BARBARITY, IN BLACK AND WHITE
by Ramona Koval
The Weekend Australian, May 16-17 1998

	Yet another envelope, and another book, lands on my desk. 
This one  is Free East Timor, edited by Jim Aubrey. The subtitle: 
Australia's Culpability in East Timor's Genocide. I've been 
reading John Pilger's new book, Hidden Agendas, and watching his 
1994 television documentary on east Timor, Death of A Nation. 
 	And even though I've just seen again the TV pictures of 
the bloody  1991 massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery, I am not 
prepared for the  photographs in Aubrey's collection of essays and 
documents that  unfold from the 23-year-old campaign.
 	A schoolgirl in her uniform - a modest skirt and clean 
white blouse  -is surrounded by five soldiers in army fatigues, 
holding her,  bending her over, covering her head with a black 
hood. Their faces  are covered with balaclavas. In the next 
photograph, they have taken  her blouse off and her shoes, and one 
of them seems to be cutting her  back with a knife. Is that blood 
streaming down her back?
  	Over the page they are taking down her white petticoat, 
and in the  next photograph a soldier is lying on top of her as 
another pushes  him down and a third holds her feet. The text 
under the photos tells me that she was raped knifed and tortured 
to death.
 	 I am reminded of  other photos I have seen in my life, of
strange piles of bodies, naked and stick-like. A breast here, a 
pubic mound  there, a mouth slung open and slack. Pictures of Jews 
like me, like  my parents, and others of children still alive with 
eyes popping out. 
 	The photos were black and white and grey, but you could 
smell the  rising stench. They were in a book commemorating those 
who died in  World War II. My mother confiscated it and hid it in 
the top cupboard  of her wardrobe. My little sister and I were 
careful not to  accidentally find it. We were afraid of what was 
possible in the  world, what people were capable of.
 	 I return to the East Timor book and another series of 
shots, this  time of a woman who was arrested outside the 
Cathedral in Dili on the  day Bishop Carlos Belo returned from 
Oslo in November 1997. According  to Aubrey, she was carrying a 
sign saying "Long live the Nobel Peace"  as well as a religious 
poster of Jesus in his robes, his arms  outstretched heavenwards. 
 	I can describe the poster because in one photo her body 
lies naked  in front of it and according to the translation from 
Bahasa  Indonesian, a hand-lettered sign says: "If you really are 
God, come  down and bring her back to life". Over the page, a 
soldier is  hammering nails into her body - a blasphemous 
crucifixion. Another  soldier holds a cigarette to her vulva, her 
body is splashed with  blood, and there is writing on her arms and 
legs. "Champion cat shit"  and "Dead like a rat" across her 
buttock and above her breasts  "Timorese champion". Of course, 
these are scenes that need no  translation.
 	The photos are from a series that was smuggled out of 
East Timor last year, and formed the basis for a photographic 
exhibition Stop Operation Annihilation, shown in Darwin and 
Melbourne  last year. After Darwin police confiscated the photos 
as offensive  and fined an East Timor activist $100, the 
exhibition went on to  Jerusalem, Dublin, London and New York. As 
usual there have been some  allegations of fakery. But the 
exhibition was launched by Justice  Marcus Einfeld and supported 
by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond  Tutu, and that's good 
enough for me.
 	Why is that photos that you hold in a book in your hands 
can disturb more than the moving pictures on a TV screen? Are we 
so used to the fiction of film that it makes images seem 
other-worldly, not connected to us? Are the images too fleeting, 
do they disappear too fast, can we more easily dismiss them from 
our minds as other images dance before us?
  	The still photo makes time stand still, stills us for 
contemplation. One fears what the regular use of image-enhanced 
computerised pictures will do to our ability to be truly moved by 
what we see. 
 	You may say that you don't want to read a detailed 
description of rape and torture while you have your breakfast or 
your  lunch on a perfectly fine Aussie Saturday morning. And it 
gives me no  pleasure to have to write it. But if you came upon 
the photos, you  too would never forget the schoolgirl in her 
uniform, the whiteness  of her blouse and her simple petticoat, 
and the blackness of the  hearts under soldiers' uniforms. 
Soldiers our own Government continues to help train.

   Free East Timor, edited by Jim Aubrey, Vintage, $19.95. 
An exhibition, Stop Operation Annihilation, will open on June 27 
at the University of Sydney's International House.