Exposed as a spy, then a lucky break

THE shy young Timorese woman lifted her top to reveal four-year-old scars from her encounter with the SGI, the Indonesian army intelligence service.

THE shy young Timorese woman lifted her top to reveal four-year-old scars from her encounter with the SGI, the Indonesian army intelligence service.

At the age of 18, Ilisiga had spent five hours behind the unmarked gates at the SGI's Dili headquarters after the 1991 massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery. The bruises from the kicking and punching had gone but there were deep weals on her back and legs from the thrashing she received with a barbed-wire whip.

When I met her in September 1995 she was in hiding, moving from safe house to safe house like hundreds more East Timorese who had dared stand up to the Indonesian occupiers.

I had entered occupied East Timor on a brand-new passport, giving my occupation as teacher. But, from the moment I stepped off the flight from Denpasar, the only Caucasian on board, I knew they were watching. Only later did I discover how closely.

For three days I travelled the occupied country, sometimes in the boot of a car, to prearranged meetings with priests and former prisoners of the SGI, investigating the brutal repression used by the Indonesians to control the annexed state.

I heard familiar tales of torture, men and women suspended by their fingers, fingernails ripped out, electric shocks, a prisoner forced to eat his own excreta.

On my third night I dined alone at a Portuguese restaurant, savouring half a bottle of Dao, as two military men finished their meal and left without paying. "That is how they behave here," the restaurant owner said. "If we gave them a bill, there would be trouble." I left a generous tip and half a bottle of red wine, promising to return to finish it the following evening.

On the fourth day I was feeling confident, cocky even. The SGI must be stupid, I thought, if they can't spot a foreign journalist in their midst. Before breakfast I went for a stroll, planning to take a sneak picture of the SGI house of torture, the hated symbol of repression.

"Where do you come from mister? Where are you going?" It would be an innocent enough inquiry in most cities in Asia, but in occupied East Timor it was a question which invited an evasive response.

As I slipped my camera from my pocket, two men dressed in civilian clothing who had been loitering outside the SGI headquarters ran after me. You are a spy, they say. You have been taking photographs. Give me your camera.

In an inspired gesture of defiance, I opened the back of the camera and pulled the film off the spool. Photographs? No, I'm just a tourist. See for yourself. One man grabbed the camera, the other pinned me to the wall. What is your name?

"Nick," I replied. "Yes, Nicholas. Nicholas Cater."

He proceeded to tell me the name of the town I had visited the day before, making a mockery of my efforts to avoid being tailed.

For two hours they interrogated me, pushed up against the bonnet of a police vehicle in the courtyard. You are not a teacher. You are a spy. Where have you been in East Timor? Write it all down. This is big trouble for you. We can keep you here as long as we like. No one knows where you are.

I was shaking, but I kept my nerve. Eventually a man arrived with my film, back from the processor, blank of course, thanks to the sun which had erased the pictures of Ilisiga and her scarred back. Thank god.

My captors conferred. An immigration official who had been summoned to watch my interrogation said he would give me a lift. To the airport. We stopped at the Hotel Turismo to collect my bags. No time to wait for your laundry, the officer said. You have a plane to catch. Like my half-bottle of Dao at the restaurant, two T-shirts and a pair of shorts became my gift to the local economy.

On the way to the airport he introduced himself as Arief and told me his story. A civil servant from Java, Arief was missing his family.

"The Timorese call us Kapan Pulang," he told me. "In their language it means: 'When are you going home?"'

As we sat in the departure terminal, Arief produced a picture from his wallet of his pretty wife in a headscarf, with twin boys. I showed him a picture of my son and daughter, looking spruce and angelic in their Hong Kong school uniforms. By the time the flight was called I felt as if we were old friends. "This is a beautiful country," I told him. "But I will be pleased to leave."

"So will I," Arief replied. "So willI."

Nick Cater was based in Hong Kong as News Limited's Asia correspondent from 1993 to 1996.