portrait of Floriana © Marcus Perkins/ Progressio

What is life really like for people in East Timor today? Floriana Nunes Saldanha tells Campaigns Officer Brie O’Keefe’s her dramatic story. Her husband was murdered in the violence at independence and she has brought up her eight children alone.

‘We have all been through a horror,’ she says. ‘After the result of the referendum for independence people were really happy. Everyone was hugging each other. Finally, we would be independent and free.

‘It was a happy moment, but it didn’t last. In the afternoon the army started shooting.

My husband told me to take the kids to the local church so that we would be safe. I didn’t want to, but he said it would be OK, that nothing would happen to him. He insisted. So I took six of the children and left two with him.

‘Everyone else did the same. The men stayed at home to protect our houses from looters and the militia. The church was full of women and children.

‘Every day the men visited their families in the church to let them know that they were all right.

‘One day my husband didn’t come. So I went home to look for him. He wasn’t there. So I went up into the hills behind our house to look for him.

‘People had been running away, trying to escape from the militia. Luciano ran too. I found him lying there in the hills. He had been shot in the front and the back.

‘We buried him in the hills at first. Later, we brought his body down here for a proper burial.

‘I found out a little about what had happened that day. The militia and the Indonesian army came here and killed 11 men. Other women lost their husbands that day too.

‘I think that there was a particular reason that he was killed. Although he worked for the Indonesians as a civil servant, Luciano was pro-independence. The Indonesians were looking for him.

‘Since Luciano was killed I have had to work very hard to support my children, to send them to school. I’ve picked coffee, worked as a nanny, washed people’s clothes, cleaned their houses and looked after their children. Now my main income is from selling firewood. I used to keep pigs, but they all got sick.

‘I want to ensure that my children get an education for their future. I won’t be around forever.

‘What do I hope for the future? Two things. I expect the government to help me to look after my kids.

‘But I want justice too. I don’t know who killed my husband, so I’m expecting the government to do something for me to support me.’