Photojournalist Elaine Briere was travelling the Southeast Asian “hippy trail” in 1974, a trip that brought her among other places to pre-invasion East Timor. She fell in love with the country. After its invasion, she found she had some of the very few high-quality images of pre-invasion East Timor. She shared them with solidarity groups around the world. Especially in Canadian activism, they became iconic. Some have even found their way back to independent Timor-Leste.
When Dalhousie University in Halifax started considering a project in Indonesia, a group of local people formed the Nova Scotia East Timor Group. The group, led by Bill Owen, Audrey Samson and Ross Shotton, undertook a letter-writing campaign to the Canadian government, the first time Ottawa felt compelled to respond to letters from the public. Ten years after the 1975 invasion of East Timor, the NSETG was instrumental in the Canadian component of an Amnesty International to raise awareness about human rights in East Timor. Under Indonesian rule, AI reported, some 200,000 Timorese had died.
Bill Owen (crouching) at NSETG literature table and banner showing, Halifax
Abé ho Aloz in performance. Timorese-Canadian duo Abé Barreto Soares and Aloz MacDonald performed numerous shows across Canada in support of the Timorese cause.
In 1983, Monsignor Martinho da Costa Lopes became the first Timorese voice to speak in Canada since the 1975 invasion. He had recently been removed as apostolic administrator of the diocese of Dili – in de facto terms, head of the Timorese Catholic church – for being too critical of Indonesia’s human rights record. Msgr da Costa Lopes came at the invitation of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, meeting Canadian Catholics and also lobbying the government and speaking to the Canadian media.
The same year also saw the release of Peter Monet’s film “Betrayed But Not Beaten,” the first documentary to be produced in North America about East Timor. -Image: screen shot of Martinho da Costa Lopes from the film
Various documents about the Museum for Textiles in Toronto. The Museum of Textiles is a non-profit educational organization incorporated in 1975. This item includes The Legend of the Crocodile Examples of textiles from Timor East-Timor; The Survival of a Vision The Buffalo and the Princess (Timorese folktale) A Swedish magazine: Forintesle i Paradiset A story of a Quail and a Rat
Various documents about the Museum for Textiles in Toronto. The Museum of Textiles is a non-profit educational organization incorporated in 1975. This item includes
Each year, a Canadian member of Parliamentarians for East Timor travelled to take part in international testimonies to the UN Decolonization Committee. -Dan Heap MP at the United Nations with José Luis Guterres of Fretilin and Charles Scheiner of ETAN/US
East Timor Alert network protesters attempt to block access to a loading bay at the Pratt and Whitney factory in Toronto. Pratt and Whitney was one company issued with military export licences to Indonesia. The protest aimed to highlight Canada's role in arming Indonesia as part of ETAN's campaign for an arms embargo on Indonesia. Photographer at right is one of the reporters who covered this event. The protesters were removed and arrested by local police.
In Canada, solidarity activists rallied to try to make a “citizen’s arrest” of Indonesian president Suharto at the 1997 APEC summit, picking up on the example of Timorese activists who had put their country’s struggle at the centre of the 1994 APEC summit in Jakarta. -Bella Galhos presents media with photos of torture in East Timor outside the APEC summit, Vancouver, 1997 (Photo: Elaine Briere)