EAST TIMOR -
Who Killed the Balibo Five?
October 1998, 50 mins
| 00.02.19.13 | GEORGE IN VISION
DISSOLVE TO COMPASS GRAPHIC - SHOTS OF FRETILIN AND TV NEWSMEN
| Hullo there, and welcome to a very special edition of Foreign Correspondent. Tonight we’re devoting our whole program to the first-ever eye-witness account of an episode that has dogged relations between Australia and Indonesia for twenty-three years - the killing, in October 1975, in the village of Balibo in East Timor, of five Australia-based television newsmen.
TIMORESE MUSIC |
| 00.03.46 | GREG SHACKLETON TO CAMERA
super: GREG SHACKLETON Seven National News
C/U SHACKLETON
super: 13 October 1975
| SHACKLETON 10.00.56 And then for the next hour sitting on woven mats under a thatced roof in a hut with no walls, we were the target of a barrage of questioning from men who know they may die tomorrow and cannot understand why the rest of the world does not care. 01.10 cut to 01.22 Why they ask are the Australians not helping us? When the Japanese invaded they did help us. Why they ask are the Portuguese not helping us - we are still a Portuguese colony. Who they ask will pay for the terrible damage to our homes? My main answer was that Australia would not send forces here, that’s impossible. However I said we could ask that Australia raise this fighting at the United Nations - that was possibe. At that the second-in-charge rose to his feet exclaimed “Camarada journalist”, shook my hand, the rest shook my hand, and we were applauded because we were Australians. That’s all they want - for the United Nations to care about what is happeing here. The emotion here last night was so strong that we all three of us felt we should be able to reach out into the warm night air, and touch it. Greg Shackleton, in an unnamed village which we will remember forever, in Portuguese Timor.
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| 00.04.59 |
GRAPHIC: COMPOSITE STILLS SHACKLETON, CUNNINGHAM, STEWART
GEORGE NEGUS IN VISION
GRAPHIC: STILLS RENNIE, PETERS
| GEORGE V/OVER But for Channel Seven’s Greg Shackleton, and his colleagues, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart, “forever” lasted only three more days ….
That emotional report from Shackleton was recorded in East Timor almost exactly 23 years ago -- on the morning of Monday October 13th, 1975.
Three days later, on October 16th, the Channel Seven team and two colleagues from Channel Nine -- Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters - were all dead.
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| 00.05.25. | GEORGE IN VISION | For most of the past two decades, Australian governments -- both Labor and Coalition -- have officially accepted the explanation for those deaths put forward by the Indonesian government -- in short, that the so-called Balibo Five were killed accidentally in crossfire during a civil war between rival factions of East Timorese.
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| 00.05.44. | 7.30 REPORT - MARIZ AND COMPANION INTO ROOM
MARIZ IN VISION 05.56.02
name super: FERNANDO MARIZ 25 October 1995
EVANS OUT OF DOOR
SHERMAN IN FRONT OF MAP
name super: Sen GARETH EVANS Foreign Minister, 1995
| Then, three years ago, two Timorese exiles gave detailed second-hand accounts of the killings on ABC television. Like similar accounts over the years, they alleged that the journalists were murdered -- in cold blood..
MARIZ: They come outside and put their hands up, “We are Australian journalists, we don’t have guns”, all this stuff, they said, the captain said, “No, go inside!”. When they inside the captain shoot, shoot all of them.
Under pressure from the newsmen’s relatives, then Foreign Minister Gareth Evans appointed former National Crime Authority chairman, Tom Sherman, to conduct what was termed a “preliminary inquiry.”
EVANS: What we’re embarking on now is an exercise to test the weight and quality of that evidence.
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| 00.06.29. | SHERMAN
GRAPHIC WITH QUOTE:
GEORGE IN VISION
GRAPHIC QUOTE
| In May 1996 -- after a three-month investigation -- Sherman presented his report to the new Liberal government. He concluded that the five journalists had been killed -- quote – “by members of a mixed attacking force of Indonesian soldiers and anti-Fretilin East Timorese led by Indonesian officers” -- unquote.
That was the first time an Australian official had acknowledged Indonesian involvement.
But Sherman went on: “it is more likely than not -- he said -- that the Balibo Five were killed in the heat of battle while fighting was continuing to occur” -- a conclusion seized upon by the Indonesian Government.
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| 00.07.03. | ALITAS ON TELEPHONE | ALITAS: “everywhere journalists come into a war situation and get killed - that is a far cry from accusing us of killing them”
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| 00.07.13 | DOWNER WITH ALITAS | To no one’s surprise, Foreign Minister Downer failed to persuade the Indonesians to co-operate in any further inquiry. So, the Australian Government opted, once again, to let the matter rest.
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| 00.07.23 | DOWNER IN VISION Name super: ALEXANDER DOWNER Foreign Minister, July 1996 | DOWNER: I think it would be unfair and I think it would be misleading of me to suggest that somehow we can take this matter a great deal further forward.
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| 00.07.33 | GEORGE IN VISION | But, during his investigation, Tom Sherman did not visit East Timor, or anywhere else in Indonesia. Nor did he speak to any eyewitnesses to the killings. |
| 00.07.42 |
| But tonight Foreign Correspondent has obtained -- for the first time – a close-range, eyewitness account of the killing of the Balibo Five twenty-three years ago this week. According to this eyewitness, their deaths were not accidental …. And his evidence places much of the blame on a man now a prominent minister in the post-Suharto Habibie Government of Indonesia. To compile tonight’s special report, Jonathan Holmes travelled from Sydney to Perth to Lisbon and Balibo. His report begins, however, on the streets of Bangkok …. |
DISSOLVE TO
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| 00.08.13 | BANGKOK TRAFFIC -
THEN SHOTS OUT OF WINDOW - OLANDINO IN TAXI
| TRAFFIC NOISE, HORNS TOOTING ETC
Olandino Maia Guterres is baffled by Bangkok. Apart from a quick trip to Bali, he’s never been out of East Timor before. Now it’s possible he may never go back.
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| 00.08.37 | JILL IN TAXI TALKING TO OLANDINO | Jill Jolliffe, an Australian journalist who’s devoted her career to the East Timor story, has been the vital go-between who’s put Foreign Correspondent in touch with Olandino.
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| 00.08.47 | JILL ON PHONE - first take
| Hullo Jonathan - ah just to say we’re on our way, I’ve got Olandino with me and we should be arriving at the hotel quite soon, OK? |
| 00.08.57 | JILL AND OLANDINO IN TAXI
| Two months earlier, Jolliffe was introduced to Olandino in East Timor. He’d revealed that he was a direct eye-witness to the killing of the Balibo Five.
