To be translated into Tetun.
A series of video letters to Suai that document my journey following the story of friendship between my community in St Kilda in Port Phillip with people in Suai Covalima in East Timor (Timor Leste) that began in December 1999 and continues today.
The first letter came about at this time because originally we were going to launch the website on the 12th November, 2008, the most important day in the history of the youth of East Timor because it is the anniversary of the Santa Cruz Massacre when 271 students died and more disappeared.
It is also a very important date in the history of our friendship because video footage of the massacre reached the international audience. The people of Port Phillip made up a section of that audience and this is the point when solidarity for the East Timorese struggle against the Indonesian occupation grew in my neighbourhood as well as the rest of the world. At that moment the violent character of that colonisation and occupation was indisputable.
Letter to Suai 1. Episode 1: ‘Seeking the Light’
In this video members of the Taibisse and Rai Timor Theatre Groups, give voice to the passionate dreams and nightmares of the young of East Timor before leaping off the walls of the Santa Cruz Cemetry to the sound of gunfire, in a re-enactment of that terrible day on the 12th November 1991.
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Letter to Suai 1. Episode 2: ‘A Mother’s Lament’
Disrupting the order of the day, an agonizing eruption of grief howls from the assembled crowd of Timorese facing the seated International community who are assembled there, on the place where it happened. This is one of the bereaved mothers, a mother of three of the 271 children who died that day.
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Letter to Suai 1. Episode 3: ‘The Birds Still Fly‘
“The birds of change still fly – the fish still swim in the sea”. Following the lament these poetic words were part of a short history of East Timor recited in Portuguese by a ten or eleven year old girl. After her, an even smaller child read a commitment to the dead on behalf of his generation.
