Not news

FIVE Australian-based journalists, known as the Balibo Five, were deliberately killed to prevent them from exposing Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor, a NSW coroner has found.

“The Balibo Five died at Balibo, in Timor Leste on 16 October 1975, from wounds sustained when (they) were shot and or stabbed deliberately, and not in the heat of battle, by members of the Indonesian special forces, including (Commander) Christoforus Da Silva and Captain Yunus Yosfiah on the orders of Captain Yosfiah to prevent (them) from revealing that Indonesian special forces had participated in the attack on Balibo,” Ms Pinch said.

We always knew this but couldn’t say it as it might have embarrassed Gough Whitlam

Mr Whitlam insisted at the inquest he had not known of the shooting until October 21, 1975, and could not recall a number of sensitive radio intercepts suggesting the men had been executed on official Indonesian orders.

Not knowing about the shooting until 21 Oct is reasonable but not recalling radio intercepts flies in the face of procedures. He would have been told about something as dramatic as journalists being murdered. The inquest also heard a navy linguist, Robin Dix, who translated an intercepted Indonesian military radio communication on the day of the invasion that was subsequently sent to the office of the prime minister and other government officials. “Five Australian journalists have been killed and all their corpses have been incinerated or burnt to a crisp,” the message read, Mr Dix told the inquest. “I will never forget it. I remember it word for word.” Rob Dix is a classmate of mine from the RAAF School of Languages where we both studied Bahasa Indonesia in the 60s. I’m glad he got his 15 minutes of fame although linguistic work, particularly at DSD, is generally kept hush-hush. Wouldn’t normally want the Indons to know we know, would we?