2016). The Assosiasaun Chega! Ba Ita (ACbit)/Association Chega! for us) has sought to highlight women’s testimonies given to the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation (Kent 2016). A more ambivalent and – for Timor-Leste – unusual new form of memory work comes from the East Timorese street artist Tony Amaral, who has spray-painted a series of stencilled images of dead and living icons of the independence struggle on prominent walls downtown Dili. The images, mostly male but also one female, include Francisco Xavier do Amaral at the time of proclaiming the independence of the nation in 1975, Bishop Dom Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, the poet Francisco Borja da Costa, and Rosa ‘Muki’ Bonaparte Soares. Next to their images are ambiguous captions and quotes based on their speeches, which can be read as a critique of unfulfilled promises of independence (cf. Kammen 2009 and Traube 2007 on unfulfilled expectations of independence).10 The artwork is in many 10 The slogans include ‘Sem proclamação, sem nação’ (author’s translation: Without a proclamation, without a nation, or Without a proclamation, there would be no nation) for Amaral, ‘Ita manan liberdade maibe lakon moral’ (We have gained independence but lost our morals) for Bishop Belo, ‘La Bele Mukit Iha Koñesimento’ (One cannot lack knowledge) for Borja da Costa and

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Figure 10.1 Street Art in Dili by Tony Amaral depicting Rosa Muki Bonaparte Soares, January 2019

Photo: Henri Myrttinen

ways unique in the country, not only for its style but because it publicly questions straightforward messages about the past. It also differs from OPMT’s and ACbit’s approaches in that it is not as focused on the years of war and occupation and takes a public, freely accessible visual format. Another alternative form of remembering the heroic dead is narrated by Teresa Cunha (2016), as she contrasts the private and oral memorialisation of Bi Murak with that of her husband, a prominent independence leader. While the memory of Bi Murak is marked by immateriality and by a markedly complex relationship with her husband, and is preserved mostly by women, her husband is very visibly celebrated through public monuments focusing on his political and military persona and straightforward heroism. Cunha also makes the broader point that it is men’s blood, spilled in battle or in killings, that is celebrated, while women’s spilled blood, be it through death or sexual violence, or more positively the life-giving blood spilled at childbirth, is invisibilised. ‘La iha buat ida maka makas liu ema feto ida n’eebe maka luta ba saida mama nia fiar’ (There’s nothing more powerful than a woman who fights for what she believes in) for Rosa Bonaparte.

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Discussion The dead play a key role in Timor-Leste society at various levels, and are imbued with agency. This also applies to the ‘political dead’ – those who were active in the public sphere and lost their lives in part because of this, and those who were caught up in broader political events that led to their deaths. As in many other countries, the story of the nation-state’s independence gives a special place to these political dead, but acknowledgement is not evenly distributed. The resulting narrative, which is reinforced by public commemorations, monuments, and sacral sites such as ossuaries and heroes’ cemeteries, and political exhortations to the living and particularly ‘the youth’,11 reproduce a one-dimensional, teleological and masculinecoded story. This narrative seeks not only to explain why and how national independence came about, but also why the current power-holders should be in power, and why certain decisions are taken and others are not, for example when it comes to allocating budgets to public memorials to the dead but not to living survivors. The simple, heroic narrative erases the inevitable messiness of occupation and war – compromises, collaboration, denunciation, violence committed by all sides, but also unexpected acts of mercy and kindness – and above all the mundane everyday struggles both civilians and combatants lived through. The acts remembered and solidified in monuments are those of heroic agency, military action, and (tragic) glory, not of everyday hunger, boredom, happenstance, and internal discord. As Lia Kent (2016, 52-53) notes, while ‘this is an intensely masculine narrative that reinforces problematic gendered assumptions about male and female roles, it is nonetheless also extremely powerful, resonating both with discourses of the Resistance and with the perceived nation-building imperatives of the present’. Death in East Timorese society is, as Judith Bovensiepen (2014, 113) points out, a time to renegotiate, reassert, reproduce, and recalibrate social and status relations in a community. This happens mostly at the extended family and immediate community level, but in the case of those who are publicly commemorated it happens at the national level as well. From a gender perspective, the dominant narrative serves to both project onto the dead the gendered and in part gerontocratic hierarchies of the living, and also use the dead to legitimise these power differentials among the living. Though contested by private persons and occasionally by non-state groups, the Timor-Leste state has sought to monopolise the emotional 11 This in itself being an ambiguous and gendered category.

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regimens of memorialising the past as well as defining the dominant narrative. The erasing and discouraging of polyvocality has in some ways been done knowingly and explicitly, and in other ways inadvertently, but in both cases undermining the state’s own claims of establishing an inclusive and egalitarian narrative. As recent history in Timor-Leste shows, the sense of exclusion this creates can perpetuate old feuds or lead to new conflicts – and thereby to new deaths. The visible celebration of dead men who fought feeds into a national narrative arc of a centuries-long, continuous, teleological, masculine-coded funu (Tetum, ‘war or struggle’) for independence (cf. Gunn 2000, RamosHorta 1987, and more critically Kent 2012 and Sakti 2018). Without in any way wishing to detract from the struggle and sacrifice of the fallen FALINTIL and civilian Resistance members who are commemorated, I do believe that the partial politics of memorialisation and valorisation of these men, and the hierarchies among the dead that this produces, is somewhat at odds with the political leadership’s more egalitarian and inclusive mantra that ‘all East Timorese suffered’ for independence (see also Sakti 2018) and that independence was brought about equally by armed and unarmed resistance. The gendered politics of it also further sideline women and their social and political participation, but also the younger generations who were either not old enough to join the armed struggle or, as the majority of the country is today, born after its end. Furthermore, the invisibilisation of some of the dead and of most of the wounded means that the needs of these people and of their families and close ones have not been properly attended to. As the reading of Bi Murak’s memorialisation by Teresa Cunha (2016), the work of Tony Amaral, or the private commemorations described by Sakti (2018) show, there are also alternatives to the heavily masculinised and often militarised ways of remembering the political dead and of narrating Timor-Leste’s history. These alternative paths do not detract from the very real sacrifices of the mostly male members of the armed resistance, but rather help create a more complex, honest, nuanced, and inclusive discussion. It also gives space and spiritual comfort to those who are currently marginalised from the narratives and official forms of memorialisation or compensation. In the context of Timor-Leste, this is not only necessary for placating the living, but also the dead, who remain potent, desirous of attention, and agentic. It will also require the willingness to allow multiple, at times conflicting narratives about the past to co-exist. Not all, of course, will want a public memorialisation of the dead to whom they are attached. There is thus also a need respect those who want privacy and discretion and do not wish for their dead close ones ‘to become any sort of currency to

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be used in contemporary political machinations’ (Cunha 2016, 50). Echoing Cunha’s thoughts on celebrating the spilled blood of childbirth as a life-giving force, while the dead demand and deserve respect and memorialisation, perhaps more efforts should also be directed towards the living, in particular those whose lives continue to be marked by the aftermath of the country’s violent political history. The limited attempts at creating alternate, less straightforward, more ambiguous, less masculinist, but closer-to-life (and death) ways of memorialising the past in post-independence Timor-Leste have largely been small-scale and led either by private efforts or NGOs. As the twentieth anniversary of the nation’s independence nears, and an ever larger proportion of the population will have known only the post-independence years, it remains to be seen if more space for alternate narratives will emerge alongside those celebrating dead, victorious men of action.

References Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014. ‘Paying for the Dead: On the Politics of Death in Independent Timor-Leste’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15 (2): 103-122. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2014.892528. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2015. The Land of Gold: Post-Conflict Recovery and Cultural Revival in Independent Timor-Leste. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Chambert-Loir, Henri, and Anthony Reid, eds. 2002. The Potent Dead: Ancestors, Saints and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Cristalis, Irena, and Scott, Catherine. 2005. Independent Women: The Story of Women’s Activism in East Timor. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. Cunha, Teresa. 2016. ‘Beyond the Timorese Nationalist Orthodoxy: The ‘Herstory’ of Bi-Murak’. In Women and the Politics of Gender in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste – Between Heaven and Earth, edited by Sara Niner, 46-64. London: Routledge. Damaledo, Andrey. 2018. Divided Loyalties: Displacement, Belonging and Citizenship Among East Timorese in West Timor. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Viegas, Susana de Matos. 2019. ‘The Co-presence of Ancestors and Their Reburials among the Fataluku (Timor-Leste)’. Indonesia 107 (April): 55-74. Gunn, Geoffrey. 2000. ‘The 500-Year Timorese Funu’. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 32 (1-2): 5-10.

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Gunter, Janet. 2007. ‘Communal Conflict in Viqueque and the ‘Charged’ History of ’59’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1): 27-41. Hägerdal, Hans, and Douglas Kammen. 2017. ‘The Lost Queens of Timor’. In Women and the Politics of Post-Conflict Timor-Leste, edited by Sara Niner, 17-45. Abingdon: Routledge. Harris Rimmer, Susan. 2010. Gender and Transitional Justice: The Women of East Timor. Abingdon: Routledge. Kammen, Douglas. 2009. ‘Fragments of Utopia: Popular Yearnings in East Timor’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40 (2): 385-408. Kammen, Douglas. 2015. Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor. Singapore: NUS Press. Kent, Lia. 2012. The Dynamics of Transitional Justice: International Models and Local Realities in East Timor. Abingdon: Routledge. Kent Lia. 2016. ‘After the Truth Commission: Gender and Citizenship in Timor-Leste’. Human Rights Review 17 (1): 51-70. Kent, Lia, and Naomi Kinsella. 2015. ‘A Luta Kontinua (The Struggle Continues): The Marginalization Of East Timorese Women Within The Veterans’ Valorization Scheme’. International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (3): 473-494. Leach, Michael. 2017. Nation-Building and National Identity in Timor-Leste. London: Routledge. Loney, Hannah. 2012. ‘Women’s Activism in Timor-Leste: A Case Study on Fighting Women’. In Peskiza foun kona ba Timor-Leste: New Research on Timor-Leste, TLSA Conference Proceedings 2012, edited by Michael Leach, Nuno Caras Mendes, Antero Benedito da Silva, Robert G. Boughton, and Alarico Costa Ximenes, 265-269. Hawthorn, Victoria: Swinburne Press. McWilliam, Andrew. 1997. ‘Mapping with Metaphor: Cultural Topographies in West Timor’. In The Poetic Power of Place: Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality, edited by James Fox, 101-112. Canberra: Australian University Press. Molnar, Andrea. 2010. Timor Leste: Politics, History, and Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Myrttinen, Henri. 2011a. ‘Histories of Violence, States of Denial: Militias, Martial Arts and Masculinities in Timor-Leste’. Ph.D. diss., University of KwaZulu-Natal. Myrttinen, Henri. 2011b. ‘Nach dem bewaffneten Kampf: Die Veteranen, Clandestinos und der Ruf nach Anerkennung’ [After the armed struggle: Veterans, Clandestinos and the Calls for Recognition] in ‘Die Freiheit, für die wir kämpfen…’ Osttimor in der Unabhängigkeit. [‘The freedom that we are fighting for…’ East Timor after Independence], edited by Henri Myrttinen, Monika Schlicher, and Maria Tschanz, 155-168. Berlin: Regiospectra.

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Myrttinen, Henri. 2014. ‘Claiming the Dead, Defining the Nation: Contested Narratives of the Independence Struggle in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste’. In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and The Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by F. Stepputat, 95-113. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Myrttinen, Henri. 2016. ‘The Camp, the Street, the Hotel, and the Brothel – the Gendered, Racialised Spaces of a City in Crisis. Dili, 2006-2008’. In Spatializing Peace and Conflict – Mapping the Production of Places, Sites and Scales of Violence, edited by A. Björkdahl and S. Buckley-Zistel, 98-117. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Niner, Sara. 2011. ‘Hakat Klot, Narrow Steps: Negotiating Gender In Post-Conflict Timor-Leste’. International Feminist Journal of Politics 13 (3): 413-435. Nygaard-Christensen, Maj. 2012. ‘The Rebel and the Diplomat: Revolutionary Spirits, Sacred Legitimation, and Democracy in Timor-Leste’. In Varieties of Secularism in Asia: Anthropological Explorations of Religion, Politics and the Spiritual, edited by Nils Ole Bubandt and Martijn van Beek, 209-229. Abingdon: Routledge. Ottendörfer, Eva. 2013. ‘Contesting International Norms of Transitional Justice: The Case of Timor Leste’. International Journal of Conflict and Violence 7 (1): 23-35. Ramos-Horta, José. 1987. Funu: The Unfinished Saga of East Timor. Trenton: Red Sea Press. Rodriguez Tchailoro, Nuno. 2019. ‘Houses as Sites of Women’s Resistance in the Occupied Zones’. Presentation at the Understanding Timor-Leste: 2019 TimorLeste Studies Association Research Conference, Dili, 27-29 June 2019. Sakti, Victoria Kumala. 2018. ‘Bonds and Boundaries: Emotion, Memory, and Social Repair in Timor-Leste’. Ph.D. diss., Freie Universität Berlin. Scambary, James. 2019. Conflict, Identity and State Formation in East Timor 2000-2017. Leiden: Brill Publishers. Smith, Sarah. 2019. Gendering Peace: The United Nations in Timor-Leste, London: Routledge. Traube, Elizabeth G. 2007. ‘Unpaid Wages: Local Narratives and the Imagination of the Nation’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1): 9-25. United Nations. 2006. Report of the United Nations Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste. Geneva: United Nations. Accessed at https://www. ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/COITimorLeste.pdf. Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and PostSocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press. Wieringa, Saskia. 2011. ‘Sexual Slander and the 1965/66 Mass Killings in Indonesia: Political and Methodological Considerations’. Journal of Contemporary Asia 41 (4), 544-565.

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About the Author Henri Myrttinen is a researcher with the Berlin-based Mauerpark Institute. He has been working on issues of gender, peace, and security for the past 15 years and holds a PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, with a thesis on masculinities and violence in Timor-Leste.

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On the Politics of Memory Cult of Martyrs, Contested Memories and Social Status1 Rui Graça Feijó Abstract Afonso Savio and Commander Falu Cai were active members of the Resistance. Their respective deaths took place in times of extreme hardship, surrounded by controversy regarding circumstances and culpability. When Timor-Leste regained independence, clouds of doubt hung over their memories, preventing them from being honoured as true heroes of the liberation. Their families mounted strategies to fight those contested memories and to establish a hegemonic narrative that restored their martyrdom to the national pantheon of heroes. Funerary arrangements and memorials were organized to enshrine their new condition. More than material gains, it is argued that the driving force behind their families’ efforts was a goal of obtaining recognition of a specific social status in a highly hierarchical society. Keywords: contested memories, martyrdom, memorials, hegemonic narrative, social status, social hierarchy

Introduction: Jorge Luis Borges in Timor-Leste In January 1944, isolated in his native and rather peaceful Buenos Aires watching from afar while World War II ravaged the planet, Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) wrote a very short story entitled ‘Theme of the Traitor and the Hero’, later included in his Ficciones (Fictions). Presented as an idea for a longer piece to take place ‘in an oppressed, tenacious country’, it is set in 1 This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Senhora Albina Marçal Freitas / Bia Shana (1958-2019).

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch11

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Ireland in 1824. Fergus Kilpatrick was ‘a conspirator, a secret and glorious captain of conspirators’ who opposed the English domination, and ‘perished on the eve of the victorious revolt which he had premeditated and dreamt of’. As people commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the victorious revolt of which Fergus was the symbol, Ryan, one of his great-grandchildren, is preparing to write a biography of the hero. What he finds is a secret that leaves him astonished: Fergus had betrayed his companions. Having been exposed in a meeting of his fellow conspirators, ‘he signed his own sentence, but begged that his punishment not harm his country’. His assassination was prepared by his friends in such a way that the blame for the act would fall on their enemies. Fergus’s allegedly innocent blood could then be vindicated by his followers and feed the anticipated revolt. As such, the plan transformed ‘the traitor’s execution [into] an instrument for the country’s emancipation’. Ryan gives up writing his book.2 A quarter of a century later, Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci (19412018) adapted Borges’ story to the silver screen (The Spider’s Stratagem, 1970). The setting is moved to Fascist Italy. Athos Magnani is an anti-fascist hero who has been involved in the organisation an assassination attempt against the Duce on the occasion of a visit to the small town of Tara. However, the authorities are tipped off about the plan and it is abandoned. In order to obtain a new effect that could undermine the credibility of the fascists, the popular Athos Magnani – presumably the traitor – is sacrificed and shot at the very end of an operatic performance prepared for the Duce, as Rigoletto explodes in the final aria, ‘Ah! La maledizione!’ (‘The curse!’). The crime, perpetrated by his friends, can thus be attributed to the local fascists. This widely accepted version of events has an impact on the partigiani’s level of support. In the aftermath of this tragic event, the collective memory of Tara is built around this interpretation, which lasts for more than a generation. This theme – a crime committed under circumstances that could not be properly elucidated, which leads to the emergence of a manipulated narrative – resonates in present day Timor-Leste. As in both f ictional cases, Timor-Leste was an ‘oppressed, tenacious country’ which endured 24 years of brutal foreign occupation (1975-1999). During that quarter of a century, Timorese men and women fought for self-determination at the same time that they had, in Peter Carey’s words, ‘to learn how to live with the enemy’. This long process inevitably took many lives. Yet the 2 An English version of this short story (from which these excerpts were taken) is available at http:// allaboutjeff.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/theme-of-the-traitor-and-the-hero-by-jorge-luis-borges

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context of war experienced during that long period meant that not all deaths had clear-cut contours. Many of them occurred in situations that cast a shadow of ambiguity over them, and different, conflicting narratives have circulated. ‘Objective’ truth about motives and circumstances was difficult to ascertain, and the purposes of propaganda and strategic needs under duress often replaced the quest for a just appraisal of events. Nowadays, when martyrs are considered heroes and as such a key element in the construction of a nationalist narrative (see Leach in this volume), the ambiguous circumstances surrounding many deaths require special attention. The Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste is designed as a ‘heart-felt tribute to the martyrs of the Motherland’ (Preamble) and stipulates that the new Republic ‘acknowledges and values the historical resistance of the Maubere people against foreign domination and the contribution of all those who fought for national independence’ (Section 1.1). It defines the symbolism of the colours in the national flag, stating that the dominant red represents ‘the struggle for national liberation’. The national anthem sings ‘Fatherland, Fatherland, Timor-Leste our nation / Glory to the people and the heroes of our liberation’. All this contributes to symbolically include the martyrs in the community of the living and forms a legal bedrock upon which the Timorese have constructed a complex system of values, at the core of which we find the notion of martyrs (see Viegas in this volume). This is visible in highly symbolic national initiatives such as the large statue in Dili paying tribute to Nicolau Lobato, the guerrilla leader who was shot dead in 1978; the statue to those who fell in the Santa Cruz Massacre (12 November 1991); and the construction of a national cemetery designated ‘The Garden of Heroes’, replicated on a smaller scale at the level of all the districts, and in some cases even closer to local communities (see Kent in this volume). Homage to those who participated in the liberation struggle, locally known as ‘Veterans’, is also important, since the state has instituted a generous pension scheme that benefits those who survived but also the relatives of those who perished (see Roll in this volume). The ‘veterans’ issue is highly sensitive in political terms, not least because it touches simultaneously on the material conditions offered to them and the cultural values according to which freedom f ighters enjoy respect and prestige, and thus enjoy ‘symbolic capital’ (Bourdieu 1985). In fact, participation in the liberation struggle is widely regarded as a major source of social and political legitimacy (Silva 2009), and a claim to have suffered direct consequences from the dire conditions imposed during the occupation is a major prerequisite

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to public recognition and social status (Trindade 2019). Xanana Gusmão (2015) once alluded to this, saying that one of the fundamental tasks of the Timorese state is to assure that the heroes of national liberation are offered proper homage as an integral and critical part of the collective memory which we are building day after day to reinforce our national identity.

Tributes to martyrs are not circumscribed to initiatives emanating from the national authorities. They comprise a significant number of other forms that have their origins in popular, grassroots ways of celebrating the virtues of deceased Timorese. They involve both top-down and bottom-up forms. The cases presented in this chapter illustrate instances in which national initiatives and support are intertwined with the need felt at local level to address conflicting narratives which threatened the full inscription of individuals who perished under the occupation into a nationalist list of heroes, so they would be perceived as such in the public sphere. The high esteem of present day Timorese for their martyrs derives, to a large extent, from their ancestral belief in the power of ancestors. Deceased relatives retain the power to influence the lives of their descendants. They are credited with providing instructions on behaviour necessary to achieve certain desired goals, and conversely considered capable of inflicting misfortune on the living who fail to adequately perform their duties towards them (see Viegas chapter in this volume, and Chambert-Loir and Reid 2002 for a comparative perspective). They are considered ‘ancestors’. Among these duties we may single out giving proper burial, performing the ritual ceremonies according to the established procedures, and maintaining tombs that have prepared for comfort of the deceased. Tombs and proper entombment are therefore a critical element in the cult of the dead, and Timorese people do consider spending very substantial sums of money in the preparation of decent funerary monuments. As Xanana put in it in an interview with this author, ‘They lack most things. But they build magnificent tombs. If they do not tend those grave adequately, the dead will show their dissatisfaction’. In fact, the cult of martyrs frequently requires that the first instalments of the veterans’ pension scheme be devoted to this endeavour before being considered for more mundane purposes related to living standards. It comes as no surprise that honouring martyrs goes well beyond the realm of officially established means and finds very decentralised and diversified forms of expression. This brings us back to Jorge Luis Borges’ story. Martyrs are human, after all, and human beings are liable to fail. Anyone can be suspected, for one

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reason or another, of having failed to live up to expectations. Conditions exist, mainly in times of extreme social polarisation, for nuanced cases to be appropriated by either side, stripping them of their intrinsic ambiguity in order to satisfy the purposes of propaganda or the creation of a cultural myth that can be manipulated. Timor-Leste is no exception: human beings took part in the struggle under very severe conditions, and the precise circumstances of their major deeds may often remain inescapable. However, those deeds have been made known to wider circles of the population, who have had the opportunity to create an image over time that we may assume conveys a popular valuation of the person in focus. The very nature of the process suggests that there are areas which remain open to interpretation, and therefore to contestation. On the other hand, the current inclination to attribute a very high positive value to a ‘true’ martyr explains why people actually go to great lengths in order to secure the (re)establishment of a public image in line with the ‘correct’ interpretation of intrinsically ambiguous situations. There are obvious rewards to be achieved, both in material terms and in mainly symbolic value that enhances the social standings of the martyr’s relatives. At the end of the day, all efforts rest upon manipulating contested memories. This chapter focuses on two different cases encountered during fieldwork in Lautém (2012-2016). After encountering each of them by accident, I devoted my efforts to elucidating their significance. I interviewed family members of these martyrs, as well as people who had first-hand knowledge of the cases, both locally and in Dili. Though there are not many that are relevant to these cases, I also sought written sources. The goal of this chapter is obviously not to write the ‘correct’ version of events or the pursuit of a supposed historical truth about those incidents. Rather, it aims to show how people deal with intrinsically ambiguous and difficult situations in order to obtain a major goal – that of amassing symbolic capital to enhance their social status.

Two case studies Afonso Sávio In May 2012, the National Parliament passed Resolution 10/2012, which ‘rehabilitates all the Timorese who were killed, imprisoned or suffered evil treatment in the context of the Timorese Resistance’. This resolution comprehends dozens of names and was made necessary by the continuing presence of competing narratives regarding the behaviour of those listed.

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These names represented ‘contested memories’ that ought to be clarified in order to ease the inscription of those dead as true martyrs of the national liberation. Bestowing official sanction upon one of those narratives was regarded as a powerful means of obtaining wider recognition for those feats and retrieving a ‘rehabilitated’ memory for collective use. Among those who were ‘rehabilitated’, one finds Afonso Sávio. Afonso Sávio was born in Ira-ara (in the district of Lautém) in 1946, studied in the Mission of Fuiloro, was once a member of the Portuguese army, and served as a teacher (interviews with Ma’averu and Maunana;3 Literatura Timor blog). In 1974, he emerged as the local leader of ASDT (Timorese Social Democratic Association), the party who espoused the defence of an independent Timor-Leste. The Portuguese military officer Manuel Luís Real (personal communication) recalls him as a dedicated cadre, closely associated with the nationalist ideals of Francisco Xavier do Amaral, the party leader, somewhat distanced from the political radicalism that this party would exhibit after having changed its name to FRETILIN (Revolutionary Front for an Independent Timor-Leste). With the fall of Lospalos to the Indonesian paratroopers in February 1976, Afonso became the leader of one of the Resistance bases in the mountain of Paicao and was promoted to regional secretary and second commander of a sector (interviews with Horácio Sávio, Maunana, and Renan Selak). 4 In 1977 a conflict broke out within FRETILIN that culminated in the downfall of Xavier do Amaral, who was President of the unilaterally declared Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. Amaral enlisted the support of Afonso, who was then arrested (together with Amaral himself and many others) and, according to the testimony of Konis Santana, abused by his companions (quoted in Jolliffe 3 Cornélio Ximenes ‘Maunana’, Born in the region of Lospalos to a traditional local leader. First degree veteran for his 24 years in the armed front, which he joined on 7 December 1975, and where he rose to the post of commander. In 1983, he was recruited to serve as bodyguard to Xanana, a fact that explains his involvement with the Falu Cai episode. After independence, he pursued a military career, which had begun under the Portuguese administration, serving in the Prime Minister’s office and as head of the military intelligence. In 2018, he was promoted to the post of Brigadier-General of the Timorese armed forces, becoming one of its most senior officers 4 Horácio Sávio is Afonso’s younger brother who lives in Lospalos, where he was interviewed. Faustino dos Santos ‘Renan Selak’ joined the guerrilla force at 18. First degree veteran, having served in the Resistance for 24 years. Intermediate cadre, including being regional secretary and second commander of a company. After independence, he joined the UNDERTIM party, whose leader is Cornélio Gama ‘L7’ , and was a member of the National Parliament (2007-2012). Resides in Lospalos, where he owns a building company which has been awarded several contracts on the basis of respect for veterans.

