Born: 26 December 1931, Australia
Died: 15 January 2023
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Born in 1931, Australia’s Shirley Shackleton became an activist after the 1975 murder of her husband, journalist Greg Shackleton. Greg had been sent to report on the civil war between Indonesia-supported factions and the leftist Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) following the Portuguese withdrawal from East Timor, where he and other members of the Australian press were apparently killed by Indonesian soldiers less than a week after he arrived. At 43, Shackleton was left a single mother to an eight-year-old son, and she was determined to know what had happened to her husband and the rest of “The Balibo Five.”
Less than two months after the murders, Indonesia annexed East Timor on December 7, 1975. The government claimed the journalists had gotten caught in crossfire, and the Australian government was disinclined to make international political waves over a few dead journalists. For years, Shackleton did what she could in Australia to gather intelligence and to publicize Indonesian brutality in East Timor, but it wasn’t until 1989 that she was able to visit herself, hearing firsthand about atrocities in the country, including an account of what happened to the Balibo Five. She called out everyone from General Benny Moerdani, who had led the invasion of East Timor, to Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke.
“It’s not to do with my husband anymore, although I know that’s what he would have wanted,” she said of joining a peace mission to the country in 1992 against Australian government cautions. “It’ll be 17 years this year since he died, and I have dedicated my life to helping free East Timor.”
She asserted in 1995, 20 years on, “If I drop dead tomorrow, it’s still going to go on. The quickest way to make something endlessly intriguing is to try and cover it up.” Eventually, an investigation found that Indonesian soldiers had burned the men’s bodies and offered the tepid finding that they “more likely than not” had been murdered.
It was only after East Timor, also known as the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, regained independence in 1999 that Australia’s government made public documents about the Indonesian invasion and annexation of the country—but still held back more sensitive materials. A 2007 Australian coroner’s inquest was conducted into the death of one of the other journalists, in which former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam essentially blamed Greg Shackleton for the deaths, because he had been warned that the government could not protect them. New South Wales Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch found that the Balibo Five had been deliberately killed by Indonesian special force soldiers after surrendering, and referred the case to Australian Federal Police for a war crimes inquiry, which lasted from 2009 to 2014. But investigators were forced to conclude there was insufficient evidence after almost 40 years and a blatant cover-up by Indonesia’s military and government.
But although she could not secure justice for her husband and his colleagues, Shackleton made damn sure their story would not be forgotten. In 2010, she published the book Circle of Silence: A personal testimony before, during and after Balibo, which won a Walkley Award for journalism. A documentary of the same name was released in 2022. In 2013, the East Timorese Government awarded her the Medal of the Order of Timor-Leste. When she died in 2023, Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak stated, “her loss is also a loss for Timor-Leste.”