The Living Memory Project

A few years ago, prison doors in Indonesia and East Timor swung open to release hundreds of East Timorese nationalists imprisoned for supporting their country's 24-year struggle for independence. The most famous was José Alexandre 'Xanana' Gusmão, today president of the Democratic Republic of East Timor who returned to his country to the acclaim of wildly-cheering crowds.

In the following period ex-prisoners organised themselves into the Associação dos ex-Prisoneiros Politícos do Timor-Leste (Association of former Political Prisoners of East Timor, ASEPPOL), which estimated that around 10,000 people living in East Timor today suffered imprisonment. Many of these had been tortured. Countless others died in prison or disappeared without a trace. For each person imprisoned, a wider circle of family and friends was affected — by the anguish of separation from the victim, by knowledge of his or her suffering, by the loss of a breadwinner, and by stigmatisation and political persecution arising from the relationship. Children were especially marked by the imprisonment of family members.

Working with ASEPPOL, the Living Memory project aims to create a video archive based on interviews with these ex-prisoners. Inspired in part by Stephen Spielberg's Shoah Visual History Foundation, the project will collect, preserve and catalogue testimony from political prisoners, to be held for future generations as part of East Timor's national heritage. The archive will also be accessible in various formats as an educational and media resource nationally and internationally.

Interviews will be formulated to elicit information on the impact of imprisonment on ex-prisoners' health, providing an invaluable database to plan strategies for treatment, especially in the case of torture victims.

The Living Memory Project at East Timor is managed by Jill Jolliffe and provides videos and images of ex-prisoners in East Timor.

Gregório Saldanha and Fellow-Prisoners, Semarang Prison, Indonesia
(Standing, left to right): Jacinto Alves, an Indonesian friend, Filomeno Ferreira, Gregório Saldanha, another Indonesian friend, Pudjo Prasetyo of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and Francisco Branco., (Seated, left to right): Juvêncio Martins, Saturnino Belo, and an Indonesian friend., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Lourdes Maria Assunção Alves Araújo
Marita Alves, an MP for the Fretilin party, tells of her flight to the mountains after Indonesia’s 1975 invasion. She was captured in 1978 with around 10,000 people forced to capitulate after encirclement by the Indonesian army at Metinaro, east of Dili. A student activist in the UNETIM movement, Marita was transferred to Dili, resisting rape and torture attempts at the Sang Tai Ho interrogation centre. In Balide prison she later met her husband Octavio Araujo, also a prisoner. She witnessed the ill-treatment of others and was given courage by a visit from student leader Maria Gorete, who suffered torture during her earlier imprisonment., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Chico Mau Lohi
Chico Mau Lohi , revolutionary songwriter, describes 1975 invasion; witnesses executions 9 Dec 1975; imprisoned and tortured in Tropical Hotel 28 Dec. 1975; sings to Col. Sinaga for his life; Feb. 1976 transferred to Balide Prison; wife dies at home 28 July 1976, attends funeral and returns to prison 2 more years; describes disappearance Orient Five band members; freed 1978, remarries., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Filming Simplício’s story
Living Memory camera assistant Elvis Sarmento Guterres (left) and cinematographer Nicola Daley, outside Santa Cruz cemetery, December 2006., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Prisoners After the Santa Cruz Massacre
Prisoners after the Santa Cruz massacre (left to right): Filomeno Gomes, Carlos Lemos, Indonesian lawyer Ponco Atmono, Bonifácio Magno, Simplício Celestino de Deus, Aleixo Cobra, Jacinto Alves and Augusto Xavier (disappeared without trace, 1994). Police barracks, Comoro, Dili, 1991., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Simplício Celestino de Deus
Simplicio is a customs official in independent East Timor who lives with the trauma of torture he suffered during the 11 November 1991 massacre by the Indonesian military. He survived the massacre, in Dili’s Santa Cruz cemetery, but lives with images of his student friends who didn’t. His ear was cut off by a soldier at the height of the violence, he was later detained at Lahane hospital and Polda police barracks, Dili, before transfer to the eastern town of Lospalos, where he became a slave labourer for the elite Kostrad regiment during two years., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Maria da Silva Benfica
Maria da Silva Benfica, 23, photographed by Indonesian officials at the doorway of Balide (Comarca) prison Dili, soon after her imprisonment, February 1977., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Identity Card of Maria da Silva Benfica
Identity card of student Maria da Silva Benfica issued by East Timor’s colonial administration in July 1975, fifteen months after Portugal’s radical revolution initiated decolonization in its African and Asian colonies. Indonesia invaded Portuguese Timor six months later, and Maria became a prisoner of Indonesia in January 1977, while still a student., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Identity Card of Maria da Silva Benfica
Identity card of student Maria da Silva Benfica issued by East Timor’s colonial administration in July 1975, fifteen months after Portugal’s radical revolution initiated decolonization in its African and Asian colonies. Indonesia invaded Portuguese Timor six months later, and Maria became a prisoner of Indonesia in January 1977, while still a student., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Maria da Silva Benfica
Maria da Silva Benfica was imprisoned as a 23-year-old for sending supplies to resistance guerrilla forces in 1977, two years after the Indonesian occupation began. She was interrogated in the notorious Sang Tai Ho centre in Dili and shuttled between there and the Comarca (Balide) prison, where she was singled out for brutal treatment, including torture, until her release in June 1978. Almost 30 years later, Maria’s life in independent East Timor is dedicated to assisting other ex-political prisoners and keeping the memory of their experiences alive., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Madalena Soares (“Kasian”)
Madalena Soares is one of the few women who bore arms in East Timor’s 24-year guerrilla war against Indonesian military occupation. This interview is little more than a fragment, a fleeting glimpse of Madalena after the Living Memory crew came across her unexpectedly and decided to improvise. She described how she fought with the resistance army Falintil from 1975 until capture in the Ainaro district in 1991. A militant of the women’s movement Organização Popúlar das Mulheres de Timor (OPMT), Popular Organisation of Timorese Women, she was engaged in organising women to support the struggle and in training them in arms use. She was captured during an Indonesian offensive at Mauxiga and then taken to Ainaro, where she was held and interrogated at the barracks of Battalion 613, formerly a Portuguese army barracks. Her toes were crushed during the ‘chair torture’ to which prisoners were regularly subjected, and which she demonstrates here. It necessitated a later operation at Ainaro hospital, organised by a sympathetic Indonesian officer., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Rosa Pereira do Rego
This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Genoveva da Costa Martins
This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
Portrait of ex-political prisoner João da Costa, Baucau
This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.
João da Costa (Squatting in the centre)
João da Costa (squatting, centre) as part of the cooking team, comarca prison, Balide, Dili 1976. According to da Costa these photos were taken with a camera smuggled into the prison under food in cook-pots, and the photos hidden by the prisoners over years., This item digitized and made available online with funds provided by United States Department of Education, TICFIA (Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information) Grant P337A05006.