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International Symposium

On 12 November 1991, Indonesian soldiers shot and killed over 200 people in a funerary march and pro-independence protest at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor. These proceedings are the result of an online international symposium marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Santa Cruz protest and the massacre. The symposium was held on 9-10 November 2021 by the Timor-Leste Studies Association and the Centro Nacional Chega (CNC)! Timor-Leste’s national centre of memory. The proceedings are dedicated to filmmaker Max Stahl, whose footage of the massacre had played such a pivotal role in raising awareness about the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. Over two days, almost 30 research papers and first-hand accounts were presented in English, Tetum and Portuguese, looking at topics such as the organisation of the protest, the impact of the massacre, and how these events have been remembered and commemorated in Timor-Leste and elsewhere. Recordings of all sessions of the symposium are available on YouTube, including those presentations that have not been published here.

Book Launch

The conference proceedings were officially launched in Dili at Centro Nacional Chega (CNC)! on July 15th 2023.

Photo details left to right: Hugo Fernandes, Gregorio Saldanha, Vannessa Hearman, Michael Leach, Marisa Ramos Gonçalves, Maria Madeira

Bibliographic details of the proceedings:

Vannessa Hearman, Hannah Loney, Marisa Ramos Gonçalves, and Michael Leach. eds. 2023. The Santa Cruz Massacre, 1991: Thirty Years On. Proceedings of an International Research Symposium. Hawthorn, Vic.: Swinburne University of Technology.