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2010, 86-87). Xavier would soon fall into Indonesian hands, and suffered utter humiliation until the country gained independence. Only in the final stages of the occupation would he be allowed to rejoin the ranks of the Resistance. Having died in 2012, he occupies one of the most prominent places in the national Garden of Heroes, in Metinaro. He was fully rehabilitated. For Afonso, however, a controversial path was beginning. Afonso’s younger brother, Horácio, informed us that before Matebian base fell in the end of 1978, Xanana had ordered his release, allowing him to return to the city of Lospalos. He did not carry weapons with him, a critical point of honour that distinguishes those who ‘betrayed’ from all others who were forced to surrender (interview with Renan Selak). There, Afonso is supposed to have exchanged letters with several guerrilla leaders in order to organise his return to the Armed Front. Renan Selak claims to have been one of the go-betweens and testifies that exchanges took place. However, the unwillingness of those Afonso was in contact with to acknowledge his rightful behaviour prior to his arrest meant that he actually refused to return to the bush. Renan Selak speculates that Xanana might have preferred to keep Afonso in town in order to organise the ‘Clandestine Front’. However, while in Lospalos he befriended his father-in-law, Tomé Cristóvão, a former member of the integrationist party APODETI (Timorese Popular Democratic Association) who, at that point, was a member of the official District Assembly. Some argue he was capable of persuading Cristóvão to abandon his position (interview with Somotxo).5 He also socialised with Claudio Vieira, the Indonesian appointed Bupati (District Administrator). Some suspected he had changed sides and was integrating himself in the new order. After all, Xavier do Amaral was accused of treason for advocating a different path for the struggle, including contacts with the Indonesians, and Afonso had been associated with him. Afonso confided to his brother that he feared the Indonesians might attempt to kill him, as they were suspicious of his true intentions (interview with Maunana). On 17 April 1979, he was seen for the last time, presumably under arrest, at the hands of the Indonesians. His body was never found, and the Indonesians stubbornly refused to disclose any information they had on his whereabouts. The mystery that surrounds his death reflects the mystery that envelops the true interpretation of his last years. 5 José Sequeira ‘Somotxo’. Important cadre of the military front, who served as private secretary to Konis Santana, the leader of the Resistance after the capture of Xanana Gusmão. As a member of FRETILIN, he has been active in supporting the Archive and Museum of the Resistance. He served as Minister of Defense in the seventh Constitutional Government (2017-2018) and is currently an MP.

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Having it officially established through the proclamation of the National Parliament that Afonso was a national hero and not a turn-coat was not deemed enough by his brother Horácio. He felt this formal act had little resonance in Lospalos where controversy still persisted. This was different from the cases of three other siblings who had likewise perished in the liberation struggle, but whose deaths were not subject to conflicting interpretations: they were considered real martyrs and had therefore been properly reburied in 2003, soon after Timor-Leste’s independence. Doubts persisted in the case of Afonso, and action was required to dispel those ominous shadows. A special funeral ceremony was then envisaged. The ceremonies in honour of Afonso took place for a few days in September 2013 and assumed a double face. Horácio acted in line with the precepts of Fataluku kultura: as the eldest surviving sibling, he organised an event to ‘call for Afonso’s spirit’ and collected symbols of his presence (a lizard that appeared and rounded itself in a bottle, then a grasshopper that landed on a tais laid on the ground, and was wrapped in it). These items were subsequently placed inside a coffin. The funerary ritual that followed was performed in the usual Fataluku way, and as much as USD 13,000 was invested – Xanana is credited with a donation of USD 4,000, Horácio gave USD 3,000, another brother offered ten head of cattle, comprising buffaloes, pigs, and goats. A member of the government pledged yet another USD 10,000, but at the time of our last contact that sum had not materialised.6 A Portuguese teacher who was invited to the ceremony admits that perhaps two thousand people were present for festivities that lasted several days, all being duly entertained with food and drinks. Horácio Sávio, however, took an unprecedented initiative in Lospalos: he asked the Secretary of State for Veterans for permission to keep the symbolic mortal remains of his brother in the district’s ossuary, which was by then about to be completed in the local ‘Garden of Heroes’. This decision did not go down well with the family, who distrusted the official memorial. But it did go down very well with both FRETILIN and the government. Secretary of State Vítor Costa saw an opportunity to inaugurate the facility, which had not garnered high levels of popular support amongst the local community, and decided to attend the event. FRETILIN also showed signs of jubilation for this ceremony and supported it with the presence of national leaders. Horácio had this to say in favour of his decision: ‘They have fought. When the state acknowledges that fact and offers means [to pay respects], one should do as the state says’ (interview). 6 For comparative purposes, Timor-Leste’s GDP per capita in 2014 was USD 2,626.

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His contribution to the success of the official initiative should also be registered. Indeed, this episode is said to have ‘opened the door’ for the local Garden of Heroes to be embedded in the cultural landscape of the region, although its moderate support has translated into the very small number of coffins that are now deposited in its ossuary, of which Afonso’s was the first. At the time of my last contact with Lospalos, Afonso was symbolically laid to rest in the ossuary that represents an official homage to those who perished for the cause, waiting for a proper tomb in the adjacent cemetery to be built. At his graveside are a large photo of him, a national and a FRETILIN flag, and a board displaying praise of his deeds and his contribution to the national liberation. He rests with all possible formal blessings that ‘rehabilitate’ his memory as an official hero.

Commander Falu Cai Here is the location of the bloodshed of 21 July 1985 when a meeting was held with the objective of discussing the ‘Concept of National Unity’ as a means to attain the liberation of the Fatherland. But with different ideas came a shooting between the enemies, the TNI National Force of Indonesia, and FALINTIL’s First Unit of the Red Brigade. With bodies dispersed all over the ground and the blood spilt in here which render the soil fertile for future generations, we say Honour and Glory to the Martyrs of the Fatherland.

These words are inscribed on the memorial commemorating the feats of Commander Falu Cai (Miguel Pereira, 1952-1985) and eight men of his guerrilla unit, located in Caivaca, just outside Lospalos. They were killed in circumstances that were never fully established and which led to the dissemination of contradictory narratives. The episode is narrated in Mario Carrascalão’s memoirs (2006, 256-259). Inserted in a government-backed attempt to capture the rebel leader Xanana, Luis Monteiro Leite, a prominent Timorese at the service of the Indonesians, but who harboured political ambitions of his own, is presented as having summoned a meeting with Resistance representatives, hoping that Xanana – who was then romantically involved with one of his sisters – would show up. That would not be the case. Monteiro Leite, together with his escort, met Falu Cai and his men instead. The Indonesian military subsequently informed Governor Carrascalão that the guerrilla fighters had opened fire and in the exchange that followed some of them perished, together with

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Monteiro Leite and his aides. Carrascalão does not believe this version of events. Based on the testimony of Monteiro Leite’s widow and that of his driver, he considers that the Indonesians betrayed their own ally and opened fire on the house where the meeting was being held, killing all inside – hoping they might have Xanana’s head as a trophy. The failure of the mission was clear for both camps, with both sides suffering heavy casualties. It implied the death of a significant group of guerrilla fighters and a loss of weapons, and the idea was circulated inside the Resistance movement and leaked to its sympathisers that Falu Cai foolhardily initiated the meeting. Horácio Sávio would confide to me in 2016 that ‘Falu Cai died because he did not observe discipline’ (interview). Some even suggested he had gone to the meeting in contravention of orders received from his superiors, and thus was deemed responsible for the losses. There are alternative versions of this event. First: it is well established that the contacts between the guerrilla and Monteiro Leite were made by Afonso José Fernandes ‘Keveara’.7 He was a member of the Resistance who returned to Lospalos after the fall of Matebian base in 1978, and then went back again until 1984 when he surrendered. He claims in an interview that Monteiro Leite, like himself a native of suko Cacavém, ‘forced me to look for my companions in the bush’ to deliver a message. This claim seems to be substantiated by his file in the veterans’ register, which states he was in prison and thus acting under coercion. He eventually found Falu Cai, whom he knew well and who had been a friend of Monteiro Leite while both served in the Portuguese army, and who showed some inclination to accept the challenge. According to Keveara, Falu Cai was intent on trying to secure a new ceasefire and is said to have written a letter to the integrationist, while Monteiro Leite was keen to pursue his independent ambitions and eventually meet Xanana and his sister Felicidade, by then Xanana’s companion (interview with Justino Valentim).8 This explains the 7 Afonso José Fernandes ‘Keveara’ was a member of the Resistance from 1975. In 1984 he surrendered – eventually as a tactical measure to secure his efforts in a new guise – and was arrested. He then assisted Luis Monteiro Leite in his attempt to establish contacts with Resistance fighters. He claims he remained in prison after 1985. Before 1999, he assisted the Resistance again. After independence, he applied for a veteran’s pension and was turned down. His file in the Veterans department contains information provided by the relatives of all nine guerrilla fighters who perished in Caivaca, accusing him of treason, a motive that disqualifies one from benefitting from the time served. 8 Justino Valentim. Second class veteran, having served in the Resistance for 15 years. Local secretary of CNRT before 1999 in Lospalos. Member of FRETILIN. He served as local assistant to our project, and died prematurely a few weeks after our sojourn in Lospalos in 2014.

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reference to a mutual agreed meeting to discuss ‘the concept of national unity’ present in the memorial of Caivaca. And is perhaps the reason why Keveara claims Monteiro Leite was acting on his own without informing the Indonesian military commanders, who nevertheless knew of the plot. Renan Selak was then a member of the unit led by Falu Cai. He was ordered not to join the expedition and to stay behind writing a report that had been requested by a superior. He confirms that Keveara was the go-between, and that he had been arrested for his contact with the Resistance. Falu Cai was confident he had the support of enough men – 15 in all – and envisaged a chance of turning Monteiro Leite into a sympathiser of the Resistance. For this reason, he had on his side the ‘political commissar’ Mau Velis, who also perished. With hindsight, Renan Selak speculates that the request for a meeting, allegedly made by Monterio Leite, represented a ‘strategic decision’ which should have been brought to the supreme command. Had the initiative been taken by Falu Cai, as some maintain, this would apply even more forcefully. Maunana, another guerrilla fighter, testified that Xanana Gusmão knew of the idea of the meeting and opposed it. However, the message he sent to that purpose was not delivered on time: Maunana admits that when he arrived in the camp with the leader’s decision, Falu Cai had already departed. In this light, there should be no reason to question the loyalty of Falu Cai to his superiors. He also claims that Falu Cai and Mau Velis trusted Keveara, not realising he was working for the enemy. Another guerrilla fighter, Somotxo, who was also a member of the unit led by Falu Cai, believes Keveara to be a sort of a double agent who persuaded the Resistance to accept the meeting under false conditions. Under the circumstances of the struggle, there was little room to pursue an independent investigation. The leadership of the Resistance found it difficult to admit that anyone other than the ‘adventurous’ Falu Cai was to blame for the disastrous consequences of the episode. This option was consequential. In the aftermath of Falu Cai’s death, his widow – Albina Marçal Freitas – who had lived in hiding and married in the bush was forced to return to Lospalos, where she was soon arrested by the Indonesians. She spent four years in jail. But her estrangement from the Resistance organisation was longer, and she suffered from mistrust due to her husband’s alleged behaviour up to 1996, when she was allowed to return to the Clandestine Front and discharge high level functions in the Organisation of Timorese Women.9 9 Albina Marçal Freitas passed away in December 2019. She is buried in Metinaro in the official Garden of Heroes

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Towards the end of the first decade of the new millennium, Senhora Albina thought it timely to rehabilitate the memory of her deceased husband and his men. On the very spot where they were shot, and subsequently buried in common, unmarked graves, she started erecting grandiose memorials, using the financial support that came with the official recognition of Falu Cai’s achievements, and both his and her status as ‘veterans’ with the attached pensions. Her initiative was backed by the Association of the Victims of the Conflict. Later on, the works received further official support from public authorities. The National Parliament, in which Senhora Albina has sat since 2012 as an MP for Xanana’s CNRT (National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction) party, offered USD 50,000 with unanimous support of all political parties. The Ministry for Solidarity, which is entrusted with managing funds for veterans, also contributed. By 2014, the overall cost (before the works were completed) amounted to well over USD 100,000. In parallel with the construction of those monuments which sit on top of the previous graves, the families of those martyrs performed customary rituals of significant impact. On the 30th anniversary of the massacre, the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmão, military commanders and several other high-ranking figures in Timorese society were present at the inauguration of the memorial. Timorese TV broadcast the event on its news bulletin. The construction of this expensive memorial, the celebration of a three-day long kultural ceremony and a Catholic mass – ‘just like a normal funeral’ – and later the ‘end of mourning’ rituals, testify the victory of one narrative: Falu Cai, Mau Velis, and his men were brave soldiers in the struggle for national liberation and should therefore be remembered as martyrs and heroes. The imposing memorial created by the efforts of Falu Cai’s widow and publicly supported by the leaders of the nation does not allow for competing narratives.

Reputation, recognition, distinction, social status The case studies just presented do not suggest that actual traitors have been turned into heroes. Rather, they suggest that under the severe circumstances of the liberation struggle conditions existed that cast doubts on the behaviour of some martyrs and, as a consequence, divergent narratives emerged and were publicly voiced. Doubts were allowed to persist into the age of independence, and this negatively affected the families of those under suspicion and the ways in which they were socially regarded. Controversy

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Figure 11.1 Falu Cai’s memorial under construction

Photo: Rui Graça Feijó

blocked the way to their acceptance as heroes by some sectors of the population and as such it had to be dispelled to the best of their families’ abilities. Lia Kent remarked that the memorialisation of martyrs appears to be a paradox, as it absorbs significant amounts of resources at the disposal of their families, sometimes in excess of what material gains may be obtained in the short term (2015). Alessandro Boarccaech (in this volume) states that ‘now everyone wants to have a martyr in their family’ in order to be eligible for material benefits. Tangible benefits, however, do not seem to have resulted from, nor been the main motive behind the decision-making processes in these cases. Sávio and Falu Cai were both registered as veterans, and their pensions had been awarded by the official department, prior to those decisions. In the case of Afonso Sávio, he had been formally rehabilitated by the National Parliament and was awarded the title of ‘Combatant for the National Liberation – First Degree’. Decisions to honour them were made possible by the very fact that their families were now endowed with significant material resources thanks to the official recognition of their deeds. The rationale for these homages was thus not to persuade the authorities that those men were real martyrs of national liberation, and thus entitled to material benefits. It was rather concentrated in obtaining popular recognition for a given narrative that placed them on the positive side of History. The situation therefore requires an analysis of the social and

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cultural mechanisms privileging the long-term benefits of those actions. That is the way one should look in order to grasp what made Horácio Sávio and Senhora Albina devote so much of their efforts and resources to honouring their relatives. Arguably, there is a symbolic dimension associated with the narratives of national heroes, which has a very high moral value and comprises different levels of meaning. The wide socialisation of a particular narrative which replaces public doubts and contested memories with an official discourse is a need felt by many that needs to be fulfilled in order to be able to fully benefit from the status of martyr’s relatives. The background to this need has been identified by Elizabeth Traube in a study of Mambai-speaking communities after independence, in which she speaks of ‘unpaid wages’ (2007). Traube found that the involvement of people in the liberation struggle calls for reward, a requirement that does not fade away in cases where people have perished. The legitimacy of the modern state is contingent on its ability and willingness to pay the debt of gratitude incurred in the process of gaining independence, both to the living and to the dead. The same applies to the families of deceased people: they have to repay the deeds of the dead on the basis of which they are receiving benefits. Many tales are told of people who received veterans’ pension payments, chose to allocate them to other priorities, and were punished by the spirits of their deceased relatives. Damian Grenfell (personal communication) told me of a man who used this money to buy himself a motorbike and was soon killed in a traffic accident; Judith Bovensiepen (personal communication) also reported being aware of this sort of narratives. Similar stories have been heard in Lospalos and Dili, and this seems to have been turned into a trope when addressing this momentous issue. Appeasement of the spirits by virtue of paying the dead for debts incurred is thus a vital part of the considerations involved in decisions about whether to spend large sums of money in memorials and kultural ceremonies. Judith Bovensiepen has further elaborated on this aspect of ‘paying for the dead’, arguing that these funerary practices ‘enable people to negotiate status differences that have been more contested since independence’ as well as allowing ‘local residents to re-inscribe themselves in nationalist discourses’ (2014). A second element may thus be grasped in the idea that sufferance, and the right to claim to have endured such fate, is key to the notion of legitimacy in the wider political world in Timor-Leste. Catherine Arthur (2019) stresses that the modern national narrative in the country is based on the combination of funu (struggle) and terus (suffering). Josh Trindade provides a very insightful analysis of this phenomenon when he discusses the widely diffused notion of halerik, or the ‘song of sufferance’

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(2019). Those who may rightfully ‘sing this song’ – especially if their suffering derives from an association with the resistance struggle – are regarded as members of the core group of people whose right it is to be part of a diffuse elite of special nation-builders. Both the potency of the dead regarded as ancestors (discussed by Viegas in this volume), and the struggle for recognition of the deeds of martyrs that enable them to be part of the heroes of new nation, justify diversified initiatives to guarantee that both of the above goals are met. These remarks lead us to notions such as ‘reputation’ which, in the words of Gloria Origgi, ‘is a powerful retroactive system of the ego over itself that constructs our social identity and integrates in our self-perception the way we see ourselves in the eyes of the other’, being thus ‘an end in itself and not only a means to obtain ulterior benefits’ (2016, 8, 50). In this sense, the concept of ‘reputation’ loses its moral overtones that characterised it in the aristocratic societies of the past and acquires a new cognitive dimension. This allows it to be put on a par with other explanatory concepts for human action in contemporary societies. This is especially true in cases for which the social sciences have been proposing different ways of dealing with hierarchy, such as the notion of ‘dignity’ or ‘respect’ present in José Mattoso’s work on Timor-Leste (2005). Pierre Bourdieu offers some clues to understand what is at stake when, in a book centred on the notion of ‘distinction’, he refers to ‘symbolic capital’ as an important form of social and cultural resource that opens doors to the fruition of goods and the satisfaction of needs (2010, 298-299; see also Bourdieu 2014). In other words: symbolic distinction may be translated in social differentiation (and hierarchy). In Timor-Leste, being associated with a martyr of the national liberation offers a solid basis to claim ‘distinction’ – and this requires that a positive narrative be established beyond the reaches of doubt. Building memorials and placing the martyrs in consecrated grounds are thus forms of expressing the desire to extend their influence over the lives of their relatives. To use the concept put forward by Axel Honneth (1995), they are the instruments of the ‘politics of recognition’. Katherine Verdery remarked that ‘dead bodies have another great advantage as symbols: they don’t talk much of their own’ (1999, 29). In the cases under scrutiny, the problem was, to an extent, the reverse: too many words were put in the mouths of Afonso Sávio and Commander Falu Cai, to the point that what emerged was a cacophony. It is true that, as Verdery also writes, ‘among the most important properties of bodies, especially dead ones, is their ambiguity, multivocality, or polysemy’ (1999, 28). But the purpose of the efforts we have witnessed is precisely to reduce, if not to eliminate, all aspects that might diminish the perception of those martyrs as true heroes.

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The two funerary memorials of Lospalos are important instruments in the struggle for social status – a concept originally formulated by Max Weber in 1920 in his attempt to clarify the modes of social stratification, which reverberates strongly in the context of the debates on Southeast Asian societies about ‘respect’ and ‘dignity’. Weber maintained that, apart from differentiation based on economic criteria (classes) or purely political ones (parties), there would be an independent social formation that derived its morphology from moral qualities such as prestige and honour – and he labelled it status. All these forms imply an unequal distribution of power in a very broad sense, and each of them can be seen as the root for some forms of social stratification and differentiation. In the present case, I am considering an acquired status, that is, one that derives from some practice involving the gifts, efforts, and ability of one person – the martyr. However, the social apprehension of the martyr’s feats does not depend solely on what he did. It requires that those feats be inscribed in a narrative that reverberates in the present by virtue of the actions undertaken by his surviving relatives, who rescue its memory in such a way that ‘contested memories’ are notionally subjected to an independent verification of past events, and alternative interpretations to the one that glorifies the hero are cast aside. The relatives of the martyr are inserted into a line of continuity from the martyr’s prestige, legitimating their status as prominent figures in Timorese society. Retrieving a notion proposed by Albert O. Hirschman, these people are exercising their strategic ‘voice’ – that is, ‘any attempt at all to challenge […] an objectionable state of affairs, through […] various types of actions and protests, including those that are meant to mobilize public opinion’ (1970, 30).

Conclusion Honouring the martyrs of the national liberation and ensuring that a positive narrative takes over where controversy existed over their merits, due to the ambiguity surrounding some deaths during the Indonesian occupation period, is a complex phenomenon. This chapter has conveyed the idea that two sorts of reasons are present in the processes presented in the case studies: first, the need to ‘pay’ the martyrs for the debts incurred when tangible benefits derived from their deeds reached their descendants, a belief that derives from the assumption that the dead are ‘potent’ and capable of influencing the life courses of their relatives – in other words, because martyrs are ancestors in the sense defined in this book. Second, the circumstance in which conflicting narratives present a danger that

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doubts will subsist in the popular imagination regarding the ‘true’ nature of heroic deeds, with direct implications for the martyr’s family’s social status, requires strategic mobilisation of one’s ‘voice’ and affirmative action to dispel those doubts and solidify one’s position in the social hierarchy of modern Timor-Leste. The proposal of a new, unequivocal narrative is a necessary condition to elevate those martyrs to the category of symbols of the national liberation – symbols that are ‘crucial to consolidating the national imagined community because they objectify such abstractions and make them tangible and real’ (Arthur 2019: 11). However, this process cannot be confined to the realm of official discourse; it must invade and dominate the public sphere, in the sense of Habermas – that is, a multilayered community (local, regional, national) or a realm of social life in which public opinion can be formed. In a society marked by profound changes since independence, social hierarchies are being shaken and reordered by a combination of the resurgence of tradition and the opening up of the country to the winds of modernity in a context of ‘co-habitations’ (Viegas and Feijó 2017). A new national narrative is emerging to sustain the independence of the country, bringing to the fore the deeds of those who fought for self-determination, granting them and their relatives’ prominent positions on the social ladder. As in many other places around the world, the dead are adopted by nationalist discourses, especially in cases involving victimhood (Verdery 1999: 33). The families of Afonso Sávio and Commander Falu Cai have invested their resources and efforts in securing an unblemished image of their martyrs that, they hope, could rise and become hegemonic. This is a sign of their aspiration to inscribe their loved ones into the founding narrative of Timor-Leste and thus to hold a privileged position in a stratified society based on the honourable deeds of their martyrs.

References Arthur, Catherine. 2019. Political Symbols and National Identity in Timor-Leste. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Borges, Jorge Luis. 2006 [1951]. Ficciones. Buenos Aires: Alianza. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1985. ‘The Forms of Capital’. In Handbook of Theory and Research for Sociology of Education, edited by J.G. Richardson, 241-258. New York: Greenwood. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2010 [1979]. A Distinção. Uma critica social da faculdade de juízo. Lisbon: Edições 70. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2014. O Poder Simbólico. Lisbon: Edições 70.

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Bovensiepen, Judith. 2014. ‘Paying for the Dead. On the Politics of Death in Independent Timor-Leste’. Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15 (2): 103-122. Carrascalão, Mário Viegas. 2006. Timor Antes do Futuro. Dili: Livraria Mau Huran. Chambert-Loir, Henri, and Antony Reid, eds. 2002. The Potent Dead: Ancestors, Saints and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia. Honolulu: Allen & Unwin and University of Hawai’i Press. Gerth, H.H., and C. Wright Mills, eds. 2009. From Max Weber. London and New York: Routledge. Gusmão, Xanana. 2015. ‘Discurso de Sua Excelência o Primeiro-Ministro Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão por ocasião da sessão de abertura da conferencia internacional ‘Memoria e Identidade Nacional’ organizada pelo Arquivo e Museu da Resistência Timorense’. http://timor-leste.gov.tl/wp-content/ uploads/2015/01/ConferênciaInternacional-Memória-e-Identidade- Nacional-26.1.20151.pdf. Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice and Loyalty. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Honneth, Axel. 1995. The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jolliffe, Jill. 2010. Finding Santana. Cambridge, MA: Wakefield Press. Kent, Lia. 2015. ‘Remembering the Past, Shaping the Future: Memory Frictions and Nation-Making in Timor-Leste’. Canberra: ANU SSGM discussion paper 2015/1. Literatura Timor-Lorosa’e. 2014. ‘Afonso Sávio: Patriota Ne’ebé didika nia an tomak (1946-1979)’. Accessed 27 December 2019. https://www.historiatimor.com/2014/01/ afonso-savio-patriota-neebe-dedika-nia.html. Mattoso, José. 2005. A Dignidade: Konis Santana e a Resistência Timorense. Lisbon: Temas e Debates. Origgi, Gloria. 2016. La réputation. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. República Democrática de Timor-Leste. 2002. Constituição da Republica Democrática de Timor-Leste. Dili: Assembleia Constituinte. Silva, Kelly C. 2009. ‘Suffering, Dignity and Recognition: Sources of Political Legitimacy in Independent Timor-Leste’. In Timor-Leste: How to Build a New Nation in Southeast Asia in the 21st Century, C. Cabasset-Semedo and F. Durand, 139-155. Bangkok: IRASEC. Traube, Elizabeth, 2007. ‘Unpaid Wages: Local Narratives and the Imagination of the Nation’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1): 9-25. Trindade, Josh. 2019. ‘Matan-malirin, Tempu rai-diak and Halerik: Expressions of What Timorese Longed for in Life’. In Josh Trindade: a collection of essays, 55-59. Beau Bassin (Mauritius), Lambert Academic Publishing Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Viegas, Susana de Matos, and Rui Graça Feijó, eds. 2017. Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations. London: Routledge. Weber, Max [1920]. ‘Class, Status, and Party’. Accessed 4 April 2020. http://www. ac.wwu.edu/~jimi/363/webercsp.pdf.

