REVIEW BY PIP HINMAN
A Woman of Independence: A story of love and the birth of a new nation
By Kirsty Sword Gusmao
Pan Macmillan Australia 2003
320 pages, $30 (pb)
Kirsty Sword Gusmao's book, A Woman of Independence, is not just a love story. Rather, it's a story of courage, will and idealism — and not just her own but a range of fellow fighters for East Timor's independence, some of them Indonesians.
It's also a gripping insiders' account of a part of the 29-year struggle for the political self-determination of the East Timorese nation.
Sword befriended an East Timorese student in Melbourne and first went to East Timor in the early 1990s. But before that she had visited Indonesia a number of times, interested in the language, history and politics.
Sword understood early on that the democracy struggle in Indonesia against the dictator Suharto and the struggle for East Timorese independence were inextricably linked.
Living with democracy activists, she quickly became aware that the Indonesian people, like the East Timorese, faced a common enemy. As she puts it: "My love for Indonesia was neither diminished by my growing awareness of conditions inside East Timor... oppression and military abuse of power was also the scourge of Indonesian society."
After a brief stay in Oxford, England, working in the Refugee Studies Program, Sword became restless and jumped at the chance to accompany a small film crew to occupied East Timor in 1991. The following year she decided to make Jakarta her home, befriending radical democracy activists and East Timorese refugees in and around the Skephi/Infight office.
English language classes kept Sword fed and housed, and helped cover the costs of transcribing, translating and editing her new friends' stories for broader distribution.
At one stage, Sword asked herself: "Why me? Why was I chosen to be their [East Timorese] confidante?" Her answer? "My status as a white foreigner conferred on me a certain immunity to the dangers they faced as the most maligned and distrusted of Indonesia's colonial subjects.
"I was one of the very few foreigners living in Indonesia who was prepared to put my privileged position and my ability to remain in the country on the line by actively supporting their cause. I had the added good fortune of being a woman and therefore doubly innocuous."
In 1993, one of the East Timorese prisoners whom Sword was in contact with asked her to carry out some errands for a new arrival at Jakarta's Cipinang prison, Xanana Gusmao.
This was the beginning of an exciting but dangerous chapter for Sword as she turned her effort and talent to helping boost the profile of the independence struggle internationally under guidance from one its central leaders.
East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in 1975, with the complicity of the then ALP government of Australia. While solidarity activists worked hard to oppose Canberra's complicity, they failed to end bi-partisan support for the Indonesian occupation.
The public outrage following the 1991 Dili massacre put the heat on Indonesia, but that too had started to die down by the mid-1990s.
In Australia, Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor began campaigning to link the two struggles, conclusions that Sword and her activist friends from East Timor and Indonesia had long since come to.
By this stage, Sword, with some technical help, had rigged up a system for keeping in touch with Gusmao as well as developments in East Timor. Black plastic bags were delivered every day or two to Sword, first with hand written requests, later with computer discs. Occasionally she'd receive some of Gusmao's prison-grown produce, and for special occasions, live produce!
Because of the trust she'd earned, Sword found herself at the centre of an elaborate system of international communications — a responsibility she continued to shoulder right up until after independence had finally been won.
The book had a particular poignancy for me as some of the Indonesian activists who were central to helping East Timorese refugees take their cause to the rest of the world in the 1990s are personal friends.
If it wasn't for these democracy activists, particularly those in the Indonesian Peoples Democratic Party who also put their own lives at risk, some of the more successful embassy stunts and asylum bids (where East Timorese successfully highlighted Indonesia's illegal occupation of their country in the international arena) would never have come off.
Sword's documentation of the difficulties, dangers and frustrations of being the imprisoned Gusmao's personal secretary, and later on his lover, make this book a fascinating read. Sword comes across as someone with a sense of proportion and, equally importantly, humility.
But A Women of Independence is about a lot more than Sword's personal story. Today, as the Indonesian military's violence in West Papua and Aceh looks unstoppable, this book reminds us that the seemingly impossible can happen. A nation's struggle for freedom can be realised if there's the political will — and international solidarity — to fight for it.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 3, 2004.
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