Cripple hands hold babies, which the militia failed to crush, while wriggling boys play on the Suai Loro shoreline.

These images, from Timor Lorosae, explore a new country, in a new millennium, ravaged and torn ... hungry and happy with new found freedom ... a freedom without work opportunity or indeed the shelter to protect a family from a rainy season.

Dignified widows hold ripe cucumbers, while anxious refugees return to what they have always known best .... the hearth of a county ripped asunder. School has resumed ... in stops and starts, and people marry and carry water for salt distillation. Life indeed goes on .... testimony to resilience and bravery.

People light candies in memory of departed souls, whose identity will burn forever in rebuilt homes. The savagery of "brown-shirted" thugs will be erased with time, as will the pathetic incursions of militia spies. This country will endure ... as it has endured so much ... only the deranged man will make obsolete the need for a victim. Did the old man see too much ? Only those that SEE him will be able to tell ?

These photographs tell a story .... a complex one of ebb and flow. They are to be exhibited in a world long abused by suffering. Only the East Timorese can know that their incredible sacrifice will reap the glow of a new dawn on Timor Lorosae.

©Jon Lewis 2000