The view from the old fortress in Balibo is of the Savu Sea and volcanic slopes consisting of sun-torched branches and eroded soil. Children of war-plagued parents play here, running along the boulders that the Indonesian invaders sprayed with bullets that day in late 1975 when Timor-Leste was overrun by the Indonesian army and pro-Indonesian militias.
The children engage in a game where branches act as rifles and shadows from the trees are invisible enemies that needs to be defeated. Cows dig in the gravel next to the “integration monument” erected by Indonesia in the wake of its…
