Listen: This is how it ended for Nicolau dos Reis Lobato,
and if you’re the sort who needs happy endings wrapped up in pretty paper with
a bow on top, you’d best stop reading now. Because what happened on Mount
Mindelo wasn’t a fairy tale. It was the kind of thing that happens when history
gets mean drunk and decides to pick a fight with hope itself.
Several hours before the new year began—before 1978 could
finally bleed out and die—Lobato found himself trapped on Mount Mindelo. The
mountain was one of those places that God or the devil (take your pick, they’re
both in the real estate business) had forgotten about: hilly, fog-shrouded,
deep in the heart of Timor-Leste where the world couldn’t see what was about to
happen. That was probably the point.
The sky over the Maubisse valley that Sunday looked like the
color of old bruises, purple-black and sick. It looked, Lobato might have
thought (if he’d had the luxury of poetic reflection, which he didn’t), like
the sky was refusing to offer one last bit of shelter to the man who’d been
Indonesia’s most-wanted for three long years. Three years is nothing when you’re
reading about it in a history book. Three years is forever when you’re the one
being hunted.
The December rains had turned the mountain soil into
something that wanted to suck your boots right off your feet—thick, glutinous
mud that made every step a negotiation with gravity and exhaustion. For Lobato’s
small band, it was misery. For the troops coming up behind them—oh, for them
it was Christmas morning, New Year’s Eve, and their birthday all rolled into
one. Bad weather meant the quarry couldn’t run as fast. Bad weather meant the
end was near.
The Indonesian military had mobilized everything they had.
This wasn’t a hunting party anymore. This was an extermination.
Nicolau Lobato—gaunt now, worn down to wire and will,
weighed down by the kind of burden that makes a man’s shoulders slope like a
question mark—knew the net had closed. You know how you know? The same way a
mouse knows when the cat’s got it cornered in the kitchen. The same way a man
knows when his number’s up. Sometimes you just know.
The steep Mindelo valley had been a natural fortress. Past
tense. Had been. Now it was a killing jar, and Lobato and his men were
the specimens.
The sound of helicopter rotors came slicing through the
morning air like a cleaver through meat. Whup-whup-whup-whup. It’s a
sound that stays with you, if you live long enough to remember it. For the
small group of loyal bodyguards still at Lobato’s side—the remnants of Falintil’s
elite forces, forced out of Matebian and Natarbora—it was the sound of the
reaper sharpening his scythe.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s what happens when
you know how the story ends. Let me back up.
---
Nicolau dos Reis Lobato was born on May 24, 1946, in
Soibada, which was about as far from anywhere as you could get and still be
somewhere. Remote inland region of Timor-Leste. During Portuguese colonial
times, it was known as a center of Catholic education, which is a fancy way of
saying the priests had gotten there first and set up shop.
His father was Narciso Lobato. His mother was Felismina
Alves. They raised him on Catholic values, which is to say they raised him to
believe in something bigger than himself, something worth dying for. That
lesson took, as we’ll see.
Soibada was home to the Colégio Nuno Álvares Pereira, a
mission school that churned out many of Timor’s intellectual elite. Back then,
colonial education was rarer than hen’s teeth—accessible only to the brightest
indigenous kids or the sons of liurais, the local royalty. Lobato was one of
the chosen few. His leadership talents showed early, the way some kids show
talent for music or mathematics. Some people are just born with that thing
inside them that makes others want to follow.
He went on to study at the Seminário Nossa Senhora de Fátima
in Dare, a seminary in the hills outside Dili where boys went to learn how to
be priests. There he rubbed shoulders with future key figures: Francisco Xavier
do Amaral, who’d become East Timor’s first president, and Alberto Ricardo da
Silva, who’d end up Bishop of Dili. Funny how destiny works. Put a bunch of
smart, idealistic kids in a seminary and sometimes what comes out isn’t priests
but revolutionaries.
The curriculum covered theology, philosophy, history, Latin,
Portuguese. They got exposed to European humanist thought, ideas about social
justice that were dangerous as dynamite in the wrong hands—or the right ones,
depending on your perspective. Lobato didn’t finish his training to become a
priest. The collar wasn’t for him. But the spirit of service? The discipline?
That stuck to him like tar.
In 1966, after leaving the seminary, Lobato did his
mandatory military service with the Portuguese armed forces. He learned combat
tactics, command structure, battlefield discipline, weapons handling. All the
things you need to know if you’re planning to wage war. He absorbed it all like
a sponge, storing it away for later. For when he’d use those same skills
against the Indonesian army—hell, against the Portuguese themselves if it came
to that.
In the Portuguese military, Lobato rose to sergeant in the
elite Caçadores infantry unit. That’s no small feat for a native boy in a
colonial army. He earned respect from his mostly Timorese subordinates and
something like admiration from the Portuguese officers who recognized
intelligence when they saw it. That experience gave him a deep understanding of
military logistics and soldier psychology—the kind of knowledge that would
serve him well when he led Falintil through years of guerrilla warfare.
