Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface: The Dead, the State, and the People in Timor-Leste
- Introduction: Martyrs, Ancestors and Heroes: The Multiple Lives of Dead Bodies in Independent Timor-Leste
- Part I Ancestors, Martyrs and Heroes
- Part II The Dead in Everyday Life
- PART III The Dead and the Nation-State
- Index
6 - The Politics of Loss and Restoration: Massive Bad Death in the Oecussi Highlands
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface: The Dead, the State, and the People in Timor-Leste
- Introduction: Martyrs, Ancestors and Heroes: The Multiple Lives of Dead Bodies in Independent Timor-Leste
- Part I Ancestors, Martyrs and Heroes
- Part II The Dead in Everyday Life
- PART III The Dead and the Nation-State
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter engages with the after-effects of the Bobometo village massacre in Oecussi on the lives of surviving family members and the social and cultural world in which they live. Focusing on the dead and their ongoing relations with the living, it explores the multiple ‘lives’ and potencies of the ‘bad’ and political dead and their interplay. Based on cross-border ethnographic research, this chapter explores how these dynamics shape new forms of relatedness between the living and the dead, the local and the state, and within family networks now separated across the borderlands. It discusses what acts of remembrance for the conflict dead can tell us about the politics of loss and restoration in the aftermath of massive violence and bad death.
Keywords: bad death, borderlands, kinship, martyrs, restoration, Oecussi
Introduction
On a village hilltop in the southern highlands of Oecussi, an enclave of Timor-Leste, lies a cemetery that holds both local and national significance. More than 80 civilian victims of a massacre that took place during the post-ballot violence in 1999 are buried here. Weathered wooden crosses mark the rows of identical graves, shaped to resemble the motif of the country's national flag. They face a memorial, on which the names of the victims are engraved under an arch that reads ‘garden of heroes cemetery’ in the Indonesian language. The memorial also displays the signature of Xanana Gusmão, leader of the Resistance movement against the Indonesian occupation and the nation's first elected president, who inaugurated the site. Every year on the anniversary of the massacre (9 September) and on the commemoration of the Santa Cruz massacre in Dili, local residents and dignitaries gather at this place to remember the dead. They pay tribute not only to their war dead but also to the hundreds of thousands of East Timorese who perished under the 24-year Indonesian occupation (1975-1999). Altogether, the site creates an atmosphere of sacredness, of sacrifice, and, thereby, of dignified deaths.
Outside of official remembrance dates, the cemetery is secluded. Villagers avoid going near there and the main gate is usually shut. Only family members of the massacre victims visit the graves of their dead.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste , pp. 159 - 178Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020