Introduction

An estimated 102,800 Timorese were killed or otherwise died as a result of the 24-year Indonesian occupation and preceding Timorese civil war (CAVR 2006, 6:3). How have these individuals been remembered in Timor-Leste's post-independence period? Scholars of Timor-Leste have focused on two main frameworks for remembering the war dead in Timor-Leste. On the one hand, the deceased have been remembered by and incorporated into familial units as ancestors; on the other hand, the deceased have been incorporated into the new nation state as heroes and martyrs. This chapter examines a third framework for remembering the dead in postindependence Timor-Leste. Put simply, if families of the deceased have remembered the war dead through a lens of ‘ancestorship’ and the Timorese nation-state has remembered the deceased through a lens of heroism and martyrdom, international human rights and transitional justice institutions in Timor-Leste have worked to remember the deceased through a lens of victimhood.

In Timor-Leste's immediate post-independence period, multiple human rights and transitional justice institutions were established inside Timor to help the new nation make sense of the violent Indonesian past. This article will examine the way one such institution – the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste/ CAVR) – has worked to frame the Timorese war dead as victims. It will then compare and contrast this framing with the Timorese State's presently dominant framing of the dead as heroes and martyrs.