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| 00.09.16 | HOLMES GREETS OLANDINO | NATSOT HOLMES GREETING OLANDINO
HOLMES: Olandino? Hi, welcome to Bangkok
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| 00.09.19 | OLANDINO, JILL, HOLMES IN LIFT SEQUENCE .
| Now he wants to tell his story to the world. But we’ve insisted that first, for his own safety, he should get out of East Timor.
SNATCH OLANDINO IN PORTUGUESE
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| 00.09.35 | LIFT, DOOR CLOSING, “DO NOT DISTURB” NOTICE | HOLMES (OOV): Olandino why have you decided to tell this story now, 23 years later?
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| 00.09.41 | OLANDINO IN VISION
| OLANDINO SUBTITLES Because I think I have to tell the story of these five journalists for everyone to know that they too were working for the future of our nation. |
| 00.09.54 |
| Everyone always said it was we Timorese who killed them. But it was the Indonesians, Indonesian soldiers, who killed the five journalists.
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| 00.10.09 | MAP - TIMOR, DISSOLVE TO CLOSE UP BORDER, SHOW DILI, BALIBO
| MUSIC |
| 00.10.19 | BALIBO SCENES
| MUSIC
It’s flattering Balibo even today to call it a town. Back then it was little more than a dusty square at a crossroads, a few Chinese-owned shops, and an old Portuguese fort on the hill.
MUSIC
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| 00.10.44 | HOLMES LOOKS AT MEMORIAL
ARCHIVE FOOTAGE BALIBO DECLARATION
BACK TO HOLMES LOOKING AT STATUE
| Today the main square is dominated by a memorial to the Balibo Declaration. It was here, in November 1975, that an Indonesian-backed puppet government declared the so-called liberation of East Timor from Portugal, and its union with Indonesia.
NATSOT OR FX
A week later, East Timor’s capital Dili would be invaded by the Indonesian army, and the long, brutal occupation of East Timor would begin.
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| 00.11.12 | ABC ARCHIVE VIEW OF FORT, PAN ROUND TO SQUARE
FRETILIN SOLDIERS WITH CAMOUFLAGED GUN
| CHANGE FROM MUSIC TO NATSOT OR FX - JEEPS ETC
But in October 1975, all that was still in the future. Balibo was on the Portuguese side of an international frontier - and the front line of defence against an imminent invasion
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| 00.11.30 | SHACKLETON STANDING IN FRONT OF FRETILIN TROOPS.
| That was why a 3-man crew from Channel 7’s National News installed itself here on Saturday October 11th
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| 00.11.38 |
SHACKLETON PAINTING WALL
| And that was why Channel 7 reporter Greg Shackleton occupied himself, on October 12th, by painting the Australian flag, and the word Australia, on the walls of the house where his crew were camping out.
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| 00.11.53 | HOLMES IN BALIBO
super: JONATHAN HOLMES | JONATHAN TO CAMERA This is the house in the main square of Balibo where Greg Shackleton painted those crude Australian flags 23 years ago. The fact that he did so shows that he and his colleagues were expecting some kind of attack on the village, and in fact that they’d decided that if necessary they were going to let the tide of war wash over them, trusting in those signs, and on their obvious civilian status, for protection. Now that’s a risky course for a war correspondent to take in any combat situation. But to understand why the journalists decided to take that risk, we first have to understand the knife edge on which East Timor found itself in October of 1975 |
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| 00.12.28 | FRETILIN SUPPORTERS CHEER, FIRING VOLEY IN AIR, SINGING | NATSOT FX: VIVA!! VOLLEY IN AIR - BANG! SINGING STARTS
In 1974, a revolution in far-off Lisbon produced hope and ferment in Portuguese East Timor.
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| 00.13.01 | PORTUGUESE TROOPS MARCHING
PORTUGUESE FLAG DOWN
SOLDIERS ON PARADE | Radical young officers in the Portuguese army had overthrown Western Europe’s longest-standing dictatorship.
Now the troops in Portugal’s far flung colonies, from Mozambique to East Timor, couldn’t wait to get out, and get home. |
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| 00.13.21 | LISBON SCENES
SILHOUETTE JILL SHOT WITH LISBON IN B/G - THEN DOCUMENTS
| But twenty-three years later, a modern, cosmopolitan Lisbon is still reluctantly burdened with responsibility for the poorest and most distant part of its once-mighty empire.
In the eyes of most of the world’s nations, Portugal is still East Timor’s legal ruler -
and it’s from a Lisbon apartment that journalist Jill Jolliffe, who first arrived in East Timor in August 1975, has been following the fate of its unfortunate people for ever since |
| 00.13.50 |
JILL JOLLIFFE IN VISION
super: JILL JOLLIFFE Freelance journalist |
JOLLIFFE Well it was a very interesting time for Timor, very moving really, because Timor had been effectively closed off from the outside world for the past half century and the people were very excited because they were being offered the chance of decolonisation, um political parties were permitted and were v quickly formed... |
| 00.14.14 |
APODETI BADGE ON PRISONERS
FRETILIN BANNER | there were three parties, uh there was UDT which was a pro-Portuguese rather conservative Catholic party, there was APODETI, a very tiny pro-Indonesian party and uh there was Fretilin |
| 00.14.30 |
JOLLIFFE. | which drew - in the opinion of most observers - drew the most support from the population
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| 00.14.40 | CIVIL WAR FOOTAGE.
| But the sudden abdication of Portugal left a vacuum which was hard to fill. By August 1975, relations between the rival parties had descended into a brief and bitter civil war.
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| 00.14.54 | CAMERA RUNNING ACROSS AIRFIELD
| GERALD STONE V/OVER 00.01.39 We’re just running - shooting has broken out in the vilage across the street, just get down behind the barrels here...DIP UNDER
The only Australian TV crew to arrive before the fighting ended was Channel Nine. Gerald Stone was a veteran correspondent of the Vietnam war.
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| 00.15.09 | STONE TO CAMERA | FIRING THEN STONE /that’s rifle fire, repeated rifle fire, before we heard mortar going off.
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| 00.15.29 | DEAD BODY AND WOMAN CRYING
FRETILIN GUARDING PRISONERS - SUGGEST PRISONERS
FRETILIN SOLDIERS ON TRUCK | The war was soon over.
By the end of August Fretilin’s opponents were under guard in Dili, or had been driven over the border into Indonesian Timor.
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| 00.15.38 |
SOEHARTO INSPECTS STATUE OF GENERALS,
RAMOS HORTA AND GARY SCULLY | But Fretilin was a party of the left - and East Timor’s giant neighbour Indonesia was ruled by a man who ten years earlier had come to power over the dead bodies of hundreds of thousands of Indonesian Communists. To President Soeharto and his generals, Fretilin’s leaders, like the fiery young Jose Ramos Horta, were out and out Communists -and unacceptable neighbours.