Interviews Afonso José Fernandes ‘Keveara’. Lospalos, 31 October 2016. Albina Marçal Freitas ‘Bia Shana’. Lospalos, 31 July 2012; 6 March 2013; Dili, 1 August 2014; 10 August 2014; 30 October 2016. Cornélio Ximenes ‘Maunana’. Dili, 7 March 2013; 28 August 2014. Faustino dos Santos ‘Renan Selak’. Lospalos, 16 March 2013; 25 August 2014. Horácio Sávio. Lospalos, 24 July 2014; 11 October 2014. José Sequeira ‘Somotxo’. Dili, 27 August 2014; 7 November 2016. Justino Valentim. Lospalos, 30 July 2012; 11 March 2013; 24 July 2014; 6 August 2014. Rogério Savio ‘Ma’averu’. Dili 11 November 2016. Xanana Gusmão. Dili 7 March 2013.

About the author Rui Graça Feijo is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (where he holds a contract under the Transitional Norms of Law 57/2017), and Associate Researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History, Nova University of Lisbon. Over the last fifteen years he has devoted most of his research to contemporary issues in the history and society of Timor-Leste, including the process of self-determination, the construction of a new state after independence, and the global process of nation and democracy building. He has published Dynamics of Democracy in Timor-Leste. The Birth of a Democratic Nation (AUP 2016) and co-edited with Susana de Matos Viegas Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: dynamics of social and cultural cohabitations (Routledge 2017).

12 Gathering the Dead, Imagining the State? Examining the Work of Commissions for the Recovery of Human Remains Lia Kent

Abstract This chapter focuses on the phenomenon of ‘commissions’ for the recovery of human remains that have proliferated across Timor-Leste. I argue that the commissions’ practices constitute forms of ‘nonstate governmentality’ (de Cesari 2010, 625) that take the government’s valorisation programme in unexpected directions. By working to exhume, identify, and categorise the dead the commissions are, to some extent, contributing to the state’s goal of dignifying martyrs. At the same time, they are potentially enlarging the definition of martyrdom beyond the state’s narrow interpretation. Ultimately, the commissions bring to light the nation’s painful history and remind the state of its responsibility to dignify all the nation’s martyrs. Keywords: human remains, exhumation, resistance networks, nonstate governmentality, martyrdom, dignification

Dealing with thousands of ‘corpses out of place’ (Warren 1993, 31), which remain scattered across the landscape, remains an urgent preoccupation in post-conf lict Timor-Leste. While families around the country are organising ad hoc expeditions to retrieve the remains of deceased relatives from shallow bush graves, more organised initiatives are being undertaken by ‘commissions’ for the recovery of human remains (Komisaun Rekoilamentu Restu Mortais). These self-described commissions have proliferated across Timor-Leste over the last few years at the scale of

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch12

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municipality, posto (administrative post), and suku (village). They tend to be led by individuals who were once prominent f igures in the armed or clandestine resistance against the Indonesian occupation. They are often connected to, and sometimes a formal part of, veterans’ associations or groups that promote the interests of former Resistance members through activities such as small business and microf inance (see Roll in this collection.) A key aspect of the commissions’ work is searching for, and exhuming, the human remains of those had been involved in the Resistance. Once recovered, remains are stored in ossuaries or temporary protective houses (uma mahon) to await burial in one of the state’s Garden of Heroes cemeteries. While an increasing amount of scholarly attention is being paid to familyled practices of recovering, reburying, caring for, and honouring the dead in the aftermath of the occupation (Bovensiepen 2018; Viegas and Feijo 2017; Grenfell 2012; McWilliam 2008, 2011) and the state’s memorialisation priorities (Leach 2008; Arthur 2019), little attention has been paid to the commissions. Yet these entities are an intriguing phenomenon to study because, although they do not represent the state, they are composed of actors who, because of their historical roles in the Resistance, hold significant moral and political power in their local communities. In this chapter I analyse the commissions’ practices, arguing that they constitute forms of ‘nonstate governmentality’ (de Cesari 2010, 625). I will explain what I mean by this in more detail, below. At this point it is enough to briefly note that commission members articulate a desire to assist the national government’s ‘valorisation’ programme – particularly its goal of reburying martyrs in Garden of Heroes cemeteries – which suggests they are helping to perform a state that ‘owns’ its martyrs and regulates its population. However, I argue that the commissions’ practices are also taking the valorisation programme in new directions. Specifically, they illuminate the power that continues to reside outside the formal state centre in layered networks of decentralised actors and groups, including resistance groups. The commissions’ practices also reveal – and seek to respond to – the power possessed by the spirits of the unburied and restless conflict-dead. Before discussing the commissions as examples of nonstate governmentality, it is first necessary to show how the dead are central to the state’s regimes of governmentality. The first section begins with a discussion of critical anthropological scholarship on the state and considers the efficacy of the dead in the ongoing social production of the state as a stable and coherent entity. I then use this literature as a lens through which to examine the Timor-Leste state’s commitment to the valorisation of veterans generally

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and its approach to martyrs specifically. Building on the work of Kate Roll (2018, 140), who has identified the government’s project of valorisation as a ‘key technology for state-building,’ I focus specifically on the regulations and practices relating to the reburial and honouring of ‘martyrs’, drawing out the spatial and material dimensions of this project. The main body of the chapter discusses the work of the commissions for the recovery of human remains. Drawing on interviews conducted with commission members in the municipalities of Baucau, Manatuto, Ermera, Liquiçá and Lospalos, and observations drawn from visits to ossuaries, I seek to make sense of the energy, resources, and scope of the commissions’ activities by approaching them as forms of nonstate governmentality that, while mimicking elite-driven state-building agendas, evince different normative priorities from those of state actors.1 The commissions’ spatialised practices are, I argue, consolidating the power of decentralised resistance networks and actors, advocating for the recognition of the ‘historical distinctiveness’ of specific regions, and responding to the demands of the powerful dead.

Dead bodies and the social production of the state This chapter contributes to a growing body of critical anthropological scholarship on the state in which the state is understood not as a stable and fixed entity, or as a container in which political and social action takes place, but as a ‘significantly unbounded terrain of powers and techniques’, discourses, rules and practices (Brown 1995, 174). To put it differently, the state is not viewed as a pre-existing thing: rather, it is an ‘idea’ that is made socially effective through imaginative and symbolic devices as well as through material practices and the utilisation and transformation of space (Bjorkdahl 2018; Jeffrey 2013, 24; see also Mitchell 1991; Bovensiepen and Nygaard-Christensen 2018). From this starting point, a core concern becomes to understand how the state, as an idea, enters into and gains legitimacy within the consciousness of citizens (Jeffrey 2013, 25). These critical ‘postfoundational’ (Bjorkdahl 2018, 36) approaches to the state are deeply influenced by Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality (1991), which is concerned with the ‘management, or “conduct of conduct” of 1 In 2017, 2018, and 2019, I interviewed members of commissions for the recovery of human remains in Liquiçá, Ermera, Manatutu, Natarbora, Iliomar, Quelicai, Uatulari, and Baucau and visited several ossuaries and Garden of Heroes cemeteries (and cemeteries in the making). This research was funded by the Australian Research Council (grant number: DE 150100857).

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populations and the production of self-regulating citizens’ (de Cesari 2010, 626). They seek to uncover the intellectual labour and resources, and the materials and performances that are required to socially produce the state as a stable and coherent entity (Jeffrey 2013, 24). Implicit in these analyses is the idea that producing the state is an unstable, and never totalising, process, because the state ‘idea’ must be continually performed (Jeffrey 2013, 24; see also Painter 2006). The management of the dead has historically been pivotal to the production of the state and projection of centralised political authority (Verdery 1999; Stepputat 2014; Rojas-Perez 2017). Modern cemeteries, which emerged in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and were justified with reference to public health and containing disease, acted to reconfigure local habits, beliefs and conduct in relation to the treatment of the dead. Specifically, they altered ‘the traditional familiarity and spatial intimacy’ between the living and the dead that had previously been a feature of European cities (Johnson 2008, 780; Stepputat 2014, 16-17). More recently, the dead have become significant in the legitimation of new political regimes in the aftermath of war and colonial rule. One only needs to consider the immense resources that are invested by political elites in the retrieval of (nationalised) dead bodies around the globe (Stepputat 2014, 23-24) and their reburial in designated spaces to appreciate how the management of corpses assists new regimes to ‘govern the memory’ of the past (Rojas-Perez 2017, 18). Adding to the significance of the dead in post-conflict regimes of governmentality are recent processes surrounding the exhumation, identification, and categorisation of the conflict-dead, in which discourses of forensic science have become central. These processes have given rise to new regimes of ‘forensic truth,’ and involve the development of new regulations around how relatives of the deceased should deal with and bury their dead. This, in turn, helps to create a distinction between the public and private spheres that is critical to modern understandings of statehood (Rojas-Perez 2017, 18). A key reason for the dead’s symbolic usefulness in projects of state and nation-building is due to their materiality (Verdery 1999). As Katherine Verdery’s seminal work has illustrated, ‘bones corpses, coffins and cremation urns’ are ‘indisputably there, as our senses of sight, touch and smell can confirm’ (Verdery 1999, 27). This material there-ness suggests that they have ‘a single meaning that is solidly “grounded”’ (Verdery 1999, 29). To put it differently, bones provide what Roland Barthes (1981, 88; 82) has described in his discussion of photographs as an ‘evidential force’, a form of ‘tangible evidence of otherwise invisible processes and events’ that invokes a sense of

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the ‘immediacy and real’ (Crossland 2009, 71; 73). It is simultaneously their invoked immediacy and their ability to conjure a single meaning that gives dead bodies their symbolic effectiveness in a range of political projects. The materiality of the dead is particularly useful in the spatialisation of the state: the projection of a ‘taken for granted spatial image of a state that sites above and contains its localities, regions and communities’ (Ferguson and Gupta 2002, 982).2 Perhaps more so than other spatialising strategies, such as the policing of borders, the strategic placing of national flags and monuments, the renaming and streets, and the creation of grand boulevards (e.g. see Till and Kuusisto-Arponen 2015, 294), the ‘emplacement’ of dead bodies in the material landscape – for instance through reburials in official military cemeteries – is a powerful technique in producing the state. Through the ‘enclosure’ of identified bodies in distinct spaces, and their labelling and categorisation (Johnson 2008), the state’s ‘ownership’ over those bodies is asserted, and the boundary between the ‘state’ and ‘family’ is delineated. A final important point to note about the social production of the state is that a range of actors beyond political elites are invested in this process. The state, as Alex Jeffrey observes, is produced in part through the ‘prosaic and everyday’ practices of citizens’ (Jeffrey 2013, 25, see also Painter 2006). De Cesari (2010, 627) has coined the phrase ‘nonstate governmentality’ to capture this phenomenon (see also Feldman 2008, 160). Nonstate governmentality is not, however, a straightforward mimicking of official forms of governmentality. This is because, as Morten Nielsen (2011, 331) points out, the resources made available through official governmentality strategies are ‘frequently used also for idiosyncratic purposes’. Nonstate governmentality is a useful concept in the context of TimorLeste, where the state’s ambitious dezenvolvementu (development) agenda appeals to a population that lives in structural, entrenched poverty, and where there are ‘popular desires for a strong state capable of managing the nation independent of foreign powers’ (Bovensiepen and NygaardChristensen 2018, 420). At the same time, government agencies are perceived as remote from the lives of the population, and development is often regarded as ‘yet to come’. Amid these constraints, as Judith Bovensiepen and Maj 2 James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta’s work shows that the state idea is conveyed through the interrelated manoeuvres of ‘verticality’ and ‘encompassment’. State verticality refers to the idea of a state that hovers ‘above’ and is superior to other institutions in society including the family, community, and what is sometimes termed ‘civil society’. The term encompassment refers to the idea that the state is present in a widening series of circles that begins with the domain of the family and local community and ends with the nation-state system (Ferguson and Gupta 2002, 982).

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Nygaard-Christensen (2018, 416) highlight in their discussion of large-scale petroleum-driven projects, ordinary citizens may seek to ‘co-produce’ the state’s development vision. They show how, in the municipalities of Suai and Oekussi, where promised projects have yet to materialise or have been incompletely implemented, citizens have engaged in their own local entrepreneurial efforts that anticipate their imagined benefits. These communities thus help to project ‘the idea of a strong state capable of bringing it to completion, even as the project itself remains unfinished’ (Bovensiepen and Nygaard-Christensen 2018, 427).

Producing the state through valorisation From these starting points, it is possible to appreciate how the detailed regulations and associated practices surrounding the valorisation of ‘martyrs’ in Timor-Leste are key to the social production of the state. The elaborate veterans’ valorisation scheme developed by successive East Timorese governments works to categorise and recognise – in both symbolic and material forms – still-living veterans and those martyred during the resistance struggle. In regards to martyrs specifically, Article 9 of the 2006 Statute of the National Liberation Combatant (the core piece of legislation covering veteran entitlements) states that ‘National Liberation Martyrs shall be all militants of the struggle for national independence who have perished or disappeared between 15 August 1975 and 25 October 1999 as a result of their participation in that struggle’.3 Martyrs’ families are entitled to receive substantial ‘survival’ pensions of between USD230 and USD287 per month (which is well above the average monthly Timorese income: see Roll in this volume; Roll 2018). Martyrs’ bodies have the right to be buried in the national Garden of Heroes cemetery in Metinaro (or one of the municipal equivalents that are now being constructed) and families have the right to request state funeral honours. Roll argues that through valorisation, the state seeks to gain control over ‘unruly subjects’ – including veterans’ groups that have historically had their own territorially-grounded power bases – through techniques that ‘register, categorise and track them’ (Roll 2018, 142). This facilitates state-builders’ efforts to ‘consolidate power with the state’ while at the same time allowing 3 Unlike still-living veterans, who must prove that they participated in the resistance struggle for a minimum of three years to qualify for recognition, Article 9 does not require martyrs’ families to prove a minimum time period of service.

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them to continue to harness the ‘symbolic power of the resistance’ (Roll 2018, 140) In relation to martyrs specifically, the efforts to gather bodies that had hitherto been scattered in disparate places (such as family cemeteries and shallow bush graves) and emplace them in centralised, knowable, visible, state-sanctioned places, evince the spatial dimensions of the valorisation project. In addition to the Garden of Heroes cemetery in Metinaro, Dili, a process of constructing identical heroes’ cemeteries (and ossuaries for the temporary storage of bodies) is now underway in each municipality. Decree Law 30/2017 governs arrangements such as: determining the bodies that are entitled to be buried in the cemeteries; the correct spacing of graves; their shape and depth; the material out of which the coffins are to be constructed, and their thickness. It also sets out the minimum time required after death before burial can take place, the ornamentation permitted on graves, and the behaviours that are prohibited in the cemetery grounds. The layout of the cemeteries provides separate areas for the burial of members of the clandestine resistance and FALINTIL and is hierarchically ordered along the lines of rank. There are several technologies of governmentality at work here. First, as performances of ‘ownership’ of or sovereignty over identified bodes, these regulations and spatial practices work to demarcate the boundary between state-owned and family-owned bodies, and the public and private spheres. Second, the emplacement, enclosure, and ordering of dead bodies in the cemeteries prevents the ‘diffuse circulation’ of those bodies amongst families and veterans’ groups and cultivates a ‘reformed sensibility’ towards the conflict-dead amongst the population (Johnson 2008, 781; 787). Third, the retrieval of bodies from the bush helps to reorder a ‘disordered landscape’ of ‘corpses out of place’ (Warren 1993, 31). In a symbolic sense, this acts as a form of containment of the violence and disorder of the past that assists political elites to govern the memory of the occupation and perform a ‘new’ state. In a very practical sense, this ordering helps to make way for promised projects of dezenvolvementu by clearing the land of obstacles in the form of submerged bodies. While these are powerful performances of statehood, if we shift attention to the practices of the commissions it becomes possible to see that the valorisation scheme also reveals the fragility of the state-building project. As I now discuss, the nonstate governmentality practices of the commissions are often underpinned by different normative imperatives than those of elite politicians, and are taking the government’s valorisation plans in unanticipated directions. Before turning to these dynamics, I will briefly describe the commissions’ core activities and the scope of their work.

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Gathering the dead On a warm afternoon in Liquiçá, I sat down to interview former Clandestine youth leader Leandro (alias ‘Gray’) at his house. Gray had established one of the first commissions for the recovery of human remains, in Liquiçá, in 2012, and I had heard his name mentioned numerous times in my conversations with families of the dead and missing. Gray, who spoke of his work with enormous energy and passion, explained that he began this initiative as a means of ‘helping’ the state which, as he saw it, was increasingly interested in the reburial of martyrs. According the Gray, the dead needed to be ‘dignified’ and the state did not yet have the capacity and resources to accomplish this. Gray’s commission began its work by conducting extensive ‘socialisation’ amongst families and Xefe Suku (Village Chiefs). By Gray’s account, some families initially expressed tentativeness about the initiative because they wanted their dead to be buried close to their houses. But gradually, as Gray and his colleagues gained their trust and support, they persuaded families that those who died for independence were ‘the state’s people’ and therefore needed to be buried together. According to Gray, his group has so far located the remains of 277 people who died during the conflict. Some of these bodies were located in the bush and others were exhumed from family cemeteries. After temporarily storing these remains in the official ossuary located at the Liquiçá Garden of Heroes cemetery, which is the first of the government’s planned municipal heroes’ cemeteries to be completed, 254 coffins were interred in the Liquiçá Garden of Heroes cemetery in an official state ceremony in July 2017. 4 Gray put me in touch with former FALINTIL commander, Komandante (Commander) ‘Dudu’, who established the Ermera municipality commission in 2004. This commission has been similarly active and is in close contact with the Liquiçá commission. Komandante Dudu told me that veterans in Ermera had collected the remains of 6,000 conflict-dead. Some of these remains had been exhumed from a mass grave in Aifu (where FRETILIN members had been killed by UDT just prior to the Indonesian invasion).5 These remains are currently being stored in a small wooden uma mahon not far from the centre of town, because the official ossuary at the site of the yet-to-be constructed Ermera Garden of Heroes cemetery in Hatolia is too 4 The remaining bodies are still to be identified or are awaiting collection by commissions from other municipalities. 5 There is a newly built monument at Aifu, which depicts the flags of the five historic parties and is called ‘Monumento Reconciliaciao Aifu’ (Aifu Reconciliation Monument).

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small. I was told that the remains will be stored in the uma mahon until such time as they can be buried in the municipality’s Garden of Heroes cemetery. Komandante Dudu took me to visit the uma mahon, a small, deceptively modest wooden building secured with a lock and key. Inside the building, the scale of the Ermera commission’s efforts were strikingly on display. Hundreds of coffins were stacked from floor to ceiling. Many others were not accessible because they were crammed into small rooms. Labels on the front of the coffins listed the names of the dead, their rank, and their suku. Those that had not yet been identified had been labelled desconicidu (unknown). In some cases, the bones of several bodies (in one case 17) had been placed in a single coffin. Another feature of the Ermera ossuary, which I had not expected, and yet later found replicated in several other ossuaries, was that it contained the bodies of civilians as well as those involved in formal resistance structures. Among the dead were the bodies of those who cooked, washed clothes, acted as security, and supplied food to the FALINTIL forces during the period of the Baze de Apoio (Resistance Support Bases) in the mid to late 1970s and had been killed in military operations or died due to hunger or illness. The civilian dead had been placed in coffins labelled populasaun (population) or populasaun participativa (active population). Komandante Dudu explained that his vision is for the heroes’ cemetery in Ermera to contain separate burial places for the FALINTIL, the Clandestine, and ordinary people who were killed or died as a direct consequence of their participation in the Resistance. This was a vision voiced in different forms by members of other commissions. Commissions are also being established on a smaller scale, for instance within a single posto. Members of the Natarbora commission claim to have gathered over 2,000 bodies since 2015 (500 of which have been exhumed from a mass grave in Soibada). They have also established a ‘mini-museum’ which, they hope, will both become a drawcard for tourists and contribute to the teaching of history to young people in Natarbora. The museum consists of a photo display and a modest room filled with small plastic-covered boxes containing what was described to me as ‘evidence’. Here, personal items gathered from the dead are displayed: small pieces of clothing, twine that was used to tie peoples’ wrists when captured, coins, combs, hair, and pieces of broken plates. Like human remains, these objects provide an ‘evidential force’ (Barthes 1981, 88, 82), creating a tangible, intimate and emotional connection to the past, to the everyday lives of those who have passed away, and to the suffering they experienced. The commission in Quelicai, a posto of Baucau, has been similarly active. According to the president of the commission, a former FALINTIL

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Figure 12.1 Feeding the dead at the Quelicai ossuary

Photo: Lia Kent

commander, it has collected the remains of 669 bodies since 2013. These remains are currently housed in two wooden uma mahon. On visiting the uma mahon, I was intrigued to find that a table had been placed next to the rows of coffins, which supported a large pot of freshly cooked rice and was set with plates, forks, and spoons. I was told that, since 2013, families had been putting their money together to buy rice and vegetables. Women cook for the dead three times a day and the spirits of the dead are then called to eat with the living. At an even smaller scale, in Iliomar, there is a suku-based commission in Suku Fuad. This commission began as a family-based initiative to collect the bodies of those who died from two different knua (hamlet). According to a member of the Iliomar veterans’ council, families started to collect their dead back in 2003 and, in 2010, the family-led initiative evolved into a suku-level commission to recover the bones of those from the whole of the suku. According to interviewees, the initiative has thus far collected 284 bodies. Most of these are in coffins in a modest wooden uma mahon, although some have been placed in crypts or provisional graves from which

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they can be removed at a later point and buried in a Garden of Heroes cemetery. This brief description gives some sense of the immense scope of the commissions’ activities. Regardless of the accuracy or otherwise of the commissions’ records, and whether or not all the coffins contain human remains, tens of thousands of coff ins have been amassed, which now await reburial in a state-sanctioned Garden of Heroes cemetery. How, in a context of limited resources, and where there is limited forensic testing available, have the commissions managed to accomplish work of such as scale? To begin to grasp this, it is f irst important to understand the unique methods used by the commissions to ascertain both the identity of bones and the location of the dead. These include relying on the memories of former Resistance combatants, who had marked the sites of shallow bush graves with rocks and other markers. They also involve using what some respondents referred to as ‘traditional’ methods: taking account of messages delivered from the dead to living family members through dreams (which often provide details of their location) and working closely with custodians and interpreters of indigenous cosmology, including Lian Nain (traditional healers) and Matan Do’ok (‘one who can see far’). As also detailed by Blau (in this volume), Lian Nain and Matan Do’ok sometimes utilise a method referred to as ‘traditional DNA’. This involves taking a blood sample from a relative of a missing person and placing it on recovered bones, which is thought to conf irm whether or not the body belongs to that family (see also Robins 2010, 51).6 I was also told that, in cases where actual human remains cannot be found, soil and rocks could sometimes be taken from the site of death, and infused with the spirits of the dead. The utilisation of these unique methods reveals a great deal about how personhood is understood in Timor-Leste in relation to the dead body, destabilising common forensic science assumptions about the elements necessary to ‘proper’ identification (Crossland 2015, 243; see also Blau in this collection). Contributing to the scale of the commissions’ exhumation efforts has been the ability of commission members to access considerable resources 6 I was told that if the blood remained ‘metin’ – i.e. it did not run off the bone – then the body belongs to that family. Another method described to me by members of the Natarbora commission involved a Matan Do’ok or Lian Nian tapping an egg near a site that is thought to contain human remains. I was told that if the egg cracks this means there are bodies there. If it doesn’t, there are no bodies present. The example of Afonso Sávio discussed by Feijó in this volume offers evidence of the fact that skeletal remains may be replaced by things that represent them.

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from government agencies. The government contributes funding to the commissions through the Commission Homenagem (Homage Commission), which receives and assesses project proposals for food, tais, coffins, 4WD vehicles, and other requirements for ritual ceremonies. Some political leaders have also provided personal donations to the commissions for the construction of uma mahon and ossuaries. Commission members have invested financial resources of their own into these activities, which they have amassed through their veterans’ pensions.

