-People are already in the cemetery, and then the shooting starts.

The vast majority of the people that got killed ran this way.

-Yes.

-Directly into the bullets.

The vast majority of the people that survived... -Is that who... -...ran that way.

-...ran that way.

[ Gunshots, people shouting indistinctly ] -And you were one of them that managed to escape through the cemetery?

-At the back side, yeah.

-Is it still crystal in your head?

-Yes, very.

Very much, very much.

-Liberty or death.

-Yeah.

-I'm Ian Grant, and I've spent the last three decades using my background in history and art history exploring cultures all around the world.

♪♪ In this series, I'll take you to places I've never been to before... ♪♪ ...experiencing local life through the lens of the world's artists, artisans, and keepers of culture.

This is "Culture Quest."

♪♪ -Gustavus Adolphus College equips students to lead purposeful lives and act on the great challenges of our time.

Gustavus -- make your life count.

-Over a billion people live with preventable blindness.

See International partners with volunteer doctors to provide sight-restoring surgeries in underserved communities around the world.

-This organization is united in one mission -- to restore sight to the blind.

-They purify the air I breathe and the water I drink... keep me and the planet cool... and give me a career I love.

Trees -- when we take care of them, they take care of us.

-We all seek different in our own ways because different reflects who you are, who you want to be.

The Northern Territory -- different in every sense.

-East Timor takes up mainly the northern half of Timor Island, just north of Australia.

It's the youngest country in this part of the world, declaring independence in 1999 after a brutal 24-year-long fight with Indonesia, a struggle that saw as many as 200,000 East Timorese losing their lives, as casualties of war, group executions, from starvation.

And while there is, of course, no way for us to encompass even a fraction of what happened here, there is a great place to start -- at an old prison turned war memorial museum in the capital city of Dili.

This episode has some hard moments in it.

But in order to talk about the present, you have to try and understand the past.

So for the first half of this episode, a little history.

-Good.

-Hugo.

-Hi.

Hey, yeah.

-Hugo Fernandes is the executive director of Centro Nacional Chega or just called Chega, a prison during Portuguese colonial times and then taken over by the Indonesians and used to house mainly political prisoners all through the war.

Now the prison has been turned into a museum that describes through displays, as well as the original prison itself, all that East Timor went through over the 24-year fight for independence.

Gotcha.

-All of these dates, all of these photos and moments in time reflect a very real part of the struggle.

They are an indicator of people losing their freedom, their liberty, their lives, and ultimately conquering insurmountable odds.

A tiny country on a tiny island in the Coral Triangle going up against a major and, at the time, aggressive world power and, eventually in 1999, winning.

One of the most important events on this timeline was the Santa Cruz Massacre of November 12, 1991.

Yeah.

A reporter managed to film the massacre when Indonesian soldiers opened fire on a group of mainly student protesters at the Santa Cruz Cemetery, killing scores of them.

It's that moment in time that we'll focus on later in the episode.

Throughout the museum, you see posters like this one describing the individual horror that so many people went through here.

"We hid in a friend's house from where we heard the screams of people being killed."

I mean, you see there -- "We were put in crates like chickens."

Is that a well?

-It's a well, and then after they kill people, then they just dump it down.

-The museum is also a repository for all of the evidence that was collected for a 2,500-page truth and reconciliation report.

And Hugo was the team research leader and co-editor of it.

-People testimonies, we recorded Indonesian military operations documents.

-Oh.

That's what all this is?

-Yeah, research, more than about 25,000 archives.

-That report was used in part as a guideline for reconciliation with Indonesia and reconstruction in East Timor.

Next, we move into the area where the high-level political prisoners were held and tortured.

-So, this is the -- the dark cells.

-All of the cells in this part of the prison were called dark cells, with any vestiges of light completely blocked out.

What?

-Yeah.

-You're going to drown in people's waste and filth.

-People waste and filth and everything.

-So you have to stand.

-You have to stand up.

This is a really dark one.

