Timor and the empire-builders

TELLING: East Timor: Personal Testimonies 1942-1992 By Michele Turner (New South Wales University Press, $175) IF you enjoy eye-witness accounts of rape, torture, mutilation and execution, then this is the book for you. The work deals with Timor, that big island just to the north of Australia, the west end of which was formerly occupied by the Dutch, the east by the Portuguese.

World War II changed all that. The Japanese took over for a while; then after the war came the Javanese, the Indonesians who seem to be settled in for good or ill.

Judging by these edited interviews, it seems generally to be for ill. Goodness knows how many Timorese have died, whether they be of primarily Indonesian-Malay stock from the coast or Melanesian aboriginals in the mountains.

This is really two books in one: the first about the Japanese occupation, the second about the Javanese occupation. The author's technique has been to transcribe various interviews in sections with scant narrative in-between. It works, up to a point, butcan become extremely confusing.

Naturally enough, this being an Australian book, the first part involving the Japanese invasion has many references and passages concerning the Australian detachments which operated in Timor during World War II.

Interviewees often had European names as the Portuguese, as happened all over the world, had assimilated themselves into the fabric of East Timor society by intermarriage.