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| 00.16.01 | RAMOS HORTA IN VISION super: JOSE RAMOS HORTA Fretilin spokesman, 1975 | RAMOS HORTA They always call us Communists but they never call us freedom fighters, as nationalists, as Timorese patriots that want to liberate our people from colonialism, from oppression and exploitation, we are nationalists, that’s all.
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| 00.16.19 | FRETILIN SOLDIERS
| Officially, Indonesia accepted East Timor’s right to independence. Unofficially, Indonesia’s hard-line generals had no intention of tolerating what they saw as a second Cuba in their archipelago.
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| 00.16.31 | GERALD STONE | Gerald Stone had a very different impression of Fretilin.
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| 00.16.33 |
Super: GERALD STONE former reporter, Nine News
| STONE: Well my own view was that Fretilin was just a scared and sorry organisation, that had a fight for a few days then suddenly found itself in control of this country.
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| 00.16.44 | HOLMES | But they didn’t strike you as Communist bogey men?
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| 00.16.46 | STONE
FRETILIN SOLDIERS | Not at all, I mean , you know I mean they were young guys and I suppose they had socialist leanings, and the revolution of Che Guevara and all of that , but no there was no , I mean they were too naive to be Communists
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| 00.17.00 | WHITLAM MEETING WITH SOEHARTO
| Fretilin could expect little help from the Labor Prime Minister of its other giant neighbour, Australia. In a series of meetings in 1974 and 1975, Gough Whitlam made it clear to President Soeharto that in his view the best solution for East Timor was integration with Indonesia. And integration was what the generals were after.
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| 00.17.20 | STONE IN VISION | STONE: it was clear that building up and up was the threat that Indonesia was going to take over , nobody knew how, and so the story just became bigger and bigger.
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| 00.17.30 | MAP: BALIBO, THEN BATUGADE
| On October 8th 1975 the story became bigger still. Batugade, was little more than a border post on the coast road between the Indonesian and Portuguese halves of the island.
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| 00.17.42 | STILLS TIMORESE IN BATUGADE | That day its Fretilin defenders were driven out of the town and the old Portuguese fort by a sudden assault from West Timor.
The Indonesian media claimed that the attacking force consisted entirely of anti-Communist East Timorese, attempting to win back control of their own country
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| 00.18.01 | JOLLIFFE IN VISION
| But Jill Jolliffe, recently arrived in Dili, was told a different story by Fretilin. JILL JOLLIFFE I was we were told that there had been an Indonesian attack which seemed quite credible to me because they used - they allegedly used uh aircraft and naval bombardment to take it over and we knew that UDT didn’t have that sort of equipment so it sounded credible but we had no way of proving that without going...
HOLMES: Let me put it this way I mean for Australian journalists, what was the crucial |
| 00.18.31 | HOLMES IN VISION
JOLLIFFE IN VISION
| story to be told in October of 1975?
Well the story was to obtain proof of the Indonesian presence inside East Timor and Batugade suggested that there was indeed a presence and we needed to document that. |
| 00.18.51 | FRETILIN SOLDIERS IN BAIBO FORT
VIEW OF BATUGADE FROM FORT | And the place to go to try to document the Indonesian presence in Batugade was Balibo.
From its fort high on the hill Fretilin soldiers - and foreign journalists - could look down to the sea, and to Batugade.
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| 00.19.06 | AERIALS DILI
| On Friday October 10th, just two days after the takeover of Batugade, an aircraft chartered in Darwin by Channel Seven News landed at Dili airport.
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| 00.19.19 | CAR ARRIVES TURISMO
HOLMES DOWN CORRIDOR WITH JOAQUIM | Then as now, every journalist who comes to Dili stays at the Hotel Turismo. Jill Jolliffe was already here. Fresh off the plane, Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart from Channel Seven’s Melbourne newsroom checked in here too - indeed they probably had help with their bags from old Joaquim, who’s been here 33 years.
But they didn’t even stay the night. |
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| 00.19.40 | JILL JOLLIFFE | JOLLIFFE: they were very eager to get off very quickly, over lunch they asked a lot of questions about the situation,// but it was obvious that their main objective was to get down there to the border as quickly as possible and television was the perfect medium to show the Indonesian presence if they possibly could, they were going to dig in and wait and get what they could
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| 00.20.11 | HOLMES DRIVING TO BALIBO | On today’s bitumen roads, with a modern vehicle, it takes only three hours to get to Balibo from Dili. It was different in 1975.
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| 00.20.23 |
JEEP ON ROUGH ROAD
| FX OLD JEEP
It took the Channel 7 crew the whole of that afternoon, and most of the Saturday morning, to reach Balibo.
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| 00.20.29 | JEEP COMING INTO BALIBO - BEFORE IT TURNS CUT TO AROUND
OUR CAR THRU BALIBO - PAN TO HOUSE ON CORNER?
| JEEP FX
According to Greg Shackleton’s journal, when they first arrived, they followed a Fretilin convoy straight through the village, and out along the road to Batugade.
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| 00.20.39 |
super: GREG SHACKLETON’S JOURNAL
JEEP STOPS BY SOLDIERS
| SHACKLETON JOURNAL (evan) Then a truck ahead of us turned around, and so did an open car behind. We were told it wasn’t safe to go any further...Our driver didn’t want to come this far - he’s very scared we’ll be cut off from the rear and encircled.
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| 00.20.55 | AUSTRALIA FLAG HOUSE OR MAIN SQUARE
HOUSE TODAY
| And so, on Saturday October 11th, Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart spent their first night in Balibo - in the house on the corner where the road from Batugade meets the main square.
The description of the village in Greg Shackleton’s journal rings remarkably true today.
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| 00.21.14 | RUBBISH INSIDE HOUSE
FLOWERS
SUN ABOVE FORT
WOMAN AND CHILD IN ROAD | SHACKLETON’S JOURNAL
The buildings are deserted, dirty, strewn with rubbish and rent with holes or smashed windows. But the spectacular flowers remain, row upon row...and so does the magnificent weather, warm but not too hot... Balibo in short has all the tourist attractions one could ask for, except peace.
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| 00.21.34 |
FRETILIN SOLDIER RUNS - HELICOPTER - SOLDIERS ON ROAD DISCUSSING - LOOKING through BINOCULARS VIEW OF HILLS FOLLOWING | Indeed the Fretilin defenders of Balibo were nervous. On Sunday an Indonesian helicopter flew overhead. There were powerful rumours that the village was about to be attacked from across the border. At lunchtime, Fretilin decided to retreat further East.
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| 00.21.57 | GREG PAINTING SIGNS -
| It was then that Gary Cunningham filmed Greg Shackleton painting Australian flags, and the word Australia, on the walls of the house on the corner.
