Statement by Shirley Shackleton to Coroner Dorelle Pinch at the
Inquest re Brian Peters, June 1, 2007
My husband was convinced he would die young – that’s why I married him. Just
before he went to Timor Leste, as it is now called, I asked him,
‘What became of the idea that you would die young?’
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you
about that,’ he replied. ‘I think I was wrong about the time;
right about the event.’
This was before he knew he was
going to Portuguese Timor. He was haunted by the possibility
that if his conviction was right he would be forgotten. Because
of the work taking place in this court I don’t think that is
going to happen now.
I want to
thank Your Honour for giving me this opportunity. I feel I
should take the oath. It’s a matter of credibility. I have
always taken great care not to make assertions I could not
prove, but a great deal that I have said has been dismissed as
fiction.1
Why is
truth necessary? Trying to recover from grief is impossible if
circumstances about a death are withheld. The mind is a powerful
force that cannot be controlled. No matter how terrible the
facts are, one’s imagination can make things worse, much worse.
This is the first time respect has been shown to the Balibó Five
in a court – that is what has been missing, a policy of decency.
The Balibó Five did not lose their lives; their lives were
ripped away from them. However, through the dedication of many
wonderful people, these dead men cast very long shadows.
I want to acknowledge Roger East, the lone,
brave Australian reporter who went to Portuguese Timor to
discover what had happened in Balibó. He published the first
credible accounts of the atrocity. He was brave because he
decided to stay and send reports from the mountains in the event
of an Indonesian invasion. He was arrested by troops from
Battalion 502, an East Java unit under the command of Major
Warsito and taken to the Dili wharf on December 8th
1975. He was ordered to turn his back on the guns. He refused
and was shot in the face.2
His murder was witnessed by numerous
Timorese citizens forced to cheer as 100 of their countrymen and
women were murdered. To this date nothing has been done to
address Roger’s murder. His bona fide’s were impeccable;
he covered the Spanish Civil War, started a newspaper there and
reported the war in Vietnam. His death is testament to the fact
that no amount of experience or training can protect anyone from
being murdered. Murder is a deliberate act and cannot be
foreseen by the victim.
My husband Greg Shackleton was 28 years old
when he was killed. On the day our son turned 27 he told me:
‘When I woke up today I thought if I were my dad I’d have one
year left to live.’
Greg was academically brilliant. He won a
scholarship to study Law but lacking money and support he took
odd jobs until he became a cub-reporter at 3AW, a Melbourne
radio station. That’s where we met. I was the Publicity
Director. Greg’s rise was typically phenomenal – Corbett Shaw,
the News Editor promoted him to an A Grade journalist before he
turned twenty-one. In those days many 40 year old journalists
had not attained that grading.
I had lunch with Greg, Tony and Gary three
days before they left for Portuguese Timor. We often met at The
Flower in Port Melbourne. They had formed a reliable team who
covered dangerous assignments for Channel 7 News. They reported
bushfires and disasters at sea etc. The conversation that day
was all about avoiding danger if they were sent to Portuguese
Timor. Greg had informed the Department of Foreign Affairs in
Canberra of his plans. Among other queries he wanted to know
where to obtain up-to-date maps. He definitely informed the
Department of Foreign Affairs of his intention to travel to
Portuguese Timor; I heard him speaking on the phone and, because
he knew all the top bureaucrats through his work, he did not
deal with a mere secretary.
I didn’t want him to go. He worked full-time
at Channel 7 and was studying for his Bachelor of Arts degree at
Melbourne University. He wrote the six o’clock news; wrote and
read the late news single-handedly and anchored a Sunday evening
political discussion program ‘This Week’ at which Prime Minister
Whitlam and others like Bob Hawke were regulars. He was to sit
his final exam prior to leaving for Columbia University’s
Journalism Course in New York and so it wasn’t convenient for
him to take that particular assignment. Of course he wanted to
go – it was a chance to break the biggest story to hit the South
Pacific since World War Two.
Imagine a scenario we are expected to believe
where the head of a country warns a journalist of the danger in
a particular assignment. My husband would have burst into his
commissioning editor’s office with the news that something big
was about to happen in Portuguese Timor. ‘I got it from the
horse’s mouth!’ If anything like that had happened he would
certainly have mentioned it to me and his colleagues. It would
have confirmed a pressing need to report on a situation that
could have serious consequences for Australia.
