A special service was held at the weekend in the Holy Family Catholic Church , Karama, Darwin , above, for Shirley Shackleton ,9l, who died in Melbourne on January 15 . The widow of reporter Greg Shackleton ,one of five media people killed during the Indonesian invasion of Balibo in l975 , she fought long and hard to get to the truth of the event , writing a book, taking part in films , strongly supporting East Timor's battle for freedom .
Messages about Shirley flooded in to Darwin agronomist and activist Robert Wesley-Smith , long involved in the East Timor Struggle .
He recalled taking part in a tree planting ceremony with Shirley Shackleton at Balibo where she gave him one to plant to honour journalist Roger East , who had gone from Darwin to Dili to support Fretilin and investigate the Balibo deaths , ending up murdered .
East is arrowed in the above photograph at a Darwin Reconstruction Commission arranged media conference . The reporter to East's right is Peter Blake , later employed in New York .
Wesley-Smith subsequently played East in the re-enactment of him being shot and thrown into the harbour at Dili.
American political activist , Noam Chomsky, who strongly condemned the East Timor invasion , expressed sorrow at the news of Shirley Shackleton's death , saying she had been " a wonderful person."
A few days before she died she had been sent a Free Julian Assange badge , having long admired the Wikileaks founder's exposes, truth telling .
In the emails forwarded to Wesley-Smith was one containing part of the transcript of a British television film , Balibo . The Final Chapter , in which Shirley Shackleton rails against the cover up by governments , the lies .
A film version of Shackleton's 2010 book, Circle of Silence . A Personal testimony before , during and after Balibo , was made by Luigi and Stella Acquisto and Lurder Pires ,
Extracts from an email sent by Luigi and Pires included the following background information :
Shirley Shackleton came into our lives when we started making the documentary Circle of Silence, inspired by her rich life, fierce and uncompromising drive to uncover the truth about the Balibo murders and the subsequent invasion of East Timor.
Shirley's husband Greg Shackleton and four other Australian based journalists, Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie were murdered in Balibo on October 16, 1975. Stella and I worked on the film with Lurdes Pires who'd first met Shirley in Darwin in the late 1970s.
Shirley became a great collaborator on the film. We travelled twice to East Timor and Indonesia, and to Perth and Canberra to investigate the murders.
She later wrote and recorded the narration for the film and was able to attend a private screening before her death. During her illness she never lost her spirit, her fight to know what 'really happened' in Balibo and why the crime was covered up by every Australian Government since.
Circle of Silence exposes some of the fictions created by the Australian and Indonesian Governments to hide the truth about the mass killings and the role Australia played in the invasion of East Timor and the subsequent genocide. More needs to be done as called for by Jose Ramos-Horta, President of Timor-Leste.
Circle of Silence was screened at the Mumbai International Film Festival and will have a limited release in Australian cinemas early this year. It is a Fair Trade Films Production in association with Dili Film Works...
A funeral service was held in Melbourne and viewed by many around the world . The following display in the Darwin church was set up on Timorese Tais woven cloth .
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