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| 00.22.05 | GREG SHACKLETON PTC
| SHACKLETON: “ At any rate we look like being the last people in the town and we’ll make a decision very shortly on whether we too should pull back. In the meantime we’ve daubed our house with the words Australia in red and the Australian flag in the house where we spent the night. We’re hoping it may afford us some protection”
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| 00.22.25 | FIRE
HOLMES TO CAMERA BESIDE FIRE | JONATHAN TO CAMERA In the end they did decide to pull out of Balibo that afternoon. They spent that Sunday night in a little hut just like this one somewhere outside the town of Maliana. And it was then that they had that conversation with Fretilin supporters that so moved Shackleton, Cunningham and Stewart. It’s clear that they were becoming emotionally involved with the Fretilin cause. But when, the next day, Fretilin decided to send reinforcements back into Balibo, the decision that Channel Seven made to go with them was motivated almost certainly simply by the newsman’s urge to get the story”. |
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| 00.22.57 |
super: MALCOLM RENNIE National Nine News
SHOT PANS PAST RENNIE TO SOLDIERS UNDER TREE
| Meanwhile back in Dili, Channel Nine reporter Malcolm Rennie had arrived.
RENNIE: Dili is a very changed city compared to when Channel Nine last visited this particular part of the country...
Rennie was a young Englishman, a police roundsman for National Nine News in Melbourne whom Gerald Stone, now Nine’s News Director, had decided to send to his first war-zone. |
| 00.23.17 | STONE IN VISION | GERALD STONE my instructions were as clear as anything, that no story is worth a person’s life, and that the worst thing a war correspondent can do is get killed. I mean that’s just it because he doesn’t get the story back and there’s nothing worth the risk, but at the same time, journalism is there to capture events, and if that event included an invasion, if that included firefights, then they were there for that . OUT 21.04.42
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| 00.23.47 |
| Rennie’s cameraman, Sydney-sider Brian Peters - another Englishman - was more experienced. In fact he’d been with Gerald Stone in East Timor two months before.
Jill Jolliffe remembers that they were both keen to follow Seven to Balibo.
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| 00.24.02 | JOLLIFFE IN VISION
DILI BEACH | JILL JOLLIFFE the three of us Malcolm Rennie Brian Peters and myself walked along Dili beach for a while just talking about the situation and what they could expect at the border and then they took off and that was the last I saw of them |
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| 00.24.17 |
FRETILIN PATROL
| By Tuesday the 14th, both crews were ensconced in Balibo. Together they went on patrol with Fretilin, occasionally getting in each other’s shot.
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| 00.24.29 | FRETILIN GUY SITTING ON BATLEMENTS MAN LOOKS THRU BINOCULARS SHIPS AT SEA
| Balibo was quiet. But ominously, from the fortress, they could see no fewer than six Indonesian warships moored just inside Indonesian waters. The storm was gathering.
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| 00.24.43 | REFUGEE CAMP FOOTAGE FROM INDONESIAN DOCO | Across the border, in the town of Atambua, some twenty thousand East Timorese refugees were crowded into unsanitary camps.
The camps were controlled, by the Indonesian authorities - and so were the UDT and APODETI soldiers who’d fled with them over the frontier.
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| 00.25.00 | STILL DADING IN COWBOY HAT AND SCARF
TEAM PHOTO - ZOOM IN TO YUNUS
| The military commander in the border region was this man: Dading Kalbuadi - despite his cowboy hat, he was a colonel in the Indonesian army’s elite red beret force, Kopassandha.
Under Dading was a team of young Kopassandha officers. They were dubbed by the Indonesian press “the blue jeans soldiers”, because they never wore military uniform. Among them was a certain Captain Yunus Yosfiah.
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| 00.25.25 | YUNUS AT PRESS CONFERENCE IN JAKARTA
| Today, he’s a Lieutenant-General - and Minister of Information in the new Habibie government. Every week he gives press conferences expanding on the President’s agenda for reform.
YUNUS TALKS BRIEFLY
But even twenty-three years ago he was no simple soldier. He’d been working undercover in East Timor for months - and he was about to play a crucial part in the deaths of the Balibo Five.
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| 00.25.55 | ARCHIVE FOOTAGE: KALBUADI
TIMORESE SOLDIERS TRAIN AT BATUGADE
| Dading Kalbuadi and his officers were planning to strike deeper into East Timor - but Indonesia’s involvement had to be deniable. They needed the cover of a Timorese force. They’d spent September training volunteers from the former UDT and Apodeti militias.
One of the first recruits was Olandino Guterres.
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| 00.26.15 | OLANDINO GUTERRES | OLANDINO SUBTITLES That was two weeks before…when we fled over the border.. that was when I were told this. .not just me, but also my Timorese companions were told… “Who wants to participate, and go with the Indonesian military to Balibo and Maliana?...give us your name”… and we went with the Indonesians to Balibo and also to Maliana
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| 00.26.50 | ZOOM DOWN HILL PAST CANNON TOWARDS COAST | There’s evidence from many sources that the Indonesian commanders down in Batugade were well aware of the presence of Australian journalists in Balibo.
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| 00.26.58 | L1 IN SILHOUETTE | One of those sources is this man, a UDT volunteer who was recruited by the Indonesians in Batugade to do special work for Colonel Dading Kalbuadi, the commander. |
| 00.27.09 |
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L1 (PORTUGUESE, SUBTITLED:)
JILL: And what was the work that you did for Dading Kalbuadi?
A: Intercepting conversations
JILL: What conversations?
L1: Fretilin communications
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| 00.27.22 | CONTINUE SHOT OF L1 UNDER NARRATION | As we’ll see later, he was a crucial witness in the Sherman inquiry. Tom Sherman talked to him in Lisbon, and gave him the codename L1. But this is information he didn’t give to Sherman.
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| 00.27.34 | L1 IN SILHOUETTE | SUBTITLES: I heard it on the radio - they said the journalists now - that is, on the Fretilin radio, speaking from Eagle Post to Rome Post,- they said that the Australian journalists, either three or five- were already in Balibo, they said they were there. The reply was: “message received”
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| 00.28.07 |
| JILL: And when you overheard this information, what were you expected to do? Did you write it down?
L1: I wrote it down, yes. I handed it in writing when I left my shift to Colonel (he wasn’t then a Brigadier) Dading Kalbuadi.
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| 00.28.21 | L1 CONTD | Witness L1 admitted to us that he hadn’t talked to Tom Sherman about his intelligence role, or his vital pre-knowledge of the presence of the Australian TV crews in Balibo:
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| 00.28.32 | L1 | L1 SUBTITLES
I didn’t say before that I was working in the secret radio post but now I say it because I trust you.
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| 00.28.39 |
| JILL: So what did you tell Sherman?
