In September 1974, socialists in Dili founded the Revolutionary Front for the Independence of Timor-Leste, better known as FRETILIN. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, FRETILIN grew from a small group of left-wing intellectuals into East Timor’s main independence party and armed resistance movement.
Remarkably the party survived Portuguese decolonization, a civil war, and a twenty-four-year guerilla struggle against a US-backed Indonesian dictator, General Suharto. In 2001, FRETILIN’s persistence paid off when the party won the first free and fair elections in Timor-Leste.
Crucial to their victory were efforts led by members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) to establish and maintain an illegal radio network linking Timor-Leste with the outside world. Known as Radio Maubere, it broadcast from remote areas of Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), a sparsely populated area twice the size of Texas. Between 1975 and 1978, Communists relayed coded messages between FRETILIN fighters, exiled party leaders, and overseas journalists. Their efforts inaugurated the decades-long fight against Indonesian occupation.
During the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor and the bloody occupation that followed, Radio Maubere exposed Indonesian war crimes, including the massacre and starvation of civilians. Suharto and Australian authorities tried to shut the network down, but radio operators used covert tactics to evade the army and police, for example, by posing as tourists and slipping into the bush under the cover of darkness. When Indonesia seized FRETILIN equipment, the CPA smuggled new transmitters disguised as boom boxes across the Timor Sea.
Radio Maubere drew international attention to Suharto’s genocidal campaign, forcing Australian…
Auteur: Zac Gillies-Palmer
