Timor-Leste‟s population stands at a little over 1 million (Govt. of Timor-Leste, 2010): 72% of these live in rural areas, working largely in subsistence agriculture: around 80% of crop production is for self consumption (World Bank, 2010). More than a third of the population is desperately poor: 37% have an income below $1.25 per day including almost half of those living in rural areas (UNDP, 2006) and this has worsened since 2001 (UN, 2009). Malnutrition remains a problem, with 43% of children under five underweight and 20% chronically malnourished (UNDP, 2006); a third of adult women are malnourished (UNICEF, 2003). In terms of human development, Timor-Leste ranks as the „worst performer‟ in East Asia and the Pacific, a direct result of more than two decades of Indonesian occupation. Food security remains a huge challenge, with many going short of food between November and February: 64% of families report food insecurity (UNDP, 2006). The poorest are households that have small landholdings and few or no livestock, and those with many children or elderly or other dependent relatives (ibid). The poorest half of the population has access to an average of less than 0.22 hectares of land. One of the most important differences in human development achievement is that seen between men and women: earned income is estimated to be only one eighth that of men and 10% of households are female headed, partly as a result of the history of conflict (UNDP, 2002). Many widows however move to live with their husband‟s family as a way to ensure survival. Women have fewer opportunities to earn their own income, two-thirds are illiterate, only a minority participate in the labour force and they have little voice in their communities. Inequality remains high in Timor-Leste in comparison with neighbouring provinces of Indonesia, driven by the urban-rural divide: income in the poorest district, Lautem, is almost half that of the capital, Dili (ibid). Poverty
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remains not just an impact of decades of conflict but the potential cause of future violence and instability (UN, 2006).
The Timorese consist of a number of distinct ethnic groups, most of which are of mixed Malayo-Polynesian and Melanesian/Papuan descent, as well as small Chinese and Muslim communities. The diversity of the population is seen in the large number of languages spoken, in excess of 30 (Fox, 2001). As a result of the Portuguese presence a population of mixed Portuguese-Timorese origin exists, known as mestiços, who formed a traditional elite close to the colonial power (Weatherbee, 1966). The huge variety of Timor-Leste, ethnically, linguistically and culturally make it difficult to generalise, but efforts will be made here to identify the most general features of Timorese society. The traditional beliefs of the people of Timor are animistic, and many of these traditions remain, having implications for attitudes towards death and the rituals associated with it:
Among the Timorese, this real life/non-physical life is translated into their view of the world, their cosmology and the world where they live [...], whereby the secular is inhabited by living things and the cosmos by the spirit and the ancestors. (Babo-Soares, 2004: 22).
Since the Portuguese presence however, Timor-Leste has been nominally Roman Catholic and the role of the Church in the resistance to the Indonesian occupation strengthened its position. Timorese responses to issues that impact on both the sacred and the profane are now driven by a syncretised understanding of the world that mixes the Catholic and the animist (see below).
Most Timorese live in villages, where traditional structures remain relevant to their lives. Those entrusted with spiritual matters, the lia nain, literally the „culture speakers‟, come from specific families and are in contact with the ancestors (Hohe and Nixon, 2003): they maintain ritual authority, including over the liurai, traditional former kings who maintain some political power. The structure of local secular and sacred hierarchies and the network of obligations between and within families creates a unified structure that traditionally represented both local governance and law (ibid.). In this sense structures of both governance and justice are “socio-cosmic” (ibid: 11), deeply embedded in the form that communities take and in shared beliefs of spiritual understandings arising from the importance of acting in accordance with the wishes of the ancestors. The most important part of local social organisation is the uma lulik
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(sacred house), which links an individual to his extended family and his ancestors (Hicks, 2004). Socio-cultural aspects of Timorese societies are interdependent, refuting efforts to separate the profane and the sacred, the legal and the social. A council of elders will traditionally have been chosen on the basis of a mix of hereditary rights and selection by senior male members of the community. Such hierarchies were used by both the Community Reconciliation Process of Timor-Leste‟s Truth Commission (see Section 4.3.3) and in informal reconciliation efforts at village level (Babo-Soares, 2004).
Timor-Leste remains a highly patriarchal society, reflected most visibly in the widespread practice of polygamy, and the fact that on marriage a woman moves into the home of her husband‟s family. Despite a constitution that guarantees women‟s rights and equality in all spheres, traditionally only men can own property and this culture persists in rural areas, ensuring that women remain dependent on men. Illiteracy is widespread, particularly among women of whom it is estimated 70% are illiterate. The family is at the heart of life in Timor, with strong networks among families that can be highly supportive. Marriage is the relationship not just between two individuals but between two families (Hohe and Nixon, 2003). The family can offer support, emotionally and financially, to women whose husbands are dead or missing. However, some families remain dysfunctional and domestic violence continues at high levels: a 2002 survey found that 43% of women respondents had experienced some form of domestic violence in the previous year (Ward, 2005).
