A Gabriela poster honouring martyred women during the Marcos martial law
years in the Philippines on display at the AUT film screening. IMAGE:
David Robie/APR
Seven weeks ago the Philippines truth-telling martial law film Katips
was basking in the limelight in the country’s national FAMAS academy
movie awards, winning best picture and a total of six other awards.
Last week it began a four month “world tour” of 10 countries starting
in the Middle East followed by Aotearoa New Zealand on Sunday – hosted
simultaneously at AUT South campus and in Wellington and Christchurch.
The screening of Vincent Tañada’s harrowing – especially the graphic
torture scenes – yet also joyful and poignant musical drama touched a
raw nerve among many in the audience who shared tears and their
experiences of living in fear, or in hiding, during the hate-filled
Marcos dictatorship.
The martial law denunciations, arbitrary arrests, desaparecidos (“disappeared”),
brutal tortures and murders by state assassins in the 1970s made the
McCarthy era red-baiting witchhunts in the US seem like Sunday School
picnics.
Filmmaker and journalist Max Stahl, 66, has died almost 30
years after capturing images of the Indonesian massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery
in the Timor-Leste capital Dili, which helped accelerate the country’s
struggle for independence.
By coincidence, he died on the same day in 1991 as Sebastião Gomes,
the young man who was buried in Santa Cruz and whose death led to the
protest that ended in the Santa Cruz Massacre.
More than 2000 people went to Santa Cruz to pay tribute to Gomes, who
was killed by Indonesian-backed militia in the Motael neighbourhood.
Filmmaker Max Stahl speaking to the 20th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review in Auckland in 2014. Image: Del Abcede/APR
The atrocity by the Indonesian military was secretly filmed by Max
Stahl and footage smuggled out of the country. International attention
on East Timor dramatically changed as a result.
At the graveyard, the Indonesian military opened fire on the crowd,
killing 74 people at the scene. Over the next few days, more than 120
young people died in hospital from their wounds or as a result of the
crackdown by occupying forces.
Most bodies were never recovered.
Born on 6 December 1954 in the United Kingdom, journalist and
documentary maker Christopher Wenner, better known as Max Stahl, began
his ties to the country in 1991 when he managed to enter East Timor for
the first time.
He became a Timorese citizen in 2019.
Hiding among the graves
On November 12, hiding among the graves of Santa Cruz cemetery, he
filmed the massacre — one of many during the Indonesian occupation of
the country. Images were circulated around the world’s media and this
changed history.
Decorated with the Order of Timor-Leste, the highest award given to
foreign citizens in the country, the Rory Peck Prize for filmmakers, and
several other rewards, Max Stahl leaves as a legacy the main archives
of images from the last years of the Indonesian occupation of the
country.
The archive was adopted by UNESCO for the World Memory Register and
has been used for teaching and research on Timor’s history under the
framework of cooperation between the University of Coimbra, the National
University of East Timor and CAMSTL.
The original 1991 Dili massacre footage by Max Stahl. Video: Journeyman Pictures
Stahl studied literature at the University of Oxford and he was a
fluent speaker of several languages, including the two official
languages of East Timor — Portuguese and Tetum.
He began his career writing for theatre and children’s television
shows. However, he found his calling as a war correspondent when he
lived with his family. At the time his father was ambassador to El
Salvador where Stahl reported on the civil war between 1979 and 1992.
Stahl covered other conflicts such as those of Georgia, former
Yugoslavia and East Timor (from 30 August 1991), where he arrived as a
“tourist” at the invitation of resistance groups.
“The king is dead. With great sadness, I write to inform you that Max passed away this morning.”
— Max Stahl’s wife Dr Ingrid Brucens
Historic resistance leaders
Throughout his long ties to East Timor, where he lived until he had to
travel recently to Australia for medical treatment, he interviewed
historic resistance leaders such as Nino Konis Santa, David Alex and
others.