-Prisoners would be placed in here for days, weeks, or even months, left in complete darkness, occasionally being taken out to be tortured for information and then put back in.

-In one time, in that cell particularity, -Yeah.

-...have more than 32.

And immediately in the first night, two of them would die.

-So they couldn't even sit down.

-They couldn't even sit down.

-And the people that died -- -They just died, because of -- -32 people in there.

-32 people, yeah.

-Right when it all started, yeah.

Oh, so these are people that come in -- -Yeah.

We have -- -A major part of the museum's outreach is towards students, from school tours and guest lecturers, to university students holding weekly classes here.

Yeah.

This is Naldo Rei.

With a master's degree in international communications, he's worked for the United Nations as head of sustainable development here.

He's been a consultant for Oxfam, was the lead researcher for a United Nations report on East Timor's progress since independence, and he is a published author, including a book he is best known for called "Resistance: A Childhood Fighting for East Timor."

It's a personal account of his life in the East Timor resistance until he was in his mid-20s, and independence came to the country.

In his teens, he was a courier for the top clandestine leader, Sabally, during the war.

In 1984, when Naldo was 9, his family lived in the jungle.

And his father, a leader in the resistance, was captured and, along with five others, was executed somewhere on a jungle path without Naldo and his family knowing his father's fate.

When Naldo couldn't find answers, he wanted to join the resistance.

On his way back from meeting with the rebels, he was captured by the Indonesian army.

-And then when they capture me, they, you know, even appealed to the community, that, "Don't follow this boy's steps."

-Really?

-'Cause they try to -- -To use you as an example.

-Yeah, as an example.

-They tortured you when you were 9?

-Yes, yes, yes.

-We were at Chega.

So, you were actually in that prison at one point?

-Yes, yes.

-In the dark room?

-Dark room.

-Naldo was 17 years old at the time.

-But the worst is that, you know, when you enter the prison, they took all your clothes.

-So they throw you in there naked.

-Yeah, naked.

That toilet is already full, full and in everywhere, you know.

-Oh, on the floor and everything?

-On the floor, everywhere, everything.

-So they stick you in there naked.

So, there's no legal proceedings, right?

They can just pull you off the streets and -- -They can put you in the street, and they kill you, or they put you in prison for any days, any months, any years.

It's up to them.

-And were you in school during all this, too?

-Yeah, I go to study there as a student and work in the nighttime as a courier, clandestine courier.

-So your -- So -- So your life right then was you were in prison.

You come out.

You're reporting to the Indonesian army in the morning.

You're going to school to study, and then you're doing clandestine work in the evening.

-Yes, but I also, you know, study very hard because I got message from the guerrilla fighter -- "One day, Timor become independent."

-Mm-hmm.

-"If you don't study, who going to lead this country?"

-Were you still in school when the Santa Cruz -- -Yes.

-Oh, you were.

Okay.

-Yes, yes.

-How old were you when that happened?

-[ Sighs ] Think I was 16, 16 or 17.

-I think we should maybe head over there, if -- if you're -- if you're up for it.

-Definitely.

-And tell more of your incredible story, man.

Yeah.

-Definitely.

-Okay, let's do it.

-Let's go.

-The Santa Cruz massacre all started from a march in protest over the killing of independence supporter Sebastiao Gomes.

Rarely allowed in the country by the Indonesian government, reporters were also in town at the time of Gomes's memorial service at the Motile Church.

So the clandestine movement organized a big march from the church to the Santa Cruz cemetery to give reporters a glimpse into what was happening in East Timor.

As part of the clandestine group, Naldo circulated recorded messages from independence leader Xanana Gusmao urging people to join the march.

It ended up being the largest protest since occupation began, made up of mainly students and young people.

-When we come here is we started protesting, and then, you know, the young generation, the students, they already put, you know, banners on the top of that entry.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And, you know, they just already surround us, that, "Stop, you know, protesting."

But people keep yelling "Viva Timor-Leste" and "Indonesia out now."

-Yeah.

-And so suddenly, they start shooting.

