Friends of Suai

Chamot – co-ordinator of the Uma Media and YoMaTre has just uploaded this video from Suai. This is a historic moment in the history of the friendship that comes just one month after the 10th Anniversary of the massacre and the surround events that led to the formation of the friendship ten years ago.
Notisias Dokumentario Yo-Ma-Tre.
Nebe Kobertura iha fulan setembru 2009.

Find more videos like this on friends of suaimediaspace

Desleigh Kent a member of the Friends of Suai Committee has returned to Port Phillip after a trip to Suai with the English teachers with photographs of the Anniversary. The photographs show that as on the First Anniversary,  the remembrance ceremonies and prayers took place in the place where the massacre took place in Our Lady of Fatima Church, in front of that Church and under shade on the large grassy area in front of the unfinished cathedral.

[Show as slideshow]

The character and form of the remembrance symbols has changed over the years and the original circle of stones has been moved from the driveway in front of the Church to the side. The original Church that was rehabilitated after the massacre and the accompanying fire has been demolished and replaced with a new one.  Ergilio reported in a conversation on Skype that the people have stopped crying, and he is afraid that the story will be forgotten and justice is out of their reach. According to Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald article on the 7th September, The United Nation’s top human rights official Navanethem Pillay, says East Timor’s release of the Indonesian accused of crimes against humanity violates the country’s own constitution as well as UN Security Council resolutions rejecting impunity for genocide. Bere came across the border on a Visa issued by East Timor’s government, for his father’s funeral in August, in Cova Lima. When locals recognised him as one of the perpertrators of the atrocities in 1999 he was captured and handed over to the police, only to be released again on the orders of President Jose Ramos-Horta.

When approached by the local journalists in Suai for answers to why Martenus Bere was released Gusmao refused to answer them; a move that was very disappointing for the people who supported him and gave up their lives for Independence and democracy under his leadership.

According to the SMH Ms Pillay has asked the East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta for more information on the release of Bere. More –  http://www.smh.com.au/world/massacre-suspects-release-draws-warning-from-un-20090906-fcui.html

The following Obituray was written by Paul Cleary for the Sydney Morning Herald in March 2009 when Paddy Kenneally passed away. It is included here because according to Paul Cleary (author of “Shakedown:Australia’s grab for Timor oil” he probably did ” more than any other person to remind Australia of its debt to the Timorese, especially after the Whitlam government gave Indonesia the green light to invade the territory in 1975″ . He was at the launch of the Friends of Suai and is believed to have been a resident of Port Phillip during his long life.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Fervent champion of Timorese
* March 6, 2009
Paddy Kenneally, 1916-2009

PADDY KENNEALLY quit his job as a wharfie the day
Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941 and enlisted
in the Australian army. One month later, after
undergoing minimal training, the tough Irishman
was on his way to join an elite guerilla unit in East Timor.

While more than 20,000 Australian soldiers were
captured by the Japanese on islands to the north
of Australia, the unit in Timor known as the
2/2nd Australian independent company fought a
successful guerilla war in the mountains.

As the Oscar-winning filmmaker Damien Parer noted
at the time, the men in this unit were “unique in
that they remained an organised fighting body all
through the lightning Jap successes ∑ These lads
are writing an epic of guerilla warfare”.

Kenneally took part in two of the defining
actions of this campaign during his year of service there.

On the night of May 14, 1942, he was one of 13
men who mounted a raid into the heart of the
Japanese headquarters in the capital, Dili. The
men shot up the barracks and escaped without
suffering any casualties. Kenneally and his
platoon commander, Geoff Laidlaw, were the last to leave that night.

One week later, when the Japanese came looking
for the raiders, Kenneally was one of six men who
ambushed about 100 Japanese soldiers near the
village of Remexio, in the hills above Dili.

The Australians were armed with .303 rifles and
one sub-machine gun, but they used the terrain of
Timor to their advantage and took more than 20
enemy casualties. One of those killed was a
senior Japanese officer who had been brought to
Timor to drive out the bandits in mountains.

Kenneally and other veterans said they would not
have lasted a week had the Timorese not protected them.

But the Timorese paid dearly for their support,
with an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 perishing in
the conflict. Kenneally, who became the last
surviving veteran from these encounters, often
said all the Timorese got from supporting them was misery.

He served with the 2/2 for the rest of the war
and saw action in New Guinea. He also returned to
Papua New Guinea after the war and at 75 climbed
Mount Wilhelm, the country’s highest mountain.

John Patrick Kenneally, always known as Paddy,
has died aged 93. He was born in Youghal, County
Cork, Ireland, son of Michael Kenneally and Mary
Ellen Morrissey. The family migrated to Australia in 1927.

By virtue of his energy and longevity, Kenneally
probably did more than any other person to remind
Australia of its debt to the Timorese, especially
after the Whitlam government gave Indonesia the
green light to invade the territory in 1975.

During the occupation Kenneally visited the
territory four times, starting in 1990 when he
was 76 and travelling extensively around the
hills where he had fought. He returned three more
times after the ballot on self-determination.

Kenneally reported back to East Timor activists
in Australia and to the veterans who remained
involved through aid projects and their newsletter, the 2/2 Commando
Courier.

Though he was a Labor man through and through,
Kenneally had little time for Whitlam because of
his support for Indonesia’s invasion.

When he opened a photo exhibition on East Timor
in Parliament House, Canberra, in 1996, he
lambasted Whitlam in front of several Labor
luminaries over his treatment of the Timorese.

