Love story amid blood-soaked birth of nation

By Wendy Frew
Updated October 4 2012 - 12:28pm, first published October 1 2012 - 3:00am
Desire for justice ... Beatriz (Irim Tolentino) searches for her husband, Tomas, among the men killed in the village of Kraras in <i>A Guerra da Beatriz</i>.
Desire for justice ... Beatriz (Irim Tolentino) searches for her husband, Tomas, among the men killed in the village of Kraras in <i>A Guerra da Beatriz</i>.

HISTORIANS often say the past is a foreign country but in East Timor it's a thread that runs through the fabric of daily life. Reminders of Indonesia's brutal 24-year occupation are everywhere: burnt-out buildings in central Dili; the absence of men of a certain age; a memorial at the city's Santa Cruz cemetery to the victims of the 1991 massacre by Indonesian soldiers.

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