[ Gunshots, siren wailing ] [ Indistinct shouting ] -There were several journalists at the massacre, one of whom was killed, two more severely beaten, but somehow the journalist Max Stahl managed to keep filming after the violence broke out.

-Well, lucky that he -- somehow he saved the tape.

-Max's footage eventually gets smuggled out of East Timor and makes its way back to England, where it's aired on television there and gets picked up by major networks and is seen all around the world, including in Indonesia, at long last drawing the world's attention.

-They bombarding from the sea, from -- from the land, and from the air, and the people flee to the jungle and then die from hunger.

Nobody pay attention.

-Nobody pays attention.

-The turning point was on 12 November 1991, Dili massacre, where the world opened their eyes, what happened, you know, really happened in East Timor.

-As for Naldo, this isn't even the midway point of his story of resistance.

At every turn, he would have another incredible anecdote of his times during the struggles.

And he's quick to say that he was just one of thousands of people with equally incredible stories, all of which collectively came together to create an independent East Timor.

-Sometimes people talk about mourning all the time.

So we should also think about the future.

So how we can value their sacrifice in the world.

That's what they want, the country in better shape and independent as a nation, as a country, as a people.

-Have self-determination.

-Self-determination, yes.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-On that note, we make a sharp turn to the future of East Timor, now over two decades since independence, and life here seems quite normal.

People going about their daily lives, after-work soccer games, bustling local markets, families and friends fishing at low tide.

It looks like what you would expect from any busy city on an island nation.

There is no denying that this country has had its fair share of struggles since independence in 1999.

But in the grand scheme of things, it's still a young country, and people here seem determined and hopeful.

And there are a lot of things for the country to pin its hopes on -- small- and large-scale fishing, strong agriculture of all variety, large oil and gas reserves, and a huge opportunity for all variety of tourism.

With a huge generation gap from the war, much of the hopes for the future of East Timor falls on the shoulders of the younger generation, and many of them have an eye towards progressive change.

This is a Inacia Teme, and she has a degree in marine biology and has already amassed quite a résumé working in conservation with an emphasis in marine biology and preservation.

She's also one of the original members of the group Buibere nia Riska, a women's art collective.

Yeah.

They won a commission to paint a mural on a giant wall in one of the busiest sections of town.

Yeah.

The project was created to give the artists a way to encourage people and empower women to collectively change social norms about violence against women.

The women in the collective decided to focus imagery on solutions and aspirations.

In a country that's trying to work its way towards gender equality, it's an especially big deal for young women and girls to be able to walk by a mural like this and see such positive images that they themselves could aspire to.

-This mural, it, like, also represents, like, to represent theirself, and that represents their hobbies.

Like, this one, like, she loves painting.

She loves music.

-Yeah, like -- like a C-section or something.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

Oh, to soar.

-Yeah.

This one means, like... -And is she crossing out the "can't"?

-Yeah.

-So now "woman can."

Brilliant.

-For me, it's, like, to express myself and represent women as a whole in Timor.

They can understand our feelings, our expressions through the paintings.

-Women's rights in East Timor have a little ways to go, right?

-Yes.

-But is it moving in that direction?

-Yeah, like, at the moment, like... -Women are in sports more and more here.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

Soccer player or anything.

But now -- now it's much more -- This is you.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

Oh, "women also can."

Yes.

It's early morning.

We're about to head over to Atauro Island.

I don't know if the camera will pick it up, but you can kind of see the outline of the island.

It's maybe an hour and a half as the crow flies straight across the ocean.

Nice, calm seas.

We're going straight to go spear fishing and free diving with these women that go out and catch fish for the village.

Atauro Island is just a little over 15 miles off the coast, and the communities that have lived there for centuries now survive in large part from what the ocean provides.

And this is an amazing bit of ocean.

It drops to over two miles deep between Dili and Atauro and is an important feeding and migration route for any variety of sea creature you can think of.

-We get 23 different species of dolphin and whale that either pass through here or are resident here permanently.