Nonstate governmentality: taking valorisation in new directions The commissions practices might be understood as instances of nonstate governmentality that work to ‘co-produce’ the government’s valorisation agenda (cf. Bovensiepen and Nygaard-Christensen 2018, 416). This co-production is evident in the commissions’ mimicking of the rhetoric, practices, and symbols of the official valorisation programme. In a visual sense, for instance, the commissions’ practices are saturated with symbols of statehood; tais (woven cloth) in the colours of the Timor-Leste national flag drape the coffins and the four-wheel drive vehicles and police escorts that are used in the process of exhumations. National flags are displayed outside the ossuaries, alongside FALINTIL flags. The language of statehood is also noticeable in the official nationalist rhetoric of valorisation invoked by those involved in the commissions. In a context where there is popular disappointment in the government’s slow progress in ‘dignifying’ the dead, commission members describe their work as helping a state by extending its spatialising reach and augmenting its capacity. Their efforts to persuade families that the bodies of their loved ones should be buried together with other heroes, rather than in family cemeteries, cultivate the idea that those who died for the nation are the ‘state’s people’. Like government officials, they are invested in the project of dezenvolvementu, and seek to retrieve ‘corpses out of place’ to make way for roads and other construction projects. Finally, the mundane practices of the commission are marked with the language and symbols of science and bureaucracy that is a key aspect of governmentality. This includes the language of forensic science and DNA testing that, since the UN transitional administration, has been introduced to Timor-Leste by various international organisations (see Blau in this volume). Bodies are carefully labelled according to name, village, rank, place of recovery, and cause of death (where known). They are placed in state-issued

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coffins that are identical in size. In the case of the Natarbora commission, a sophisticated computer system has been developed to record information about each body. And while they may utilise idiosyncratic methods to establish the location of the dead and their identity, the commissions’ identification practices invoke ideas of rationality, certainty, and measurement. Through performances of identification and categorisation, the commissions appear to be mimicking the official valorisation programme’s attempts to identify and control ‘unruly’ subjects (and the unruly past) by preventing the ‘diffuse circulation’ of dead bodies and associated practices (Johnson 2008, 781). At the same time, those involved in the commissions are driven by normative imperatives that are often quite different from those of elite politicians. As I now discuss, these include the imperative of caring for the dead for the sake of the living and the necessity of incorporating into national memory the ‘historically distinctive’ contributions of local communities to the Resistance.

Caring for the dead It became acutely evident during my fieldwork that interviewees perceived themselves to be engaged in an important, morally grounded form of public service that contributes to the security and well-being of veterans, ordinary citizens and the nation-state. As already noted, a key motivation expressed for engaging in this work was to ‘dignify’ the dead. Yet, unlike the government’s valorisation programme, which assumes the dead to be passive, inert bones, the commissions understand dignif ication as requiring an engagement with agents who have the capacity to influence the living. The spirits of the restless and unburied dead who continue to haunt the landscape and the living must be cared for and properly emplaced in the landscape. Many spoke of their fears that the families of the dead and the maluk (close friends) of those who died (i.e. those who fought alongside them) will continue to experience negative consequences if the dead are not given a ‘good place’. In Natarbora for instance, I was told that the commission had been established after a plague of locusts had struck the village in 2001, eating all the crops and precipitating a hungry season. The locusts, it was discovered through one villager’s dream, were in fact the spirts of the dead who had died in the war, and who had come back to complain that they had not been given a good resting place. According to some interlocuters, the ramifications of failing to give the dead a ‘good

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place’ could also extend to the nation-state. As a member of the Quelicai commission explained, the state would not be able to move ahead with ‘development’ or achieve stability until the demands of all dead were met and they had been given a ‘good place’. As he put it, ‘The nation is not metin [strong] because of their spirits.’ The government tun sai dei’t (rises and falls). In this sense, the commissions need to be understood, at least in part, as engaging in forms of care for the dead. They represent a moral mission to meet obligations to the dead, to ensure their protective blessings and the future well-being of their descendants and the nation (Bovensiepen 2009, 327-328).7 Caring for and defusing the power of the dead is, however, challenging in a context where government plans for cemetery-construction and reburials lag far behind the capacity of the commissions to collect human remains. In their liminal, unburied, state in the uma mahon and ossuaries, the dead have not yet been properly separated from the living. Continual efforts are needed to nurture them and respond to their desires. Commissions respond to this imperative in different ways. The Natarbora mini museum provides families with a key to the box continuing objects belonging to their deceased relatives. Families of the dead are permitted to touch these objects – which are understood to be lulik (spiritually charged) – and remove them from the box to use in rituals undertaken at the site. And, as previously discussed, the Quelicai commission meets the needs of the dead through daily efforts to feed them. The ritual act of feeding the dead is a powerful form of care because ‘nourishment’ helps to ‘produce separation between the living and the ancestors’, ‘thereby producing life by generating wealth, fertility, health, and agricultural productivity’ (Bovensiepen 2015, 43). These ongoing obligations to feed and satisfy the desires of the dead will continue until the dead are in their final resting place – until they are ‘emplaced’ in the landscape and properly separated from the living – at which point they will no longer be a potential source of danger.

Recognising historical distinctiveness A second normative imperative that underpins the commissions is that of achieving state recognition of the historically distinctive contributions 7 As discussed in the Introduction to this volume, national initiatives that have ignored the multitude of individual cases still pending have failed to gain traction among the population at large.

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of local communities to the Resistance. During interviews, commission members frequently emphasised that their specific geographical areas played significant roles in the resistance struggle and therefore deserved their own cemeteries. They did not want the unique features of their struggle to be subsumed within an overarching national narrative but rather, to tell their own local story of their contribution to the nation and for this to be officially recognised. Members of some commissions were therefore lobbying for the creation of new heroes’ cemeteries at the scale of the posto and suku.8 For instance, those involved in the Quelicai commission argued that the official Garden of Heroes cemetery for Baucau should be based in Quelicai rather than in the provincial capital. Their argument is that Quelicai is a ‘historical site’ because it was the first place where FALINTIL fighters were killed by Indonesian aerial bombings. Those involved in the Natarbora commission also appear to have persuaded the government to a establish a new posto-level cemetery there on the basis that Natarbora is of national significance, since it is a site where people from all over Timor-Leste were killed during the Resistance. They are currently also developing their own unique cemetery design that makes the most of the site’s hilly, forested, and undulating land (as they do not wish to have a cemetery that looks like every other Garden of Heroes). Advocacy for the construction of these new cemeteries is given further weight due to its link with the ‘caring for the dead’ imperative; it is argued that the government’s planned municipality-based heroes’ cemeteries are too far away for families to visit to pray, light candles, lay flowers, and communicate with the dead. A striking instance of the ‘historical distinctiveness’ imperative can be seen in the case of FALINTIL Commander Cornelio Gama (alias L7) advocating that Sagrada Familia members should be buried together. L7 has collected what he claims to be the bodies of 480 former members of Sagrada Familia, a group that split off from the mainstream armed resistance body, FALINTIL, during the later years of the conflict and has since then maintained an ambivalent stance towards the state (Myrttinen 2016). The bodies are currently stored in an uma mahon at L7’s home in Laga, a subdistrict of Baucau. L7, who remains an influential and somewhat controversial political figure, has recently persuaded the government to 8 Decree Law 30/2017 does note that ‘special cemeteries may be built in the Administrative Posts, whose number of National Liberation Combatants who were born, resided or fought in those Administrative Posts, justify the construction of them, by decision of the President of the Republic’. However, the commissions are pushing for far more cemeteries than the government anticipated.

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build a Garden of Heroes cemetery in Laga, not far from his house, and construction is now underway. L7 claims that he is motivated by a juramento (blood oath) that he and his Sagrada Familia members took during the conflict that committed them to bury one another should they be killed. From the accounts of some interviewees, L7 currently dissuades families from taking their dead home on the basis that Sagrada Familia members need to be buried together.

The effects of the commissions’ practices Aside from considerably expanding the size and number of heroes’ cemeteries well beyond the government’s plans, the commissions’ practices seem to be having several other effects upon the official valorisation programme and its underlying state-building imperatives. Key amongst these is that they are illuminating, and indeed reinforcing, the significant power that continues to lie beyond the centralised state, in former resistance networks. By amassing human remains, the commissions are establishing visible lieux de memoire or ‘places of memory’ (Nora 1998) that illuminate the contributions of Resistance leaders in specific areas, and those under their command. These emplacement practices are given added potency due to the material presence of the dead, which helps to bolster the continuing power of these figures over their former territorial domains. In addition, resistance networks are being reinvigorated through the self-organisation of the commissions along the lines of former armed resistance structures (sectors, regions, and zones). During interviews, commission members described how they were cooperating on a nation-wide scale (by mobile phone and through visits to different municipalities) to collect the human remains of members of ‘their’ municipality and bring them ‘home’. There is, as one interviewee put it, a nationwide movement of bodies going on. Another way in which the power of local resistance networks is being reinforced is through commission members’ influence on the process of determining who is (and who is not) a martyr – and, consequently, whether a family is entitled to a sizeable martyr’s pension and state funeral honours. Although they are not necessarily members of the government’s verification teams that regularly travel to the municipalities to assess claims for veteran status (see Roll 2018; Roll in this collection), the commissions make recommendations to the government’s homage commission (commission homenagem) on such matters. This, in turn, fosters’ families’ debt to and reliance on powerful, local Resistance figures in their geographic areas.

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At the same time, my fieldwork suggests the commissions’ practices are also working to broaden the state’s narrow interpretation of martyrdom. While the veterans’ legislation states simply that martyrs are those who have died in the course of participating in the struggle for national liberation, off icial forms of valorisation have favoured a narrow interpretation of martyrdom in which those who were members of formal resistance structures, including the FALINTIL and the clandestine resistance – generally men – are prioritised over others (Kent and Kinsella 2015.) By including the civilian dead – among them, women and children and those who died of starvation and illness – in their ossuaries and uma mahon, and imagining a place for them in their cemeteries, the commissions demonstrate that the populasaun participativa are also martyrs. This broadening underscores the degree to which, far more than government bureaucrats sitting in Dili, commission members are confronted with community understandings of martyrdom and their expectations of recognition, and the demands of the powerful dead in their territories. It is at the coalface that the fuzziness of the distinction between ‘civilian’ and ‘Resistance cadre’ is revealed, and the very real dangers of failing to dignify all the deserving conflict dead manifest.

Conclusion In this chapter I have argued that commissions for the recovery of human remains are engaged in forms of nonstate governmentality that, while co-producing the plans of political elites for the valorisation of martyrs, take these plans in new directions. To some extent, the commissions are extending the state’s reach by gathering, identifying, and categorising the dead. Yet they are motivated by different normative imperatives than political elites – including the imperative to care for the powerful dead and to recognise the historical distinctiveness of specific groups and places – and their practices are having complex effects. While they appear to be reinvigorating decentralised resistance figures and networks, they are also potentially enlarging the definition of ‘martyrdom’ beyond the state’s narrow interpretation. Regardless of their effects, there is no doubt that the scale of the commissions’ exhumation and identification efforts is extraordinary. While it likely that there are forms of community resistance – or at least ambivalence – towards them, the commissions have nonetheless succeeded in amassing tens of thousands of coffins, which now wait in ossuaries around the country

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while the state plays catch-up.9 The material presence of coffins and human remains brings to light the nation’s painful history and reminds the state of its unfinished responsibility to dignify all the nation’s martyrs. Looking ahead, the project of gathering, reburying, dignifying, and defusing the power of all the conflict-dead is ultimately an impossible, never-ending one. Those involved in the commissions have ambitious plans for future exhumations of mass graves and for the gathering of the dead from remote locations, including Mount Matebian. Yet there will always be bodies that allude detection, and questions will linger as to whether secondary burials have completely responded to the demands of the dead and dispelled their disruptive power. All of this suggests that the commissions may be around for many years to come, continuing to reveal the immense difficulties faced by political elites in performing a state that regulates unruly veterans’ groups, prevents the diffuse circulation of the dead, and contains the material legacies of the Indonesian occupation.

Bibliography Arthur, Catherine. 2019. Political Symbols and National Identity in Timor-Leste. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang Bjorkdahl, Annika. 2018. ‘Republika Srpska: Imaginary, Performance and Spatialization’ Political Geography 66: 34-43. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2009. ‘Spiritual Landscapes of Life and Death in the Central Highlands of Timor-Leste’. Anthropological Forum 19 (3): 323-338. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2015. The Land of Gold: Post-conflict Recovery and Cultural Revival in Independent Timor-Leste. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications. Bovensiepen, Judith. 2018. ‘Death and Separation in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste’. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Death, edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben, 59-70. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Bovensiepen, Judith, and Nygaard-Christensen. 2018. ‘Petroleum Planning as State Building in Timor-Leste’. Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology 19 (5): 412-431. Brown, Wendy. 1995. States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 9 While there is no space to discuss this here, I have encountered several families who have used strategies to ensure that the bodies of their dead (or parts of them) remain with the family.

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Crossland, Zoe. 2009. ‘Of Clues and Signs: The Dead Body and its Evidential Traces’. American Anthropologist 111 (1): 69-80. Crossland, Zoe. 2015. ‘Epilogue’. In Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights, edited by Francisco Ferrandiz and Antonius C.G.M. Robben, 240-252. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. de Cesari, Chiara. 2010. ‘Creative Heritage: Palestinian Heritage NGOs and Defiant Arts of Government’. American Anthropologist 112 (4): 625-637. Feldman. Ilana. 2008. ‘Refusing Invisibility: Documentation and Memorialization in Palestinian Refugee Claims’. Journal of Refugee Studies 21 (4): 498-516. Ferguson, James, and Akhil Gupta, 2002. ‘Spatializing States: Towards an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality’. American Ethnologist 29 (4): 981-1002. Foucault. Michel. 1991. ‘Governmentality’. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by G. Burcell, C. Gordon and P. Miller, 87-104. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Grenfell, Damian. 2012. ‘Remembering the Dead from the Customary to the Modern in Timor-Leste’. Local-Global: Identity, Security, Community 11: 86-108. Grenfell, Damian. 2015. ‘Of Time and History: The Dead of War, Memory and the National Imaginary’. Communication, Politics and Culture 48 (3): 16-28. Jeffrey, Alex. 2013. The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Johnson, Peter. 2008. ‘The Modern Cemetery: A Design for Life’. Social and Cultural Geography 9 (7): 777-790. Kent, Lia and Kinsella, Naomi. 2015. ‘A Luta Kontinua (The Struggle Continues): The Marginalisation of East Timorese women in the Veterans Valorisation Scheme’. International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (3): 473-494. Leach, Michael. 2008. ‘Difficult Memories: The Independence Struggle as Cultural Heritage in East Timor’. In Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with Difficult Memories, edited by W. Logan and K. Reeves, 144-161. Oxford: Routledge. McWilliam, Andrew. 2008. ‘Fataluku Healing and Cultural Resilience in East Timor’. Ethnos 73 (2): 217-240. McWilliam, Andrew. 2011. ‘Exchange and Resilience in Timor-Leste’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17: 745-763. Mitchell, Timothy. 1991. ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics’. American Political Science Review 85 (1): 77-96. Myrttinen, Henri. 2016. ‘Claiming the Dead, Defining the Nation’. In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by Finn Stepputat, 95-113. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nielsen, Morten. 2011. ‘Inverse Governmentality: The Paradoxical Production of Peri-Urban Planning in Maputo, Mozambique’. Critique of Anthropology 31 (4): 329-358.

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Nora, Pierre, ed. 1998. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Painter, Joe. 2006. ‘Prosaic Geographies of Stateness’. Political Geography 25 (7): 752-774. Republica Democrática de Timor-Leste. ‘Decree Law 30/2017, Cemitérios Especiais dos Combatentes da Libertação Nacional Jardins dos Heróis da Pátria (Special Cemeteries for National Liberation Combatants/Gardens of Heroes of the Nation)’. Jornal da, República 1, no. 31: 1455-1460. Robins, Simon. 2010. ‘An Assessment of the Needs of Families of the Missing in Timor-Leste’. Report for the Postwar Reconstruction and Development Unit. York: University of York. Rojas-Perez, Isaias. 2017. Mourning Remains: State Atrocity, Exhumations, and Governing the Disappeared in Peru’s Postwar Andes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Roll, Kate. 2018. ‘Reconsidering Reintegration: Veterans Benefits as State-Building’. In The Promise of Prosperity: Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste, edited by Judith Bovensiepen, ANU Press, 139-153. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Stepputat, Finn. 2014. ‘Governing the Dead? Theoretical Approaches’. In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by Finn Stepputat, 11-32. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Till, Karen, and Anna-Kaisa Kuusisto-Arponen. 2015. ‘Towards Responsible Geographies of Memory: Complexities of Place and the Ethics of Remembering’. Erdkunde 69 (4): 291-306. Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press. Viegas, Susana de Mato, and Rui Graça Feijó. 2017. ‘Territorialities of the Fallen Heroes’. In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations, edited by Susana de Mato Viegas and Rui Graça Feijó, 94-110. Abingdon: Routledge. Warren, K.B. 1993. ‘Interpreting la violensia in Guatemala: Shapes of Mayan Silence and Resistance’. In The Violence Within: Cultural and Political Opposition in Divided Nations, edited by K.B. Warren, 25-56, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Interviews Maun ‘Gray’. Liquiçá , 30 July 2017. Komandante ‘Dudu’. Ermera, 17 July 2017. L7. Laga, 18 November 2017. Members of Natarbora commission. Nararbora, 16 April 2018. President of the Quelicai commission. Quelicai, 11 April 2018. Members of the commission in Suku Fuad. Iliomar, 12 April 2018.

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About the Author Lia Kent is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on questions of peacebuilding, reconciliation, transitional justice, and memory politics in the aftermath of mass violence. Lia has undertaken research in Timor-Leste since 2000, and has recently also worked on Aceh, Indonesia. Her current project, which is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), considers the diverse forms of memory work being undertaken by non-state actors in Timor-Leste. Lia is the author of The Dynamics of Transitional Justice: International Models and Local Realities in East Timor (Routledge 2012) and has published in journals including The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Human Rights Quarterly, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Third World Thematics.

13 Selling Names The ‘Material Dimension’ of State Recognition of Martyrs in Timor-Leste Kate Roll Abstract This chapter focuses on pension payments to the families of martyrs and explores the ways in which resources have been marshalled to address the ‘material dimension’ of state recognition. It describes the complexities of this task, including the state’s role in arbitrating whether a person who died in the conflict should be recognised as a ‘martyr’ and thus eligible for state support, and details the ways in which actors have grounded claims for material support. These distinctive discourses involve the mobilisation of the dead and their suffering to create material state obligations to the living. The final section takes a deeper look at the controversy around ‘selling names’, whereby the names of martyrs have taken on material value. Keywords: pensions, Timor-Leste, martyrs, discourse, re-victimisation, commodification

Oh may we n’er them ungrateful prove! But bless the impulse that their spirits rous’d, And bless the patriots who our cause espous’d. – Humphreys, 1783 When national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, as they impose duties, and require a common effort. – Renan 2011, 83

Kent, Lia, and Rui Graça Feijó (eds), The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463724319_ch13

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Introduction The loss of thousands of Timorese to violence, disease and starvation during the Indonesian occupation and withdrawal (1975-1999), has left a legacy of pain, loss, and disequilibrium that continues to shape Timorese domestic, community, and political life decades later. Moreover, honouring those who fought and resisted the occupation, including those who perished and are now memorialised as martyrs, has also become central to the state-building project. Valorising the Resistance has enabled the bureaucratic extension of the state (through constructing pensions databases, for example), and is the domain in which the state asserts itself as the legitimate keeper and arbiter of these national histories and memories (Roll 2018a). Less attention, however, has been paid to the political economies of loss. Yet this, too, merits attention: both veteran status and the recognition of martyrdom are tied to significant financial resources. Indeed, in 2006 the National Parliament recognised the ‘material dimension’ as one of the three core components of its public policies towards those who perished due to the occupation: ‘(1) the moral dimension of recognition and appreciation, (2) the material dimension of solidarity and retribution of social or socio-economic protection and (3) the dimension concerning the preservation of the memory, the conservation and dissemination of values and achievements of the resistance’ (Decree Law No. 5/2012). While a distinction is made between recognition and material solidarity, in practice, the idea of payment is deeply intertwined with embedded notions of honour, appreciation, and indebtedness. This chapter explores the ways in which resources have been marshalled to answer the ‘material dimension’ of state recognition. It then takes on the complexities of this task, including the state’s role in arbitrating whether a person who died in the conflict should be recognised as a ‘martyr’ and their families thus be eligible for state support. The next section looks at the ways in which actors have grounded claims for material support, focusing on a set of discourses that have been used to expand these resources. These distinctive discourses, specifically revolving around the image of founding fathers, sacredness, sacrifice, and re-victimisation, provide an example of the mobilisation of the dead and their suffering to create material state obligations to the living. The final section takes a deeper look at the controversy around ‘selling names’, whereby the names of martyrs have taken on material value. This chapter is based on analysis of political speech drawn from local newspapers as well as two sets of extended fieldwork in Timor-Leste in

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2010 and 2012-2013; the research involved over 75 in-depth interviews, 18 of which are used in this chapter, as well as a representative survey of over 200 registered former Resistance members in eight districts, six of which are quoted in this chapter.1 The research took place during a period when the nationwide pensions programme for martyrs and veterans of the Resistance was under development, having undergone legislative changes in 2006, 2008, and 2011. This moment of ferment and policy change provided a particularly important time period in which to observe the efforts of civil society to shape national policy.

The material dimension in numbers Over the last decade, benefits programmes targeting former Resistance members2 and the families of those who perished have in Timor-Leste have grown dramatically. The Timorese state has now established a legal regime that defines ‘martyrdom’ and ‘veteranhood’ in the post-conflict era and allocates resources accordingly; in doing so, the state reifies these categories and, by linking them to resources, makes them valuable in material and not just symbolic terms. The state’s recognition programme provides significant material benefits, ranging from healthcare and scholarships3 to monthly pensions. In addition, in the early days of the pensions programme, there was considerable pressure to provide more immediate benefits, which resulted in an ad hoc programme of providing preferential access to lucrative government contracts to former high-level Resistance members and the families of those who were killed. The core of the state’s material commitment has been realised through an expansive programme of payments to former combatants and the families of those who perished. Benefits are organised into five distinctive categories, based on length of exclusive service, and then into grades, which reflect 1 Interviews and survey responses are anonymous and therefore cited by number. The respective abbreviations are INT and SUR, respectively. A table with descriptors of the interviewees (INT) can be found at the end of the chapter. 2 The term ‘former resistance member’, while ungainly, provides the most encompassing and accurate descriptor of the many groups who participated in the 24-year resistance movement, and includes members of the armed, clandestine, and diplomatic fronts. The term ‘veteran’ (veteranu) is avoided as it has a narrow legal definition in Timor-Leste, although Timorese often uses it more broadly. 3 Scholarships to the University of Timor-Leste and a special channel for the children of martyrs have been a point of recent controversy (see Belo 2018, 2019).

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rank; pensions for the survivors of martyrs (which I will call survivors’ pensions), are only distinguished by grade. Over the last five years, more than 250,000 individuals have registered, a figure equivalent to 60 per cent of the population over 30 years old, many who are still pending approvals. By 2015 this had peaked at USD127 million; the approved 2019 budget allocates over USD95 million to these payments. Putting these figures in perspective, these payments account for over 15 per cent of Timor-Leste’s recurrent 2018 budget, or 5 per cent of the total Timorese national budget – an expenditure almost twice that of the entire Ministry of Health. While recent figures on the breakdown of payments between living former combatants and the families of those who died because of the conflict – whom the government calls ‘survivors’ in legal documents4 – are not available, data from the beginning of the programme demonstrate how directing payments to survivors was an initial priority. In 2008, of the approximately 12,000 individuals approved for payments, 95 per cent were survivors. Concerning actual payments made, a 2009 World Bank review found: ‘Throughout 2008, survival pensions were paid to a total of 1,597 beneficiaries (638 widows, 805 descendants and 153 parents)’. By 2011, almost 68,000 individuals had been successfully registered, of which 13,222 were survivors; of note, while a minority of the overall number of registered people, these survivors constitute 62 per cent of individuals approved to receive monthly pensions. By 2016, the number of family members receiving survivors’ pensions increased to 16,157 (Timor Agora, 2016). All pension payments since 2012 have been pegged to base civil servant salaries (vencimento mínimo); in 2014 this ranged from USD230 to USD287 per month, with five individuals receiving USD750 per month based on their prominent role in the Resistance (Roll 2014, 106). Decree Law 5, passed in 2012, introduced a lump sum payment to expand the scope of ex-Resistance members and survivors receiving support. Specifically, it offered a single payment to those who served for four to seven years and to the ‘relatives up to the fourth degree of the collateral line in the event there are no relatives of the National Liberation Martyr entitled to a Survival Pension’. It is difficult to calculate the value of other programmes, such as government contracts, which range from small-scale construction projects to multi-million dollar rice importation contracts. The practice of awarding 4 The term ‘survivors’ may be used more broadly to include a range of actors affected by conflict (see Rothschild in this collection); however, for the purpose of this chapter and discussions of benefits, I am using a narrower definition of ‘survivors’, thus reflecting the term’s use in Timorese law.

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preferential or single-bid construction contracts has been made possible through the use of emergency funds, for which the normal scrutiny and tender processes are not required. This is the case for the government’s USD500 million rural electrification project, for which many subcontractors were used to erect power poles and government contracts went to companies owned by former Resistance members or the families of martyrs (see comments by the Secretary of State for Electricity: ‘National Parliament Receives Complaints’, Jornal Independente, 2013). The Timorese watchdog NGO La’o Hamutuk documented that at least 123 emergency project contracts were awarded to companies fronted by former Resistance members between 2010 and 2012. Together these contracts have an average value USD630 thousand and a total value of USD78 million (La’o Hamutuk, 2013). The group has also specifically raised concerns that USD27 million of the USD80 million 2012 budget rectification has been used to pay for ‘political party promises’ through these contracts. These are vulnerable to rent-seeking behaviour, whereby the veteran’s company secures a lucrative, or even inflated contract, and then subcontracts the actual work to a low-cost Indonesian firm, pocketing the difference. In contrast to pensions, these benefits appear to be distributed in a more ad hoc manner, raising greater concerns regarding clientelism and nepotism, and undermining the stated policy goal of socio-economic protection.

