Santa Cruz, 12 November 1991: the Dili massacre the world saw

The mass for Sebastião Gomes began at the Motael church, on Dili's waterfront, between six and seven on the morning of 12 November 1991. So many people came that the priest said it outdoors. Gomes, a young member of the clandestine resistance, had been shot dead by Indonesian forces in a raid on the church two weeks earlier, and the mass was the start of a flower-laying ceremony at his grave in the Santa Cruz cemetery.2 sources2 sources

About 3,500 people had attended, by the truth commission's count. The mass ended at about seven, and the crowd set off on foot for the cemetery. The procession turned into a demonstration almost at once, the largest against Indonesian rule since 1975. Hidden T-shirts were uncovered and Fretilin flags unfurled. One banner read “Portugal we are your responsibility”. Marshals with megaphones kept the ranks tight, shouting “Disciplina! Disciplina!”2 sources2 sources

Soldiers, police and plain-clothes intelligence agents lined the route and watched. On the way there was a scuffle in which an Indonesian officer, Major Andi Gerhan Lantara, was stabbed, and a few marchers threw stones. The march went on and reached Santa Cruz at about 7.50, where some 500 more people were already waiting.2 sources2 sources

Some marchers climbed the cemetery wall to hang banners. About 50 people went inside to pray at Gomes's grave, while most stood in the street outside the gate, and some had begun to drift away. Then a column of soldiers in brown uniforms came up the road behind them, ten to fifteen abreast, rifles held in front of them. Two American journalists, Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn, stepped between the troops and the crowd. They thought soldiers would be less likely to do anything rash in front of Westerners with headphones, microphones and a camera.1 source1 source

East Timor is the eastern half of the island of Timor, at the far end of the Indonesian archipelago, and it was a Portuguese colony. In 1974 Portugal set out to create a provisional government and a popular assembly to decide its status. In August 1975 fighting broke out between the main Timorese parties, and on the night of 26 August the Portuguese administration withdrew to the island of Ataúro, never to return to Dili.2 sources2 sources

Fretilin declared independence on 28 November 1975, and Indonesia launched a full-scale attack on Dili on 7 December, a story told in a separate article. In 1976 Jakarta declared East Timor its 27th province. The occupation that followed was brutal: the truth commission estimated at least 102,800 conflict-related deaths between 1974 and 1999, most of them from hunger and illness.3 sources3 sources

In August 1991 a visit by a Portuguese parliamentary delegation was announced for 4 November, and the clandestine resistance prepared a large demonstration to greet it, at the risk of exposing its networks to Indonesian intelligence. On 25 October the Portuguese parliament suspended the trip, because Jakarta refused to let journalists including Jill Jolliffe and Rui Araújo travel with it.2 sources2 sources

Harassment of activists grew. In the early hours of 28 October soldiers raided the Motael church, where young people had been painting banners for the visit. Two men died: Sebastião Gomes Rangel and an East Timorese informer. With the delegation gone, the resistance decided to turn the ceremony for Gomes on 12 November into a protest, while the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Peter Kooijmans, was in Dili. The organisers worked hard to keep it peaceful.3 sources3 sources

An Indonesian military police inquiry later named First Sergeant Udin Syukur as the first soldier to fire. An officer ordered two warning shots, but by the second the troops, from Battalion 303 and including three East Timorese auxiliaries, were already shooting into the crowd. Other soldiers fired from inside the Indonesian military Heroes' Cemetery across the road.1 source1 source

The crowd was trapped between the high wall of Santa Cruz and the walled military cemetery opposite. Many fled into the cemetery itself; others ran through the yards of the houses to the north. Survivors told the truth commission that soldiers then surrounded and entered the cemetery and bayoneted people who were unhurt or only lightly wounded.2 sources2 sources

Medical files later produced at the trial of one of the organisers listed 17 people shot at the cemetery, six of them hit in the upper body from the front. Of 91 wounded, 43 had bullet wounds, and 21 of those had been shot from behind, in the back, buttocks, legs or neck.1 source1 source

Kamal Bamadhaj, a 21-year-old New Zealander studying in Australia, was the only foreigner who died. He got away from the cemetery but was shot by a passing patrol on Bispo Medeiros Avenue. A Red Cross delegate tried to take him to the civilian hospital, was refused entry and had to drive on to the military one, where he died from loss of blood. Soldiers beat Goodman and Nairn and fractured Nairn's skull.3 sources3 sources