-Blue whales and sperm whales, huge dolphin pods that will happily surf the bow wave of your boat.

This little area in the Coral Triangle recently caught Conservation International's eye.

-They did a survey on the east coast of Atauro on a reef there.

And they said there is very few places in the world that have as high biodiversity as that reef there.

We get, in between the strait, super pods of 1,000-plus dolphins passing through, killer whales, pygmy killer whales, tons of different things.

-If you're a diver, this place should be high on your list.

After starting to see dwindling fish populations, the communities on Atauro recently collaborated with conservation groups to create protected marine areas and no-fishing zones all around the island in hopes of increasing fish stocks.

Dive companies agreed to pay a fee to dive here, and some of that money goes directly to the island's communities.

As a result of this collaboration, people are starting to catch more and larger fish.

Dive groups are seeing incredible marine life.

Traditional fishing villages are starting to see a second source of income through sustainable tourism, and large sections of reef all around the island are protected and thriving.

But this is why we're here -- to visit the village of Adara, and its spear-fishing women.

And it's so stunning here.

All we really had to do was turn our cameras on, slip into the water, and press record.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ The women, known in the region as Wawata Topu, which translates to "women divers," have made a name for themselves in an occupation that has, for centuries, traditionally been the domain of men, and they use whatever gear they can come up with to do it -- handmade wooden goggles, taped-together scuba masks, simple sharpened metal rods as spears, doing it all in their flip-flops and sarongs, whatever it takes to get the job done.

The men here go out on boats to fish every day, but sometimes the catch just isn't enough to make ends meet.

So the women fell back onto what they had done since childhood, swimming and diving for fish.

They mainly sell what they catch -- clam, octopus, fish -- and sell it at a market on the other side of the island, which is either a long boat ride or a two-hour trek over the island, because there are no roads in or out of Adara.

The extra money they earn is used to buy additional supplies for the village, as well as helping to send their kids to school.

The women here didn't set out to make social change.

They just wanted to put some extra food on their table.

But that simple act of them going out into the ocean and fishing is changing the way people on the island perceive gender roles.

And that speaks volumes for what's going on in this village.

One of the more striking things, in addition to the underwater landscape, was the nonstop laughter not only from the fisherwomen, but also from the rest of the village hanging out, watching what's going on.

Even this woman, trying to keep a serious face for the cameras, started to laugh.

And while they have their fair share of struggles living on the remote side of a remote island like this one, they were so welcoming, so genuine, so willing to share their culture.

We filmed here for the better part of a morning and an afternoon but could have stayed here for days.

So here we're just, what, a couple miles out of Dili, and it feels like a completely different place, right?

-Yes.

-White-sand beaches.

It's Sunday, so everyone's out playing, which has actually got to be -- after all that this country's been through, just to see kids playing in the water and having a good time and doing what kids should be doing.

-This is what we fought for.

We want to see the people to be happy, enjoy their life.

And those people who sacrificed themself, died for this country want to see them to be happy, to be the country that the base of the needs of the people itself.

-Mm-hmm.

-Not we just copy from another country and they're based here.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

Cut and paste, yeah.

-Cut and paste.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

-You know, we become an independent country, nobody believe it.

A small country in a war against the biggest country, giant country, but we won.

We won our freedom.

We're proud to be East Timorese.

-Yeah.

-We're proud to be called Maubere people.

So this is our identity.

To be -- the country to be more... ...as a proud country, as East Timorese.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Gustavus Adolphus College equips students to lead purposeful lives and act on the great challenges of our time.

Gustavus -- make your life count.

-Over a billion people live with preventable blindness.

See International partners with volunteer doctors to provide sight-restoring surgeries in underserved communities around the world.

-This organization is united in one mission -- to restore sight to the blind.

-They purify the air I breathe and the water I drink... keep me and the planet cool... and give me a career I love.

Trees -- when we take care of them, they take care of us.

-We all seek different in our own ways because different reflects who you are, who you want to be.

The Northern Territory -- different in every sense.