It was interesting to hear Prime Minister
Whitlam’s choice of words and to see his body language as he
attempted to defame my husband – with a dismissive wave of his
hand he minimised the importance of the two interviews conducted
by Greg Shackleton. You might have thought Greg was a free-lance
journalist: and yet the subjects were extremely important. They
covered the budget and the threat to withhold supply. I do not
accuse Gough Whitlam of telling falsehoods Your Honour; I can
imagine him saying, ‘You know we can’t protect you if anything
goes wrong.’ It’s a throw-away line and the answer would have
been, ‘Yes.’ Of course Greg knew – are we supposed to believe
there was a chance that the government would have sent in the
marines?2b
Since 1974 the Channel 7 newsroom had
received reports of hit-and-run attacks emanating from across
the shared border with Indonesian-occupied Western Timor. The
Indonesian president repeatedly denied these reports as baseless
allegations. When the appeals increased in urgency imploring
Westerners to come and judge the violence for themselves, Greg began to research the
history of our closest neighbour. He was impressed by the
compassionate help given to Australian troops by the Timorese in
World War Two. He thought if an expansionist dictator like
General Suharto were to invade ‘the gateway to Australia’ as
Portuguese Timor was known in WW2, it was vital that we know
about it as soon as possible.
He did not underestimate the danger. He did
not need to be warned – even a child could work it out given the
circumstances. Neil Davis’s front line reports were widely known
and Vietnam vets were publishing memoirs with shocking candour.
My concerns were based on the fact that Greg was about to spread
his wings and return to America.
He did not entertain preconceived notions
about the identity of those responsible for the border attacks -
the coup by UDT and APODETI had been ‘spin-doctored’ as a civil
war – and still is. He could not know that Indonesia had armed
and supported the leaders of that coup.3
The Channel 7 team were in agreement: if the
Indonesian military was responsible for the attacks, they would
be in danger of arrest. Greg was a very bad asthmatic. He could
have died in prison if medication was with-held. He asked me to,
‘Do everything to get us out, sell the house.’
Can anyone actually think a reporter of
Greg’s calibre was ignorant of the tenets of the Geneva
Convention? He knew it backwards.
They did not expect to be killed
by Indonesians. If you think Australia has a good relationship
with Indonesia today – ah, well not perhaps at this very moment
(after Your Honour’s recent initiation into the ways of
Indonesian hyperbole,) nevertheless our friendship is nothing
like it was in 1975. Despite the fighting over Borneo in the mid
1960’s Australian bureaucrats from the prime minister down have
lauded our friendship. That was Greg’s first mistake. He
believed Australian government propaganda. In fact the team were
more afraid of being maltreated if they were arrested by
dissident Timorese than by professional soldiers.
Josè Ramos-Horta feared that they were
underestimating the brutality of the Indonesian military. Again,
the Balibò Five re-assured him that they would not be
deliberately killed because of their prime minister’s great
friendship with General Suharto. This was their second mistake;
they trusted Gough Whitlam.
They did not have bedding or
proper food. Josè heard them whispering as they lay awake from
hunger and cold on the floor of a school. He told me, ‘they were
determined to do all they could to publicise the unfolding
tragedy – they’d seen the damage done to people’s homes and
learned about the indiscriminate killings associated with the
attacks.’ Josè saw my husband and his colleagues for what they
were, they were just doing their job and having worked as a
reporter he appreciated their dedication and professionalism
and, they were in the right place at the right time to carry out
their job.
I ask you to imagine the
situation in Balibò. There was no demarcation line to define the
border and it was not manned until after the Indonesian invasion
several weeks later on December 7th 1975. Family
members
lived on either side and people crossed at
will. Both sides had forward scouts and Falintil received
reports of huge Indonesian troop movements (five battalions were
massing along the border in Western Timor.) Knowing Greg’s
determination to expose a situation of such enormous importance
to Australia, is it any wonder that when he was asked to send a
note to the Falintil commander in Maliana he agreed to do so?
He did not employ a sky writer to advertise for additional
troops and ammunition; he sent a discreet note! You can impugn
him but I put it to you it would have been a clear breach of his
duty to his crew had he not requested reinforcements. What’s the
use of a handful soldiers facing 5000 troops without ammunition?
If Falintil had stayed, all five
men would have moved back out of the line of fire. If you study
the terrain there are many places from which to film. When
Falintil withdrew (except for one lone machine gunner covering
the retreat) Greg and his colleagues would have breathed a sigh
of relief in the belief that they could not be killed
accidentally as they were alone in a deserted village. In the
event they would have been killed along with the machine gunner
by members of Battalion 744 who came up the back road to Balibò.