Trucks carried the dead, the wounded and the arrested away, to the Wira Husada military hospital in Lahane, to interrogation centres, or to be killed. Hundreds of young people ran to Bishop Belo's residence for refuge. Witnesses told the commission of a series of killings in the days that followed, as the security forces hunted down people they suspected of taking part.2 sources2 sources

Nobody knows exactly. Even Indonesia's own inquiry admitted that the dead were not properly identified and that families had little chance to see the bodies, and the official count moved more than once. On 13 November the armed forces commander, General Try Sutrisno, spoke of at most 50 dead; the regional commander, Major General Sintong Panjaitan, then gave 19 dead and 91 wounded. On 14 November Try Sutrisno was quoted as telling military graduates, in the truth commission's translation: “Delinquents like these have to be shot, and we will shoot them.”3 sources3 sources

Under foreign pressure, President Suharto appointed a seven-member National Commission of Inquiry on 18 November. Its advance report of 26 December 1991 blamed the demonstrators for much of what happened and concluded that the dead “totalled about 50”, without naming any of them. The International Commission of Jurists, twice refused permission to visit East Timor, called the figure “seemingly arbitrary” and noted that the commission had exhumed a single body and ordered no autopsy.2 sources2 sources

The figure most often quoted today, 271, is the number of names on the Portuguese list. The truth commission, which surveyed only a few Dili neighbourhoods, collected the names of 72 people still missing and thought the real number of missing much higher. It found credible reports of at least one mass grave, at Tibar, and possibly another at Hera, but it lacked the resources to exhume them.4 sources4 sources

Justice ran one way. In 1992 ten low-ranking members of the security forces were court-martialled and given eight to 18 months. Panjaitan and the commander in East Timor, Brigadier General Rudolf Warouw, were moved from their posts. The Timorese organisers fared worse: twelve trials began in March 1992, and sentences ran from five years and eight months to life imprisonment for Gregório da Cunha Saldanha.3 sources3 sources

What set Santa Cruz apart from earlier killings in East Timor was the camera. Foreign journalists and aid workers had come to Dili for the Portuguese visit, and for the first time since 1975 the Indonesian army's violence against civilians was caught on film.2 sources2 sources

Max Stahl, born Christopher Wenner in Britain in 1954, kept filming as the soldiers fired. Knowing he would be arrested, he hid the cassette in the cemetery, in a freshly dug grave by one account and under a gravestone by another, and went back for it that night. A Dutch reporter, Saskia Kouwenberg, carried some of the tapes to Amsterdam in her clothing; Stahl took others out himself, and at least one could never be recovered from its hiding place.3 sources3 sources

Within days the pictures were on television around the world. In Portugal, the sight of young Timorese praying in Portuguese among the graves moved many. In January 1992 Yorkshire Television screened In Cold Blood: The Massacre of East Timor, a 51-minute film by Stahl and Peter Gordon built around the footage. The British photographer Steve Cox, who was badly beaten, brought out still pictures.3 sources3 sources

Governments had to respond. The Netherlands, Denmark and Canada suspended some aid to Indonesia, and the US Congress voted to bar some military training for it. Indonesia's foreign minister, Ali Alatas, later called the massacre a turning point in his country's diplomacy on East Timor. Australia, by contrast, worked to support Jakarta's line that “rogue elements” in the army were to blame.2 sources2 sources

Solidarity groups multiplied. The East Timor Action Network was founded in the United States straight after the massacre, and the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign was founded in Dublin after the Yorkshire film was screened. In many countries 12 November became a day of vigils and demonstrations every year until 1999.2 sources2 sources

Stahl went back in 1999 and was one of a handful of journalists who stayed to film the violence after the referendum. He made Timor-Leste his home and set up an audiovisual centre for an archive he built over three decades; in 2013 UNESCO added it to the Memory of the World register as On the Birth of a Nation: Turning Points. He became a Timorese citizen in 2019 and died in Brisbane in October 2021, aged 66.3 sources3 sources

In Portugal the images landed hard. The country held a national day of mourning on 19 November 1991, and there were mass protests and calls for the United Nations to act. Portugal broke off its UN-sponsored talks with Indonesia and went back to them only in late 1992.2 sources2 sources