L1: I didn’t tell this to him because I didn’t trust him. |
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| 00.28.47 | MARIZ HANGS OUT WASHING | Across the world, in Western Sydney, lives another man who refused to speak to Sherman. But his evidence confirms that the Indonesians knew the Australian newsmen were in Balibo.
In October 1975, Fernando Mariz was a platoon commander of Timorese anti-Communist forces based in Batugade. His Indonesian superior was an officer he knew as Major Leo.
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| 00.29.12 | STILLS : TIMORESE TRAINING | During the day, he and his colleagues were busy training. In the evening, to pass the time, they’d listen to radio Fretilin, broadcasting in their own language from Dili. |
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00.29.41
00.29.44
00.30.06
00.30.12
| FERNANDO MARIZ AND HOLMES 2-SHOT
MARIZ IN VISION
HOLMES
MARIZ IN VISION
HOLMES IN VISION
STAY ON HOLMES MARIZ IN VISION
| One or two days before the attack on Balibo, says Fernando, they heard a surprising news item.
MARIZ: They said uh, in the news they said “five Australians journalists was in Balibo to film the movement of the war, the Indonesian troops or something like that.
HOLMES: So what did you do then?
MARIZ: Then we go to the compound where the general and the staff lived, eh? We saw Major Leo and I talked to Major Leo about the news we hear from the radio, broadcast from Dili, Radio Fretilin. He said “oh don’t worry, we know this few days ago, don’t worry we have a med...a proper medicine to give to them, don’t worry about this.
HOLMES: So what did you understand Major Leo to mean when he said he had medicine for the journalists?
MARIZ: This is uh, only killing. We know straight away that they get there, they finished, they finished..”
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| 00.30.23 | JEEP ARRIVES
RTP FOOTAGE: (black & white) PAN FROM SOLDIERS TO GOMES ON RAMPARTS
GOMES ON RAMPARTS AT BALIBO | Meanwhile in Balibo, on Wednesday October 15th, another TV crew had turned up.
Adelino Gomes was a reporter for RTP, the Portuguese public TV service.
SNATCH GOMES: Batugade etc... He was a veteran of Portugal’s colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique.
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| 00.30.50 | GOMES IN EDITING SUITE, LISBON
ALI ALITAS ON MONITOR: | Gomes is now a freelance producer who works in Lisbon, and maintains his interest in Timor and Indonesia.
GRAB ALITAS FROM MONITOR
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| 00.31.00 | GOMES EDITING | He remembers well the five Australian journalists he met in Balibo that day - and especially a conversation he had with Greg Shackleton.
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| 00.31.09 | GOMES IN VISION super: ADELINO GOMES former reporter, Portuguese TV | GOMES I invited them to come with me to Maliana which is 6 or 7km far , where we could have lunch finally and a bath, and they told me , but do you believe that , he made me the same question that you made , but if something happens where do you believe it will happen ? And I asked (answered) him here , at the border, at Balibo , and then he told me, well if this is the point , then I will stay here because I was sent to East Timor by my editor to get some minutes of combat , and if the combat will be here I must film it . They stayed there believing as I believed that it was there that something will happen
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| 00.32.04 | BALIBO SQUARE - PORTUGUESE FOOOTAGE
FOUR AUSSIES IN SQUARE | Before they left for Maliana, Gomes’s crew took this famous shot of four of the five Australians drinking beer in the square at Balibo. It’s the last known time they were photographed alive.
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| 00.32.19 |
FRETILIN BOARD TRUCK TONY STEWART LOADING GEAR
| Late that day, most of the Fretilin defenders of Balibo again withdrew - but this time - fatally, as it turned out - Channel 9 and 7 decided to stay.
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| 00.32.31
00.33.05
00.33.11
00.33.19 | HOLMES TO CAMERA
C/A HOUSE
PHOTO
SHOT OF FRETILIN SOLDIERS OUTSIDE HOUSE
BACK TO HOLMES IN FRONT OF HOUSE TODAY
| JONATHAN TO CAMERA For a long time it was assumed that they spent their last night here, in the house on the corner of the Batugade road. After all, that was where Adelino Gomes had filmed them that afternoon; this was where they’d painted the Australian flags. And this was where they’d spent every night up until now. But we can now be certain, from our own eyewitness and others, that some time between 5 pm on the afternoon of Wednesday 15th October, and 4 am on Thursday the 16th they moved to another Chinese-owned house across the square - that one, over there
Today, it’s surrounded by bushes and trees. But then, as this contemporary photograph shows, it was open to the street.
We don’t know why they moved. As channel 7’s own footage shows, the second house was usually occupied by Fretilin soldiers.
Perhaps their own house was damaged by the naval artillery shells which suddenly, at three o’clock in the morning, began crashing down on Balibo.
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| 00.33.27 | BOMBARDMENT
| FX
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| 00.33.34 | DISSOLVE TO MAP - SHOWING BATUGADE, MALIANA - ARROWS SHOW DIRECTION OF ADVANCE | The infantry attack on Balibo was launched at around four a.m. - not from Batugade, but from the South and East. A simultaneous assault was launched on Maliana, further east.
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| 00.33.46 | MOON, TREES AT DAWN | It was still dark when the assault began - but there was a moon. Most of the attackers were Indonesian special forces.
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| 00.33.54 | OLANDINO IN VISION | OLANDINO: SUBTITLES
Those who attacked Balibo were composed of three hundred or so people, counting the Indonesian forces, there would have been two companies, | |
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| and together with them a team called SUSI, which was commanded by Andreas, who is presently the Minister for Information of Indonesia, Yunus Yosfiah
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| 00.34.27 | STILL: ZOOM OUT FROM C/U YUNUS TO REVEAL W/S OF HIM AND OTHERS IN GROUP SHOT AT BALIBO | Numerous sources - including the Sherman report - have confirmed that Captain Yunus Yosfiah used the alias Major Andreas. He disguised more than his name. This photograph of Yunus, in the fashionable sunglasses and base-ball cap, was taken in Balibo shortly after the assault. | |
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| 00.34.46 | OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUBTITLES Andreas’s team, called Susi, always wore civilian pants, Levis, and tennis shoes, and even pyjamas, and they used AK weapons | |
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| 00.35.11 | DAWN SHOTS TREES ETC | According to Olandino, there was no more than token resistance from Fretilin as the attackers approached Balibo
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| 00.35.17 | OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUBTITLES the Resistance only fired against them for not more than a minute. because we only heard the sound of machine pistols, if I’m not mistaken then, after a minute of firing from the type of gun FRETILIN forces had, then it stopped, and I only heard the sound of the weapons used by the Indonesian military.-. .AK guns
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| 00.35.57 | WIDE SHOT BALIBO AT DAWN
TRACKING SHOT BESIDE HOUSE TO MALIANA ROAD - CHINESE HOUSE ACROSS ROAD.
| In the half-light before dawn, Olandino Guterres advanced into Balibo from the south-east. He reached the Maliana road without encountering any resistance. Then, less than twenty metres away, he saw four or five Indonesian soldiers from Team Susi firing into the windows of the Chinese house just across the street.