Limited studies have been made of the mental health of the population of Timor- Leste, which is presumed to be highly impacted by the high levels of violence over 24 years. A study in 2000 found a prevalence of PTSD of 34% (Modvig et al., 2000), while one in 2008 found levels of 1.5% and noted that single, unemployed women are at a higher risk of PTSD (Silove et al., 2008). While there is a Government mental health service operating at some level in every district centre, in practice this is difficult for many in rural areas to access, and even in Dili services remain limited.
With estimates that as many as one third of Timor-Leste‟s population has died since the Indonesian invasion (Kiernan, 2003; Staveteig, 2007), for many Timorese death has become something with which they have too often been confronted. Whilst 90% of East Timorese claim to be Catholic, almost all continue to hold traditional beliefs, including that a spirit must be laid to rest after death, through burial or the offering of sacrifices; otherwise it may become a „wandering soul‟ (Hicks, 2004). Where someone
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has died a „bad death‟, i.e. an unnatural one, the spirit will seek vengeance on the family and the village: in this sense the issue is one for the community and not just the relatives of the dead:
A society, either an individual or a community, is required to recognise its
hun, its forebears, its lineage and its clan‟s origin, because these elements
represent the „source‟, the trunk of life. [...] It is a concept that embraces
maun-alin (elder-younger siblings), lineage, clan, kin; rai; the land one stands
on; uma, the house one lives in; mouris (life), the future one seeks to achieve; and rate, the graveyard of one‟s kin. (Babo-Soares, 2004: 22-23)
During the 24 years of terror under the Indonesians, large numbers of the dead were not put to rest according to tradition (Rawnsley, 2004): in some cases bodies were taken by those responsible for killings, in many others people died while they were in the mountains and separated from families. Following the end of the conflict, at all levels of society families sought to retrieve remains of relatives to make appropriate ritual, in some cases exhuming bodies where they had been buried by comrades or family members.20 President (then Foreign Minister) Jose Ramos Horta exhumed the body of one of four sisters who died during the violence of the occupation in 2002:
We knew where she had been buried. The local people buried her. When they saw her killed they knew it was my sister. They wrapped her properly, dressed her and ever since they have kept a guard on her grave. (Ramos- Horta, quoted in The Press, 2008)
Two of his brothers remain missing:
We still don't know where they are. We don't know where they were killed, how they were killed. We know they were killed in 1977. (ibid)
In the years since independence bodies of victims of the conflict have continued to be discovered, both by accident and design: in some neighbourhoods of Dili construction invariably reveals the corpses of such victims (e.g. Associated Press, 2010).
20
F-FDTL, the Timorese armed forces and successor to the Falintil resistance made efforts to exhume known resistance dead soon after its formation for reburial in a martyrs‟ cemetery (Private communication, F-FDTL officers.).
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CAVR confirmed “a cause of continuing deep anguish to relatives and friends is that the victim‟s remains have never been recovered” (CAVR, 2005: 7.2: 9). The dilemmas faced by the families of the Missing are illustrated by the story of a veteran of the Falintil resistance movement, Lu-Olo, whose family assumed he was dead since they hadn‟t seen him for 24 years and held a funeral rite. When he returned in 1999 they assumed he was a „wandering spirit‟ and found it hard to reconcile his presence among them (Rawnsley, 2004). For the women of the group Rate Laek („no grave‟) whose husbands were taken during the violence of 1999, they have little doubt their husbands are dead, but the fact that they have no bodies to bury and have been unable to perform the rituals their culture requires is a great sorrow (da Silva, 2002):
[W]e cannot begin to inquire into the truth of what happened until the mourning is finished. And mourning does not end until the bodies are properly buried and the spirits of the dead are able to be at rest. Now in East Timor we have passed the initial time of mourning; some refugees need to bring home the bodies of their dead to their traditional places. (Isabel Amaral-Guterres, quoted in Rawnsley, 2004: 13)
Beyond those whose fate or grave is unknown, are those who are buried but away from traditional burial grounds where family members cannot visit. In such cases arising from the conflict exhumation and secondary burial has become common, such that relatives can have „proper‟ graves (Field, 2005).