Battalion 744 was commanded by
Lieutenant-General Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah (a captain at that
time.) He describes himself as an orang tempur, a
fighting animal.4
He led 100 red beret Kopassandha (secret
warfare) troops (now called Kopasses) into Balibó. The operation
was part of the wider attack and was a clear breach of the
United Nations Charter. Yosfiah’s troops were ordered to remove
all badges of rank and other identifying insignia. Yosfiah was
promoted after Balibó and he went on to greater things - he led
Battalion 744 when they murdered the commander of the Timorese
Resistance Army, Nicolau dos Reis Lobato on Mt. Maubesi in 1978.
Yosfiah was promoted after both these actions. In an interview
with the magazine Tempo in 1989, he disclosed the fact that his
favourite pastime is in playing back a video of the killing of
Nicolau Dos Reis Lobato. I often wonder if he filmed our loved
ones as they died at Balibó. He was accepted for special
training at the United States Special Command and General Staff
College at Fort Leavenworth (1997) and at the Royal College of
Defence Studies in Britain (1989.)
After I ambushed General Murdani in Dili in
1989, I was approached by the odd Indonesian officer (I had
adopted a policy of shouting drinks at the Hotel Turismo in
order to glean useful information.) Many were impressed by my
nerve (indeed I was assured without malice that a Timorese woman
would have had her neck broken.) On the matter of Balibó, the
soldiers I got to know were apologetic and of the opinion that
it was a disastrous mistake. One by one, separately, they told
me that the secret warfare troops under Murdani did not need
orders to kill anyone – it was Murdani’s modus operandi –
shoot first and ask questions afterwards, especially unarmed
civilians whether they are poor Indonesians, Timorese, West
Papuans or Westerners. However, they assured me that they would
never have killed five white men without being protected by
orders.
Amy Goodman and Alan Nairn were attacked at
the Santa Cruz Massacre. Amy told me in New York last year
during an interview on her TV program Democracy Now that she was
attacked and thrown to the ground and a pistol was put to her
head. Alan Nairn in trying to protect her sustained a fractured
skull. The Indonesian officer cocked the pistol and asked her if
she was an Australian journalist; it was only when she said she
was American that he removed the pistol. ‘I
was left in no doubt,’ she told me. ‘If I had been Australian I
would have died right there.’
I was not informed of the deaths
of my husband and his colleagues by my government. I heard a
news report on ABC radio. Sometime after the 16
th
October I received a telegram from Dr. Henry Will, the
Australian Consulate doctor in Jakarta informing me that he had
been asked to examine what purported to be the remains of the
five journalists. The information contained in that telegram
made me reel with horror. I was still shocked when I received a
telephone call later that day from a man claiming to be from the
Department of Foreign Affairs. ‘If you want the bodies brought
home,’ he said, ‘you will have to pay and it will cost you at
least forty-eight thousand dollars.’ The silence was deafening
as I re-read the telegram: ‘The most I can say about the remains
is that they are possibly human.’
I asked if they were being brought home in
five coffins and was curtly told, ‘No.’ Angry now at this
attempt to frighten me, I asked if they were stuffed into one
coffin. Again, the answer was ‘no.’ Were they in a suitcase or a
shoebox? Having received a negative reply I read out the
telegram. Then I made a terrible mistake – I lost my temper. ‘In
other words the pilot could bring the so-called remains home in
a matchbox in his pocket,’ I said, ‘whatever they’ve got up
there isn’t my husband or his colleagues. They were definitely
human. You can do whatever the hell you want.’ I believe this
was the start of yet another trail of lies including the fiction
that I had given my consent for all five bodies to be buried in
Jakarta. I must stress this point, I was never asked for my
consent, nor was I invited to the bogus funeral arranged by
Richard Woolcott. The damage was done; it set family members
against me. But I did not know that then. I was asked at a later
date if I wanted to send flowers to Jakarta. I declined. I was
then asked to write a letter to that effect and sign it. My
state of mind can be judged by the fact that I wrote two almost
identical letters and posted them separately. I believe now that
my signature was used as a further pawn in a plot to separate
the families by making it appear that I was making decisions
without consulting them.
See how it’s done?
Weak-kneed lily-livered sycophants may think
that they rule, but they shoot themselves in the foot. A huge
part of the Australian commitment to covering up Indonesia’s
genocide in East Timor and for the atrocity at Balibó is
‘trade’. Two little words at the end of the Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade turns so-called great men into
pig-ignorant money grubbing puppets once removed from horse
traders.
Gough Whitlam basked in the title of The Lion
of the Left, and yet when the Fretilin political party, having
put down the coup in only eleven days introduced a country-wide
literacy campaign, Gough Whitlam called them Communists and
accused them in this court of hounding UDT out of Timor. UDT had
attempted to seize power and in doing so, they committed
treason. The leaders were air-lifted by Indonesian helicopters
and flown to Western Timor. HOUNDED OUT OF TIMOR?
