9
Chega! for Us: Socializing a Living Document
Maria Manuela Leong Pereira
This chapter is based on a spoken text by the director of ACbit (Chega! for Us Association), translated by Laurentina “mica” Barreto Soares.
The Asosiasaun Chega! Ba Ita (ACbit, the “Chega! for Us Association”) aims to promote the values and principles that underlie the work of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Friendship (CAVR), including human rights, justice, and reconciliation. We are committed to bringing the lessons of the past to guide our decisions and choices as individuals and as a society, working towards the fulfilment of the promise for a better future for all.
ACbit has four major programs. These are to facilitate outreach, education, and policy debate on the CAVR findings and recommendations; to conduct innovative research and training using participatory methods; to carry out advocacy and community organizing on the implementation of the CAVR recommendations, particularly on gender justice; and to support victims in asserting their rights though access to assistance programs from the Ministry of Social Solidarity and other relevant institutions.
ACbit receives funding from international donors and the government of Timor-Leste. Current and past international donors are the United Nations Trust Fund (UNTF); the Dutch development organization HIVOS; and the Indonesia-based group Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR). We also receive funds from the Timor-Leste Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Fund for Civil Society Organisations of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Our major task is the socialization and dissemination of the Chega! report. Since 2010, we have organized a school visit program to bring students to the Chega! exhibition site. To this end, we have facilitated about twenty-five to thirty students on each visit, which last about one hour. In this school visit program, apart from showing and explaining the Chega! report to students, we also organize small discussions and reflections to find out the students’ understanding of the history of conflict in Timor-Leste and to what extent they are aware of the Chega! report and what they think about it.
We organize “Chega! Ba Ita mobile” programs to facilitate the socialization and dissemination of the Chega! report in the districts and some subdistricts. The target groups include students, youth, women, and the community in general. In the districts and subdistricts, the exhibitions normally remain about three to four days and attract many visitors.
In 2013, we organized and facilitated training programs for youth groups to become guides for the Chega! Ba Ita mobile activities in the districts and for them to learn and understand Timor-Leste’s history and the impact of the conflict on their lives. Their feedback showed the training program was not entirely successful because the youth asked to be paid for their time spent guiding the exhibition. ACbit did not have enough financial capacity to address such issue and we considered it a failure. To fill the vacuum, staff from ACbit were and are the ones directly in charge of all the exhibitions so far. There might be a possibility to resume the training program in the future but it depends on the availability of funds.
With the help from the ICTJ (International Center for Transitional Justice), we developed a simple and short version of the Chega! report to help readers reach a quick understanding of the content. This short version was completed, printed, and distributed in 2013 to all the secondary schools in Timor-Leste. We then worked together with school teachers and developed a guide to help them educate their students about Timor-Leste’s history and conflict.
For us, socialization is important. The report belongs to everyone in Timor-Leste. Since 2010, we have been campaigning on the findings and recommendations of the CAVR using the slogan, “Chega! Ba Ita,” or Chega! For Us, the Timorese people. This refers to our deep conviction that the people of Timor-Leste have had enough of conflict and injustice, and need to genuinely implement the recommendations of the truth commission to ensure that these violations are never repeated. The saying “Chega! Ba Ita” also underlines our belief that the CAVR report was written based on the experiences and voices of the people, for the people. It is not a document that should be shelved and forgotten. It is a living document to be understood, debated, and reinvented for generations to come.
Socializing and disseminating the Chega! report was supposed to be the responsibility of the Post-CAVR Technical Secretariat because that is part of their mandate and they have funds for that activity. In ACbit, our advocacy department is in charge of the socialization and dissemination of the Chega! report. Our primary target groups for this activity are the secondary and university students, community groups, and the members of victims’ associations. Whenever we organize exhibitions on the Chega! report, we always invite these target groups to visit the site and we hold discussions and reflection sessions with them after the visit.
In Dili alone, under the school visit program, we have organized thirteen school visits for secondary-school students, one for university students, and nine for youth groups. In total, we have helped 1,792 students and youth (931 girls and 861 boys) to visit the exhibition and attend discussion and reflection sessions. We brought in visitors from all the thirteen districts in Timor-Leste. The school visit program started in 2011, but the above-mentioned statistic only covers visits from 2013–15.
Our biggest constraint or obstacle is a lack of human resources and financial capacity. We are not able to cover all the subdistricts, sucos (villages), and aldeias (hamlets) due to inadequate funding and a shortage of human resources. Demands for exhibitions and opportunities to learn about Timor-Leste’s history are quite high, but people do not take the initiative to voluntarily visit the site unless we organize the visit for them and provide transportation to and from the location. In the districts, our problem is the limited means of transportation to bring the exhibition materials to districts, subdistricts, and sucos.
In terms of information and people’s awareness about the Chega! report, we observe that so far, many people, especially the younger generations, do not have good knowledge about the history of conflict in Timor-Leste. And many people are still not aware of the CAVR’s Chega! report. It is ACbit’s mission to change that, to bring the report and the people together.