"There's blood everywhere, there's blood on the walls, there's blood on the scaffolding…" The towering half-built cathedral became the militia's biggest weapon. "Bullets weren't used to shoot people because they were probably expensive. So they've just literally herded these people up three flights of stairs and thrown them off." Still at the place where he fell are what appear to be the Suai priest's glasses. There was no doubt that the militias viewed the defiantly pro-independence Suai a legitimate target. And here, as in the rest of Timor, it's the Indonesian military that are labelled the real villains. "First when they burned the houses they were burnt by the militias, but the Indonesian military was standing behind them." The victims of the brutal assault are now slowly returning to the burnt-out houses of Suai. On the run, without medical care, those bearing the wounds of their encounters with the militia are suffering from their neglect. An old man presents his three-week-old bullet-shattered arm to one of the few doctors to make it to Suai. The helicopters and armoured vehicles that now patrol the streets are too late to save the buildings and many of the people. But in Suai they're thankful anyway: there's not even a hint of anger that the world left them at the beginning of last month to the mercy of a spiteful and brutal and military operation. The soldiers here now are the grateful symbols that the terror of Black September is finally over.

Produced by ABC Australia