ABSTRACT
The origins of Fataluku labour migration to Europe and the UK at the end of the twentieth century lay in the resistance struggle for national independence. In developing this argument, Chapter 3 follows the radicalisation of young Timorese student activists from the 1980s. They became the civilian vanguard of the clandestine resistance front (frente clandestina) and operated as messengers (estafetas) for armed Falintil combatants in rural areas, and as protestors and social dissidents in the capital Dili, working to disrupt and challenge the presence of Indonesian forces. The chapter highlights the oppressive conditions that fostered activism and sustained resistance in the wake of Indonesian military invasion and occupation. The movement culminated in the Santa Cruz Cemetery massacre in Dili at the end of 1991 when hundreds of unarmed student activists were gunned down by the military, and many more apprehended and jailed in the weeks that followed. The events at Santa Cruz marked a turning point in the struggle for independence and led many young Fataluku (and other Timorese activists) to seek political asylum via occupation of European embassies in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. The chapter features a series of accounts from participants in these events. It is from these unlikely seeds of rebellion and exile that the first tentative steps to a bourgeoning transnational labour migration emerged.
