more from Laloran Justisa

Laloran Justisa is up front about being didactic/educational: it covers issues like domestic abuse, alcoholism, presumption of innocence, nepotism, and so on. The most recent episode dealt in part with an upright young police officer with a secret in his past: his brothers were part of pro-Indonesia militias that formed after Timor-Leste declared in a 1999 referendum that it wanted to be independent of Indonesia.

( quickie historical review )

In an earlier episode, Vitór and the idealistic lawyer Rosa bump into each other at the Centro Nasional Chega, a museum that documents the abuses of the Indonesian occupation.



In another episode, Vitór is present at the commemoration of the anniversary of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, when the Indonesian military gunned down some 250 protestors, in Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, including schoolchildren.

Santa Cruz cemetery


Students participating in the commemoration


Vitór, in uniform this time, watching


His brothers' participation in pro-Indonesia militias is revealed, and he loses his job, but Rosa helps him recover it. It helps that he himself did not participate. But by having him talk about the situation in his suco (village) at the time, the show is able to broach why people did participate.

Here he's saying what his brothers did, but earlier he says, "In my village, there was a lot of pressure for us to be part of Indonesia, and those who joined the militia were given money, nice clothes, and good food." Since deliberate starvation was an Indonesian policy tactic that killed more than 180,000 people,¹ "good food" was a compelling benefit.



I think about this a lot, about how you weave together a people that have been unraveled.

¹Sian Powell, "UN Verdict on East Timor," The Australian, January 19, 2006, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.