Santa Cruz and the 12 November 1991 massacre made the name Max Stahl
known internationally with his images exposing the barbarism of the
Indonesian occupation.
In Portugal, the images made a special impact — both through the
brutality of the violence portrayed and because the survivors gathered
in the small chapel of Santa Cruz, praying in Portuguese while listening
to the bullets being fired by the Indonesian military and police.
The 1999 referendum prompted Max Stahl to return to East Timor when
he covered the violence before the referendum and after the announcement
of independence victory. He also accompanied families on the flight to
the mountains.
News of Max Stahl’s death on Wednesday at a Brisbane hospital quickly
became the most commented subject on social media in East Timor,
prompting condolences from several personalities during the struggle for
independence.
In statements to Lusa news agency, former President José Ramos-Horta
described Max Stahl’s death as a “great loss” to Timor-Leste and the
world. He said it would cause “deep consternation and pain” to the
Timorese people.
“Someone like Max, with a big heart, with a great dedication and love
for East Timor … [has been] taken to another world,” he told Lusa.
Dr Ingrid Brucens, Max Stahl’s wife, and who was with him and the children in Brisbane, announced his death to friends.
“The king is dead. With great sadness, I write to inform you that Max
passed away this morning,” she wrote in messages to friends.
Antonio Sampaio is the Lusa correspondent in Dili.
Reflections on 9/11 from a Fiji newsroom ... warnings about scapegoats and the media. IMAGE: Al Jazeera screenshot APR
FLASHBACK TO 9/11:By David Robie
WHEN I arrived at my office at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji on the morning of 12 September 2001 (9/11, NY Time), I was oblivious to reality.
I had dragged myself home to bed a few hours earlier at 2am as usual, after another long day working on our students’ Wansolwara Online website providing coverage of the Fiji general election.
One day after being sworn in as the country’s fifth real
(elected) prime minister, it seemed that Laisenia Qarase was playing
another dirty trick on Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour Party, which had
earned the constitutional right to be included in the multi-party
government supposed to lead the country back to democracy.
Human rights defender Carmel Budiardjo ... many lives "touched - and
sometimes transformed - by her passionate and determined campaigning for
human rights, justice and democracy in Indonesia, East Timor, Aceh and
West Papua". IMAGE: TAPOL
BRITISH and Indonesian human rights defender Carmel Budiardjo,
founder of TAPOL watchdog and the movement’s driving force for many
decades, has died peacefully aged 96.
TAPOL said in an announcement that she had died on Saturday and would
be greatly missed by an extensive network of people whose lives had been
“touched — and sometimes transformed — by her passionate and determined
campaigning for human rights, justice and democracy in Indonesia, East
Timor, Aceh and West Papua”.
For many, she had been a great mentor as well as a beloved friend, TAPOL said.
The
Afghan Files ... How the ABC reported a "Defence leak exposing deadly
secrets of Australia’s
special forces" in 2017. Image: Screen shot of
ABC/PMC
ABC editorial director Craig McMurtrie told RNZ Morning Report the message the raids sent to sources and whistleblowers who
wanted to reveal things in the public interest was concerning.
TWO damning and contrasting books about Indonesian colonialism in the
Pacific, both by activist participants in Europe and New Zealand, have
recently been published. Overall, they are excellent exposes of the
harsh repression of the Melanesian people of West Papua and a world that
has largely closed a blind eye to to human rights violations.
In Papua Blood,
Danish photographer Peter Bang provides a deeply personal account of
his more than three decades of experience in West Papua that is a
testament to the resilience and patience of the people in the face of
“slow genocide” with an estimated 500,000 Papuans dying over the past
half century.
With See No Evil,
Maire Leadbeater, peace movement advocate and spokesperson of West
Papua Action Auckland, offers a meticulously researched historical
account of New Zealand’s originally supportive stance for the
independence aspirations of the Papuan people while still a Dutch colony
and then its unprincipled slide into betrayal amid Cold War
realpolitik.
