ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the difficult sites of conflict, imprisonment, trauma and resistance are being remembered in the now independent nation of Timor-Leste. The initial proposal to rehabilitate the Comarca came from the association of ex-political prisoners in 2000 and was adopted by the then nascent Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) as an appropriate site to house the 'human rights history' of Timor-Leste. Timor-Leste has witnessed intergenerational disputes over national identity and official languages, a major political-military crisis in 2006, and wider 'history wars' within the former independence movement over the symbolic 'ownership' of the independence struggle and its core historical narratives. A generation earlier, an estimated 60,000 East Timorese were killed in the course of the Japanese occupation of Portuguese Timor from 1942 to 1945. In 1942, Japan was under considerable pressure from its Axis ally Germany to respect Portuguese neutrality, as Germany feared the Allies would be granted access to Portugal's naval bases in the Azores.
