East Timorese children study
in a roofless school destroyed by anti-independence militia in Dili.
East Timor
“We have to teach children
the history of our country, but we need to do it with a book that is impartial”
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Key dates
1520: Portuguese
invasion of East Timor.
April 25, 1974:
Triumph of Portugal’s Revolution of the Carnations opens the way to decolonization.
1975:
Civil war concludes with the declaration of independence by Fretilin (the Revolutionary
Front
for the Independence of East Timor).
July 17, 1976:
Indonesian President Suharto orders the annexation of East Timor, which becomes
an Indonesian province. Nicolau Lobato leads resistance to the occupying forces.
December 1978:
Lobato dies in combat.
Xanana Gusmao succeeds him.
November 12, 1991:
Indonesian troops kill 271 people in the Santa Cruz cemetery, Dili, during the
funeral of an independence activist. The West condemns
the massacre.
November 20, 1992:
Gusmao is arrested in Dili.
His initial sentence of life
imprisonment is commuted
to 20 years.
October 1996:
Dili Archbishop Carlos Ximenes Belo and José Ramos Horta, international
spokesman for the resistance, are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The campaign for
independence restarts.
May 1998:
Suharto resigns, and is succeeded by Yusuf Habibie. The East Timorese guerrillas
intensify their activities, and are met with a brutal crackdown by Indonesian troops.
January 27, 1999:
Indonesia announces an about-face in its policy towards East Timor. The province
will be offered autonomy; if rejected, the path to full independence will be open.
August 30, 1999:
The East Timorese vote in
the landmark referendum organized by the UN, with 78.5 percent rejecting
plans for provincial autonomy.The army and pro-Indonesian militias reacted by attacking
civilians and destroying local infrastructure.
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Money may be tight, but
East Timor’s school year began recently with plenty of enthusiasm. One of the people
in charge discusses what lies in store
 A school year without teachers, schools
or universities—just pupils. This is the challenge facing Armeido Maya, the former
rector of the University of Timor who is now running the country’s higher education
system. “If we could manage while occupied by Indonesia, just think what we can do
now that we’re free,” he declares.
Maya, 42, was born in East Timor under Portuguese rule. In 1975, only two weeks after
gaining independence from Portugal, the country was occupied by Indonesia. “I had
to give up my plans to enter the Jesuit school in Dili [the capital],” he says. “I
was 18 and very keen to learn, but for two and a half years I chose to live in the
jungle and the bush with my mother and two brothers as a member of the underground
resistance.”
When he left the Fretilín guerrillas and came back to Dili, he was tortured
by the occupation forces. After agonizing about what to do with his life, he gave
up the idea of becoming a priest though not his faith in East Timor’s independence.
Today, the problems are different. “Ninety-five percent of school buildings were
destroyed by the Indonesians a little over a year ago after the referendum that confirmed
our wish for independence,” he says. Rebuilding a poor country is tough. “The help
of the Catholic church has been very important,” says Maya, who spent five years
at the Catholic University in Java reading history and geography. The East Timorese
are 90 percent Catholic, and identify closely with a church that was on their side
during the bloody 24-year Indonesian occupation, in which 300,000 people were killed.
As a result, the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Archbishop Carlos Ximenes
Belo and the political leader José Ramos Horta.
Starting
from scratch: from language to history
“The education system needs
first aid,” says Maya. “To begin with, we want to teach computing, human rights,
English and Portuguese. This is what we need for training and informal education.”
The language problem in East Timor is especially serious since almost everyone speaks
the Bahasa of the Indonesian invaders, while the local Tetun language has a surprising
number of dialects. “Bahasa is going to be replaced by Tetun and Portuguese in primary
and secondary schools, and by Portuguese and English in higher education,” he says.
Language classes, however, are jeopardized by some very basic flaws. “We could only
begin the school year when classrooms had roofs and enough books and other materials,”
says Maya, who also points to a lack of good teachers. “Half of those who say they
can teach primary and secondary courses would fail professional tests.”
Things are not much better in the university. “We have 5,000 people wanting to take
courses in agronomy, education, economics or political science, which are our four
faculties, but we only have 1,000 places because 3,000 are already reserved for those
whose studies were interrupted last year. Furthermore, we only have 90 teachers for
the four faculties.”
The curriculum has also caused a number of headaches. “We have to teach children
the history of our country, but we need to do it with a book that is impartial and
based on democratic values,” he observes. “We’re working on a textbook with help
from foreign teachers, which will have to be ready within a year.” Then it will be
read under tin roofs, in classrooms with dirt floors, in buildings nobody ever thought
would become places of learning. The Jesuit Jacob Filomeno, who runs the refugee
office, simply notes that “every day we have 2,000 children gathered outside wanting
to take classes.”
UNICEF sent $490,000 worth of school supplies to East Timor, mainly in the form of
$300 kits designed by UNESCO “that were a success in Somalia and Rwanda” according
to Pilar Aguilar, the UNICEF representative in East Timor. “Each kit contains enough
materials for 80 pupils and a teacher in a class that can be held outdoors.”
Coping with a desperate situation does not faze Maya, whose only complaint is that
he does not have time to play chess and to read. Outside his office, the alleys and
streets are full of pigs, chickens and oxen while helicopters skim through the sky
to anxious glances from people below.
“Between 1993 and 1997, after returning from further studies in sociology and economics
in New Zealand, I was in charge of the University of Dili again and the situation
was worse,” recalls Maya. “I don’t mean in terms of poverty, but in terms of freedom.
The tyres of my car were slashed several times, I got death threats by phone. I had
to go into exile in the United States, to Minnesota. There I was, a man from the
tropics, used to temperatures of more than 30° C, passing the time in some place
where I remember being frightened by snow!” Maya had to go into exile several times
due to political fluctuations in East Timor, but his firm intention was always to
return.
But going home after the fall of former Indonesian dictator Suharto was no easy matter.
“After the independence referendum on August 30th of last year, we had to hide in
the mountains again,” he says. “I didn’t even have time to enjoy my honeymoon. But
now I’m back, and this time for good.” Maya hopes many other students and ex-students
share his desire to return. “Most who went to New Zealand and Australia to study
will come back. I’m sure of that. We need them to build the country. Their skills
are vital for our people and the thousands of children who have to go to school.”
For the moment, life is still confused and unstable. Witness the jumbled state of
East Timor’s small society: in marketplaces, several languages are mirrored by three
currencies—the U.S. dollar, which has been adopted
as the official currency, the Indonesian rupiah and the Australian dollar, both local
currencies from neighbouring states. “Over the next year, we’ll have elections and
a local Timorese government will take over from the country’s Brazilian administrator,
Sergio Vieira de Mello,” says Maya.
The present administration is a coalition that includes members of the National Council
of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), such as Maya, who also works in the education ministry,
and officials from the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).
“We’re working against the clock,” says Maya. “As well as the help from UNICEF, we’ve
also had $13 million from the World Bank that we’ve used for the most urgent repair
work and to provide some training for teachers and pay their wages.”
“Wages,” it should be said, is something of a euphemism. Maya is ready to tackle
all the problems that come his way, including hunger. He prefers not to talk about
it, but UNICEF is also taking care of the most urgent food needs of pupils and teachers,
some of whom are going to school on empty stomachs and are so tired that they cannot
concentrate for long. “But at least we’re free now,” says Maya with a smile.
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