When East Timor was struggling to get a fair deal
in negotiations over Timor Sea oil in 2005,
Kenneally rallied his mates to fight one last time for the country.

Appearing in national television ads on the eve
of Anzac Day, Kenneally and five other veterans
called on the Howard government to give the
impoverished new nation a fair go. Kenneally told
the prime minister John Howard: “I’d rather that
you did not come to my Anzac Day parade.”

The following day, the Government capitulated,
offering East Timor a 50 per cent share of the disputed Greater Sunrise
field.

Right to the end, Kenneally’s love for the
Timorese and the country where he fought remained
fervent. Last year he returned there with two
sons and a grandson, where he attended the Anzac
Day service at the war memorial built by the 2/2 veterans, overlooking Dili.

Kenneally is survived by his wife of 57 years,
Nora (nee Kelly), their children Gerald, Helen,
Michael and Sean, and seven grandchildren. A
requiem mass will be held today at 10.30am at Christ the King church,
Yagoona.

Paul Cleary

Port Phillip residents are providing home-stay for old friend Alberto de Jesus Barros from Suai who is currently in Australia on a 6-month scholarship studying English for Academic Purposes at Taylors College.

Alberto was travelling to Melbourne as his family and community were preparing for the 10 year Commemoration of the Suai Massacre on 06 September 2009.in Suai. Within days of his arrival he found himself at his first photo shoot as Friends of Suai were preparing for the Commemoration in Port Phillip. Photo by Jason Sammon, Port Phillip Leader.

Alberto has been connected to the friends of Suai for five years, during that time he has hosted many Port Phillip visitors in Suai, translating and showing them around the district.

He and his wife Lenta have 3 children; Asten 5, Anie (Anya) 2 and Joni (Zoni) is 1 month 2 weeks and 3 days.

Alberto graduated with a Bachelor Degree in Agricultural Economy from the Faculty of Agriculture and the Department of Social Economy, at National University of Timor Leste Dili, in 2003

He worked with UN Peacekeepers between 2000 and 2005 as a Language Assistant.

Later he was employed at the Suai Community Centre supported by the City of Port Phillip between 2005 and 2009 as a community development worker and financial manager.

In 2009 he took up a new position with the International NGO Peace Dividend Trust in Suai, Cova Lima, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to making peace and humanitarian operations more efficient, effective and equitable.

Info Timor (IT) crew with Andrew Mahar from InfoXchange Australia are in Suai and finalising the set-up of the computer workshop and training room at the Community Centre. This photograph shows students at the computers in the new training room. As Simao said in a text message this week, it is a ‘dream of the last two years is happening now’ with the establishment of the computer centre.

Weekly training is being planned by InfoTimor with Alipio from Baucau who will travel to Suai each week to assist with building the computer centre into a business enterprise. Alipio set up the Baucau operation and the plan is that the Community Centre will set up an Internet Cafe along with the Youth Centre to deliver internet to the local community.

ASSOCIATION OF ENGLISH TEACHERS FORMS: Friends of Suai volunteer teachers have been training English language teachers from the Cova Lima secondary and pre-secondary schools for the past four weeks. Port Phillip residents and ESL teachers, Desleigh Kent and Jenny Jaensch together with Jenny Green, Barbara Selvay, Helen Nankervis will conclude classes today.

Pat Jessen spoke briefly with Simao, Co-ordinator in Suai, this morning. Simao and the Timor English teachers were preparing for the last class and a celebratory lunch at the school which was being prepared by his wife Palmira and friends. District Education Department representatives will also attend the celebration.

Ho prezensa (Uma Media Regional)UMR suai nebe servisu hamutuk ho Centro Juventude Covalima ba programa Youth Media Centre (Yomatre) bele halo fasil kommunidade no joventude sira atu hetan asesu ba informasaun iha distritu Covalima.

Ema hotu kontente, halsolok (slogan Timor Telcom nian), mais ami nia slogan “Fo Beran ba Ema NEBE BERAN LA IHA” (give power to the powerless people).

Klaru katak servisu hamutuk ne’e fo benefisiu no opportunidade bo’ot ba komunidade iha distritu Covalima atu aksesu ba informasaun ho simples, la karun no sustentavel.

AGORA bele loke internet iha Estrada laran besik Centro Juventude Covalima nia oin (UMR/Yomatre)  deit depois tiha instola sistema broadband iha loron Tersa, 22 Septembro 2009.
Presiza aksesu ba internet…??? Mai iha CJC/Yomatre/UMR, Ami attende no servi ba ita bo’ot sira ho responsabilidade oras 24 nia laran. Hatene informasaun, domina mundu…

Chamot Egy and friend walking down the road with Egy carrying his laptop demonstratng that several hundred metres from the Youth Centre they have got a wireless signal? It must be a liberating feeling after so many years of feeling left out of the loop or waiting in queues at Timor Telecom.

Ergilio – Co-ordinator of the Cova Lima Youth Centre – Jen & Jeff ,filmmakers in St Kilda have been chatting on Skype using the new broadband access in Suai.

It took six years to get the video cameras and computers and ten to get Broadband but we did it, with a lot of help from others.

We chatted about what was happening in Suai in the past weeks and plans for the future – trying to work out what steps we want to take.

Independence Day for East Timor was celebrated in the centre of Melbourne at Federation Square with speeches, music, slideshows, stalls and movies on the huge central screen. Our film titled Fila Mai Orain- Come Back to Your Country by a young Cova Lima man shot in 2000: Armindo was screened there after I had to leave following excerpts from Scenes of Independence by Carmela Baranowska (1999) and others.