Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface: The Dead, the State, and the People in Timor-Leste
- Introduction: Martyrs, Ancestors and Heroes: The Multiple Lives of Dead Bodies in Independent Timor-Leste
- Part I Ancestors, Martyrs and Heroes
- Part II The Dead in Everyday Life
- PART III The Dead and the Nation-State
- Index
13 - Selling Names: The ‘Material Dimension’ of State Recognition of Martyrs in Timor-Leste
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface: The Dead, the State, and the People in Timor-Leste
- Introduction: Martyrs, Ancestors and Heroes: The Multiple Lives of Dead Bodies in Independent Timor-Leste
- Part I Ancestors, Martyrs and Heroes
- Part II The Dead in Everyday Life
- PART III The Dead and the Nation-State
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter focuses on pension payments to the families of martyrs and explores the ways in which resources have been marshalled to address the ‘material dimension’ of state recognition. It describes the complexities of this task, including the state's role in arbitrating whether a person who died in the conflict should be recognised as a ‘martyr’ and thus eligible for state support, and details the ways in which actors have grounded claims for material support. These distinctive discourses involve the mobilisation of the dead and their suffering to create material state obligations to the living. The final section takes a deeper look at the controversy around ‘selling names’, whereby the names of martyrs have taken on material value.
Keywords: pensions, Timor-Leste, martyrs, discourse, re-victimisation, commodification
Oh may we n’er them ungrateful prove!
But bless the impulse that their spirits rous’d,
And bless the patriots who our cause espous’d.
– Humphreys, 1783When national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value
than triumphs, as they impose duties, and require a common effort.
– Renan 2011, 83Introduction
The loss of thousands of Timorese to violence, disease and starvation during the Indonesian occupation and withdrawal (1975-1999), has left a legacy of pain, loss, and disequilibrium that continues to shape Timorese domestic, community, and political life decades later. Moreover, honouring those who fought and resisted the occupation, including those who perished and are now memorialised as martyrs, has also become central to the state-building project. Valorising the Resistance has enabled the bureaucratic extension of the state (through constructing pensions databases, for example), and is the domain in which the state asserts itself as the legitimate keeper and arbiter of these national histories and memories (Roll 2018a).
Less attention, however, has been paid to the political economies of loss. Yet this, too, merits attention: both veteran status and the recognition of martyrdom are tied to significant financial resources. Indeed, in 2006 the National Parliament recognised the ‘material dimension’ as one of the three core components of its public policies towards those who perished due to the occupation: ‘(1) the moral dimension of recognition and appreciation, (2) the material dimension of solidarity and retribution of social or socio-economic protection and (3) the dimension concerning the preservation of the memory, the conservation and dissemination of values and achievements of the resistance’ (Decree Law No. 5/2012).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste , pp. 305 - 326Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020