***First aired in 1995.
During the celebrations of the 50 years since the end of World War II in the Pacific, an East Timorese couple asked Japan end Australia to assume the wartime responsibilities over the death of dozens of thousands of East Timorese people.
Antonio Maia and Veronica Pereira Silva has been in Tokyo in the war crimes compensation forum, where they ask Japan to put more pressure on Indonesia regarding human rights in East Timor.
Australian Doctor Andrew MacNaughtan was in Tokyo with the Timorese. In an interview with SBS radio Portuguese language programme he said that Australia first violated East Timor neutrality, disembarking troops there on December 1941, what possibly triggered the Japanese invasion two months later, with dramatic results.
Veronica Pereira Maia was 15 years old when the Japanese arrived in East Timor. She was living with her father, grandparents and five sisters. Veronica tells us now her uncle was killed by the Japanese when they discovered that he was hiding three Australians at home.
“The Japanese were coming around every day asking about my uncle and then asking him “Where are the Australian soldiers?”. And my uncle always hide, saying “Don't have”, “Don't have”, “I didn't see Australian troops”. And later, one week, they took my uncle out of home, hit, hit him, for two weeks so, with bamboo, which can kill. Later they killed my uncle, it seems after four or seven hours of being beaten. They killed my uncle, aunt, grandmother, father, the whole family”, said Veronica.
Veronica also told us a young mother’s story, who had her husband killed by the Japanese and was brought to veronica's house, where she was used as sexual slave for three years, while the Japanese were there.
“They abused that Lady, with a little child, a baby. She was brought to our house Ann was walking around naked and then he was my grandmother, and my aunt, who gave some close to the lady. She was still kept at home with those men for three years time. She stayed in her house. They support her every day, every night all of them use her as a thing, as a woman of slave thing”, told Veronica.
SBS – Who was that lady?
Veronica – “The private Batista…of Facto-Lulik…The lady was from Bobanaro. Now she still alive, in Timor.
SBS - Is she still alive?
Veronica – Yes, in Bobanaro.
Veronica told us also what she wants from Japanese and Australians.
“I think that Japanese and Australians should sit together to take the Indonesian forces out of my land”.
Antonio Maia is 74 years old. He was 16 and was living in Lacluta when the Japanese arrived in Timor. He tells us now how the Japanese killed his three brothers-in-law, who fled a prison, in the moment when they were found by the Japanese.
“They were walking under the trees, looking at the branches with binoculars. They were up in the trees, on the branches. They punish my brothers in law there. They hang them from the tree, a “Jaca-tree”, they hang them, then they burnt “piri-piri”, those leaves, they did something like a fire torch and when they said that they couldn't afford it anymore they said bad words to the Japanese and the Japanese cut the rope from up, they fell down and they were beaten straight after with bamboo, on their heads. The three died”, said Antonio.
Antonio also spoke about Japanese and Australians.
“Now, indeed, when I arrived here, I said ‘I don't like the Japanese’. Right now at the conference, I said ‘I don't like them, I don't want’. Why? Because the people, yes Sir, has no blame. Only the soldiers. The military is what’s something that is…incredible”.
SBS - And the Australians in Timor?
“Australians, more or less. They were everywhere, around. They killed some people, those who were spies they killed. They didn't spoil people as the Japanese spoiled the women in Timor. They spoiled everything and more. My land at moment has no one there who's giving orders. Only Indonesia is over my land. Casually I came here to introduce to the Maubere people, what we suffer doing Japanese times, it's not just my family, it's everybody in Timor. Even Indonesians. Even Kupang. Even Tambua. Everybody suffered”.
Doctor Andrew MacNaughtan talks further about the claims of these two Timorese, Antonio Maia and Veronica Pereira Maia.
“The fact that both of these people lost a lot of family under the Japanese. Antonio Maia lost 32 family members under the Japanese and they both lost significant numbers of close under the Indonesian invasion. Part of the reason for coming here is not so much to talk about the history of Japan in World War II in Timor. It is very relevant, because of the ongoing problem here in East Timor, because the Japanese government is the biggest financial back of Indonesia. They make more investment in Indonesia than any other country. They give more foreign aid to Indonesia than any other country. Historically, the Japanese trained the Indonesian Militia and they became the Indonesian army. In a sense, the Indonesian army had its birth under the Japanese imperial army from 1943 to 1945. The Timorese people in Darwin through Antonio Maia and Veronica Pereira are actually trying to make the Japanese people and government be aware of the responsibility from the World War II to do something about the problem in East Timor now.”
The Timorese couple and Doctor Andrew MacNaughtan left Tokyo this morning for Darwin.
