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laughed that the kids were yelling at me,“ malae, malae”. With her father a Portuguese who had been stationed in Timor during the early 1970s she understood the meaning and context, explaining they were excited to see a‘ whitey’. At first I hadn’ t known what to think, although I was sure it wasn’ t in a racist context.
Liquicá seemed to confirm my thoughts. It was here that the Japanese had first taken control of the town from the Portuguese during World War II, saving it from the relentless bombings that destroyed most of the island. Then in the late 1990s it became synonymous with East Timorese independence when Indonesian militia massacred two hundred people attending the local parish church.
The resultant investigation by Australian diplomats, invited by the Indonesia government, soon led to an international police force being established in Liquicá. The force, under the auspices of Interpol, was called the UNTAET Crime Scene Detachment and had representatives from Great Britain, the Philippines,
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