Students linked to the magazine Fórum Estudante raised money to charter a Portuguese ferry, the Lusitânia Expresso. In March 1992 it sailed from Darwin, in northern Australia, with activists and journalists who meant to lay a wreath at Santa Cruz. Indonesian frigates shadowed it and it was ordered to turn back.2 sources2 sources

Portugal was also in court. On 22 February 1991, months before the massacre, it had sued Australia at the International Court of Justice over the Timor Gap treaty that Australia had signed with Indonesia in 1989. Portugal argued that the treaty carved up natural wealth that belonged to the people of East Timor. On 30 June 1995 the court declined to rule, because it could not judge Indonesia's conduct without Indonesia's consent. It did call Portugal's argument that the right of self-determination is owed to the whole international community “irreproachable”.2 sources2 sources

At the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1993, Portugal was largely responsible for a resolution on East Timor and, with help from its former colonies, won over the United States, Canada and Australia. The American mission in Geneva sent home a frank verdict.1 source1 source

Portugal also took in people. Scores of survivors of the massacre later found refuge there. On 12 November 1994, the third anniversary, 29 East Timorese students climbed into the US embassy in Jakarta while President Clinton was nearby for an Asia-Pacific summit; they were granted political asylum in Portugal, as were five men who entered the French embassy a year later.2 sources2 sources

The resistance took a heavy blow when its leader, Xanana Gusmão, was captured in Dili on 20 November 1992. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he went on directing the struggle from Cipinang prison in Jakarta. In October 1996 the Nobel Peace Prize went to Bishop Belo and José Ramos-Horta, the resistance's envoy abroad, and from January 1997 the new UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, gave the talks fresh energy.1 source1 source

The opening came from Jakarta. Suharto fell in May 1998, and in June his successor, B. J. Habibie, offered East Timor limited autonomy within Indonesia. On 5 May 1999 Portugal and Indonesia signed agreements in New York asking the UN to hold a “popular consultation” in which the East Timorese would accept or reject that autonomy. The UN envoy Jamsheed Marker recalled that Prime Minister António Guterres and Foreign Minister Jaime Gama would accept no solution that was not based on the East Timorese people's freely expressed choice.2 sources2 sources

The UN mission, UNAMET, registered 451,792 voters in East Timor and abroad. On 30 August 1999 about 98% of them voted. 344,580 voters, 78.5% of valid votes, rejected autonomy, which meant a transition to independence; 94,388 (21.5%) accepted it.1 source1 source

Pro-Indonesian militias, at times backed by elements of the Indonesian security forces, answered with killing, looting and arson across the territory. The truth commission put the number of East Timorese killed by the military and militias in 1999 at between 1,200 and 1,500, about 900 of them after the ballot. The UN says as many as 500,000 people were driven from their homes, about half of them out of the territory.2 sources2 sources

Portugal had called for an international peacekeeping force before the vote and again on 1 September, and there were mass protests in Portugal and Australia. On 12 September Indonesia accepted outside help, and the Security Council authorised an Australian-led force, INTERFET. On 25 October it set up the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) to run the territory until independence.2 sources2 sources

An elected assembly signed the country's first constitution into force on 22 March 2002, and Xanana Gusmão won the presidential election on 14 April. Timor-Leste became independent on 20 May 2002 and on 27 September joined the United Nations as its 191st member state.2 sources2 sources

In Timor-Leste, 12 November is National Youth Day. On the anniversary in 2019, a mass was said at the Motael church, students retraced the 1991 march to Santa Cruz, and President Francisco Guterres Lú Olo called the dead “national heroes and martyrs”. On 9 April 2005 Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became the first Indonesian head of state to visit the cemetery.2 sources2 sources

The massacre is also unfinished business. The truth commission called it an unresolved matter of great significance to families and to the nation, and asked for a fuller investigation than its own. In 1994 a court in the United States ordered Sintong Panjaitan to pay $14 million in damages to Kamal Bamadhaj's mother, Helen Todd; the money was never paid. The commission found that the officers who fired or commanded the troops who fired were protected, and only a few low-ranking men ever faced a court martial.3 sources3 sources

For Portugal, Santa Cruz turned a legal position, that the people of East Timor had never been allowed to choose their future, into a public cause. It brought a day of national mourning, a protest ship and eight years of diplomacy that ended in the New York agreements of 1999.2 sources2 sources