Of Time and History: The Dead of War, Memory and the National Imaginary in Timor-Leste

Patterns of memorialisation in Timor-Leste have been shaped by political trajectories and priorities that are bound up with state-formation since the end of the Indonesian occupation in 1999. The state has tended to give priority to both the living and the dead in terms of their involvement in the military resistance by providing pensions for stillliving veterans and for the families of combatants killed in the war, as well as by establishing graves and ossuaries for the dead. Across these hierarchies, remembering the dead in Timor-Leste is both shaped by and embedded in different forms of temporality. On the one hand, memorialisation is part of the process of forming the new nation. On the other hand, it exists alongside what are referred to here as both ecclesiastical and customary temporalities. Remembering of the dead by the living-even when represented in empty cenotaphs and marked by political hierarchies-draws people into a kind of simultaneity across time and binds them not only to a distinctive past, but also to a new, reimagined future through collective mourning and recognition. A fuller sense of how the violence of the Indonesian occupation plays out in the post-conflict context can be found by considering other kinds of memorialisation concerning those killed in war, including graves and mortuary rituals. Both customary and ecclesiastical patterns of memory and temporality continue to be present in patterns of memorialisation.