Deliberating death Before moving into a discussion of discourse, it is worth recalling that the state’s pension programme provides a vivid example of the meeting of culturally held categories, in this case martyrdom, and the machinations of an emergent bureaucratic state. Through this programme, the state has taken on the task of drawing up rules and regulations that distinguish between ‘martyrdom’ and other forms of death during or due to the conflict, drawing lines between types of death and assigning them value. The 2006 Pensions Law defines martyrs as: ‘all the militants of the struggle for national independence who have died or disappeared between 15 August 1975 and 25 October 1999 by virtue of their participation in that fight’. This definition hinges on the idea of participation in the national struggle; while this is meant to narrow the definition, as will be explored below, in practice this is understood expansively (see also Kent in this collection). This task of distinguishing between different types of death and then confirming corresponding claims raises both practical and existential

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challenges. On the practical front, assuming unambiguous eligibility criteria, a lack of documentation and clear historical records complicates the verification of claims. As a United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) official stated: ‘The verification, particularly of martyrs, is very difficult’. The lack of service and medical records means that the state is highly reliant on testimonies from commanders and others involved in events such as massacres. As deaths from illness are also recognised (although at much lower numbers than those attributed to the person ‘being killed by the enemy’), this further complicates questions of attribution and authoritative records (see also Kent in this collection). Beyond the practical concerns, however, lie the difficult questions of what the meaning of martyrdom is in the eyes of the state – what does participation in the struggle mean? And what are the boundaries on attribution (‘by virtue’)? As with the category of veteran, this has been a fraught process, and one in which the formal institutions of the state, including legal categories, are interpreted through informal mechanisms and custom by those tasked with taking decisions (see Roll 2018b). The idea of attribution is particularly difficult; as one survivor described, she ‘until now has not gotten martyr’s benefits. The commission said that [my husband] was not killed by the TNI and thus cannot get benefits – but it was suffering that killed him! His case is pending.’ Here the survivor attributes the death to suffering, a suffering that was felt widely across Timor-Leste during the occupation. What makes one type of death more worthy of state valorisation than another? Survivors awaiting approvals often looked to the commissioners tasked with verifying registration to settle their cases. Commission members have been drawn from local Resistance-era networks, and often include key leaders and deputies. In these roles, the commissioners wear two hats: they represent the bureaucratic state as well as the Resistance movement, including their own networks of authority, loyalties, and conflict knowledge. As one respondent described: My wife is going to receive $4,000. She is still lacking $2,000, for martyrs. She was told to wait. Her child was killed in 1999, shot to death. We have made the grave and cultural rites. I know the commissioners; they helped me to get listed. The commission is from the jungle.

The respondent identif ied the commissioners with the more fluid and informal, non-state world of the jungle. The jungle-ness of the commissions grants a more traditional and charismatic, rather than bureaucratic, form of authority, through which commissioners are responsive to local realities,

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understandings, and politics, and unhindered by laws. The jungle is also associated with a world of the supernatural and magical. Here, facilitating access to state resources further binds together Resistance-era networks in the post-conflict era. In this manner, payments programmes have extended the authority and power of these former leaders into the new, post-occupation era.

Arguing for care The scope and form of state-led reintegration programmes are contested and highly negotiated. Far from being passive, resistance actors, including survivors, have actively asserted their rights to state support. Demands for compensation and resources have been made publicly, through the media and petitions, as well as privately, using Resistance-era connections as backchannels for accessing high-level political leaders. While the literature on post-conflict transitions has often focused on coercive action, including public demonstrations and threats, in Timor-Leste these actions have been limited. Instead, I look to ‘the issues, social identities, [and] styles of politics’ that successfully facilitate access to state reintegration resources (Skocpol 1992, x), focusing on how certain narratives have been the key to making political opposition to benefits programmes – and their expansion – untenable. Normative foundations Political scientists and sociologists have increasingly looked to discourse to understand institutions and institutional change and ask questions about why some policies or actions are able to take hold. Schmidt argues that ‘discourse itself, as a representation and as well as a process, needs to be evaluated as to why it succeeds or fails in promoting ideas’ (2008, 309). The discourses deployed by former Resistance members to argue for access to resources are grounded in norms and ‘scripts to which [people] conform’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 912). This is akin to Schmidt’s ‘resonance’ (2008, 311), whereby certain concepts or language are more compelling due to their connection to the broader context.5 Through connecting their arguments to these norms and associated narratives, resistance groups have 5 Although I use the language of norms here, historians such as Resch (1999, 6) have turned to the writings of Hume and Smith to understand the persuasiveness of moral arguments; Purcell,

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imbued assistance to survivors and ex-Resistance members with a ‘quality of “oughtness”’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 891). Discourses of national sacrifice, for example, engage with normative beliefs around reciprocity, which foreground arguments for a state’s obligation of care to those who fought and the families of those who died. Engagement with such norms is well documented across conflicts. Resch notes the active role US Revolutionary War veterans played in ‘arousing sentiments of gratitude’ and efforts to ‘present themselves to the public as suffering soldiers […] which became a more powerful rhetorical device’ after the passage of the 1818 Pensions Act (1999, 8). Skocpol highlights mobilisation of ex-combatants following the US Civil War behind ‘claims as “saviours of the Republic”’ (Skocpol 1993, 88). Kriger observes that politically mobilised ex-combatants in Zimbabwe have claimed to be forgotten and neglected by the state (2003). In each case, these ‘political sentiments seek to bind the nation together around patriotic memories’ and change the terrain of policy debate (Purcell 2002, 53). Scholars of Timor-Leste, notably Silva (2008),6 have paid particular attention to the way in which personal biography, suffering, ancestry, and faith are used in political discourse to establish legitimacy. The grounding of these narratives in cultural norms is, at least in part, strategic. As Elster notes, ‘rational actors often deploy norms to achieve their ends’ (Elster 1989, 99). As Kriger notes, these narratives of neglect serve as ‘an important symbolic resource and a strategy to seek privileged access to state resources’ (Kriger 2003, 1). Her argument parallels that of Humphrey and Valverde in the context of victims’ mobilisation in Argentina. There, the narratives used by the victims ‘constructs a moral and political relationship between the individual and the state’, one in which the state has an obligation to respond to these groups’ demands (Humphrey and Valverde 2007, 181). As Renan states in his famous speech on what makes a nation, discourses of grief, for example, can be used to ‘impose duties’ (2011, 83). For Renan, it is not important what duties are imposed, but instead that unifying, reciprocal ties are established, drawing the nation together as a ‘vast solidarity’. However, the argument that these discourses are used strategically has some limitations. As Bourdieu writes, ‘legitimation of the social world is not, as some believe, the product of a deliberate and purposive action of propaganda or symbolic imposition’; instead, he argues, it results ‘from in her discussion of national gratitude, draws upon Plato and Cicero and their writings on the ability of gratitude to unify nations (2002, 54). 6 I am thankful to the careful editors of this volume for bringing this work to my attention.

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the fact that agents apply to the objective structures of the social world structures of perception […] which tend to picture the world as evident’ (1989, 21). Former Resistance members and survivors fundamentally see themselves as the proper and legitimate recipients of significant state care. By identifying as the families of ‘heroes’, ‘founding fathers’, or ‘veterans’ (i.e. ‘applying structures of perception’), they assume the position of the obvious or natural recipients of scarce state resources. Such discourses popularise these conceptions and reproduce patterns of labelling or identification that, again, naturalise certain individuals’ claims to benefits. These discourses reflect deep, culturally reinforced perceptions of the Resistance experience and the state’s reciprocal obligations; as such, these discourses further reinforce the ‘taken-for-grantedness’ of claims. Founding Fathers In the case of Timor-Leste, the most dominant discourse deployed to assert the state’s obligation of care is the role of martyrs and Resistance members as the ‘fathers of the nation’ (INT 07), a script that invokes an existential debt – the nation would not exist without us – and also draws parallels to family structures. This imagining of Timor-Leste as a family, with elite ex-Resistance members, particularly the deceased leaders of the Resistance, as the ‘father’, invokes both the associated authority that fathers have over children and the obligations of care that children eventually assume for their fathers – a complex dynamic. Demonstrating the former, Lieutenant Colonel Sabika, a prominent Resistance leader, stated: ‘It is important for the Government to pay attention to the future of the veterans, because the country will never exist without having veterans and probably the Indonesians would still occupy us’ (‘No Veteran, No Nation,’ Diario Nacional, 25 November 2010). A high-level clandestine leader echoed this sentiment: ‘Without veterans there would be no government!’ (INT 03). Both comments suggest a debt; the state itself is a product of their service: ‘Our obligation has already been met: we fought. Now they have their [obligation] to fulfil’ (INT 03). Timorese society is predominantly patriarchal7 and hierarchical, aspects reinforced by the dominant Catholic Church (Rimmer 2007, 339; Hohe 2002, 80). There exist strong familiar norms of deference towards both 7 This is reflected in both the work of Presidential Commissions set up to create lists of veterans – of the first 36,959 veterans registered, only 13 were women – and the legal framework for dispersing veterans’ pensions (Roll 2014, 99-100, 126). The roles of women in the resistance

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male heads of households and male traditional leaders, and power is often exercised through familial networks. These social structures, Hohe argues, have translated into ‘indigenous values of unitary and hierarchical political authority’ (Hohe 2002, 69). Expanding from this observation, I argue that these norms of familial and filial piety have been mobilised in this narrative of national fatherhood. By identifying as ‘fathers’, former Resistance members become natural subjects of deference and authority – these discourses model the relationship between the Resistance and the government as between fathers and sons.8 Resistance actors have also used this framing to position lower level Resistance members or civilians as the younger brothers of high-level Resistance leaders who have benefitted in the post-independence period; Gusmão’s popular epithet, Big Brother (Maun Boot), fits within this framework. This familial, yet subordinate status suggests an obligation for those in power to ‘look after’ the rest (INT 09). Adopting this language of family, one Resistance leader, who currently holds a high-level position in the F-FDTL, states: ‘[former commanders and Resistance members] consider each other as older and younger brothers […] they still call me Commander’ (INT 06). He considered it his on-going obligation to support his former soldiers; such perceptions may encourage the continuation and even formalisation of patronage relationships. Sacred, national treasures A slightly different discourse centres on former Resistance members as valuable or sacred objects. Members of the Resistance are ‘heroes, nationbuilders, they are this country’s treasures’ (INT 03); this discourse is particularly powerful in relation to the deceased. In interviews, former Resistance members described both people, particularly Gusmão (INT 18), and institutions like FALINTIL as sacred (INT 17). As a Timorese security analyst suggested: ‘The name [of veterans] is sacred [lulik]’ (INT 07). As Wilson summarises: ‘Veterans are accorded great, almost religious, status in Timorese political culture’ (2010, 145). This sacredness forms part of the national mythology, and contributes to the construction of Timorese history around the near-miraculous triumph of a determined, ‘righteous’ resistance movement and their treatment in reintegration programmes have been the subject of excellent scholarship by Niner (2011) and Kent and Kinsella (2015). 8 This may also help to contextualise the exclusion of women in the valorisation of resistance members – women simply do not fit easily within the model of male, filial power (INT 11).

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against a much larger, occupying state. As a result of status, interactions with former Resistance members and the valorisation of the Resistance may have not only political, but also cosmological consequences. Commentary by Trinidade and Castro (2007, 18) is worth quoting at length: [Interviewees] suggested that the East Timorese people, through the government, have forgotten the martyrs (Matebian/War Heroes) who sacrificed their lives during the resistance. These martyrs or fighters are part of the spiritual world at the moment. When they are upset, the spiritual world is out of order, resulting in conflict in the real world […] East Timorese described this phenomenon as Malisan husi Matebian sira [curse from the martyrs] or Matebian Babeur [disturbances from the spirit world to the real world by the martyrs].

The linking of the spiritual and terrestrial world makes the valorisation of former Resistance members particularly important. Their neglect raises concerns about the loss of spiritual equilibrium, and preventing this disequilibrium may reinforce state actors’ interest in valorising ex-Resistance members through benefits schemes. This sacred status suggests not only a relationship of deference, as with the narrative around ‘founding fathers’, but places former Resistance fighters on a higher plane – above the state and its laws. As one NGO worker and former clandestine member stated: ‘They think that they’re free from justice. [They say] “I’m God, you cannot bother me! If I am wrong, I will not go to jail.” It is not equal, just look at Lobato9 – he’s a veteran’ (INT 02). Accordingly, tensions have emerged around the conceptualisation of Resistance members and their relationship to state institutions. One Timorese security analyst described a culture of impunity: ‘The state has always protected them […] It’s like the mafia – untouchables – they cannot be arrested, it can’t be done’ (INT 01). As the NGO worker queried: ‘We need to valorise them, but is God still higher?’ (INT 02). The imputed ‘sacred’ status of former Resistance members, a non-state source of authority, undermines and conflicts with the realisation of a vertical state – one that stands above or over all citizens (Ferguson and Gupta 2002, 981). 9 Rogério Lobato served as the FRETILIN defense minister in 1975 and Central Committee member. Following the end of the occupation, he established and supported veterans’ groups, including AC75, which challenged the supremacy of the new military (Rees 2003). As Interior Minister, in the 2006 Crisis he again mobilised veterans against state forces by illegally arming the Rai Los group (ICG 2011, 5-6).

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The duality of former Resistance members as both fallible and human or infallible and godly or sacred can be seen even in a single individual. Regarding the confrontation between Resistance leader and parliamentarian Cornelio Gama (nom de guerre L7) and the police, one informant explained the difference: ‘an individual is wrong, a veteran cannot be […] L7 and Cornelio Gama are not the same’ (INT 14; my emphasis). For this interviewee, these two levels exist within one man. For the informant, while Gama should be investigated for illegal dealings, any comment against veterans or ex-Resistance members is inappropriate. Another informant expressed genuine concern that criminal activity ‘decreases their value, and sullies them a bit. Like the L7 case – it is a lot of little cases that add up’ (INT 07). Because of the importance of a heroic resistance mythology in Timorese nationalism, the dirtying or profaning of the Resistance name becomes of profound concern. Sacrifice and suffering Another prominent discourse centres on the sacrifices made by the Resistance members, and it bases their claim to compensation on the losses that they suffered during the conflict – what Raftopoulos has termed the ‘ideology of sacrifice’ (in Kriger 2006, 1165). Traube (2007, 10) has also identified this in Timor-Leste: It is a Mambai commonplace that the nation was won through suffering and sacrifice; it was ‘purchased’, the saying goes, ‘not with silver or gold, but with the blood of the people’ […] [This] idiom also evokes a cultural code of reciprocity in which those who suffer to bring something forth must be repaid; whoever benefited from or caused their suffering owes them ‘payment for their fatigue’ or ‘wages’ (seul kolen).

This language can be found throughout political discourse. In remarks reported by the Jornal Independente, 10 June 2013, Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak stated: I want that those who have falsified documents to be sitting in jail, as this money was bought with blood and flesh, and it needs to be done with honesty.

The sacrifice for the state creates a reciprocal obligation of the state, as it is ‘the state’ that benefitted from the suffering. This discourse has been also

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been used to define the group of individuals seen as legitimate recipients of state benefits. This discourse is used to distinguish between ex-Resistance members and civilians, particularly politicians. As one prominent veteran explains: ‘There is tension: the veterans have suffered, they have already built this nation, and now they can see politicians prospering’ (INT 04). This became particularly notable when a substantial pension – the Pensaun Vitalisia – was proposed for Members of Parliament (MPs). The relationship between the parliamentarians’ pensions and the veterans’ pensions remains an issue; in March 2020, a representative on the National Liberation Combatants’ Council demanded the alignment of pensions for ex-resistance members to those of MPs suggesting that, in light of their suffering, they are also entitled to comprehensive pensions (Tatoli, 2020). More forcefully put, one respondent stated: ‘Those of us that had been in the armed front, we gave everything, 24/7 just waiting to die. And then there is the Pensaun Vitalisia!’ (SUR 01). Another individual questioned why Parliamentarians deserved generous pensions for ‘sitting in a chair’ for five years when his decades of suffering and sacrifices in the jungle merited only a single payment (SUR02). Additionally, the idea of sacrifice has been key when arguing that compensation for former Resistance members should be comparable to – if not exceed – that provided to anti-state actors following the 2006 Crisis.10 Emphasising the insult of not receiving benefits while these anti-state actors did, resistance actors put pressure on government actors. As one respondent stated: ‘I worked for the Timorese land, but why did they give [payments] to the petitioners? If no one had gotten it, it wouldn’t be a problem’ (SUR 03).11 As one former member of the student resistance recounted: ‘When the government gave money to the gang leaders, the petitioners, we asked: why not the veterans?’ (INT 05). Such arguments, drawing upon the state’s obligation of care, influenced the subsequent passage of the 2008 pension law (Pensions Law, Decree Law 16/2008), which established specific benefits levels. 10 The 2006 Crisis was a breakdown in security and governance in May 2006, which precipitated a massive internal displacement. Triggered by the dismissal of a third of the country’s defence forces in March 2006, the conflict mobilised the police against the military and split the country along regional lines. However, the origins of the Crisis run much deeper, and reflect tensions and political rivalries from the resistance period. For an excellent discussion of the Crisis, see International Crisis Group (ICG) 2006. 11 The ‘petitioners’ is the name for the group of soldiers who organised in protest of alleged anti-western bias within the F-FDTL; the subsequent dismissal of 600 soldiers from the F-FDTL was a catalyst for the 2006 Crisis.

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However, these discourses have also been used to universalise the experience of suffering – as raised by the widow whose husband suffered and died during the occupation, yet who has been denied payments – and find commonalities between different groups. In Timor-Leste, the discourse of sacrifice has also been mobilised to expand access to resources, with the success of one group’s claims on these grounds paving the way for other groups. For example, as a former long-term Resistance member and Sagrada Familia leader argued, ‘The law needs to recognise everyone, including people who were not jailed. It needs to pay everyone because they lost their lives;12 it is too narrow’ (INT 03). He appeals to the common experience of suffering as the basis for compensation, not membership within a formal institution. Similarly, in an address to the FOK-FALINTIL 13 convention, FRETILIN leader Mari Alkatiri argued that widows and orphans from both the clandestine and armed fronts deserve government support due to their equal sacrifice (RTTL 2012). Overall, the political currency of this discourse, married with the widespread experience of suffering, has allowed for the adoption of this narrative by clandestine members and victims groups, for example, and has provided the basis of their claims to state resources and special status. Looking forward, some high-level actors anticipate the further growth of pension benefits to clandestine actors and even conflict victims, driven by these discourses based on the experience of the conflict rather than an individual’s particular rank (INT 08; INT 12); some of this is already underway with regards to the 12 November participants. Suffering is used to define those deserving of reintegration assistance – a crucial deviation from the emphasis on dedicated service and position within organisational hierarchies, as in the legal regime. Re-victimisation Closely linked to sacrifice is the narrative of re-victimisation by the government. This discourse suggests the injustice and irony of the on-going suffering and vulnerability of veterans and survivors, particularly widows, 12 This phrase should be understood not in the English idiom, as meaning ‘death’, but more broadly to signify the loss of a full social and cultural life – the opportunity to have a house, a family, and a position in the community. L4 emphasised the dehumanising experience of ‘living like an animal’ in the jungle: poorly clothed and underfed, sleeping outside and without a fire (INT 03). 13 Feto Oan Kiak (FOK)-FALINTIL is an advocacy organisation for the female widows and children of those who perished during the conflict.

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despite their previous sacrifices and the material benefits that independence has brought to others. Following their suffering and victimisation by the Indonesians in the jungle or prisons, a lack of benefits and/or recognition is described as re-victimisation, with the government uncomfortably and unflatteringly grouped with the oppressive colonial occupiers of TimorLeste’s past. This discourse has been widely adopted, and the Timorese press, for example, have described the state’s failure to care for ex-Resistance members as shameful.14 In public statements prior to becoming prime minister, former Resistance member and political leader Taur Matan Ruak declared: ‘If you call, I will answer. There are widows because of us. They have become vulnerable; they have rights.’ In one clear example of the argument, a Timorese NGO worker described the lack of government progress on providing housing and employment in these terms: Many [former Resistance members] still are becoming victims – they are still sitting in the same houses […] Some veterans have not received good employment, even though they made an important contribution; [the conflict] ruined them. They have already become victims once (INT 14).

Similarly, in one dramatic exchange, a man being removed from the veterans’ registration list described the failures of the administrative process through the lens of victimisation: ‘Again you are accusing the people who are suffering! We are becoming victims again’ (INT 15). These narratives are suffused with a sense of helplessness and subordination to an unfeeling state. As one registered Resistance member stated: ‘I am just angry because of the law. We have to submit to the law – there is frustration, you can’t do anything. The government has said to just wait. I am again waiting for the state’ (SUR 04). Similarly, again noting the power of the state, another averred: ‘Now those who did not f ight have the opportunity to erase the rights of those who participated before […] why have some not been considered?’ (SUR 05). From a rhetorical perspective, taking this submissive stance accentuates the state’s failing to meet its duty of care and the state’s unique position to provide such assistance. 14 For example, in October 2010, the government was criticised for failing to assist former fighters in their efforts to recover the bones of those killed during the resistance; this demonstrated that the government had ‘not paid maximal attention to the national heroes’ (‘Govt Should Pay Attention,’ Timor Post, 27 October 2010).

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Selling names and limits to commodification These discourses establish a set of ideas regarding the legitimate use of state resources and the basis for legitimate claims to material support. However, amidst these claims for expanded material benefits, there has also emerged concern around the misuse of ‘the dead’ to gain access to benefits. This speaks to a tension between the sacred and profane, between the symbolic value and felt presence of the dead in Timorese life and the material value that their deaths now offer to their survivors. At issue is the question of what constitutes the dignified use of the dead to obtain material benefits, and what actions do not; to what extent can service be commodified, bought and sold? While information on these practices remains limited, this work suggests that normative discourses around sacrifice and reciprocity also delimit views on the legitimate material transformation of the dead and claims of service. The subject of the unacceptable commodification of the dead arose in conversations about relation to preferential government contracting. As discussed above, the distribution of these contracts is personalised and rooted in Resistance-era networks and hierarchies, with officials providing preferential treatment to companies registered in the names of former Resistance members or survivors. These individuals then subcontract to another firm, taking a cut (INT 16). This has emerged as a significant avenue for state actors to provide benefits to former Resistance members, yet has also been an avenue for exercising political patronage and for fraud. As the International Crisis Group notes, the newspaper Tempo Semanal ‘reported the prime minister had ordered that veteran-owned companies be granted the contracts and delivered a list of 30 such companies to the tourism and industry minister’ (ICG 2011, 14). Here, Xanana Gusmão has been able to hand-pick contract beneficiaries. This importance of ‘who you know’ was echoed again and again by survey respondents: ‘People that know Xanana or the Minister for Electricity, they get it. This is not right’ (SUR 42). This practice violates ideas around entitlement and the connection between service or sacrifice and payment. Of particular interest, the rise of these contracting practices has created a perverse market for the names of former Resistance members – the commodification of their names and service. Family members of martyrs reported pressure to ‘sell the names’ of the deceased to those seeking contracts. As one widow described it: ‘People are always asking for projects. And they have asked me for my husband’s martyr’s documents to use

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for entering a tender’ (SUR 06; see also ‘National Parliament Receives Complaints,’ Jornal Independente, 2013). The widow explained that in this scheme she would be paid for the use of her husband’s name; his name would enable the ‘buyers’ to receive preferential treatment in securing government contracts from which they would then reap the f inancial benefits. This issue of ‘using names’ has been recognised at the parliamentary level as well; according to a 2012 newspaper report, MP Inacio Moreira stated that ‘when we want to give a project tender, there must be some consideration, because currently there are also those who are not veterans who use the names of veterans to get project tenders’. In his larger statement he uses the concern with ‘false veterans’ and the misuse of names to raise concerns with poorly executed projects. Here again, we see how sacrifice and the experience of suffering are used as ‘credentials to legitimate […] access to power and resources’ (Kriger 2006, 1167). As these names and conflict identities have become more valuable, players – including non-state groups and veterans’ associations – have perceived greater stakes in managing who can take on these identities and access state resources. This has been of concern to prominent former Resistance members, including Cornélio Gama, known as L7, who established the prominent clandestine organisation Sagrada Familia, and served as a Member of Parliament from 2007 to 2012. In our discussion, L7 expressed concern with contracts being awarded to ‘fake’ veterans or survivors and looked to the government to verify their status. He argued, ‘The government is giving contracts to “veterans” but it is not clear where these “veterans” come from’ (INT 10). Here he challenges the veracity of the identities used to access funds. These transformations are profound. The state first sorts the dead, transforming some through official recognition into ‘martyrs’ while dismissing others. And by linking these assignations to both pensions and contract access, the names are again transformed into commodities – the names like trading cards of popular baseball players to be bought and sold. As one respondent said, in regard to contracting: ‘They are always talking about this – it is a complicated thought. They are just interested in money, which lowers their dignity. They are sacred. They need to look after this money. One cannot sell a veteran’s name to get money’. The introduction of the material or financial dimension can thus be used to honour service, but may demean the dead by reducing their names to the stuff of transactions, commodities.

