[TimorLesteStudies] Timor Archives: Revisiting 'Operation Skylight', 1978

[John Waddingham]

‘Operation Skylight’ is one of a number of particularly notable episodes in
the dramatic and tragic early years of the Indonesian military occupation
of Timor-Leste. This episode signifies heightened Indonesian
military pressure on an increasingly fragile resistance, the loss of
resistance radio contact with the outside world and culminates in the death
of the Fretilin leader Nicolau Lobato on the last day of 1978.

This still-sensitive historical topic has been a recent focus of animated
social media exchanges in Timor-Leste. A new CHART article provides a small
sample of surviving records from the period and summarises what we know
(and don’t know) about those 1978 events.

More materials need to be uncovered before it will be possible to conduct a
proper study of Operation Skylight. Such study may not resolve some
difficult questions. But it will get us much closer to understanding the
whole story at that time. It should also help us to better understand the
roles of individuals in the high-pressure 1978 environment of sharp
military conflict, internal divisions and general human catastrophe.

Full article at:
https://timorarchives.wordpress.com/2020/06/26/operation-skylight-1978-01/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Waddingham
Archivist / Manager
Clearing House for Archival Records on Timor Inc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/easttimorstudies/attachments/20200626/7ab272af/attachment.html>