56 Asia The EconomistSeptember 14th 2019
1T
he prisonin the six interconnected
bungalows of Comarca became notori-
ous during the 24 years that Indonesia oc-
cupied East Timor. Many of those locked up
there for resisting the occupation did not
survive its torture cells. Comarca is now oc-
cupied by Centro Nacional Chega! (cnc), an
institution set up in 2016 to continue the
work of the truth commission established
after the Timorese voted for independence
in a un-supervised referendum in 1999.
Comarca has in recent weeks been re-
ceiving more foreign visitors than usual.
Many were in Dili for a party to mark the
20th anniversary of the referendum on Au-
gust 30th. The Timorese paid a big price for
freedom. The Indonesian army and its lo-
cal militias went on the rampage, killing at
least 1,400 Timorese and reducing the
country to ashes. Recently declassified
American documents show that the Ameri-
can and Australian governments knew
about the Indonesian army’s intentions for
months, but did nothing. They acted only
when the country was already burning.
The truth commission’s report, pub-
lished in 2005, includes a long list of rec-
ommendations to prevent the recurrence
of atrocities. But the Timorese government
chose to ignore them, partly so as not to up-
set Indonesia, its powerful neighbour, and
partly because of internal opposition. The
report was left to gather dust in churches
and libraries.
The cnc’s director, Hugo Fernandes,
wants to make sure East Timor “will learnfrom its past and knows its own history”.
Every group in East Timor has developed
its own narrative of the struggle for inde-
pendence, casting itself in a pivotal role.
The trick, he says, is “to balance these into
one communal history.”
It was partly with that aim that the gov-
ernment in 2009 created the “Order of Ti-
mor-Leste”, the highest national honour, to
acknowledge locals and foreigners who
have “contributed significantly” to the
country. Taur Matan Ruak, the prime min-
ister and a former resistance fighter, says it
is important to give young Timorese “altru-
istic role models”.
Some in government wanted to mark
the anniversary by conferring the order on
countries and institutions that helped in
the independence struggle. Bill Clinton
and Kofi Annan, respectively the American
president and unsecretary-general at the
time of the referendum, were both named
as recipients. But others argued the outside
world did too little, too late and that East Ti-
mor should rather reward individuals who
had taken personal risks for the country.
Several journalists who drew attention to
abuses under Indonesian occupation, in-
cluding your correspondent, made the list.
At the last minute, however, the president
decided to add two unofficials who had
worked on East Timor. Since there were no
spare medals for the presentation cere-
mony, that meant another prospective re-
cipient had to be dropped.
Saskia Kouwenberg, a Dutch journalist
and human-rights campaigner who man-
aged to smuggle out footage of an Indone-
sian massacre in 1991, was abruptly re-
moved from the list of recipients. Her
snubbing enraged civil-society groups.
They organised an alternative “popular sol-
idarity award” for her. The ceremony took
place in the forecourt of Comarca, neatly
fulfilling its mission to grapple with con-
flicting versions of the past. 7DILI
A row about awarding gongs reveals a
disputed pastEast TimorForeign medalling
Who to thank?I
ndustrial zones, residential develop-
ments, clinics and universities—the
mayor of Mongla’s ideas for his town’s ex-
pansion seem a bit ambitious. Mongla has
a mere 40,000 people; his office is in a
crumbling building hemmed in by forest.
But in five years, Zulfikar Ali insists, Mon-
gla will be a regional economic hub, ac-
commodating thousands of migrants
drawn by rapid industrialisation and
pushed by the loss of agricultural land to
the rising sea. (Already, the sea is eating
away at the surrounding low-lying delta re-
gion.) “I want to be ready,” he says.
In 1974 just 9% of Bangladeshis lived in
towns or cities. Today 37% of the country’s
170m people do. In a few decades more than
half will. The capital, Dhaka, which attracts
the majority of rural migrants, has grown
from 3m in 1980 to 18m today. It is “already
bursting at the seams”, says Saleemul Huq
of the International Centre for Climate
Change and Development, a think-tank
trying to bolster education and employ-
ment in eight places, including Mongla, to
help absorb migrants.
The surge of labour into Dhaka has pow-
ered Bangladesh’s brisk economic growth,
which has averaged 6.5% a year over the
past decade. Dhaka generates 35% of the
country’s gdp. The fast-growing garment
industry, which supplies around 11% of
gdp, employs lots of internal migrants.
But growth has come at a price. Accord-
ing to an index compiled by the Economist
Intelligence Unit, a sister company to The
Economist, Dhaka, notorious for traffic
jams and pollution, is the world’s third-
least liveable city. Some 60% of residents
live in makeshift structures, according to
the Centre for Urban Studies (cus), another
think-tank. Many of these slum-dwellers
lack access to clean water and sanitation
and are at constant risk of eviction.
In such conditions diseases—especially
waterborne ones—thrive. Frequent bouts
of illness that stop slum-dwellers from
working keep them trapped in poverty,
says Abdus Shaheen of Water & Sanitation
for the Urban Poor, an ngo. “This, of
course, hampers the wider economy, too,”
he adds.
There is also an environmental cost. Ev-
ery day 1.1m cubic metres of sewage are
pumped into Dhaka’s rivers. As the city has
expanded into nearby wetlands, a natural
drainage system has been destroyed, in-
creasing the risk of floods.MONGLA
The government is trying to muffle the
siren song of the capitalUrbanisation in BangladeshLife after Dhaka