Courage under fire Do women behave differently to men in war zones? Victoria Brittain talks to fellow correspondent, Irene Slegt, one of the last three journalists who stayed to report the violence that has erupted since the referendum in East Timor The Guardian, Monday September 20, 1999 Was it chance that the last three journalists left in the United Nations compound in the East Timor capital of Dili were women? Irene Slegt, a Dutch journalist, photographer and longtime BBC stringer, became the voice to the outside world of 1,500 desperate Timorese who had taken refuge in the compound and faced certain death if the UN plans to abandon them had been carried out. Her two companions were the Dutch writer Minka Nijhuis and Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times. All three had distinguished records of bravery already, but their collective role in Timor was one for women to be proud of and goes to the heart of some key differences between men and women. As one of Irene's friends put it: "She's the kind of woman who is prepared to feel an emotional sympathy for the people she's working among, where a man would override that in the interest of commonsense." As Irene herself puts it: "We all had the motivation to stay with the people and we operated as a team. We shared information, had companionship... with a man there it would have been more difficult." In the intensity of war even outsiders find themselves uncomfortably revealed, shorn of the props and mannerisms which allow most people, men in particular, to mask themselves most of the time. Men's response to fear is usually bravado, and in war some male journalists do the same: they become obsessed with weapons and start identifying with the military as role models, in the hope of feeling stronger and braver themselves. Women's response is to identify with the people whose intimate lives are shattered. Irene has no hesitation in saying about women journalists what many of us would hesitate to put into words: "We are more courageous... you see men losing it quicker." It is true that none of my women friends who have worked, or still do, in war zones would choose a male photographer or companion for a dangerous trip and neither would I. You can never count on men not to come over macho at a tense moment and put the whole team in danger. Journalists used to be self-reliant loners, as the great Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote recently, but new technology and the demands of corporate ownership has turned them, he argued, into something quite different. Kapuscinski would be at home with Irene and Minka - down-to-earth, hard-working, knowledgeable, and without a trace of self-dramatisation. Before East Timor, both women had specialised, unfashionably, in working in closed countries, such as Burma and Tibet. "It's difficult - I don't go officially and because I'm a freelance I don't have to bother with editors who would not want to send someone in case of endangering relations with some government or because of having repercussions on a bureau somewhere." None of the repression they have seen in Tibet or Burma compared with what has happened in East Timor in the last weeks, according to Irene. "In Tibet, for instance, the countryside still has its culture; in Timor the Indonesians have taken the culture and the religion by targeting priests, nuns, churches. The social fabric is gone with people completely scattered - the UN was the last safe haven. "When you look into old people's eyes you see them completely withdrawn. When you speak to them, they literally can not speak. Maybe the young people will have the resilience to start again." Both Dutch women were already in Dili to write books, and committed to staying on after the independence referendum, albeit under no illusions about how violent it was to become. "In fact, everyone in the UN knew what was likely to happen but they made a big, big miscalculation about what the Indonesians would do," says Irene. The women watched first the television networks pull out their teams, for security reasons, then the news agencies. "I can't remember any big story ever where the agencies pulled out," says Irene. Minka's newspaper put pressure on her to leave with the others, but she continued to file and eventually the editor called to congratulate her on her work. "The Indonesians got what they wanted. In a week 480 out of 500 journalists left." The women resisted going into the UN compound for as long as possi ble, until the military came to their hotel looking for them. Once there, they still travelled into town whenever they could, driven by an acute sense of responsibility to tell the world about the deepening catastrophe. Despite the danger, Irene is cool. "I wasn't that scared - you just have to plan carefully, and go in the morning when the militias are not drunk." Each day, their Timorese resistance friends rang to tell them to leave, or to make for the mountains where thousands of refugees were hiding. However, as the killings and the rout of Dili took on its own momentum, the two women were caught up in individual dramas. Irene and Minka saved the life of a student leader, taking him from his house minutes before a gang of 14 soldiers burst in. They hid the young man in their hotel for several days, before taking him to the UN compound. He is now in Darwin, waiting to see what will happen. "But there we've stirred up someone's life - maybe he didn't want to be saved, maybe he would rather have gone to a church or to the mountains," reflects Irene. They were preparing to leave for the mountains to report on how the terrorised people were starving to death, when without warning, the UN brought forward the hour of the secret evacuation of the compound. It asked the Indonesian military to surround it so that no more Timorese could take refuge. Irene and Minka were trapped inside - and forced to leave for Australia. It is safe to say that neither will ever get another Indonesian visa. "But we have to see this through, we cannot give up on people who know us and have counted on us." How many men in the same position would show such compassion and sense of personal responsibility for other human beings whose lives they had touched by chance? € Victoria Brittain is deputy foreign editor of The Guardian and has reported from wars in Vietnam, Angola, Uganda, Congo, Eritrea, Somalia, and Mozambique
