Punitive Damage

• 1999 ----- color ----- 73 min ----- vhs
• When 20-year-old Kamal Bamadhaj traveled to East Timor to assist a human rights investigation, his last words to his mother, Helen Todd, were "I'll be careful, Mum." Three weeks later he was shot dead by the occupying Indonesian military. Televised images of the massacre at Santa Cruz Cemetery in Dili, East Timor, shocked the world. Kamal was among the estimated 271 unarmed East Timorese killed that day. Punitive Damage crosses borders in New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia to end up in the United States Court, as Helen Todd takes on the Indonesian Government in ground breaking legal action. With eyewitness accounts from Timorese exiles, and clandestinely shot footage and photographs, the film's evidence against the Indonesian military is damning. The court case also creates an important precedent in a growing global trend to bring international human rights violators to trial.
• Topics: (Austronesia, Law, Political Science: Asian, Sociology, Southeast Asian Studies, Third World, War and Peace)