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| 00.36.17 | OLANDINO and house plan | OLANDINO SUB-TITLES from about 15-20 metres we saw that the Indonesians under the command of Andreas, one called MARCOS, another called CHRIS, and another called SIMON, and some others as well, whose name/s I don’t know, they fired into the house … but the one who went into the house to shoot was the one called CHRIS … he was the one who shot the five journalists inside | |
| 00.36.55 | OLANDINO WITH C/A’S OF HOUSE PLAN | At that time, I came down just here, and passed in front of the house And right in front of the house I heard Mr Andreas’ voice He gave an order to his soldiers..in Indonesian. !…”Just shoot! Just shoot!” so I went in front of the house and came up the side of the house .. | |
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| OLANDINO | at the side of the house there was a window, and I looked in through the window and I saw that Mr KRIS had entered the house, and shot the three journalists sitting in chairs and one leaning against the wall | |
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| HOUSE PLAN
OLANDINO | The three journalists were sitting here, there is a little table here and on top of the table if I’m not mistaken were coffee and peanuts a plate of peanuts on the table. | |
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| HOLMES | Now this is v important Olandino, do you think there is any way that those Indonesian soldiers could have known that the people inside that house were Australian journalists and not soldiers fighting for Fretilin, how would they have known?
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| OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUBTITLES It’s certain they knew they were journalists Because when they went into the house all the journalists’ equipment like film cameras and other things, like still cameras was lying on the cement floor of the room where the five journalists were seated.
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| 00.38.43 | HOLMES | HOLMES: And you’re quite postive that there was no firing from Fretilin, from the defenders of Balibo going on at the time that these journalists were shot?
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| 00.38.53 | OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUBTITLES While the journalists were being killed there was no shots being fired by Fretilin because I know very well the sound made by the type of weapons... that Fretilin used// | |
| 00.39.13 | OLANDINO | during the shooting there was only the sound of AK weapons, which were used by the Indonesian forces.
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| 00.39.25 | EXTERIOR BACK OF HOUSE AT DAWN | As soon as the first four journalists had been killed, says Olandino, he was ordered to go round to the back of the house. There was a man, it seemed, hiding in the bathroom.
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| 00.39.34 | OLANDINO and C/U HOUSE PLAN | OLANDINO SUBTITLES when I got to the door, the window, right next to the back door, I found Mr CHRIS/KRIS Mr CHRIS had a knife in his hands and threatened the other journalist who was in the bathroom | |
| 00.39.55 00.39.58 | HOUSE PLAN | HOLMES: And this is the casa de banio, the bathroom, is that right? OLANDINO: Si, si | |
| 00.40.00
| OLANDINO
HOLMES
OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUB-TITLES I saw KRIS, then, hit the bathroom doorway twice with the rifle butt He said that if he didn’t open the door he’d throw a grenade into the room then the journalist opened the bathroom door and came out. ..as soon as he came out, he put his two hands up saying, in English, if I’m not mistaken, “I am tourist, I am tourist [English]” And then KRIS, misunderstanding, threw his knife into the journalist’s back | |
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| OLANDINO
HOUSE PLAN
OLANDINO | and then he fell down, and when he had fallen down, they took the knife out of his back, out of the journalist’s back and they dragged him round the front, round into the front room, and put him against the wall where the other dead journalist was, the two leaning together | |
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| OLANDINO | …After this, they got the clothes that were hung out on the wall ..some Portuguese uniforms that were on the wall, and put them on the five journalists they put them on the journalists, and they also put some weapons next to the five journalists. .two weapons...of the FBP type ..the Sten, as the Indonesians say, and it was then that they took the photos of the five journalists. The one who took the photos could not have been any other person, it was ANDREAS himself who took the photos of the five journalists, dressed in Portuguese camouflage uniforms.. | |
| 00.42.13 | HOLMES | HOLMES: So who was in charge of this whole operation, who was giving the orders to change the uniforms and bring the guns in?
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| 00.42.20 | OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUBTITLES: At that time, the commander was Yunus, Andreas, .. it was he himself who ordered that the Portuguese military uniforms be put on and the two weapons next to.. the bodies of the five journalists
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| 00.42.39 | HOLMES | HOLMES: Did anyone tell you why they were dressing these journalists up in Portuguese uniforms - did you understand why this was happening?
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| 00.42.49 |
OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUBTITLES I think that was a tactic of the Indonesian soldiers. because they knew very well that they were journalists and not soldiers so they put the Portuguese military uniforms on them, as well as putting the guns there, to show everyone that these were soldiers... .but they weren’t soldiers, they were journalists
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| 00.43.15
00.43.23 | HOLMES
OLANDINO | HOLMES: so after they had photographed the bodies dressed in the uniforms with the guns, what happened next to those bodies ?
OLANDINO SUBTITLES After that, they took the weapons that were next to the bodies of the five journalists, and ordered the Timorese, as well as some of the Indonesian soldiers who were there .. to take the mattresses, and put them on top of the bodies of the five dead bodies . . and then ordered the Timorese to get a jerry-can of petrol.... and pour it over the bodies of the five journalists, and they burned them, right there in the house..
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| 00.44.13 | ARCHIVE - BURNING HOUSE
| This brief shot, filmed for Indonesian TV on the 16th of October, is evidence that there was a fire in the house on the corner of the Maliana road some time that day.
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| 00.44.25
00.44.34 | QUIET BALIBO SCENES
HOLMES TO CAMERA | COCK CROWING ?
HOLMES TO CAMERA Well, that’s Olandino Guterres’s story of how the Balibo Five were killed. As it happens, it strongly corroborates the account of the only other close eyewitness who’s ever talked to the media - a man who Jill Jolliffe interviewed in Lisbon for the National Times back in 1979. He too was a UDT soldier who took part in the assault on Balibo. He too said the killings occurred early in the morning, and identified this house behind me, not the house with the Australia flags, as the place where it happened. He too a group of Indonesian soldiers, firing through the windows of the house. But there were some important differences between Olandino’s version of events, and that of the 1979 eyewitness.
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| 00.45.16 | JILL JOLLIFFE | JOLLIFFE on his account as they approached the house uh one of the Australians came out the front of the house saying “don’t shoot, I’m Australian” and was shot down um others the others were then all shot through the windows of the house by the Indonesian troops, soon after that he saw uh another one of them come out a back door wounded, trailing blood, and attempt to run to another small house not v far away a police post uh but he didn’t make it because he was shot down before he could get there.
