The Santa cruz Massacre, 1991 : thirty years on

Editors :

• Vanessa Hearman
• Hannah Loney
• Marisa Ramos Goncalves
• Michael leach

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 comprise some of the papers from an online international symposium marking the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre held on 9-10 November 2021.

The symposium was held by the Timor-Leste Studies Association and the Centro Nacional Chega (CNC)!, Timor-Leste's national centre of memory and 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 firsthand 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.