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Conclusion While the cultural and political significance of those who died in the Timorese Resistance movement is the subject of excellent work, less attention has been brought to the economic values associated with martyrdom in the post-conflict period. To begin to fill this gap, this chapter examines what the Timorese government has termed the ‘material dimension’ and explored how financial resources are tied to conflict dead. Here we see the state in the role of transforming the deceased, through legal classification and the official recognition as a ‘martyr,’ into a ‘name’ that now carries significant financial value. This has perversely led to the creation of a secondary market for the ‘names’ of the dead. In the second half of the chapter, I examined discourses mobilised by both former Resistance members and the families of those who perished to assert and expand the state’s obligations. Reintegration and benefits programmes are the sites of contestation over legitimate access to significant state resource and political capital; a reductive, economistic approach to understanding support for martyrs’ families, for example, is incomplete, and requires a deeper exploration of culture and political mobilisation. Support for former Resistance members is a ‘highly emotive’ issue, rather than a purely strategic one (INT 13). Missing from most discussions of programmes to support the families of the conflict dead is the political mobilisation of Resistance-era actors into advocacy groups and their use of well-defined discourses, as well as the symbolic importance of this group to political parties. Together these reinforcing dynamics have resulted in the significant, ongoing growth of reintegration programmes in Timor-Leste. Accordingly, this chapter has mapped out the narratives that actors have used to assert and normalise the state’s obligation to provide the ‘material dimension’ of care for the families of martyrs. In particular, these discourses establish images of former Resistance members and martyrs – as founding fathers, for example, or victims – and, crucially, these images also describe the relationship of survivors to the state – as helpless and needing care, for example, or as objects of reverence. However, more subtly, and despite their diversity, these discourses share the assumption that the state is the appropriate provider of this assistance. As such, these arguments are not just about why the state should provide care, but moreover provide an answer to the question, who should care for those who fought and died? In doing so, these programmes also act to locate responsibility for Resistance dead with the state, an important element of state consolidation.

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References Belo, Rafy. 2018. ‘Reitór untl husu labele halo kobransa ilegal.’ 6 February. Retrieved from: https://timoragora.blogspot.com/2018/02/reitor-untl-husu-labele-halokobransa.html. Belo, Rafy. 2019. ‘Estudante na’in 2.986 Aprovadu Tama UNTL.’ 24 January. Retrieved from: http://www.tatoli.tl/2019/01/estudante-nain-2-986-aprovadu-tama-untl/. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1989. ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power.’ Sociological Theory 7 (1): 14-25. Decree Law No. 16/2008. Pensions for the Combatants and Martyrs of the National Liberation. Accessed 11 May 2020: http://mj.gov.tl/jornal/lawsTL/RDTL-Law/ RDTL-Decree-Laws/Decree-Law%2015-2008.pdf. Decree Law No. 5/2012. Single Lump Sum for National Liberation Combatants and Families of Martyrs. Available online: http://mj.gov.tl/jornal/lawsTL/RDTL-Law/ RDTL-Decree-Laws/Decree-Law%205-2012.pdf. Elster, Jon. 1989. ‘Social Norms and Economic Theory.’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 3 (4): 99-117. Ferguson, James, and Akhil Gupta. 2002. ‘Spatializing States: Towards an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality.’ American Ethnologist 29 (4): 981-1002. Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.’ International Organization 52 (4): 887-917. Gledhill, John. 2003. ‘Rights and the Poor.’ Human Rights in Global Perspective, edited by Richard Wilson and Jon Mitchell, 209-228. London and New York: Routledge. ‘Govt Should Pay Attention to Heroes’ Skeletons.’ 2010. Timor Post. Hohe, Tanja. 2002. ‘Totem Polls: Indigenous Concepts and ‘Free and Fair’ Elections in East Timor.’ International Peacekeeping 9 (4): 69-88. Humphrey, Michael, and Estela Valverde. 2007. ‘Human Rights, Victimhood, and Impunity: An Anthropology of Democracy in Argentina.’ Social Analysis 51 (1): 179-197. Humphreys, D. 1783. The Glory of America; or, Peace Triumphant Over War: A Poem. Philadelphia: Printed for the author, by E. Oswald and D. Humphreys, at the Coffee-House. International Crisis Group. 2006. ‘Resolving Timor-Leste’s Crisis.’ Asia Report 120. International Crisis Group. 2011. ‘Update Brief ing Timor-Leste’s Veterans: An Unfinished Struggle?’ Asia Briefing No. 129. Dili, Jakarta, Brussels. Kent, Lia. 2010. ‘The Politics of Remembrance and Victims’ Rights in East Timor.’ In Proceedings of the Understanding Timor-Leste Conference, Universidade Nasional Timor-Leste, Dili, Timor-Leste, 2-3 July 2009, edited by Michael Leach, Nuno Canas Mendes, Antero B. da Silva, Alarico da Costa Ximenes, and Bob Boughton, Dili: Timor-Leste Studies Association.

324 

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Kent, Lia, and Naomi Kinsella. 2015. ‘A Luta Kontinua (The Struggle Continues).’ International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (3): 473-494. Kriger, Norma. 2003. Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe: Symbolic and Violent Politics, 1980-1987. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriger, Norma. 2006. ‘From Patriotic Memories to ‘Patriotic History’ in Zimbabwe, 1990-2005.’ Third World Quarterly 27, no. 6 (September): 1151-1169. La’o Hamutuk. 2013. ‘The National Impact of Benefits for Former Combatants.’ Presentation at Belun Seminar. Accessed 19 March 2013. http://www.laohamutuk. org/econ/pension/VetPension6Mar2013en.pdf ‘National Parliament Receives Complaints Autonomists Self-Designated as Veterans Given Government Contracts.’ 2013. Jornal Independente. Niner, Sarah. 2011. ‘Hakat Klot, Narrow Steps.’ International Feminist Journal of Politics 13 (3): 413-435. ‘No Veteran, No Nation: Lieutenant Colonel Sabika says.’ 2010. Diario Nasional. Purcell, Sarah J. 2002. Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Rees, E. 2003. ‘The UN’s Failure to Integrate FALINITIL Veterans May Cause East Timor to Fail.’ On Line Opinion (September). Accessed 4 April 2020. http://www. onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=666. Renan, Ernest. 2011 ‘What is a Nation?’ In The Collective Memory Reader, edited by Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy, 80-83. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Resch, John. 1999. Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Rimmer, Susan Harris. 2007. ‘‘Orphans’ or Veterans?: Justice for Children Born of War in East Timor.’ Texas International Law Journal 42: 323-344. Roll, Kate. 2014. Inventing the Veteran, Imagining the State: Post-Conflict Reintegration and State Consolidation in Timor-Leste, 1999-2012. PhD diss., University of Oxford. Roll, Kate. 2018a. ‘Reconsidering Reintegration: Veterans’ Benefits as State Building.’ In Beyond the Resource Curse: Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste
After Independence, edited by J. Bovensiepen, 139-157. Canberra: ANU Press. Roll, Kate. 2018b. ‘Street Level Bureaucrats and Post-Conflict Policy-making: Corruption, Correctives, and the Rise of Veterans’ Pensions in Timor-Leste.’ Civil Wars 20 (2): 262-285. RTTL (Radio Televizaun de Timor-Leste). 2012. ‘Alkatiri: Not only FALINTIL members killed in war, but also politicians’. 13 February 2012. Schmidt, Vivien A. 2008. ‘Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse.’ Annual Review of Political Science 11: 303-326.

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Silva, Kelly. 2008. ‘Reciprocity, Recognition and Suffering: Political Mobilizers in Independent East Timor.’ VIBRANT – Vibrant Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 5 (2): 156-178. Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tatoli News Agency. 2020. “Pensaun Vitalísia no Pensaun Veteranu Tenke Balansu.” Accessed online 11 May 2020: http://www.tatoli.tl/2020/03/03/ pensaun-vitalisia-no-pensaun-veteranu-tenke-balansu/ Timor Agora. 2016. ‘Pensaun ba veteranu timor-oan sira ho ona valór dolár milloens 467,65 desde 2008 – relatório.’ 2 March. Retrieved from: https://timoragora. blogspot.com/2016/03/pensaun-ba-veteranu-timor-oan-sira-ho.html. Traube, E. G. (2007). ‘Unpaid Wages: Local Narratives and the Imagination of the Nation.’ The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8 (1): 9-25. http://doi.org/​ 10.1080/14442210601161724. Trinidade, Jose, and Bryant Castro. 2007. ‘Rethinking Timorese Identity as a Peacebuilding Strategy: The Lorosa’e-Loromonu Conflict from a Traditional Perspective.’ Technical Assistance to the National Dialogue Process in Timor-Leste. Dili: Timor-Leste. Wilson, Bu. 2010. Smoke and Mirrors: The Development of the East Timorese, 1999-2009. PhD diss., Australian National University. World Bank. 2009. Independent Peer Review Mission: National Priorities Program February 10-27, 2009. Accessed 4 April 2020. https://www.laohamutuk.org/ econ/09TLDPM/PrioritiesMatrixPeerReviewApr09.pdf.

List of Interviewees Code

Sex Nationality

District

INT 01 INT 02

M M

Timorese Timorese

Dili Dili

INT 03 INT 04 INT 05

M M M

Timorese Timorese Timorese

INT 06

M

Timorese

INT 07

M

Timorese

INT 08

F

Timorese

Descriptor

Analyst at security-focused local NGO Programme manager, peace-building local NGO Dili High-level former resistance member Dili Mid-level former resistance member Dili Senior manager, local NGO; former youth activist Dili High-level leader, F-FDTL; former high-level resistance leader Dili Programme manager, democratisation-focused international NGO Manatutu Mid-level former resistance member; involved in data verification

326 

K ate Roll

Code

Sex Nationality

District

INT 09

M

Dili

INT 10

M

INT 11 INT 12

F F

INT 13 INT 14 INT 15 INT 16 INT 17

M M M F M

INT 18

F

Timorese

Descriptor

Former clandestine leader, Commission member Timorese Dili Member of Parliament; former high-level resistance leader Non-Timorese Dili Scholar, focusing on resistance history Timorese Dili Member of Parliament; former clandestine member Non-Timorese Dili Journalist Timorese Dili Leader, resistance-era clandestine organization Timorese Manatutu Claimant seeking pension benefits Non-Timorese Dili Member of UNMIT Political Affairs Timorese Dili High-level leader, F-FDTL; former high-level resistance leader Timorese Manatutu Mid-level former resistance member; involved in data verification

About the Author Kate Roll, Assistant Professor in Innovation, Development and Purpose at University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, is a political scientist interested in vulnerability. Her multi-disciplinary work brings together politics and development studies, and her research focuses on the role of power and institutions in efforts to improve social and economic security for those living in poverty. This has involved research on issues ranging from veterans’ pensions to private sector ‘bottom of the pyramid’ development programmes. Committed to grounded research, she has conducted in-depth field studies in Timor-Leste, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Kenya. Prior to joining UCL, Kate was based at the University of Oxford, where she led a research group, taught undergraduate politics and management, and contributed to the MBA curriculum. She holds a BA from Brown University, and an MPhil in International Development Studies and a DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford. Kate had the privilege of working in Timor-Leste from 2006 to 2009; she still misses the ai manas.

Index AC75 (Associação de Ex-combatentes de 1975/ Association of former combatants from 1975) 315 Aca kaka (sacred hearth) 51-2 ACbit (Assosiassaun Chega! Ba Ita/Association Chega! For Us) 79, 255-6 Actants 23, 121-2, 126, 145 Action 16, 22-4, 29, 33, 36, 58, 121-2, 124, 129, 170-1, 198, 245-7, 250, 253, 255, 257, 259, 270, 276-9, 285, 311-2, 320 Transformative action 124 Actors 22, 109, 138, 153, 237, 284-5, 287, 306, 308, 312, 314-5, 317-8, 320, 322 Ad hoc Human Rights Court (Indonesia) 189 Adat (customary code) 56, 170 Affinal relations 144 Africa 48, 225 Afterlife 16, 163, 169-70, 181 Agency 121-2, 145, 170, 173, 187, 192, 234-5, 243-7, 250, 257 Agency of spirits 132 Agentic 244 Aifunan (flowers) see Flowers Aifunan midar (sweet flowers) 146, 187 Aifunan moruk (bitter flowers) 146, 187 Aileu 9, 11, 59, 71, 73, 80 Ainaro 71, 182 Aipelo 72 Aitahan Matak, António Tomás Amaral da Costa 75, 88 AJAR (Asia Justice and Rights) 77-9 Alkatiri, Mari 31, 202, 252, 318 All Saints’ Day 146 All Souls’ Day 115, 146, 193 Alliances 10, 24, 96, 170, 183 Marriage alliance 24, 51, 123, 165, 175 Allies 106 Marital allies 9-10 Amaral, Francisco Xavier do 28, 75, 151, 246, 255, 268-9 Amaral, Tony 249, 255-6, 258 America 116 Lowland South America 48 United States of America see USA Amnesty International 220 AMRT (Arquivo e Museu da Resistência Timorense/Archive and Museum of the Timorese Resistance) 73, 76, 83 Ancestor(s) Ancestor worship 47 Ancestorship 11, 47-61, 220 Ancestorship ritual 51-2 Ancestral omnipresence 115, 118-9, 125, 127-32 Ancestral protection 119, 128, 131; see also Forsa Spirits of ancestors 47, 101, 125, 145

Anderson, Benedict 21, 69 Animal sacrifices 9, 54, 125, 146, 169 Animism 12-3, 22, 58, 124, 199, 203 Annan, Kofi, UN Secretary General 19 ANTI (Aliansi Nasional Timor-Leste ba Tribunal International/National Alliance of TimorLeste for an International Tribunal) 79, 82 Antoulas, Symeon and Marlene 127 ANV (Associação Nacional de Vitimas/National Association of Victims) 79, 274 APODETI (Associação Popular Democratica Timorense/Timorese Popular Democratic Association) 253, 269 Appleby, Scott 141 Aragon, Lorraine 54 Araújo, Basílio 190 Araújo, Rui Maria de 31, 78 Argentina 201, 205-6, 312 Ariès, Philippe 35 Arthur, Catherine 25, 276 Ascetism 124 Bertapa 124 ASDT (Associação Social-Democrática de Timor-Leste/Timor-Leste Social-Democratic Association) 268 Asia 48, 84 Southeast Asia 19, 22, 27, 48, 51-6, 121, 278 Assembly of God 101 ASSEPOL (Associação de Ex-Prisioneiros Politicos/Association of Former Political Prisoners) 77 Asuain kias (ritual) 59 Atabae 189, 254 Atambua 184, 191-2 Atauro 34, 91-3, 98, 101, 103, 106 Atsabe 71 Augustine, saint see Saint Augustine Australia 19, 116, 201, 205 Australia Special Air Service force 248 Government of Australia 201 Austronesians 19 AVC/NVA (Associação das Vitimas do Conflito/ National Association of the Victims of the Conflict) 79 AVR (Associação dos Veteranos da Resistência/ Association of Resistance Veterans) 76 Baguia 183 Baikenu 182 Balance 10, 12-3, 55, 57-8, 123, 147, 237 Cosmological balance 61, 123, 147 Barbedo de Magalhães, António 199 Barkan, Elazar 228-9 Barthes, Roland 286 Bartlett, Robert 22 Baucau 81, 180, 183, 186-7, 252, 285, 291, 297

328 

The Dead as Ancestors, Mart yrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

Baucau Pousada 81 Baze de apoio (resistance support base) 291 Beiala sira (ancestral spirits) 121, 139, 154 Belo, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes 190, 255 Benefits 24, 36, 83, 107, 123, 126, 149-50, 152, 231-2, 236, 238, 275-8, 288, 307-22 Benetech 223-4 Benevolent/malevolent powers 11, 21, 23, 118, 174 Bertolocci, Bernardo 264 Bi Murak 256-8 Bia Shana, Albina Marçal Freitas 263, 273-6 Bible 58 Bilgin, Pinar 119 Biru (protective amulet) 119, 124, 130-2 Blau, Soren 35, 292 Blessing(s) 35, 52, 115, 120, 124-5, 295 Bensa 125 Bloch, Maurice 48 Blood 12, 59-60, 69, 81, 125, 160, 163, 203, 234, 256, 259, 264, 271, 292-3, 298, 316 Boarccaech, Alessandro 34, 275 Boaventura (da Costa Sottomayor), Dom 71-2, 84, 245, 248 Boaventura uprising (1912) 72, 248 Bobometo 159-161, 165, 168, 173 Bobometo village massacre 161-163 Bobonaro 144, 191, 253 Body/bodies 10, 15-18, 22, 25-7, 32, 37, 60, 73, 79, 91, 98-100, 108, 117, 121, 124-5, 127, 131, 143-6, 152, 154, 162-5, 171, 173, 175, 180-1, 183-6, 188, 198-208, 234, 254, 269, 271, 277, 285-94, 297-300 Corporeality of bodies 173 Bonaparte Soares, Rosa Muki 249-50, 256 Bones 12, 21, 150, 152-3, 165, 173, 181, 188-9, 198, 203, 207-8, 234, 286, 291-2, 295, 319; see also Skeleton Unatoned bones 150, 153 Borges, Jorge Luis 263-4, 266 Borja da Costa, Francisco 79, 255 Bourdieu, Pierre 105, 277, 312 Bovensiepen, Judith 33, 53-4, 60, 117, 164-5, 182, 251, 257, 276, 287 Brockwell, Sally 54 Bua malus (betel nut) 125, 127, 129-30, 132, 146 Buat 129, 256 Buat a’at (bad things) 120 Buat hotu (all things) 120 Bubandt, Niels 119-20 Buddhism/Buddhists 19, 47 Budget 82-3, 257, 308-9 Bunak 59 Bupati (district administrator) 191, 269 Bureaucracy 75, 294, 299, 306, 309-10 Burial(s) 9-10, 12, 25, 28, 35, 50, 56, 60, 98, 108, 143, 145-6, 148, 151-2, 154, 165, 182, 186-8, 246, 284, 289, 291 Double burial 35, 181 Initial burial 152, 206

Mass burials 152 Permanent burial 181, 192-3 Proper burial 22, 26, 61, 148, 165, 204, 266 Reburial 12, 18, 26-7, 30, 32, 47, 59, 143-4, 152, 189, 208, 246, 285-7, 290, 292, 295 Secondary burial 18, 23-4, 148, 164, 181, 300 Temporary burial 148, 186-8 Cacavém/Cacavéi 56, 272 Caivaca 271-3 Calu ho papu (grandfather, great-grandfather) 51 Calu ukane (agnatic forebearers) 51 Campbell, Joseph 108 Canossian Sisters 249; see also Memorial Capitalism 141 Carey, Peter 57, 264 Carrascalão, Mário Viegas 271-2 Carsten, Janet 171 Castro, Alberto Fidalgo 92 Castro, Bryant 50, 128, 315 Castro, Eduardo Viveiros de 48, 97, 100 Catholic 12, 16, 22-3, 58, 101-3, 105, 124, 144-5 Catholic cemeteries 25 Catholic Church 28, 30, 32, 57-8, 101, 106, 141, 185, 313 Catholic mass 165, 274 Catholic missionaries 20 Catholic rituals 139 Catholicism 57-8, 61, 71, 203 CAVR (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação/Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation) 17, 36, 68, 74, 77-80, 82, 85, 142, 151, 161, 165, 169, 200, 219-20, 222-30, 233, 235, 237-8 CCLN (Conselho dos Combatentes da Libertação Nacional/Council of the National Liberation Combatants) 83, 317 Cederroth, Sven 52 Cemetery/cemeteries 25, 27-30, 37, 50, 73-4, 102, 142, 145, 151-2, 154, 159-60, 168-9, 173-4, 187, 191, 201, 204, 207, 265, 271, 284, 286-7, 289-91, 294-5, 297-9 Catholic cemeteries 25 Family cemeteries 289-90, 294 Heroes’ cemeteries 27, 170, 175, 189, 201, 234, 243, 248, 251, 257, 285, 288-92, 297-8; see also Garden of Heroes Military cemeteries 27, 287 National cemeteries 12, 26, 50 Santa Cruz cemetery 23, 246-7, 251 Ceremony/ceremonies 9-11, 13, 21, 30-2, 52, 59-60, 74, 93, 97, 99, 102-3, 108-9, 142, 146, 185, 234, 270, 290 Dispatch ceremonies 10 Kultural ceremony 274, 276 Mortuary/funerary ceremonies 9-12, 32, 56, 61, 165, 181, 186, 270 National ceremonies 11, 32

Index

Political ceremonies 13 Ritual ceremonies 52, 266, 293 Wedding ceremonies 124 Chambert-Loire, Henri 23, 164-5, 266 Charisma/charismatic authority 310 China/Chinese 19, 48 Chopra, Jarat 21, 237 Christ, Jesus 57-8, 61, 146, 173, 187 Christian/Christianity 19, 22, 47, 91, 96-7, 101-3, 121, 141, 145-6, 187 Christmas 146, 180 Cipinang jail 189, 191 Civil society 78, 138, 140, 206, 287, 307; see also Society ‘Civilising mission’ 20 Clamagirand, Brigitte Renard 102 Class 244, 278 Clientlism 309 Clinton, Bill, President of the USA 19 Cloke, Paul 121 CNC! (Centro Nacional Chega!/Chega! National Centre) 74, 76-9, 84, 151, 238 CNRT (Conselho Nacional da Resistencia Timorense/National Council of the Timorese Resistance) 162, 272 CNRT (party) (Congresso Nacional para a Reconstrução de Timor-Leste/ National Congress for the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste) 274 Coffins 153, 165, 183, 188, 270-1, 286, 289-94, 299-300 Co-habitation 58, 145, 279 Colonial/colonialism 13, 20-2, 25, 34, 47, 49, 58, 60-1, 67-72, 76, 81, 84, 143, 148-9, 182, 221, 248, 251, 286, 319 Anti-colonial 71, 221-2, 237, 248 Colonial governance 13 Neo-colonial 70, 72, 237 Post-colonial 23, 26-7, 34, 68, 70, 72-3, 221, 237 Pre-colonial 58, 84 Colonialists 72 Colonisers 20, 221 Comarca Balide 73-4, 76-9 Commemorations 12, 27, 36, 67, 69-72, 75, 80, 142, 160, 164, 168, 172, 175, 234-5, 244-6, 248, 254, 257-8 Commission(s) 36-7, 200, 222-3, 225, 228, 231, 283-5, 289-300, 310, 313 Homage commission 239, 298 Commodity/commodification 305, 320-1 Communitas 172 Community 15, 18, 21-2, 24-6, 33-4, 37-8, 68, 80, 91-95, 98-100, 102-109, 118, 120-1, 125, 128, 137, 139, 144, 148, 150-2, 161, 163-4, 172-5, 180, 182-4, 186, 204-5, 207, 229, 234, 251, 257, 265, 270, 276, 279, 284, 287-8, 294, 297, 299, 306, 318 Cognate community 137, 139, 143, 144-8, 149, 152, 154

329 Imagined Community 69, 81, 279 International community 150, 208, 222-3, 227-9, 237 Compensation 107, 166, 208, 248-9, 258, 311, 316-8 Financial compensation 160 Concordat 25 Conflict/post-conflict 20-2, 28, 50, 37, 75, 77, 81, 83-5, 92, 95-6, 105-6, 108, 115, 121-3, 125, 132, 138, 141-2, 148, 150, 153-4, 159-61, 167-72, 175, 179, 190-1, 193, 199, 205, 208, 223-6, 228, 233, 249, 251-2, 254, 258, 268, 283, 297-8, 305-12, 315-9, 321-2 Conflict-dead 18, 25, 36-7, 159-61, 164-6, 172, 284, 286, 289-90, 299-300, 322 Post conflict society 26, 68 Consanguinity 69 Consolidation of the Nation/State 138-9, 142-3, 284, 322 Constituição da República Democrática de Timor-Leste (Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste) 27, 49, 141, 230, 265 Constituent Assembly 49, 140 Contestation 70, 153, 160, 267, 322 Contracts 82-3, 268, 309, 320 Government contracts 82, 107, 307-9, 321 Corporeality see Body Corpses 26, 28, 54-5, 60, 143, 286 Corpses out of place 283, 289, 294 Corte-Real, Dom Aleixo 71 Corte-Real, Leví Bucar 247 Cosmos/cosmology 9, 30, 48, 53-57, 61, 91, 94, 101-2, 123, 147, 292, 315 Costa, Francisco Borja da 79, 255 Costa, Vítor 270 Couderc, Pascal 47-8, 54 Council of Elders 108 Covalima 80 CPD-RDTL (Conselho Popular de Defesa da Republica Democratica de Timor-Leste/Popular Council for the Defence of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste) 75, 248, 252-3 Crisis/Krize (Crisis of 2006-2008) 50, 68, 75, 81, 128, 132, 150, 246, 248, 252-4, 315, 317 Cristalis, Irena 107 Cristo Rei statue 189 Cristovão, Tomé 269 Cruz metan (Black crosses) 145, 154 Culture/cultural 9, 15-6, 18, 20-1, 35, 54, 58, 68, 78, 81, 84, 91, 108-9, 119-20, 124, 143, 151, 153, 159, 163, 166, 169, 171, 173-4, 180, 185, 187-8, 192, 208-9, 22, 237, 265, 267, 271, 276, 277, 309, 314-6, 318, 322 Cultural heritage 34, 67-8, 69-72, 72-4, 80, 81-2, 84-5 Cultural nationalism 68, 72-4, 81 Cultural rites 310 Cultural values 20, 34, 312 Kultura 146, 270, 274, 276

330 

The Dead as Ancestors, Mart yrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

