Cover-up: the inside story of the Balibo Five
By Jill Joliffe
Scribe Books
Melbourne, 2001
360 pages, $35
REVIEW BY JO ELLIS
It was close to dawn on October 16, 1975, when journalists Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie were killed in the border town of Balibo, East Timor.
What happened to the "Balibo Five", as they have come to be known, remains controversial. Killed by Indonesian troops, the bodies of the five were covered with mattresses and burnt in a fire that smouldered for days. The cover-up of how the journalists died continues.
Cover-up: the inside story of the Balibo Five is a serious and thoroughly researched attempt to find out what happened to the journalists. Jill Joliffe was also working as a journalist in East Timor when the five were killed. Her investigation spans the last 26 years and includes interviews with a range of people, including East Timorese people, Australian spies and government officials.
Joliffe argues that the story of the Balibo Five is pivotal in the history of East Timor. Shortly before their deaths, the men had filmed an attack on the East Timorese border by large numbers of Indonesian troops. The film would have provided indisputable evidence of an Indonesian invasion, disproving claims by the Indonesian government that the troubles at the border were the extension of a civil war between UDT and Fretilin.
All of the Balibo Five lived in Australia and worked for Australian media companies, Channel Nine and Channel Seven. Yet, the Labor government led by Gough Whitlam made no attempt to counter the misinformation coming from the Indonesian government. The widespread coverage of the deaths prompted a pause in the invasion but, in the "absence of any meaningful protest" from the Australian government, resumed in early November.
Much of the evidence that Joliffe presents is new, due to the partial declassification of official Australian documents last September. East Timor's independence also meant that Joliffe was able to film re-enactments in Balibo with several eyewitnesses.
That other Australian documents concerning the Balibo Five remain to be declassified means that mystery still surrounds the journalists' deaths.
In one of the most extraordinary sections of the book, Joliffe investigates a theory that Australian Special Air Service (SAS) troops were in Balibo at the time of the deaths and that they were under orders to remove the journalists. Although she was unable to obtain conclusive evidence, Joliffe states that the story, if true, points to the willingness of the Whitlam government to allow the Indonesian invasion "to go ahead without the embarrassment of media eyewitness and inconvenient Australians".
Whether this is true or not, the Australian government, along with the Indonesian government, is certainly guilty of hiding the truth about the Balibo Five. Before the Sherman Report, released in 1996, "no Australian official had admitted the presence of Indonesian regular forces in Balibo, let alone suggested their responsibility for the deaths", Joliffe reminds us.
Joliffe's careful search for the truth surrounding the deaths of the five journalists links the personal tragedies of five men to the national aspirations of the Timorese people which were disregarded and betrayed by the power-brokers in Jakarta and Canberra.
From Green Left Weekly, December 5, 2001.
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