Punitive damage

Australian Kamal Bamadhaj was shot dead by the Indonesian military during the massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili in November 1991. A student of History and Indonesian Politics at the University of New South Wales, Bamadhaj was also one of the first foreigners to visit East Timor since the invasion of 1975. He had travelled there to assist in a human rights investigation. In her grief, his mother Helen Todd became determined to avenge her son’s death. She eventually found a way to fight the Indonesian government and those responsible for her son’s killing, in a landmark international court case. As the story unfolds, it becomes not only the tale of a mother’s sorrow, but also testimony to the brutal reality of Indonesia’s military occupation of East Timor.