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.

João da Costa (Squatting in the centre)
João da Costa (left) and three fellow-prisoners, the prison cooks, pictured outside the main door of the comarca prison, Balide, Dili in 1976. The letters ‘CCC’ stand for the Portuguese words Cadeia Comarca Central, ‘prison of the comarca central’. ‘Comarca’ is the Portuguese term for a legal jurisdiction, in this case the comarca of Dili., 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.
Armandina Gusmão
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.
Akui Long, Vasco da Gama, Mau Hodu and Henrique Bemiro
Akui Leong and Vasco da Gama (standing), former guerrilla commander Mau Hodu and Henrique Belmiro (seated) between interrogation sessions in the Colmera branch of the Indonesian army’s SGI (Satuan Gabungan Inteligen--Combined Intelligence Unit) Dili, 1992, after the capture of Xanana Gusmão., 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.
Akui Long
Akui Leong, clandestine driver for Xanana Gusmão, in the truck in which he drove the guerrilla commander before he was imprisoned and tortured by Indonesian intelligence services, in November 1992, in an unsuccessful bid to learn Gusmão’s whereabouts., 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.
Akui Long
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.
Henrique Belmiro, Akui Leong and Vasco da Gama
(Left to right) : Henrique Belmiro, Akui Leong and Vasco da Gama between interrogation sessions in the Colmera branch of the Indonesian army’s SGI (Satuan Gabungan Inteligen/Combined Intelligence Unit) Dili, after the eventual capture of Xanana Gusmão., 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.
First Page of Letter Written by Leandro Isa’ac to Indonesia’s President Suharto
Original Indonesian Text, 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.
Sydney Morning Herald Item on Early 1982 Visit of Ex-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to East Timor
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.
António dos Santos Matos
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.
Interview with Gregório da Cunha Saldaha
Gregório Saldanha was an organizer of the 12 November 1991 rally which preceded mass killings by the Indonesian army at Dili’s Santa Cruz cemetery. He was influenced as a child by listening to Xavier do Amaral, founder of the Fretilin independence movement. In 1989 he was imprisoned, tortured and held without trial for 6 months (at SGI Colmera in Dili) for his part in a demonstration during Pope John Paul II’s Dili visit. In 1991 Gregório was shot in the buttocks at the Santa Cruz demonstration and detained at Lahane hospital. Interrogated by red-beret special forces at a POLWIL post in Dili, he was later charged with subversion and sentenced to life in prison. His sentence was served incommunicado in Dili’s Balide prison and then in Semarang, central Java, where he was transported without his family’s knowledge. He was freed over a year after the fall of Suharto, on December 10, 1999., 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., Place of Interview: Balide Prison, Dili, East Timor (Timor-Leste), Credits: Interviewer: Jill Jolliffe, Cinematographer: Sophie Barry, Editing Michelle Soohoo, Transcription: Meno Ferreira, scanning Elvis Sarmento Guterres, archival database Maria da Silva Benfica and Olga do Amaral., Date of Birth: 1962-11-06; Prisons: Dili, East Timor (Timor-Leste); Other Prisoners: Captain, red-beret unit (Boinas Vermelhas : KOPASSUS / KOPASSANDHA); Perpetrators: SGI Colmera, Dili; Hospital Militar, Lahane; POLWIL, Dili; Comarca Balide; Becora prison, Dili; Semarang prison, cenral Java; Cipinang prison, Jakarta.
Interview with 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., Notes: A note on the language of the interview: Simplício’s mother tongue is Tetum, and his preference was to be interviewed in it. Living Memory Project’s main working language is Portuguese, but the project also conducts interviews in translation from Tetum and other local languages. Because Simplício’s Portuguese was perfectly intelligible to us, and because a translator would break the valuable psychological rapport between interviewer and interviewed, we chose that language to give maximum impact to his story. Purists may object, but as a Portuguese colleague noted: ‘The important thing is that we communicate with each other’., Place of Interview: Santa Cruz cemetery and Lahane hospital, Dili, East Timor., Credits: Archival preparation: Maria da Silva Benfica Interviewer: Jill Jolliffe Filmed by: Nicola Daley Camera Assistant: Elvis Sarmento Guterres Text transcription: Filomeno Ferreira Editing: Velinda Wardell, Other Names: ‘Mau Huno of the city’; Date of Birth: 1961-09-25; Prisons: Dili, East Timor (Timor-Leste); Other Prisoners: Battalions 303; Brimob; TNI, army; Kopassus special forces; Martin; Kostrad battalion 503; Kostrad battalion 501; Saba; Profos. ; Perpetrators: Lahane hospital; Polda police barracks, Comoro, Dili; Kostrad barracks, Lospalos.
Interview with 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., Place of Interview: Mota Ulun, Liquiça District, East Timor (Timor-Leste), Credits: Interviewer: Jill Jolliffe, Cinematographer: Nicola Daley, Other Names: Kasian; Date of Birth: 1955-09-20; Prisons: Fahi Lebu, Mota Ulun, East Timor (Timor-Leste); Other Prisoners: Soldiers from Battalion 613, Ainaro.; Perpetrators: Battalion 613 barracks, Ainaro, East Timor; Battalion 613 barracks, Sector B, Ainaro de Cima, East Timor.
Interview with 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., Place of Interview: Dili, East Timor (Timor-Leste), Credits: Interviewer: Jill Jolliffe, Cinematographer: Nicola Daley, Date of Birth: 1954-02-08; Prisons: Dili, East Timor (Timor-Leste); Other Prisoners: Sihombing; Sinaga; red berets; Suleiman.; Perpetrators: Sang Tai Ho (Colmera, Dili); Comarca (Balide) prison, Dili; --Mau Buti cell; --Mau Besa cell.
First Page of Letter Written by Leandro Isa’ac to Indonesia’s President Suharto
English Translation, 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.
Interview with Rosa Pereira do Rêgo
Rosa Pereira do Rêgo was arrested with four other women and detained briefly in June 1976, when she was seven months' pregnant. She was accused of aiding resistance guerrillas and assisting others to join them in the mountains., She was taken first to the Indonesian military Koramil post in the suburb of Colohun, run by red-beret commandos. There, she was interrogated and was administered electric shocks to her thighs., From there, she was moved to another interrogation centre in the Colmera-Mandarim district, where she was whipped under questioning. The building where she and other women were held was part of the complex of buildings known as SGI Colmera set up to serve as torture centres soon after Indonesian troops landed in Dili., Rosa describes the rape of a fellow-prisoner which she witnessed at a house in Audian, committed by one of the SGI commanders. Her baby survived, after a long, difficult home birth., 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., Place of Interview: Dili, East Timor (Timor-Leste), Credits: Interviewer: Jill Jolliffe, Cinematographer: Nicola Daley, Date of Birth: 1925-06-17; Prisons: Dili (?), East Timor (Timor-Leste];