4b
4c
See how it’s done?
Richard Woolcott prides himself on his
pronunciation of bahasa Indonesia. In this court he could
not pronounce the name of the Timorese island of Atauro. He
called it Arturo. When it came to the big confidence
trick of burying the remains of his countrymen, he did not even
possess the wit to use five coffins! He agreed to bury what was
left of Brian Peter’s, Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Malcolm
Rennie and Greg Cunningham in a foreign country whose military
appeared to be implicated in the deceased’s murders. How
bizarre! If the Indonesian attack team was innocent how did the
‘remains’ get into Indonesian hands? Why did they go to Jakarta?
Darwin is much closer. The coffin must be weighed down with
stones - a fine way for the Australian Ambassador to show
respect to his own dead countrymen.
I state here that I support Brian’s family in
their determination to have the contents exhumed and brought
home to Australia for a decent burial. That’s what has been
missing for 32 years: a policy of decency.
With help from Hamish McDonald I spoke to Dr.
Henry Will many years after the fact. He did not send me the
telegram, he said, ‘Whoever did send it knew precisely what I
wrote in my report.’ I would like to take this opportunity to
thank the unknown male or female, Australian or Indonesian who
sent me that telegram.
It is easy to establish the motives of a
dictator, for if you seize a country’s assets – oil, marble,
minerals, gold, sandalwood, timber, copra, coffee, ponies (they
were either eaten by the invading army or sold throughout
Indonesia) and if you steal the entire contents of houses and
sell them, the profit margin is 100%. Oh yes, the sacking of
Dili happened twice; in 2000 and in 1975 – doors, windows,
cutlery, crockery, food, children’s toys, sinks, light-bulbs,
electrical goods and furniture were loaded onto the ships that
had brought the Indonesian troops in.5
German puppets burn the Jews; Jewish puppets
did not choose.
Puppet vultures eat the dead; puppet corpses
they are fed.
Puppet winds and puppet waves; puppet sailors
in their graves.
Puppet flowers, puppet stems; puppet time
dismantles them.
Puppet me and puppet you; puppet German
puppet Jew.
Puppet presidents command, puppet troops to
burn the land.
Puppet fire and puppet flames feed on all the
puppet names.
Puppet lovers in their bliss turn away from
all of this.
Puppet leader shakes his head; takes his
puppet wife to bed.
Puppet night comes down to play the after-act
to puppet day.
Leonard Cohen
They had to die. The manoeuvres on the 16th
October were designed to be deniable. Demagogues and dictators
conspired to cover-up the huge, pre-invasion terror attack. It
was that simple - they had to die or they would have spoiled the
puppet’s game.
Every attempt has been made to belittle the
Balibó Five and Greg Shackleton: he was young, inexperienced and
even the crude Australian flag he drew on the side of the house
in Balibó to bolster all their spirits was spin-doctored to make
him appear stupid. The Seven team passed a three man ABC team
withdrawing from Balibó – this is frequently held-up as evidence
that the ABC crew were wise to withdraw. They came to offer
their condolences to me. They said had not wanted to withdraw,
but as their insurance had run out they were forced to leave on
orders.
See how it’s done?
The Portuguese reporter Adelino Gomes told me
when we were on the Lusitania together, that he had invited them
to Maliana for lunch and to have a bath or a swim, but the Seven
team had already stayed beyond their original time, they were
keen to make their final report and leave. Adelino agreed to
send incriminating film to Australia from Maliana of Indonesian
warships operating on the wrong side of the border. Full marks
to both teams and to Adelino because when that film was shown on
Australian TV it blew the plot wide open, or should have if our
government officials had not been compromised by their supine
acceptance of lies emanating from Indonesia, no matter how
corrupt. Adelino had intended to return to Balibó the following
day; it is to his disgust that he is also held up as having been
wise to have withdrawn.
Even their clothes were used to discredit
them. One publicity seeking wretch sought to denigrate what
Brian Peters wore in a Darwin pub - what I would identify as
army surplus was eagerly reported as: ‘Brian Peter’s wore an
army uniform.’ I can tell you that Greg’s team declined to be
armed (of course) and he wore his safari jacket for filmed
reports. I am so pleased you screened Greg’s last report – you
must understand what a professional he was. He had the courage
to tell the Timorese the truth when they asked what Australia
would do for them. ‘Australia will not send troops,’ he said,
‘that would be impossible, but they can report this fighting at
the United Nations.’ Remember when he was describing how the
elderly gentlemen spoke about the terrible damage to their
homes? In response to their plight Greg had a catch in his
throat – this evidence of compassion from one human being to
another was used to cast Greg as a Communist sympathiser.