Political culture 153, 221, 237, 314 Vernacular culture 20 Cunha, Manuela Carneiro da 48 Cunha, Teresa 250, 256, 258-9 Custom/customary 13, 32, 34, 59, 61, 91-4, 96-7, 100, 102-6, 108-9, 137-8, 144-5, 147, 150, 154, 310; see also Adat and Lisan Customary beliefs 138, 146 Customary practices 20, 23, 99, 166 Customary rituals 12-3, 32, 139, 146, 152, 274 Customary rules 122, 126, 146, 170 Customary thinking 147 Kostume 146 CVA/CTF (Comissão para a Verdade e Amizade/ Commission for Truth and Friendship) 74, 78, 169, 200 Damaledo, Andrey 35, 251 De Cesari, Chiara 287 Dead Caring for the dead 12, 26, 108, 294-7 Conflict-dead see conflict Cult of the dead 266 Dead as agents 21-5, 30 Dead of war 140 Fear of the dead 20 Heroic dead 221, 237, 256 Not fully dead 186, 188 Ownership of the dead 172-4 Paying for the dead 165, 276 Political dead 159, 164, 175, 245, 257-8 Potency of the dead 18, 23, 30, 37, 170, 175, 180-1, 185, 192-3, 248, 277 Power of the dead 18, 22, 25-30, 33-5, 117, 295 Powerful/potent dead 19, 23, 37, 173, 188-92, 246, 248, 285, 299 Death(s) Attitudes to death 35-6 Bad death 59, 159-61, 163-7, 172-3, 175 Death rituals 9, 17, 163-4, 179-80, 198 Good death 163 Hot deaths 59-60 Inside death (maet nanan) 163 Outside death (maet mone) 163 Political death 163-5 Red Death 10, 23, 59-60 Sudden deaths 10, 59 Suspicious deaths 59 Unnatural death 139-40, 142, 148 Debt 10, 12, 33, 124, 149, 167, 170, 276, 278, 298, 313 Indebtedness 306 Mortuary debt 175 Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste 19, 49, 77, 149, 246, 265, 268 Descent 57, 126, 129 Patrilineal descent 51 Unileneal descent 48, 51-57 Desconicidu (unknown) 291

Development 18-20, 31-2, 83, 141, 150, 207, 288, 295, 307 Dezenvolvementu 287 Dewsbury, John David 121 Diaspora 161, 169, 172, 183 Differentiation, social 277 Dignity 37, 160, 172, 175, 209, 227, 246, 277-8, 290, 321 Dignifying the dead 283, 294-5, 299-300 Dili 19-20, 23, 28, 30, 73, 76-7, 82-3, 92, 95, 103, 116, 118, 125, 128-9, 143, 145, 160, 165-6, 180, 189-90, 201, 205-6, 243, 246, 249-256, 265, 267, 276, 289, 299 Disabled 36, 230, 243-5, 248, 254, Disasters 95, 126, 147, 198, 202, 205-6, 228 Discrimination 128, 172, 252 Disease 10, 17, 25, 92, 152, 286, 306 Discourse 12, 36, 131, 160-1, 166-7, 171, 175, 221, 228-33, 237, 253-4, 257, 276, 279, 285-6, 305-6, 309, 311-14, 316-20, 322 Displacements 17, 68, 161, 169, 179, 187, 199 Distinction 274-8 DNA 203-4, 206-7, 294 Traditional DNA 292 Dudu, Komandante (Commander) 290-1 DVI (Disaster Victims Identification) 206 Dreams 55-6, 99, 127-8, 152, 169, 203-4, 206, 264, 292, 295 Dua or Klunguvava 93 Duarte, Jorge de Barros 92 Easter Day 146 Economy 190, 247 Market economy 137 Political economy of recognition 12, 70, 82-3 Ritual economy 147 Elite 58, 84, 149, 151-3, 236, 277, 285, 313 Political elite 25-6, 31-3, 49, 251, 286-7, 289, 294, 299-300 Elster, Jon 312 Ema hotu hotu halo funu (Everyone made war) 23 Endres, Kirsten 121 Equilibrium/disequilibrium 55-6, 147, 150, 306, 315 Ermera 32, 285, 290-1 Espiritu natureza (Spirit of nature) 122, 124; see also Rai nain Ethnicity 244 Ethno-linguistic affiliation 146, 180, 182 Europe/European 19-20, 25, 72, 84, 19, 286 Eastern Europe 26 Exchange 9-10, 17, 95-6, 101, 115, 146-7, 161, 164, 170, 236 Exchange rituals 119, 122-7, 129, 148 Gift exchange 123 Reciprocal exchange 118, 122, 131 Exhumation 35, 197-210, 283, 286, 293, 299-300

Index

Faith 58, 121, 127, 141, 312, 314, 317 F-FDTL (Falintil – Forças de Defesa de Timor-Leste/Falintil – Defence Force of Timor-Leste) 74, 128, 201 FALINTIL (Forças Armadas de Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste/Armed Forces for the National Liberation of Timor-Leste) 30, 56-7, 73-6, 131, 166, 189, 201, 207-8, 225-7, 230-3, 236, 243-4, 247-50, 253-4, 258, 271, 289-91, 293, 297, 299, 314 Falu Cai, Commander Miguel Pereira 263, 268, 271-275, 277, 279 Family 16, 25, 30-1, 33, 35, 50, 56, 69, 72, 80, 92-4, 96-8, 101, 103, 107-8, 115-8, 121, 124-6, 129, 143-4, 146, 159-61, 163, 165, 167-75, 180-9, 193, 198, 204-9, 231, 234, 236, 243-4, 249, 257, 267, 270, 275, 279, 284, 287, 289-90, 292-4, 298, 300, 308, 313-4, 318, 320; see also Kanaf Famine 23, 77, 223, 226-7, 233, 295 Fataluku 51-2, 55-6, 59, 183, 270 Faust, Drew 163 Feijó, Rui Graça 11, 25-6, 36, 49-51, 92, 97, 102, 122, 293 Felis Marindo 58 Ferguson, James 287 Fernandes, Clinton 107 Feudalism 20 Flag 13, 19, 56, 153, 160, 290 National flag 27, 49, 159, 247, 265, 271, 287, 293 Flowers 12, 16, 115-7, 146, 187, 297; see also Aifunan FOK (Feto Oan Kiak/FALINTIL [Organization of widows and children of former FALINTIL fighters]) 318 Forensic EAAF (Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense/Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team) 201, 206 Forensic evidence 204 Forensic examination 143 Forensic identification 35 Forensic pathology 143 Forensic practices 35, 199 Forensic science 197-9, 206, 286, 293-4 Forensic truth 35, 197-9, 209, 286 IFT (International Forensic Team) 201 VIFN (Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine) 201 Forman, Shepard 92 Forsa (Ancestral protection force) 131 Foucault, Michel 99, 285 Founding fathers 28, 306, 313-5, 322 Fox, James J. 92, 123 Fox, Richard 52 Franco, Francisco, Spanish dictator 28 French Revolution 25 FRETILIN (Frente Revolucionária de TimorLeste Independente/Revolutionary Front for

331 an Independent Timor-Leste) 17, 19, 72, 75, 77, 80, 190, 208, 225, 247, 249, 251, 268-72, 290, 315, 318 Friedberg, Claudine 102 Fuad 292 Funar 53 Funeral/funerary 10, 12-3, 29, 55, 102, 146, 163, 165, 180, 183, 185-8, 191, 207, 270, 274, 288, 298 Funerary practices 23, 145, 276 Funerary rituals 22, 32, 54-5, 123-4, 163, 180, 183, 185, 193, 270 Funu (struggle) 12, 84, 230, 258, 276 Galole/Galolen 93, 183 Garden of Heroes (also Jardim dos Heróis) 2730, 37, 73, 74-76, 151, 154, 160, 173-4, 191, 207, 247, 265, 269-71, 273, 284-5, 288-92, 297-8 Garden of Heroes (Indonesian) 189, 191-2 Geertz, Clifford 97 Gender 36, 99, 105, 152, 233, 243-5, 247, 249, 254, 257-8 Gendered acts 244 Ghosts 21-2, 164, 171 Gifts 9-10, 123-4, 170, 278 Global South 120 God 103, 123-4, 315 God (Biblical) 101 God Maromak 101, 121 Maromak’s creation of the world 101 Governance 13, 126, 138-40, 143, 149, 317 Governmentality 283-90, 293-4, 299 Graburn, Nelson 122 Graves/graveyard 12, 17, 23, 27-8, 30, 55-6, 74-5, 98, 102, 108, 115-7, 144-6, 151, 154, 159-60, 167-9, 173-4, 187-8, 191-3, 201, 203-4, 206, 208, 224, 244, 247, 254, 271, 274, 283, 289, 292, 310 Collective graves 74 Graveyard survey 224 Mass graves 143, 165, 197, 200-1, 207, 290-1, 300 Rehabilitation of graves 11, 18, 56, 115-6, 144-6, 148, 173, 266 Gray, Leandro 290 Grenfell, Damian 11-2, 16, 24, 35, 55, 58, 92, 122, 179, 208, 276, 284 Grief 243, 305, 312 Grievances 166, 171 Groups 9, 35, 49, 75, 77-9, 81-3, 93-5, 98-9, 103-8, 122, 128, 162, 165-6, 170, 173, 175, 180, 182, 188-9, 192, 221, 225-6, 233, 236, 245-6, 248-9, 251-2, 257, 272, 277, 284, 297, 299, 307, 309, 311-2, 315, 317-8, 322 Descent groups 48, 57, 126, 129 Ethno-linguistic groups 146 Family groups 93-4, 96-7, 101, 126, 167-8 Groups of origin 51-3 Kinship groups 56, 93, 126, 170 Martial and ritual arts groups 118, 245, 252, 254

332 

The Dead as Ancestors, Mart yrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

Militia groups 182, 188-9, 191 Name groups 168-9 Veteran groups 77, 236, 245, 249, 252, 288-9, 300, 315 Guatemala 208 Guerreiro, António 48 Guerrilla 56, 106-7, 124, 189, 202, 221, 230-1, 247, 249-50, 254, 265, 268-9, 271-3 Gunter, Janet 59-60, 251 Gupta, Akhil 287 Gusmão, Xanana see Xanana Gusmão Habermas, Jürgen 279 Habibie, B.J., President of Indonesia 23 HAK (Hukum, Hak Asasi, Keadilan/Law, Basic Rights and Justice) 82 Halbwachs, Maurice 106 Halerik (song of sufferance) 276 Halo tuir (follow customary and religious obligations) 150 Hamulak (customary prayer) 150 Hardacre, Helen 48 Harré, Ron 99 Hasai see Mourning Hasai Metan Boot (mourning ritual) 187 Hasai Metan Ki’ik (mourning ritual) 187 Hatolia 290 Hawa (evil spirit) 102 Healing 37, 228 Hegemony 36, 175, 245, 251, 263, 279 Hera 201 Heritage Cultural heritage 34, 67-76, 80-4 Immanent heritage 80 Warisan nasional 72 Hero(es) 11-3, 15, 18, 23, 27, 29, 34, 36, 47, 50, 70-1, 73, 83-4, 91, 104-9, 166, 190-1, 219-22, 228, 235-8, 243-4, 247-8, 250, 254-5, 263-6, 270-1, 274-8, 294, 313, 315, 319 Concept of hero 13, 34, 92, 230-5 Erói 104 Heroes’ Day (31 December) 30 Palahwan (hero) 161, 175, 251 Hertz, Robert 15-6, 35, 164, 180-1, 186 Hicks, David 16, 53, 59, 92, 102, 123, 179, 232 Hierarchy 27-8, 49, 105, 107, 231, 277 Hierarchy of heroism 231-2 Hierarchy of martyrdom 151 Social hierarchy 105, 263, 279 Hinduism/Hindus 19, 47 Hirschman, Albert O. 278 Hodge, Joel 57-8 Hohe, Tanja 123, 313-4 Holland/Dutch 71, 167 Holocaust 222 Honneth, Axel 277 Honour/dishonour 10, 12-3, 27, 29, 31, 56, 60, 74, 84, 98, 101-2, 105, 107-9, 173, 269-71, 275, 278, 288, 298, 306, 321

Hospital Nacional Guido Valadares 205 House(s) 9, 52, 71, 93-4, 96, 99, 126, 129, 131, 144, 146, 207, 284; see also Uma/Ume Ancestral house 116, 185 Houses of origin 11, 51-2, 116, 165 Lineage houses 10, 165 Hresuk 93, 97, 104 Hugh-Jones, Stephen 97 Human rights 36, 77-8, 82, 140, 143, 151, 198, 220, 222-9, 233, 236 Abuses/violations of human rights 67-8, 76-9, 82, 85, 143, 151, 189-91, 200, 207, 209, 219, 235 Human rights history 77 Humangili 34, 91-109 Humphrey, Michael 312 Hun (origin/roots) 57 Hunger 10, 17, 20, 60, 224-7, 257, 291 Huyssen, Andreas 228-9 ICG (International Crisis Group) 317, 320 ICRC (International Committee on the Red Cross) 17 Idate 164, 182 Identification 35, 50, 53-4, 61, 123, 143, 197-209, 286, 293-4, 299, 313 Identity/identities 16, 30, 37, 49, 68, 70, 74, 109, 160, 175, 181, 186, 188, 191-2, 203, 221, 237, 243, 277, 292, 294, 311, 321 Collective identity 26, 69-70, 81, 84, 91 National identity 18, 27, 34, 36, 68, 71, 75, 83, 142, 164, 203, 221, 236-8, 244, 266 Regional identities 75, 208 IDP (Internally Displaced Peoples) 150, 252 IFT (International Forensic Team) 200-1; see also Forensic Illiberal/illiberalism 137-40, 148-153, 154 Illiberal governance 138-9 Iliomar 285, 292 Illness 17, 23, 55, 57, 59, 95, 117, 123-5, 127, 138, 144-5, 147, 163-4, 169, 224-7, 291, 299, 310 Imagined community 81, 279 Imbate 162 Imprisonment 68, 78, 189-90 Incorporeal forces 121 Independence 18, 25, 27, 49-50, 61, 67-9, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 129, 137-8, 142, 149-51, 154, 162, 164, 166, 168-9, 190-1, 199, 208, 230-2, 234, 243-4, 246-7, 251, 255, 257-8, 263, 265, 268-70, 272, 274, 276, 279, 288, 290, 309, 319 Independence Day 72 Post-independence 9, 11, 22, 47, 50, 59, 67, 70, 73, 76, 80, 84-5, 144, 148, 153, 219-23, 235, 237, 247-8, 253, 259, 314 Proclamation/restoration of Independence (20 May 2002) 19, 21, 68, 200, 253, 255 Struggle for Independence 12, 34, 36, 59, 67-8, 74, 76, 81-2, 141, 207, 221, 230-1, 237, 243-4, 246, 248-51, 253-5, 258

Index

Indigenous Indigenous cosmology 292 Indigenous rebellions 71 Indigenous religions/beliefs 12, 314 Indigenous spirits 13 Indonesia(n) 11, 17, 19-21, 23-5, 27, 35, 49, 56, 58, 67, 69-81, 93, 106-7, 124, 129, 137-8, 141-2, 149-50, 160-2, 164, 166, 168-70, 179-80, 182, 184-5, 187-93, 200, 202-3, 207-8, 220, 222-3, 225-7, 230, 234, 236, 243, 246-51, 253, 255, 268-9, 271-3, 297 Indonesian Ad Hoc Human Rights Court 189 Indonesian invasion of Timor-Leste (7 December 1975) 79, 84, 290 Indonesian occupation 17-8, 24, 31, 34, 47, 56, 59, 61, 68, 70, 73, 76, 78-80, 104, 107, 131, 144, 148, 151, 160, 182-3, 189, 199, 201, 219-21, 237, 246, 278, 284, 300, 306, 309, 313, 319 Indonesian policies 10 Indonesian Supreme Court 189 Ingram, Sue 153 Integration/integrationism 70-2, 84, 190, 251, 269, 272 INTERFET (International Force for East Timor) 139, 142-3 Interpersonal relations 96, 98, 199 Interpol 206 Intersex persons 244 Inu (ancestral beads) 167 Invisible/invisibility 36, 55, 121, 124-5, 181, 243-5, 248-54, 256, 258, 286 Iraq 205 Ireland 57, 77, 80, 264 New Ireland (Papua New Guinea) 55 Northern Ireland 141 Isik Runguk 91 Islam/Muslims 19, 203 Jakarta 189 Japan 249 Japanese occupation of Timor 47, 60-1, 68, 71, 84, 251 Jardim dos Heróis see Garden of Heroes Jeffrey, Alex 287 Jesus Christ 57-8, 61, 146, 173, 187 Jung, Carl 108 Juramento (blood oath) 298 Justice 68, 72, 76, 82, 85, 96, 199, 228-9, 236, 238, 315, 318 Justice in war/of war 226 Punitive justice 236 Transitional justice 143, 208, 220, 222 Kammen, Douglas 251 Kanaf (family) 168-9 Kant, Immanuel 98 Kent, Lia 11, 36-7, 49, 107, 122-3, 138, 166, 257, 275, 314

333 Kera Sakti (Sacred Monkey) 252 Keveara, Afonso José Fernandes 272-3 Killings 68, 95, 162-3, 166, 169, 173, 202, 224, 226-8, 256 Unlawful killings 223, 225, 227 Kin/kinship 24, 26, 33, 47-8, 50-3, 55-7, 61, 145, 149, 154, 159, 162-3, 168, 172, 179, 182-3 Kinship networks 16, 93 Kinship relations 30, 33, 52, 56, 175, 180 Kingston, Jeffrey 236 Kinsella, Naomi 314 Kleemeyer, Adam 199 Knua (house of origin) 115-6, 292 Knua rate (ancestral gravesite) 116-7 KODIM (Komando Distrik Militer/Military District Commando) 77 Komnas HAM (Indonesia National Human Rights Commission) 200 Konis Santana National Park 52; see also Santana, Nino Konis Kore Metan (End of Mourning) 146, 153, 188 Kore Metan Nasional (National End of Mourning) 19, 30-3, 244 KORK (Kmanek Oan Rai Klaran/Wise Children of the Land) 252, 254 Kosovo 137 Kostume 146; see also Custom Krahó 48 Kriger, Norma 312 KRRM (Komisaun Rekoilamentu Restu Mortais/Commission for the Retrieval of Mortal Remains) 283; see also Mortal remains Kuchler, Susanne 55 Kultura 146, 270, 274, 276; see also Culture Kupang 183-6, 189, 191 Kwon, Heonik 22, 27, 164 L7, Cornélio Gama 201, 268, 297-8, 316, 321 Lacan, Jacques 97 Laclubar 180 Laqueur, Thomas W. 16 Laga 153, 180, 297-8 Landscape 115, 117, 161, 283, 287, 295-6 Cultural heritage landscape 34, 68-70, 75-6, 80-1, 84, 271 Disordered landscape 289 Memorial landscape 68, 70, 84 Spiritual landscape 119-23 Language games 106-7 La’o Hamutuk 83, 309 Lafuru tei (sacred hearth) 51 Laruara 56 Lasama, Fernando de Araújo 75 Latour, Bruno 23, 121 Lauser, Andrea 121 Lautém 51, 54-56, 59, 75, 183, 249, 267-8 Leaders 13, 19, 72, 75-6, 81, 95-6, 101-2, 104-6, 126-7, 142, 151-2, 160, 162, 180, 188-9, 191-2,

334 

The Dead as Ancestors, Mart yrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

201, 221-2, 225, 234, 236-8, 243, 246-7, 253, 256, 265, 268-71, 273-4, 290, 293, 298, 310-1, 313-4, 316-9 Traditional/customary leaders 13, 30, 32, 92, 94, 118, 314 Leach, Michael 12, 34, 49, 107, 247, 251 Legacies 22, 37, 53, 68, 80, 95, 169, 171, 189, 253, 300, 306 Legitimacy 13, 18, 26-9, 37, 81, 83, 139-40, 143, 149, 153, 164, 221, 227, 257, 265, 276, 278, 285-6, 306, 312-3, 317, 320-2 Leite, Luís Monteiro 271-3 Lekmori 99 Lia nain (Owner of the word, traditional healer) 125, 144 Liberal/liberalism 137-8, 140-42, 147-50, 154 Liberal peace 12, 137-45, 147-54 Lieux de memoire (memory sites) 26, 37, 298 Lifau 19 Life 9-10, 13, 16-8, 20, 25, 29, 34-5, 48-9, 52-4, 56, 61, 68-9, 72, 94, 98-9, 102, 108-9, 119-20, 122-3, 126-7, 130-1, 138, 140-2, 146-7, 160-1, 170-1, 175, 179, 185-6, 190-1, 197, 203, 209, 232, 234-5, 245, 249, 256, 259, 278-9, 296, 306, 318, 320 Afterlife 16, 163, 169-70, 181 Immanence of life 53-57 Life cycle 16, 23, 105, 179 Lived experiences 47, 58, 118, 120 Lived world 120 Non-physical life 147 Still-living 122, 127, 139-154, 180-1, 187-93, 288 Liminal state 24, 295 Lineage 10, 48, 144, 165 Liquiçá 73, 249, 251, 285, 290 Lisan 91, 93-9, 101-2, 105-6, 122-3, 145-6, 170, 202, 245-6, 250, 265; see also Adat Concept of lisan 122, 170 in Atauro 93 Lobato, Nicolau 24-5, 28, 30, 73, 75, 151 Nicolau Lobato National Holiday/Heroes’ Day 30, 84 President Nicolau Lobato International Airport 72 Lobato, Rogério 315 Lolotoe 144-5, 152 Lombok 52 Loney, Hannah 107 Longue durée 34, 36, 49, 57 Loron Matebian (All Souls’ Day) 115, 117-8, 124, 146 Lorosae/Loromonu 50, 128 Lospalos 51, 268-74, 276, 278, 285 Loss 15, 31, 37, 57, 68-70, 159, 161, 165, 170-3, 175, 198, 272, 306, 315-6, 318 Lu Olo, Francisco Guterres 31, 104 Luak 72 Luit Kolban (Victims’ money) 166; see also Pensions

Lulik 117, 122, 126, 132, 296, 314 Concept of lulik 117, 146 Lulik Circle 47, 53 Ruma lulik (sacred house) 93 Sasan lulik (sacred objects) 126, 132 Uma lulik see Uma Lulik Lumera (Humangili hell) 108 Luta (struggle) 233, 256 Ma’a veru, Domingos Sávio 268 Magic 311 Makalero 56 Makasae 183, 186 Makili 92-3 Malacca 19 Malanggan 55 Maliana 253-4 Maluk (close friend) 295 Mambai/Mambae 9-11, 54, 58-9, 276, 316 Manatuto 180, 182-3, 190, 285 Manufahi 192 Maquelab 162 Mário Soares Foundation 76 Market economy see Economy Marriage 9, 24, 94, 96, 123, 146, 165, 173, 175, 180 Marriage rituals 16 Martial and ritual arts groups see Groups Martyr(s) 11-2, 13, 15, 18-9, 22, 27, 29, 31-4, 36-7, 47, 50-1, 54, 57-61, 67-72, 74-6, 80, 84, 107, 137, 140, 142, 144, 149-54, 159, 161, 165-6, 168-9, 171, 173-5, 201, 219-22, 228, 230, 236-8, 243, 263, 265-8, 270-1, 274-9, 283-5, 288-90, 298-300, 305-10, 315, 320-2 Definitions/concepts of martyrs 18, 22, 49, 107, 138, 165, 230-5 Martyred prophet 57 Martyrdom 26, 37, 49-50, 61, 67-72, 82, 84-5, 151, 170, 174, 219-20, 231, 263, 283, 299, 306-7, 309-10, 322 False martyrdom 231 Rhetoric of martyrdom 175 Massacre 22, 34-5, 71, 161, 164, 166-8, 172, 174-5, 199-200, 226, 310 Massacre of Aileu 71, 73 Massacre of Bobometo 159-60, 161-3, 165, 173 Massacre of Caivaca 271, 274 Massacre of Liquiçá 73-4, 79-81, 249 Massacre of Passabe 162 Massacre of Santa Cruz 74, 78, 160, 203, 232, 234, 243, 246-7, 254, 265 Massacre of Suai 73-4, 78, 79-81, 200, 249 Massacre sites 68, 79-81, 151 Matan do’ok (The one who sees far) 292-3 Matebian 50, 59, 116, 121, 253, 269, 272, 300, 315 Loron Matebian (All Souls’ day) 115, 117-8, 124, 146 Malisan husi Matebian sira (Curse from the Martyrs) 315

Index

Matebian Babeur (disturbances from the spirit world to the real world by the martyrs) 315 Materiality/immateriality 26, 256, 286-7 Mattoso, José 76, 277 Mau Buti, Major-General Manuel de Freitas 236 Mau Velis, Martinho Pereira 273-4 Maubere 27, 49, 58, 265 Maubisse 254 Mauk Moruk, Paulino Gama 252-3 Maunana, Cornélio Ximenes 268-9, 273 Mauss, Marcel 123 McWilliam, Andrew 16, 49, 51-2, 59-60, 92, 102, 122, 164 Meat 125, 146 Sacrificial/sacred meat 51, 125 Mello, Sérgio Vieira de 21 Memory/memories 16, 33, 55, 74, 76, 78-9, 83, 101, 105, 109, 116, 151, 171-3, 247-8, 255-6, 263, 268, 271, 274, 278, 286, 289, 294, 306 Collective memory 69, 83, 95, 106, 109, 172-3, 228-9, 264, 266 ‘Difficult memories’ 68 Memorialisation 27, 36, 67, 71-2, 75, 80, 82, 149, 151, 243-5, 249, 251, 254-6, 258-9, 275, 284 Memory day (7 December) 84 National Institute of Memory 78, 238 Memory sites see Lieux de memoire Nationalist memory 69 Patriotic memories 312 Memorial(s) 12, 28, 69-75, 77, 78-9, 80-2, 84, 159-60, 163, 172, 191, 207, 243, 247-9, 251, 253, 255, 257, 263, 270-1, 273-8 Canossian Sisters memorial 249 Santa Cruz massacre memorial 254 Metinaro 12, 27-9, 50, 73-5, 151, 201, 204, 206-7, 208, 247, 269, 273, 288-9 Meto 161, 163-5, 167-70, 175 Meyerson, Ignace 99 Militia/militiamen 74, 78-9, 81, 107, 129, 137, 142, 162, 166-9, 182, 188-9, 191, 251 Ministry of Health 308 Ministry of Home Affairs 30 Ministry of Social Security/Solidarity 166, 274 Miracles 22, 127 Misfortune 11, 23, 55, 60, 103, 123, 127, 245, 266 Missionaries see Catholic missionaries Moderator system 103 Molnar, Andrea Katalin 71, 102, 251 Moniz, Domingos Pinto de Araújo 79 Monument(s) 27-8, 30, 32, 34, 68, 70-5, 79-80, 84, 151-2, 188, 246-7, 256-7, 274, 287, 290 National Monument of the War-Sacrificed/ Chama Eterna (Eternal Flame) 30, 32, 84 Moral order 16 Moreira, Inácio (MP) 321