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| 00.45.56 | HOLMES ON VERANDAH OF HOUSE
WALKS TO CAMERA
| HOLMES TO CAMERA Olandino didn’t see any of the journalists trying to surrender outside the house - perhaps he arrived on the scene too late. And he insists that none of the victims were able to leave the house before they were killed. There are plenty of other mysteries. There is compelling evidence, for example, from people we’ve interviewed, that the bodies weren’t in fact burnt immediately but were moved and rephotographed, out in the open, later in the day. | |
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| 00.46.23 | HOLMES IN BALIBO | But what happened to their bodies is a less crucial question than this one: why were the Balibo Five kiled? Was it a tragic accident, perpetrated by soldiers hyped up for battle, who mistakenly assumed they were Fretilin defenders and then clumsily tried to cover up the mistake? Or was this a premeditated murder, on the orders of a commander who knew very well who they were, to prevent the news of Indonesian involvement in the attack leaking out?
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| 00.46.51 | TOM SHERMAN
L1 | In his report, Tom Sherman - who of course didn’t speak to any eyewitnesses - concluded they were probably killed in the heat of battle. He based that conclusion mainly on the evidence of the anonymous witness who he interviewed in Lisbon, codenamed L1.
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| 00.47.06
00.47.15 | L1 IN SILHOUETTE AND REVERSE QUESTION JILL IN PORTUGUESE
L1 IN VISION | PORTUGUESE WITH SUBTITLES JILL: To begin with, for purposes of identification, can you confirm that you are L1 of the Sherman report?
L1: I am L1, yes
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| 00.47.16 | CONTINUE SILHOUETTE SHOT
HOLMES AND JOLLIFFE
| A few weeks ago Jill Jolliffe and I re-interviewed L1 in Lisbon. He still declined to be identified, and he insisted on being questioned by Jill in Portuguese, rather than by me. | |
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| 00.47.28 | L1 IN SIHOUETTE | On the night of the attack on Balibo, he told us, he was monitoring radio Fretilin communications as usual, from Colonel Dading’s headquarters in Batugade.
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| 00.47.36 | L1 IN SILHOUETTE | L1 SUBTITLES during the night Fretilin spoke several times, saying they were in Bobonaro, Maliana, the Lois river, and then saying “Indonesia has entered Balibo”
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| 00.47.43 |
| JILL: What happened next
L1: I left my shift at 6 am and went to sleep on the back of a truck. Around 9 am, I had bad luck. I was on the truck and it took off as I was sleeping. I woke to find the truck moving. I beat on the cabin top to tell them to stop, but they didnt stop. I was fast asleep and they took off. It was bad luck - I didn’t have a gun, or anything.
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| 00.48.23 | HOLMES OUTSIDE AUSTRALIA FLAG HOUSE
HOLMES GOES TO HOUSE
ONTO VERANDAH, LOOKS THROUGH WINDOW
HOLMES TO DOOR, TURNS TO FACE CAMERA | HOLMES TO CAMERA And so, by pure accident, L1 found himself in the main square of Balibo at about 9.30 on the morning of the 16th. At that time he told Tom Sherman - at least according to the translations which appear in his report - that there was still hostile Fretilin fire coming from three directions; from the fort up there, from the ridge behind me there;; and - rather incredibly - from this house here, with the Australia flag painted on it.
At first, he told Sherman, he tried to shelter from all this firing by sheltering behind the house here - or perhaps behind that one over there. But after a while, the firing from this window had stopped and he went and had a look in. Inside, he told Sherman, he saw five dead Europeans and three Timorese bodies lying inside the house - in fact two of the Europeans had their feet sticking out onto the verandah here. | |
| 00.49.12
00.49.18 |
GRAPHIC: REPORT AND QUOTE | Now bear in mind, this is NOT the house in which, according to Olandino and all other eye-witnesses, the five Australians were located.”
Nevertheless, Tom Sherman commented in his report:
(EXTRACT FROM SHERMAN REPORT) “L1 was not a witness to the killings but his account is strong circumstantial evidence that the Balibo Five were killed while fighting was taking place. it is also direct evidence that hostile fire was coming from the house where the journalists bodies ere found”.
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| 00.49.41 | L1
| But now listen to what L1 told Jill Jolliffe and myself:
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| 00.49.44 | L1
MAP | L1 AND JILL: SUBTITLES When I went to this house, this house here the guys were stretched out on the ground. Here, at this window, I poked my head in, because there were still some stray shots
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| 00.49.57
00.49.59 | JUMP CUT OR FAST DISSOLVES ON THIS INTERVIEW | JILL: Who were the shots coming from? From what direction?
L1: I don’t know where they were coming from, I cant say. I don’t know whether they were Indonesian bullets or Fretilin. I was here, the bullets were pinging here - Tcha! Tcha!, and hitting the earth | |
| 00.50.13
00.50.16 | CUT/DISSOLVE TO | JILL: But the shots inside the town were not from Fretilin?
L1: No, no. They were already Indonesian shots.
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| 00.50.18
00.50.19 00.50.22
00.50.24 | CUT/DISSOLVE TO | JILL: And you didn’t see any shots fired from that house?
L1: No, or I wouldn’t have gone there. JILL: Or any other house?
L1: I wouldn’t have gone there
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| 00.50.28 | CUT/DISSOLVE TO | JILL Mr Sherman used the evidence that you gave to say that it was more likely that the journalists were killed in crossfire because when you entered there was still a battle
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| 00.50.43 |
| L1: No, when I entered there was no battle madam I saw no battle - don’t confuse things. When I entered, Indonesia had already taken Balibo. There had already been a battle, but I didn’t see it. As for resistance, I don’t know - I didn’t see it. I only know what I saw, and I know that when I entered there was no battle any more. A shot here, a shot there - hidden sniper fire, see? The battle, resistance, was over
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| 00.51.20 | PTC: HOLMES IN BALIBO | HOLMES TO CAMERA So, no battle, no hostile fire from inside the village, and certainly none from that house behind me there. Whether L1 is an inconsistent and unreliable witness; or whether Mr Sherman was badly served by his amateur interpreter, doesn’t really matter. The point is that his report’s conclusion, which placed so much reliance on L1’s evidence, must now be in grave doubt. | |
| 00.51.41 | COMPOSITE STILL OF BALIBO FIVE | But the question that Sherman was asked to address still remains. Was the killing of the Balibo Five an accident, or a crime?
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| 00.51.50 | GERALD STONE | As Gerald Stone points out, Olandino’s evidence, on its own, doesn’t settle the matter.
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| 00.51.56 | STONE IN VISION
super: GERALD STONE former
HOLMES LISTENING
STONE IN VISION | GERALD STONE I mean it’s legend that in the first 30 seconds or 40 seconds of troops overrunning another position , that that’s the most likely time they’ll kill prisoners because they’ve got their blood up and their heat is up , if you can survive that then you probably will survive . I’d ask // Did the commander, that we’re talking about, did he approach this from a firing squad angle, saying ‘line those men up and shoot them’, or do whatever, did they plan to shoot them when they came into the village?