They planned to wear their Channel 7 t-shirts
even though they looked a bit ‘lairy.’ They were bright yellow.
Greg always wore very short shorts - you couldn’t possibly
mistake him for a soldier.
The arrival of the second team in Balibó
should not have made any difference if they had been intercepted
by professional troops.
Why did they stay? Never underestimate the
intense rivalry between the heads of news departments. If the
Channel Seven team had retreated and left the other team to get
the scoop, John Maher the head of Channel Seven News would have
sacked them.
Greg’s notebook was eventually returned to me – it had been
tampered with. Many pages were missing. In the Straits Times
last weekend, John McBeth alleged that people who read the
diaries of some of the journalists at the Jakarta Embassy in
1976 were struck by their naivety. There was nothing in Greg’s
diary that would give anyone a clue to what he was like - naive
or as wise as Solomon, I am requesting assistance to locate
these diaries if any of them are his. I don’t want to pry into
the other men’s thoughts, but if they are available to the
inquest I would like to read them please.
I am incandescent with rage over the harm
done to the relatives and especially to the children by both the
murderers and the liars. My mother-in-law committed suicide. In
Shonny’s case it was not the original murder that destroyed her;
it was the lies told by successive Australian government
officials. Her death exposes the heart-breaking results of their
policy-without-decency.
As for the present Monty Pythonesque
goings-on being a diplomatic crisis, they are nothing of the
sort. The leaders of our two countries know the score; they say
publicly what they think absolves them from responsibility.
Your Honour, it is a salutary experience for
us all to witness Mr. Downer’s reaction to your graceful
invitation to Mr. Sutiyoso as a possible eye-witness to the
Balibó atrocity. Could anything be more revealing? ‘Don’t worry
about Balibó would be bad enough.’ ‘Don’t worry about the Balibó
Inquest impugns the validity of this court. How shameful that
our own government is eager to subvert our justice system. In
allowing Your Honour’s integrity and the integrity of the
Australian policeman to be impugned, our rulers betray something
dreadful: they have more in common with the rulers of Indonesia
than they have with decent Australian people. The photograph in
the Sydney Morning Herald (30th May) is a perfect
example of the fake smiles of diplomacy – a group of poor,
hapless Indonesians point to a bottle of wine as if it is solid
gold – another Monty Python moment. After 32 years of blood and
lies; Australian government officials have learned nothing.6
You know Your Honour; the past 32 years could
make a sane person doubt their sanity.
As for the organised spontaneous
demonstration in Jakarta yesterday (30/5/07), those people are
poor and since they are paid to demonstrate we humbly encourage
them to take every opportunity to continue these life-saving
activities.
Perhaps you realise that Sutiyoso is next in
line to be President of Indonesia. Gee whiz, he and his
colleagues: Yosfiah and Kris de Silva will have to watch out; or
they’ll end up being poisoned like José Martins and Munir.
Shirley Shackleton.
1I
was permitted to take the oath.
2
This is public knowledge in Timor
Leste. I interviewed several witnesses in Timor in 1989 and in
Australia and my findings were verified by John Pilger’s
investigation during the Indonesian occupation for his
documentary, ‘Death of a Nation.’
3Plans
for the conquest of Portuguese Timor started long before Balibó.
The coup was masterminded by ABRI and used by Indonesia as an
excuse to claim the right to seize control of the former
Portuguese colony.
4b
Gough Whitlam
may well feel guilty about his dismissal of the rights of the
Balibo 5. I will not comment, but he will never be forgiven for
going uninvited to the United Nations and demanding that the
matter of East Timor be dropped from the U.N. agenda at a time
when it was public knowledge that genocide was being forced upon
innocent Timorese.
4c Whitlam’s use of Indonesian propaganda: ‘UDT was hounded out of
Portuguese Timor’ must be challenged. When the UDT coup failed,
innocent members fled the country. They were ignorant of their
leaders’ attempt to seize power. Even today, some believe the
propaganda that Fretilin was responsible. Their new leaders have
UDT relatives and so the truth is ignored today.
5In
1975 buildings were left intact because Indonesian military
moguls intended to ‘acquire’ them by fair means or foul. When
the TNI were forced out, as well as repeating the original
sacking, toilets was blown up and 98% of buildings were stripped
of plumbing pipes, roofing etc. Electrical wires were torn from
the walls of every room before buildings were sprayed with high
octane petrol and set alight.