335 MOREM (Indonesian Intelligence Service) 77 Moris diak, Moris hakmatek (good life) 138 Mortuary ceremonies 9-12, 56 Mourning 31-2, 146-7, 149, 165, 181, 187-8, 198, 274 Aifunan Moruk (mourning ritual) see Flowers Aifunan Midar (mourning ritual) see Flowers Hasai Metan Boot (mourning ritual) 187-8 Hasai Metan Ki’ik (mourning ritual) 187-8 Kore Metan (mourning ritual) see Kore Metan Mundu seluk (another world) 117 Myrttinen, Henri 36 Mutuality of being 47, 52 Nahe biti (spreading the mat) 30 Naibonat 182-3, 186-8 Names 79, 97-8, 104, 125-6, 159-60, 234, 250, 267-8, 291, 305-6, 320-2 Dirtying names 316 Market for names 37, 320, 322 Profaning names 316 Narrative(s) 12, 24-6, 30, 33, 36, 58-9, 79-80, 84, 91, 100-1, 106-7, 109, 118, 143, 145, 153, 163-4, 169, 172, 191, 221-3, 229-30, 232, 235-8, 248, 250-1, 253-4, 257-8, 264, 268, 271, 274-9, 311-2, 314-5, 318-9, 322 Alternative narrative 245, 255-6, 259 CAVR narrative 233, 238 Competing/conflicting narratives 36, 258, 265-7, 274 Counter-narrative 255 Egalitarian narrative 258 Hegemonic/dominant narrative 36, 222, 245, 251, 257-8, 263 Human rights narrative 233, 237 Inclusive narrative 243, 258 Legitimising narrative 28 Masculine narrative 257 Narratives of neglect 312 Narratives of resistance 36, 221 National narratives 26-7, 34, 36-7, 81, 164, 175, 229, 244, 248, 250, 265, 276, 279, 297 Resistance narrative 230, 233, 236, 237 Unifying narratives 81 Victimhood narratives 36, 222, 228-9, 238 Natarbora 185, 291, 293-5, 297 Nation/national Nation-building 15, 28, 30, 31, 33, 37-8, 68, 75, 80-1, 207, 228-9, 248, 257, 286 National identity 18, 27, 34, 36, 68, 73, 75, 83, 142, 164, 203, 236-8, 244, 266 National Liberation 18-9, 27, 30, 49, 67-70, 83-4, 107, 165-6, 201, 207, 231, 265-6, 268, 271, 274-5, 277-9, 288, 297, 299, 308 National Liberation Combatants’ Council 83, 317

336 

The Dead as Ancestors, Mart yrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

National Monument of the War-Sacrificed/ Chama Eterna (Eternal Flame) see Monuments National Parliament 77-8, 82, 140, 231, 267-8, 270, 274-5, 306, 309, 317, 321 Nationalism 20, 68-9, 71, 81, 83, 221, 236, 316 Anticolonial nationalism 221 Nationalist movement 20, 80 Postcolonial nationalism 221, 237 Proto-nationalism 20, 72 Networks 35, 48, 51-2, 82, 121, 144, 146, 159, 161, 167, 172, 283-5, 298-9, 310-11, 314, 320 Kinship networks see Kin/kinship Social networks 16, 179, 182 NGO 201, 259, 309, 315, 319 Nielsen, Morten 287 Niner, Sara 314 Nixon, Rod 123 Noni (old Dutch coins) 167 Nossa Senhora 145; see Our Lady Mary Nusa Opun Rare Opun (spirits of nature) 102 Nusa Tenggara Timur (Indonesia) 200 Nygaard-Christensen, Maj 288 O’Connor, Sue 54 Oecussi/Oekussi 19, 35, 130, 159, 161-72, 182, 288 OMT/TWO (Organização das Mulheres Timorenses/Timorese Women Organisation) 273 OPMT (Organização Popular das Mulheres de Timor/Popular Organization of Timorese Women) 249 Origgi, Gloria 277 Origin Group of origin see Group and Ratu Ossuary 37, 74, 152, 201, 207, 247, 257, 270-1, 284-5, 289-91, 293, 295-6, 299 Our Lady Mary 58, 145, 253 Pagan 22 Pahlawan (Heroes) see Hero Palmer, Lisa 54, 92, 144 Panca Sila 72 Pannell, Sandra 54 Pante Makassar 167, 173 Papua New Guinea 19, 55 Parliament see National Parliament Patriarch/patriarchal 94-5, 102, 250, 313 Paulino, Vicente 92 Paying for the dead see Dead Peace 24, 31, 35, 78, 83, 199, 229 Liberal peace 12, 137-44, 147-50, 153-4 Peacebuilding 18, 137-8, 141 Pensions 69, 82, 152, 167-9, 171, 173, 231, 305-7, 309, 312, 317-8, 321 Luit kolban (victims’ money) 166 Martyr’s pensions 166, 168, 171, 173, 298 Pensaun vitalisia (life pension) 317

Survivors’ pensions 166, 288, 308 Veterans’ pensions 27, 69, 83, 166, 231, 249, 265, 266, 272, 274-6, 293, 313 Person/personhood 33-4, 49, 51, 91, 160, 293 Kantian notion of person 98-9 Petitioners 317 PNTL (Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste/National Police of Timor-Leste) 201 Población, Enrique Alonso 92 Pollak, Michael 106 Pollution 60, 160 Polyneices 22 Polysemy 26, 277 Popular Consultation (30 August 1999) see Referendum Populasaun participativa (active population) 291, 299 Portugal/Portuguese 13, 19-21, 25, 28-9, 49, 57, 60-1, 67, 69-72, 76, 78, 84, 104, 106, 148-9, 165, 174, 182, 200, 237, 248, 254-5, 270 Carnations Revolution (25 April 1974) 20 Heroes of the Portuguese Empire 70-1, 84 Portugalization 71 Portuguese Army 71, 268, 272 Portuguese Empire 70-1 Portuguese Timor 9, 20, 68 Postcolonial see Colonial Postconflict 286 Posto (Administrative Post) 284, 291, 297 Poverty 18, 141, 287, 326 Povu (the people) 13 Power(s) 13, 17-8, 20-3, 25-30, 33-5, 38, 53, 58, 79, 98-9, 105-9, 115, 117-27, 130-2, 137, 149, 152, 179, 192, 207, 221-2, 236-8, 248, 257, 266, 278, 284-5, 288-9, 295, 298, 300, 309, 311, 314, 319, 321 Fields of power relations 105 Prayers 16, 35, 115, 124, 126-7, 145-6 Prestige 10-1, 96, 265, 278 Primitivism 20 Protection 17, 34-5, 82, 102, 115, 119-20, 122-6, 128, 130-1, 140, 142-3, 153, 160, 230, 253, 306, 309 Protestant(s) 101, 103, 105 Protestant Church 106 Pryor, Frederic 122 Purcell, Sarah J. 311 PSHT (Persaudaraan Setia Hati Terate/Brother/ Sisterhood of the Sacred Lotus Heart) 252, 254 Quebesilo 162 Quelicai 146-7, 153, 183, 186, 285, 291, 295-7 Raftopoulos, Brian 316 Rai Los, Vicente da Conceição 315 Rai nain (Spiritual custodians) 120, 122, 124, 129; see also Espiritu natureza Raklungu 92

Index

Ramos-Horta, José 104, 244, 252-3 Rape 68 Rasua 92 Ratu (group of origin) 51-2 Real, Manuel Luís 268 Reciprocity 17, 24, 107, 122-3, 126, 147-8, 312, 316, 320 Idiom of reciprocity 175 Recognition 27-8, 37-8, 67-70, 75-6, 81-5, 98, 107-8, 138-9, 145, 148, 150-4, 160, 172, 202-3, 226, 231-3, 248-9, 251, 254, 263, 266, 268, 274-8, 285, 288, 296, 299, 305-7, 319, 321-2 Misrecognition 33, 81 Political economy of recognition 12, 70, 82-3 Recognition programme 307 Reconciliation 74-5, 77, 80, 179, 226, 290 Recovery (of human remains) 18, 36, 75, 206-7, 283, 285, 290, 294, 299 Referendum (30 August 1999) 20-1, 23-4, 30, 73, 79, 162, 168, 182, 184, 189, 191, 207, 251 Regeneration 171 Reid, Anthony 23, 164-5, 266 Reinado, Major Alfredo 248, 252-3 Reintegration 208, 311, 314, 318, 322 Relatedness 48, 52-3, 56, 159, 161, 171, 174 Religion(s) 12, 19, 21-2, 27, 47-9, 69, 100, 141, 147 Remains (deadly/mortal/skeletal) 11, 18, 23-4, 28, 35, 37, 54, 56, 74-5, 142, 144, 148, 151-3, 181, 188, 197-8, 201-8, 232, 244, 246, 248, 270, 283-5, 290-3, 295, 298-300 KRRM (Komisaun Rekoilamentu Restu Mortais/Commission for the Retrieval of Mortal Remains) 283 Remembrance 12, 27, 30, 36, 78, 80, 159-61, 220-2, 228, 237, 248, 253 Renan, Ernest 305, 312 Renan Selak, Faustino dos Santos 268-9, 273 Representations (collective) 16 Reputation 274-278 Concept of reputation 277 Resch, John 311-2 Resistance 11, 13, 17-9, 21, 27-9, 31-2, 34, 36, 47, 49-50, 58, 61, 69-71, 73, 76, 81, 83-5, 104, 106-7, 131, 160, 164, 175, 201, 221-2, 225-6, 229-33, 235-8, 247, 253, 255, 257, 263, 265, 267-9, 271-3, 277, 283-5, 288-9, 291-2, 294, 297-9, 306-22 Armed resistance 67, 73, 82, 166, 246, 250, 258, 297-8 Clandestine resistance 11-2, 37, 70, 73, 75-6, 78, 82, 230-2, 252, 258, 269, 273, 284, 289-91, 299, 307, 313, 315, 318 Respect/disrespect 55-6, 74, 81, 95-8, 102-3, 108-9, 115, 117, 123, 126, 181, 253, 258-9, 265, 268, 270, 277-8 Restoration 159, 161, 171-2, 175 Restoration of independence 19, 21, 68

337 Retribution 145, 306 Reza (Christian prayer) 124 Rhetoric 13, 228, 293-4, 312, 319 Rhetoric of martyrdom 175 Rights 23, 25, 36, 38, 106, 140-2, 198, 236, 249, 276, 288, 311, 319 Civil Rights 226 Economic rights 226 Human rights see Human rights Risk 11, 118-20, 122-3, 127, 129, 139, 149 Risk mitigation 115, 118, 129, 131 Ritual(s) 9-13, 15, 17, 22-4, 26, 30, 32-3, 35, 37, 51-3, 59-61, 75, 93, 95, 100, 115, 117-9, 121-2, 124-7, 129, 144-9, 154, 160, 167-70, 172, 179-81, 187-8, 266, 274, 293, 296 Catholic rituals see Catholic Customary rituals see Custom Death rituals see Death Exchange rituals see Exchange Family-led rituals 33 Funerary rituals 22, 54-5, 183, 270 Marriage rituals 16 Mortuary rituals 9, 15-6, 32, 35, 37, 50, 54, 61, 163-6, 170 Ritual economy 147 Robinson, Geoffrey 161 Rohan (future) 57 Rojas-Pérez, Isaías 23 Roll, Kate 37, 138, 166, 265, 284-5, 288, 298 Roosa, John 17, 223-4 Roque, Ricardo 13 Rose, Nikolas 99 Rothschild, Amy 12, 17, 36, 70, 308 Ruma Luli (sacred house) see Lulik Rumanan 96-7, 102-3, 105 Sabika Besi Kulit, Lieutenant-colonel Américo Ximenes 313 Sacred 13, 26, 51, 54, 57, 74, 76, 93-6, 99, 102, 106, 108, 115, 122, 126, 129, 131, 144, 146-7, 160, 172-3, 221, 306, 314-6, 320-1 Sacralised landscape 68 Sacrifice 24, 30, 33, 50-2, 54, 60, 68-9, 71, 80-1, 85, 100, 108, 115, 119, 124, 128-9, 154, 160, 165, 167-9, 174, 191-2, 207, 221, 234-5, 248, 258, 264, 306, 312, 315-21 Blood sacrifice 69 Ideology/discourse of sacrifice 172, 318 Sacrificial meat 51, 125 System of sacrifice 123 Sagrada Família 201, 248, 252-3, 297-8, 318, 321 Saint Anthony 145 Saint Augustine 22 Saints 22-3, 69, 124 Cult of saints 22 Sakti, Victoria Kumala 35, 148, 245, 255, 258 Salazar, António de Oliveira 28-9 Saldanha, Gregório 234

338 

The Dead as Ancestors, Mart yrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

Same 72, 80, 248 Sampaio, Jorge, President of Portugal 19 Sanctity 26 Santa Cruz Massacre (12 November 1991) see Massacre Santana, Nino Konis 246, 250 Konis Santana National Park 52, 250, 268-9 Sasan lulik (Sacred objects) see Lulik Satan 102 Sau batar (Rice and corn harvesting) 118 Sávio, Afonso 263, 267-71, 275, 277, 279, 293 Sávio, Horácio 268, 270, 272, 276 Scambary, James 251-2 Schmidt, Vivien A. 311 Schreiner, Klaus 27 Scott, Catherine 107 Secular(ism) 22, 27, 30, 137, 139, 141-3, 147-8 Security 35, 83, 95, 115, 118-23, 125-6, 128-9, 131-2, 142, 150, 162, 166, 207-8, 252, 291, 295, 314-5, 317 Security governance 126 Self-determination 20-1, 23, 34, 47, 264, 279 Selling names see Names Serious Crimes 166, 168, 171 SCIT (Serious Crimes Investigation Team) 200 SCU (Serious Crimes Unit) see UN Shepherd, Christopher 13, 92 Sillander, Kenneth 47-8, 54 Silva, Kelly C. 32, 312 Skeleton/skeletal remains 197, 202-4, 206, 293 Skocpol, Theda 311-2 Smell/bad odour 54-5, 286 Smith, Adam 311 Smith, Sarah 249 Smythe, Patrick A. 58 Soares, Abílio 189-91 Soares, Dionísio Babo 30, 32 Social Social beings 16 Social contract 139-40, 142, 145, 154 Social transformations 16, 180 Society 20, 84, 92, 107, 109, 141, 145, 172, 179, 181, 186, 204, 228, 244, 250, 253, 257, 263, 274, 278-9, 287, 313 Civil society 78, 138, 140, 206, 287, 307 Soibada 291 Solidarity 49, 58, 78, 151, 191-2, 237, 306, 312 Solomon Islands 208 Somotxo, José Agostinho Sequeira 269, 273 Soul 53, 56, 91, 129, 164, 180 All Souls Day 115, 146, 168, 193 Sousa, Lúcio 55, 59-60, 92 Sovereignty 20, 33, 137, 139, 142, 149, 222, 230, 289 Spain 28-9 Sparta/Spartans 21

Spirit(s)/spiritual 10-1, 13, 15, 23, 25, 35, 37, 47, 50, 53-4, 56-8, 60, 91-2, 95-100, 102, 105, 108-9, 117, 119-22, 125-8, 132, 137, 141, 152, 160-1, 163-5, 175, 180-2, 203, 208-9, 248, 251, 258, 270, 284, 296, 305, 315 Ancestral spirits 23, 35, 47, 92, 97-9, 101-3, 105, 108, 122, 125, 139, 144-7, 193, 245 Restless spirits 245, 295 Spiritual landscape 121, 123 Spiritual life 54 Spirits (of the deceased) 9, 24, 34, 117, 124, 144, 146, 148, 161, 163-4, 174, 181, 207, 276, 292-3 ‘Spirituality of the Resistance’ 58 ‘Unquiet spirits’ 60 Starvation 17, 59-60, 138, 144, 147, 152, 199, 226, 299, 306 State 9, 11-3, 15, 18, 22-30, 32-3, 35-8, 50, 59, 61, 67-72, 75, 81-3, 85, 137-144, 147-154, 161, 164, 166-7, 170-3, 175, 179, 185-6, 193, 207, 219-21, 228-35, 236-7, 243-5, 247, 250, 252-3, 257-8, 265-6, 270, 272, 275-6, 278, 283-92, 295-6, 298-300, 305-7, 309-13, 315-6, 318-22 Non-state 257, 283-5, 293-4, 310, 315, 321 State-building 26, 38, 140-1, 143, 153, 221, 244, 285, 289, 298, 306 State-sponsored ceremonies/initiatives 12-3, 27-8, 30, 152, 201 State verticality 287 Statehood 286, 289, 293-4 Statues 26-7, 29, 55, 58, 70, 72-3, 84, 95, 142, 145, 152, 189, 243, 246-9, 265 Cristo Rei statue 189 Status 11, 17, 37, 50, 58, 61, 152, 154, 172, 190, 236, 248, 257, 263, 266-7, 274-9, 298, 306, 314-5, 318, 321 Statute of the National Liberation Combatant 107, 166, 231-2, 288 Stead, Victoria 56-7 Strathern, Marilyn 99 Strawson, Peter Frederik 97 Suai 73-4, 80, 200, 288 Massacre of Suai see Massacres Suai Circle 78 Subianto, General Prabowo 191 Suffering see Terus Suharto, president of Indonesia 27 Sukarno, president of Indonesia 27 Sukarnoputri, Megawati, president of Indonesia 19 Suku (village) 82, 92-3, 95, 98, 100, 104, 107, 284, 290-2, 297 Sulawesi 54 Survivors 78-9, 85, 151, 226-7, 247, 249-50, 257, 308-13, 318, 320-2 Susar (difficulties) 120, 233 Symbol(s)/symbolism 10, 12-3, 19, 26-7, 30-1, 33, 36, 70, 75, 91, 93, 102, 107-8, 126-7, 137, 140, 145, 151, 153, 164, 172-3, 175, 187-8, 192, 207,

Index

221-2, 233, 245-6, 254, 264-5, 270-1, 276-7, 279, 285-6, 288-9, 293-4, 307, 312, 320, 322 Catholic symbols 145 Political symbols 26 Symbolic capital 265, 267, 277 Symbolic effectiveness 26, 287 Symbolic efficacy 26, 173, 175 Symbolic imposition 312 Symbolic power 105, 289 System of signification 108 Taboo 117, 146, 181 Tahakeb nitu 165-6, 175 Tais (traditional cloth) 78, 144, 146, 182, 270, 293 Tasi Tolu 19 Tauk (fear) 120 Taur Matan Ruak 72, 82, 104, 316, 319 Tavares, João 191 Taylor, Anne Christine 48 Temi naran (to mention names) 125-6 Terus (suffering) 120, 233, 276 Tetum/Tetun 57-8, 76, 92, 104, 119, 146, 161, 170, 252, 258 Tetum Terik 93 Teun Lasi 163, 165 Threats 120, 128, 142, 165, 311 Malicious threats 160 Tibar 201 Timor-Leste Defence Force see F-FDTL TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia/National Force of Indonesia) 74-5, 79, 81, 271, 310 Tobaku 54 Torture 68, 108, 189, 225, 249 Transgression 35, 92, 108, 115, 123 Transitional justice see Justice Translocal practices 169-171 Transnational relations 179-80, 191 Traube, Elisabeth 16, 37, 49, 53-4, 58-9, 70, 81, 92, 102, 122-3, 148, 150, 276, 316 TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission [South Africa]) 225 Trindade, Josh 50, 53, 55, 92, 117, 122-3, 128, 276 Tsuchiya, Kisho 58 Tumin 162 Turner, Victor 172 Tusinski, Daniel 124-5 Uatulari 285 Uatu-Carbau 115-6, 125 UDT (União Democrática Timorense/Timorese Democratic Union) 80, 253, 290 Ula ucanu (special death by fire gun) 60 Uma/ume (house) Uma lisan (traditional house) 146 Uma lulik (sacred house) 35, 116-7, 126, 128, 130-1, 144, 146 Uma mahon (protective house) 284, 290-3, 295, 297, 299 Ume kanaf (family house) 168

339 United Nations 19, 35, 137 UN Kingdom of Timor-Leste 21, 139, 150 UN OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) 161 UN Secretary General 19, 21 UN Serious Crimes Unit 80, 143, 200 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) 77 UNMIT (United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste) 138, 310 UNTAET (United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor) 21, 137-40, 142, 149, 153, 200, 222 United Sates of America US Civil War 312 see War US Revolutionary war 312 Unruly subjects 288, 294, 300 Unseen 118, 121-2 UNTAS (Uni Timor Asuwain/Association of East Timorese in Indonesia) 184 Valentim, Justino 272 Valle de los Caídos 28 Valorisation 27, 36-7, 142, 164, 166, 230-2, 236, 243, 255, 258, 283-5, 288-9, 293-5, 298-9, 310, 314-5 Values 20, 25, 34, 37, 49, 81, 91, 94, 100, 103-5, 108-9, 139, 181, 204, 229-30, 265, 306, 314, 322 Valverde, Estela 312 Vatican 25 Vencimento minimo (minimum wage) 308 Verdery, Katherine 26, 173, 208, 277, 286 Vernacular 20, 35, 121, 138 Vernacular security 115, 119-20, 125-6 Veterans 27, 31, 36-7, 67, 69-70, 75-78, 82-5, 104, 107, 149, 151-4, 166, 219-20, 222, 230-8, 245, 248-50, 252, 254, 265-6, 268, 270, 272, 274-6, 284-5, 288-90, 292-3, 295, 298-300, 306-7, 309-10, 312-21 Association of Resistance Veterans 76 False/fake veterans 29, 231, 321 National Veterans Day 83 Veteranhood 231, 233, 307 Veteranu 307 Veterans companies 309, 320 Veterans payments/pensions 29, 231, 266, 276, 293, 313, 317 Victim(s) 12, 28, 36-7, 59, 67-71, 73-4, 76-80, 82-85, 126, 151, 159-63, 165-8, 170-3, 175, 190-1, 200, 202, 206, 209, 219-20, 222, 224-5, 227-30, 232-8, 243-4, 246-52, 254, 274, 312, 318-9, 322 Kolban 161, 165, 175 Victimhood 36, 219-20, 222, 228-30, 233, 237-8, 279 Victimisation 236, 238, 319 Re-victimisation 305-6, 318-9 Victims’ hearings 228

340 

The Dead as Ancestors, Mart yrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

Vítima 161 War victim see War Victoria (Australia) 201, 205 Viegas, Susana de Matos 11, 16, 20, 26, 34, 92, 97, 102, 138, 147, 165, 232, 265-6, 277 Vieira, Claudio 269 Vietnam 22, 27, 61, 164 Violations see Human rights Violence 24, 27, 33, 37, 60, 79-80, 115, 120-1, 128, 132, 137, 140-2, 144, 148-9, 159-63, 165-6, 168-9, 173, 175, 189, 199-200, 207, 221, 223, 225, 229, 233, 244-5, 249-54, 256-7, 289, 306 Intra-Timorese violence 225, 244 Non-violence 229 Sexual violence 250, 256 Viqueque 115-6, 118 Virgin Mary see Our Lady Mary Visibility/invisibility 109, 124, 243, 245, 250, 254 Invisibilisation 36, 243, 245, 248-258 Vovelle, Michel 36 Wages 9, 12, 316 Unpaid wages 70, 81, 276 Waima’a 183 War 13, 22, 27, 37, 50, 59-61, 69, 71, 100, 104, 107-8, 123-4, 131, 137-8, 140, 142-3, 148-50, 153-4, 160, 164, 198, 219-30, 233-4, 236, 238, 245, 250, 254-8, 265, 286, 295, 312, 315 Civil war (Spain) 28

Civil war (Timor-Leste, August-September 1975) 20, 68-9, 77, 80, 190, 219, 223-6, 229, 233-4, 251 Civil war (USA) 312 Cold War 137, 141 War victims 59 World War II 47, 61, 263 Warisan nasional (national heritage) see Heritage Warriors 83, 95-6, 104-5, 107, 250 Weber, Max 94, 140, 278 Webster, David 236 West Timor 21, 35, 142, 144, 162, 164, 167-72, 179-93, 251 Wife-takers/wife-givers 10, 146, 170 Wiley, Norbert 70 Wilson, Bu 314 Winch, Bronwyn 23, 34, 145 Winter, Jay 221, 237 Witchcraft 203 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 106 Worldview 57, 61, 97-100, 103, 109, 118, 123, 132 Worship 27, 47, 69 Sacrificial worship 119 Wright, Frank 69 Wounded 104, 243-8, 253, 254, 258 Xanana Gusmão 19, 31, 83, 104, 160, 166, 238, 246, 252, 266, 268-74, 314, 320 Zimbabwe 312