Tom Hyland: Raising a Voice When No One is Listening.

Tom Hyland passed away on Christmas Eve. If you don’t know about the 24-year occupation of East Timor by the Indonesian military, if you’re not aware that one third of the small island nation’s population were killed by Indonesian soldiers, you have probably never heard his name. If you know the history of East Timor (now Timor-Leste) over the last 50 years, you already know who he was.

I met Tom once, in 2002, after East Timor had thrown off the occupation and was just getting on its feet as a new democracy—the first new democracy of our millennium. I had him on my list for years after, to try to sit down with him and hear his stories. I didn’t make it. Now I just hear it from others.

In 1992, Tom Hyland was an unemployed bus driver in Dublin, Ireland. In a card game with friends one evening, he saw something on television that caught his attention—a documentary called Cold Blood: The Massacre of East Timor, by John Pilger. It’s about the day in 1991 when, at the height of the occupation and brutality, thousands of young Timorese students staged a non-violent protest for democracy in the Santa Cruz Cemetery in Dili. Indonesian soldiers opened fire on the students, killing close to 300 and injuring nearly 400 more. Another 270 student protesters simply “disappeared.”

British journalist Max Stahl hid behind a gravestone filming parts of the massacre. He stashed the mini-DV tapes in a grave before being arrested; later that night, after being released, he climbed the wall of the cemetery and retrieved the tapes. Max and other activists, including Amy Goodman, arranged for the tapes to be spirited out of the country and released to the international media. That’s the footage that came on in Dublin during the card game.

Hyland was incensed and decided to do something. The next day he gathered some friends and formed Ireland’s East Timor Solidarity Campaign – a group of “ordinary” Irish men and women who stepped up to be the voice of a people who were unheard, silenced, as their families were being slaughtered. Tom and his friends made calls. They talked to groups. They worked to expose the involvement of Western nations in supporting the brutal occupation. They petitioned the government – 65 times between 1992 and 1996. One of the people who remembers his repeated calls was Michael Higgins, a member of the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish legislature, named Michael Higgins. Higgins is now President of Ireland.

The East Timor Solidarity Campaign spoke to UN groups and conferences. In the second half of 1996, when Ireland held the EU Council Presidency, Ireland brought the East Timor conflict onto the agenda of the European Union, stirring opposition from the United Kingdom and Germany.

Hyland hosted and supported José Ramos Horta, the Timorese diplomat who was instrumental in ending the occupation through international pressure and diplomacy, and in 1966, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, when he came to Ireland. He was instrumental in seeing David Andrews, then Irish minister for foreign affairs, appointed EU special envoy to East Timor; Andrews brought a planeload of observers to the UN independence referendum in 1999. Irish aid agencies Concern, Trócaire, and Goal all established branches in East Timor. Irish soldiers served as UN peacekeepers in 1999 when Indonesia-backed militia rampaged in the countryside, burning and murdering.

Journalist David Cronin made a note of how in 1997 he and Hyland had plotted to exert pressure on the Irish boyband Boyzone when it performed in Indonesia, embarrassing the band in the Irish press. They didn’t manage to get the concerts cancelled, but did manage to get their message into the band’s management, and get themselves in the picture.

Tom Hyland moved to East Timor shortly after they gained independence in 2002. Max Stahl, the British journalist who broke the story of the Santa Cruz massacre open, had already done the same. They had both fallen in love, with the people, and the place. Tom returned to Ireland in 2019 for cancer treatment. When he was well enough, he came “home” again to Timor-Leste. He worked at the young nation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, teaching English to the staff. He could walk the streets of Timor-Leste as one of a virtual handful of people who could say they played a part in bringing a new democracy into the world, a man who had helped bring freedom and hope to a people who only a decade or two before had neither.

After he passed, former President and current Prime Minister of Timor-Leste Xanana Gusmao said in his tribute that “Even as his health declined, Tom would walk around Dili, supported by a cane and graced with his warm humor and knowing smile. Timorese children would often approach him, putting their forehead to his hand as a gesture of deep respect for his contribution to our people.”

President José Ramos-Horta called him “not just a supporter of East Timor’s struggle for independence; he was a passionate voice that resonated across continents. His tireless efforts through the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign played a crucial role in raising awareness about the plight of my people during some of our darkest days. He understood that solidarity knows no borders, and he worked tirelessly to forge connections between our struggles, reminding us all that we are stronger together.”

There are two lessons to learn from Tom Hyland’s life. In 1992, there was little reason to hope that raising a few voices for the people of a tiny island in Asia would accomplish anything. East Timor was a Cold War casualty. It was a tiny nation of less than a million people against the might of the Western nations. Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger has given the nod to the invasion. The US and Europe provided the arms. One could be forgiven for thinking that no one cared, for just looking away from the bloodshed and going on with one’s life.

Tom Hyland spoke up when it seemed no one was listening. He found the people who would listen and brought them together. Then he found more. And more. In the end he helped to free a nation from a bloody and brutal occupation— an occupation that if left unchecked, could well have ended up in the extermination of a people.

The second lesson? Next time you find yourself ignoring or looking down your nose at a humble bus driver, or a bus boy, a waitress, a ticket taker, just stop for a moment, and realize that you may well be looking at someone who will one day change the history of our world for the better. Show some respect.