A talk scheduled to be delivered in the Northern Territory Archives Centre, Darwin, on April 12 by Dr Vannessa Hearman will include the episode in which 18 desperate East Timorese crammed aboard a small wooden fishing boat in 1995 and sailed to the Territory capital, landing at the Larrakeyah Naval Base. They sought asylum on the grounds of Indonesian persecution after the November 12, l991 Dili Massacre in which more than 270 were shot dead by the Indonesian Army.
The flyer states the talk will provide an insight into the often turbulent relationship between Indonesia and Australia in the last years of the Keating Government. Dr Hearman is a lecturer in Indonesian studies at Charles Darwin University and her book, Unmarked Graves:Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia , is to be published later this year by the University of Singapore Press.