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| 00.52.27 | W/S OLANDINO | Olandino Guterres has no doubt about the answer to that question.
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| 00.52.32 | OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUBTITLES At the time I really ... was upset seeing that scene in which the journalists died, when the Indonesian soldiers killed them Because I think, in my opinion// Mr Andreas could have ordered his soldiers to take the journalists, interrogate them and send them back to Jakarta or perhaps send them back to Australia but at that time I don’t think Mr Andreas wanted the journalists to go back to Australia | |
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| After the death of the five journalists, as they were killing them, Andreas himself said this to colleagues who spoke Indonesian
When we were together later, my companions told me that Andreas, Yunus, said that the five journalists had to be killed... because who knows, if one of them gets away, there could be problems with what happened to the other four, his four companions who died - it could be very important, tomorrow or later… there could be problems in the future between Australia and Indonesia, because the five journalists came from Australia.
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| 00.54.25 | LISBON - SCENES, FERRY, PEOPLE OFF FERRY
PULL FROM PEOPLE TO OLANDINO AT TABLE | MUSIC:
CROWD FX
Three days after we interviewed him in Bangkok, Olandino Guterres found himself having coffee on the waterfront in Lisbon.
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| 00.54.47 | JOLLIFFE, HOLMES, OLANDINO AT CAFE | He’s been granted political asylum, but he’s a reluctant refugee.
He’s homesick, and he’s worried about his family back in Timor. He knows first hand what the Indonesian military are capable of.
Soon after the Balibo event, he began to work secretly for the East Timorese resistance. | |
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| 00.55.07
| OLANDINO
HOLMES
OLANDINO | OLANDINO SUBTITLES That very day I started to change my mind, when I saw that the Indonesian soldiers were so... dangerous, such murderers.// After a while, when we entered the village of Atabai they killed some Timorese who were innocent and unarmed so many women and children. | |
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| OLANDINO AND HOLMES | And in Bacau I saw with my own eyes, when they murdered also// ..unarmed people, women who didn’t even know how to read and raped Timorese women, and they killed my brothers and sisters too and that’s why I changed my mind.
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| 00.55.57 | OLANDINO CRYING
OLANDINO CROSSES ROAD AND WALKS TOWARDS BIG SQUARE | Olandino Guterres has no love for Indonesia. He’s hardly an unbiased witness.
But nor was it easy for him to come forward, and agree to accept exile in a distant country, far from his home and his loved ones.
His evidence cannot lightly be dismissed. | |
| 00.56.18 | DISSOLVE TO FUNERAL
| MUSIC
PRIEST: We pray that at this present moment they are enjoying your blessed presence ...
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| 00.56.44 |
| More than twenty years after the event, new witnesses and new evidence about the Balibo killings are still turning up. This remarkable footage lay undiscovered in an ABC vault until just two years ago.
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| 00.57.00 | COFFIN INTO GRAVE | In December 1975, what was left of the bodies of the Balibo Five was buried in a single coffin in a Jakarta cemetery . The funeral was attended by Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott
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| 00.57.14 | WOOLCOTT SPEECH subtitles | WOOLCOTT SPEECH: (SUBTITLE) “these 5 young men as best as we can establish were tragically and regrettably killed in fighting around the small town of Balibo in Portuguese Timor |
| 00.57.36 | EARTH BEING SHOVELLED BACK ONTO COFFIN | The truth, like the sad, burnt bones of those innocent young men - one New Zealander, two Englishmen, and two Australians - has been buried a long time. Neither the Australian nor the Indonesian government has much interest in exhuming it.
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| 00.57.53 |
DISSOLVE TO C/U YUNUS AT PRESS CONFERENCE - SLO MO OR FREEZE | But one man knows for sure how, and why, the Balibo Five were killed: the man who’s now Indonesia’s Minister for Information, General Yunus Yosfiah.
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DISSOLVE TO GEORGE NEGUS IN STUDIO
| 00.58.07 | GEORGE IN VISION
GEORGE WAVES LETTER | NEGUS: Jonathan Holmes there with a twenty-three year old story that just won’t go away ….
A week ago, we sent a detailed fax to Minister Yunus Yosfiah in Jakarta, outlining the allegations made by Olandino Guterres and asking him to comment.
We received this polite letter back saying basically that the minister was too busy to grant us an interview. He added that as far as the killings of the Balibo Five were concerned, he was satisfied with the conclusions of the Sherman Report.
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| 00.58.33
00.58.47
00.59.00 |
MULADI IN VISION super: Prof. MULADI Indonesian Minister of Justice 1st June 1998
GEORGE IN VISION | But can the new Habibie government -- or the Australian Government for that matter -- let the matter rest there?
Five months ago, the Indonesian Justice Minister, Mr Muladi, said there should be an independent inquiry into the Balibo affair.
MULADI I think we have to clarify this problem in terms of international confidence. I agree to be investigated, yuh, accurately
Now today, mixed signals from Jakarta, London and indeed Canberra. President Habibie is reported to have told a Minister in the Blair Government that he could seek more information on the killings…There’s talk of a parliamentary inquiry in …And the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia admitted to the Age newspaper that Indonesia was not “blameless” but added that the case was closed.
Well despite the ambassador’s assertion, we’ve not heard the last of the “Balibo Five” story by a long shot.
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| 00.59.27 |
| That’s all from us for tonight. Next week …. Back to our usual format, with stories from around the globe. See you again then.
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| 00.59.32 | CREDITS SUPERED OVER FUNERAL FOOTAGE:
| MUSIC
ABC NEWSREADER (NOV 1975) Indonesian authorities have finally confirmed the deaths of the five Australian newsmen who have been presumed dead for some weeks in East Timor…and the Indonesian authorities now regard the incident as closed.
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| 00.59.44 |
| VOICE OF ABC JAKARTA CORRESPONDENT, NOV 1975 Australian officials doubt whether a complete picture will ever emerge of how the Australian newsmen died…Attempts by the Australian Embassy here in Jakarta for an eyewitness account have been ignored. It’s plain that…the Indonesian Government intend to assist inquiries no further.
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| 01.00.03 | Produced in asssociation with JILL JOLLIFFE
Reported and produced by JONATHAN HOLMES
| Australian officials are far from satisfied with the case but reluctantly admit there is little they can now do to obtain further information. As for the delay in identifying the bodies - four weeks in fact - the Indonesians have blamed poor communications. Frankly, very few observers are buying that story.
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| 01.00.25 | FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT LOGO Executive Producer WAYNE HARLEY | MUSIC ENDS. |