The Santa Cruz Massacre
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On 12 November 1991, Indonesian troops opened fire on independence activists in East Timor's capital, Dili.
During a protest march to the Santa Cruz cemetery after a memorial service for an independence supporter, Indonesian troops opened fire, killing 271 people.
In 2015, Marco Silva spoke to British cameraman Max Stahl who filmed the attack on unarmed demonstrators.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: The Santa Cruz cemetery. Credit: Giulio Paletta/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to witness history from the BBC World Service. We're the podcast that |
| 0:11.0 | takes you back to a moment in history. We bring it all to life through incredible archive and the |
| 0:16.2 | amazing memories of key witnesses. Episodes are just nine minutes long and they come out every weekday. |
| 0:23.2 | If that sounds like your thing, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:28.2 | Turn your push notifications on so you never miss a program. |
| 0:31.5 | We're going back in time to November 1991 and the Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor in Southeast Asia. Once a Portuguese colony, |
| 0:40.1 | the country was then under the control of Indonesian forces who crushed resistance from the locals. |
| 0:45.7 | During a planned protest march to a cemetery after a memorial service for an independence supporter, |
| 0:51.1 | Indonesian troops opened fire on independence activists in East Timor's capital, Dili. |
| 0:56.4 | In 2015, Marco Silver spoke to British cameraman Max Stal, who filmed the attack on unarmed |
| 1:02.0 | demonstrators in the Santa Cruz graveyard. |
| 1:08.3 | It's November the 12th, 1991, and in the East Timorese capital, Daly, overlooking the Banda Sea, |
| 1:15.9 | there's a sense of unease in the air. |
| 1:19.1 | The tension in the city and in the country was palpable. |
| 1:24.0 | I have been to many war zones and I've never come across a situation where there was |
| 1:28.8 | that much tension and awareness. Max Stahl is a British filmmaker who had gone to East Timor |
| 1:35.4 | to document the country's struggle for independence. That November day, activists were planning a march |
| 1:42.5 | in memory of Sebastian Gomes, |
| 1:45.0 | and an 18-year-old who had been shot dead by Indonesian soldiers two weeks earlier. |
| 1:50.5 | First, though, in the deeply Catholic Dili, there would be a mass. |
| 1:54.9 | Walking from the church, about two kilometers to the graveyard, Sebastieno was buried, |
| 2:03.4 | everybody involved knew that it was almost inevitable, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.