Ten strife-torn years, but Timor’s future is looking up

The name might seem vaguely familiar, but for most people, if the word ‘Maliana’ enters the conversation, recognition is probably as far as it goes. In case you were wondering, then – Maliana is a major regional town in Bobonaro, East Timor, within spitting distance of the Indonesian border, a mere 20-minute drive into the mountains above Balibo. Although recent community attention has understandably focused on the latter, Maliana has its own, equally compelling, tale to tell – and woven within it are a number of distinct inner-western threads.

The most prominent of these is the Friends of Maliana group, a community partnership project established in 2001. “Before the [independence] referendum, the Australian East Timorese Association met regularly at Town Hall,” said former Leichhardt Mayor Máire Sheehan. “When the referendum was successful – when the UN was looking after it – we were approached by the East Timorese community to set up a community-to-community relationship.”

Although the group has held fundraisers and helped with infrastructure projects, including a new library, Ms Sheehan says the group is, “more about people than institutions.” It throws into sharp relief the efforts of Marrickville resident Bernadette Connole, who acted as a civilian UN poll observer during the referendum and was based in West Dili in the period leading up to the violence. “It was pretty calm until a few days before the polling; then it got quite intense,” she recalled. “One day, when the civilian police had gone on strike, we were speaking to about 600 villagers, we had four militiamen with their guns pointed at our heads.”

“Since then, I’ve been back a few times,” she said. “In terms of progress, some would say it’s very slow, but I think we should give them a chance. A lot of the educated people are now overseas – a lot of institution-building is needed.”

One of those educated people is Timor Consul-General Abel Guterres, who leaves Sydney this month to take up his new position within the European Union. “In 1999, when East Timor went to the polls, almost 80 per cent of its infrastructure was destroyed, at least 1500 people were killed, but there was also the psychological trauma that went with it,” he said. “Maliana is a border town, so it has a special effect – 24 years under Indonesia’s often brutal rule, the death toll has been publicly made as 200,000 or more killed.”

For Ms Sheehan, who returned to Maliana last year along with Leichhardt Mayor Jamie Parker, the memory of her first visit in 2000 is still raw. “The thing that struck me was that almost everything had been destroyed – no animals, no tools, no buildings, and all the power lines were cut,” she said. “It’s a country still in trauma, but the people there have an incredible optimism and incredible hope for the future. It’s hard to describe, but palpable when you’re there.”

The ‘Timor Leste Documentary Film Festival’, a retrospective of films about East Timor’s turbulent last decade, will be held at Leichhardt Town Hall on Sunday, August 30, between 1pm and 4.30pm.