“CAMSTL is not just on crime or murder or democracy or human rights. It is a forum for conversations across generations on any and all themes surrounding the Birth of a Nation, from sport to health to politics — how to build a nation.” Max Stahl, October 2021.
The Homage.
The work of the great filmmaker, journalist and humanitarian Christopher Max Stahl Wenner changed the course of history. Max’s video of the Nov. 12, 1991 massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery illuminated the plight of East Timor in an unprecedented way in the international arena. It is worth remembering that in the days after Santa Cruz, when Max’s video had not yet been seen, key Western governments – in Washington in particular – were trying to suggest that perhaps there was insufficient evidence of a massacre. The appearance of Max’s material demolished such arguments and gave an enormous boost to the international solidarity movement. Indeed, once viewed mainly as a tourist attraction in the public mind, Indonesia, in the recent words of Max, became known as a “massacre state.” As Max put it in recent months, Indonesia’s image before its key international backers in Europe and the USA never recovered. This helped set in motion a chain of events that led to East Timor’s independence in 2002.
However, Santa Cruz was only the beginning of a trajectory of devotion to the people of Timor-Leste that lasted 30 years until his passing. Max’s wider contributions, which continued in his final months, were vast, though less well known. His probing discernment was in evidence throughout, perhaps in keeping with his Jesuit education.
In a series of written exchanges in 2021 on matters concerning CAMSTL, Centro Audio Visual Max Stahl Timor-Leste, Max revealed that it was Noam Chomsky who set him on his “personal journey” with Timor-Leste, as he put it. It was at the time of the 1991 Gulf War when Chomsky was in Britain and raised the question of why Western nations who were quick to cite international law to justify their intervention in Kuwait but were ignoring the illegal and bloody Indonesian occupation of East Timor. This, coupled with contacts made by Shirley Shackleton, led Max to Timor in the period leading up to the Santa Cruz events.
Now, thirty years later, that connection led to an interview by Radio Televisao Portugues journalist-historian Antonio Louca with Noam Chomsky, aired in late October 2021, the week before Max’s death. I was privileged to be in extensive contact with Max in his final months when he shared his analysis not only of the grand impact of his historic Santa Cruz videotape but also an extensive account of the archive (CAMSTL) he founded and directed, with branches in Dili and Coimbra, which, as Chomsky emphasized in his interview, should be properly supported and highlighted for the benefit of the East Timorese people in the years and decades ahead.
It is worth recounting points that Max made, starting with a chronicle of his further investigations into the crimes at Santa Cruz which, out of the public eye, never received proper public attention. Max went on to risk his life time and again during the conflagration in 1999 when he accompanied displaced East Timorese who had fled to the countryside to escape the Indonesian sponsored militias.
Before and after independence, Max stayed close to the East Timorese who had put their lives on the line in the streets throughout the 1990s and merited justice and equity for their sacrifices, which Max never ceased emphasizing. Indeed, his audiovisual archive not only documents the crimes of the past but also provides a vehicle for building a better future — in short, healing the wounds of the occupation. In this, Max’s contributions are analogous to the physical healing carried out by his beloved wife Dr. Ingrid Bucens over the past two decades.
Out of this range of deeply lived experience grew CAMSTL, with the core historical archive registered with UNESCO.
Max’s own comments are of critical importance on the role of CAMSTL, starting with its wide potential utility, the central issues of dignity and values, in the past and for posterity. This extends to an array of practical concerns to build a better future for the people of Timor-Leste. As he put it in a written exchange on 22 August 2021, “CAMSTL is not just on crime or murder or democracy or human rights. It is a forum for conversations across generations on any and all themes surrounding the birth of a nation, from sport to health to politics — how to build a nation.”
Max stressed that CAMSTL “is making the point that the lives of people living and growing up in Timor-Leste are as valuable as those growing up in the USA or Europe and should be seen against the same standards. This of course applies to the Timorese or any Indonesians looking at themselves, as much as Europeans and Americans looking at them. All nations have a history, and without knowing it or understanding it, are doomed to repeat it.
So, making an Archive on ‘The Birth of a Nation’ is for me important to do now for any would be promoter of democracy…and doing this through the eyes of those living this experience…An audiovisual archive is for me a forum for conversation across generations, not a bookshelf for established facts.
Boa sorte e Ate logo!”
Humbling to witness, Max’s engagement never ceased. May his inspirational, generous soul rest in peace.
Arnold Kohen, Washington, DC, November 2, 2021.
Arnold Kohen is one of the world’s most-connected advocates for Timor-Leste. From the mid 1970’s, he was a leading activist and writer-researcher in support of the ‘Timor cause’ both in the United States and internationally. Through his work over the decades, he developed close links with a wide range of non-governmental figures and journalists, including Max Stahl.
Arnold and Max had a longstanding and deep friendship and they shared respectful admiration of one another’s work. Arnold wrote the ‘Homenagem to Max’ in the days following Max’s death in 2021. He sent it to Max’s wife Ingrid.
TATOLI
