Nick McCallum: Families still fighting for justice for the brutal murder of the ‘Balibo five’ in 1975

It sends chills down my spine every time I see it.

A small, rundown, abandoned house with no roof, no doors, surrounded by grazing cattle on the road into Balibo in East Timor. It looks so inoffensive , so unremarkable now.

You brace yourself, walk inside and you can’t help it — your mind wanders back 50 years to the atrocity that occurred there. It’s the scene of the brutal murders of five young Australian TV journalists just doing their jobs.

Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart from Channel 7 in Melbourne and Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters from Channel 9 in Sydney were in Balibo to report on Indonesian incursions into the newly declared independent nation of East Timor.

They believed they would be treated as neutrals because they were from Australia, a “friendly neighbour” of Indonesia.

One of the last stories they got out of Balibo featured Greg Shackleton painting an Australian Flag on the building where they slept. In his report he said he hoped that would offer them “some protection.”

At dawn on October 16, 1975, from an old Portuguese Fort on a hill in the town they shot film of Indonesian special forces illegally invading the country. The Australians sprinted down the hill, scrambled into the house and locked the doors.

According to witnesses, Indonesian troops surrounded the house, forced their way in and stabbed and shot the five Australians. They then set a bonfire and burned the bodies and the film. It was a clinical, heartless, cold blooded massacre of neutral observers there to tell the world a story it should know .

The journalists had been invited to the small mountain village and escorted there by the-then Fretilin East Timor Government’s Foreign Affairs spokesman Jose Ramos-Horta.

He wanted the world to know Indonesia was illegally invading his country. He also wanted to force democracies like Australia to no longer ignore what was happening on its doorstep — to force the Government here to act — to pressure the United Nations to sanction and condemn Indonesia.

Ramos-Horta is now the President of East Timor. In an exclusive interview with 7 News he says the Indonesian explanation that the Australians were killed in crossfire is “absolute nonsense”.

He describes what happened as a “war crime , no doubt about it.”

But successive Australian Governments appeared to meekly accept the Indonesian explanation. And then when evidence of an atrocity became so overwhelming, they meekly pursued justice , giving up when it all became too hard .

International Politics Professor at Deakin University Damien Kingsbury says successive Australian Governments simply swept the issue under the carpet to maintain good relations with Indonesia , a bigger, more powerful neighbour.

We recently hosted family members of the “Balibo 5” in the new Channel 7 newsroom in Melbourne. In the entrance there is a memorial to their loved ones. Everyone who walks in can read their story of sacrifice and appreciate the dangers of journalism .

Even after 50 years seeing the photos of Greg, Gary and Tony on the wall brought tears to their eyes . Their pain, their anger never far from the surface .

The families have been fighting in vain for justice for five decades . They accuse successive Australian Governments of betrayal and are using the 50th anniversary to demand a formal parliamentary apology to the “Balibo 5 “ for the lack of support.

Sadly, there are no indications that will happen.

Professor Kingsbury says the stark truth is that their own Government thought these young men were “dispensable.”

Think about that.

How gut wrenching and infuriating is that for their families, their friends, their workmates and in fact all Australian journalists and broadcasters.

Where were the proud democratic principles, the tradition of fair go, the ethos of “standing by your mate when he’s in a fight” that we as a nation pride ourselves on?

The fight for justice for the Balibo Five must continue. We owe it to them and their families . We also owe it to all Australians so that none of us is ever considered “dispensable” again.

Nick McCallum’s special, 7News: The Balibo Five: 50 Years on, airs Sunday at 9.40pm on Seven