Eyewitness: Short Story

In November 1991, Indonesian soldiers opened fire on protestors in Dili, the capital of East Timor, killing an estimated 250 people. For publishing a report on this massacre, Seno Gumira Ajidarma, editor of Jakarta-Jakarta magazine at the time, was dismissed from his position. He sought another way, to tell the truth about what was happening in East Timor –this time through “fiction.” The stories in Eyewitness both unsettle the mind and pull the heartstrings. With their strange, unnerving style, the stories also represent one brave author’s refusal to forget. “When journalism is gagged,” the author once said, ”literature must speak.”