He also worked as a civil servant in the colonial finance
administration and as a teacher. These civilian roles expanded his social
network in Dili, connected him to the emerging educated class. He married
Isabel Barreto, a politically aware woman who understood what her husband was
becoming, what he might have to do.
They had a son together: Jose Maria Barreto Lobato. The
family represented something new—the educated Timorese middle class,
politically conscious, frustrated by how slowly things were changing under
Portuguese rule. They were the future trying to be born, and the past wasn’t
ready to let them.
---
In 1974, the Carnation Revolution erupted in Portugal. The
fascist Estado Novo regime—forty years of authoritarian rule—toppled like a
house of cards in a stiff wind. The military coup, led by the Armed Forces
Movement, opened the door to decolonization across Portugal’s overseas
territories: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Portuguese Timor.
News of the revolution hit Dili like a shot of pure
adrenaline. Press censorship lifted. For the first time, Timorese people could
form political parties. Could speak their minds. Could dream out loud.
In this atmosphere—electric with possibility, dangerous with
hope—Nicolau Lobato emerged as a central figure. Together with Francisco Xavier
do Amaral, José Ramos-Horta, Aleixo Corte Real, and Rui Fernandes, he
co-founded the Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT) on May 20, 1974.
James Dunn, in his book Timor: A People Betrayed,
wrote: “Those two individuals, Xavier do Amaral and Lobato, remained the two
main leaders of ASDT/Fretilin for more than three years.” Three years. There’s
that number again.
In September of that year, ASDT transformed into Fretilin.
Xavier do Amaral was President; Lobato was Vice President. Xavier was the
charismatic figurehead, the kind of leader people wanted to follow because of
how he made them feel. Lobato was the engine. He was the one who got things
done. Sharp mind, pragmatic, responsible for forming and training Falintil—the
party’s military wing.
1975 was a year of chaos. Political tensions escalated
between Fretilin and its rival, the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT). Then there
was APODETI, pushing for integration with Indonesia. Foreign intelligence
operations stoked fears of communism. The Cold War had come to this little
island, and like everywhere else it touched, things got ugly fast.
In August 1975, UDT launched a coup, sparking a brief but
brutal civil war. Fretilin won, gained control over most of East Timor. But
victory came with a price: thousands of UDT and APODETI supporters fled as
refugees to Indonesia, giving Indonesia exactly the pretext they needed for
military involvement.
The atmosphere in Dili at the end of 1975 was strange—tense
and hopeful at the same time, like waiting for a storm you know is coming but
hoping it’ll miss you somehow. Journalist Jill Jolliffe recorded a moment on
the night of October 27, when Nicolau Lobato attended the wedding of his
brother-in-law, José Gonçalves, and Olímpia.
Amid threats of war from the border, Indonesian ships
appearing in Dili waters like sharks circling, Lobato allowed himself one brief
moment of normalcy. A wedding. Music. Dancing. A human touch amid the gathering
storm. But even then, Falintil troops kept tight security. An attack could come
at any moment.
“An Indonesian ship had sailed close to the coast, and a
state of emergency had been declared,” Jolliffe wrote. Even at a wedding, the
war was there, uninvited guest that it was.
Facing the increasingly real threat of full-scale Indonesian
invasion—especially after border towns like Balibo and Maliana fell—Fretilin
made their move. On November 28, 1975, in front of the Governor’s Palace in
Dili, they proclaimed independence. The Democratic Republic of East Timor.
Francisco Xavier do Amaral was sworn in as President. Nicolau dos Reis Lobato
was appointed Prime Minister.
Nine days. That’s all they got. Nine days of being a real
country with a real government.
At dawn on December 7, 1975, the sky over Dili filled with
Indonesian paratroopers. Warships bombarded the coast. The city fell in hours,
the way cities do when the full weight of a military machine decides to crush
them.
Lobato and the other Fretilin leaders evacuated to the
mountains. His wife, Isabel Barreto, was captured at Dili Harbor. They executed
her. Shot her dead and left her there.
That kind of loss does something to a man. It hardens him,
tempers him like steel in a forge. Or it breaks him completely. Lobato didn’t
break.
By September 1977, tensions within Fretilin reached a
breaking point. Lobato ordered the arrest of Xavier do Amaral on charges of
treason. Then he assumed supreme leadership: President of Fretilin, President
of the Republic, Commander-in-Chief of Falintil. All of it. The whole terrible
burden.
From the forests, he organized guerrilla resistance. He
rejected amnesty offers that came floating down from Indonesian helicopters on
leaflets. Come home. All is forgiven. He knew what those promises were
worth. For Lobato, independence wasn’t negotiable. It was everything or
nothing.
By late 1978, Indonesia had changed tactics. Operation
Seroja, under ABRI Commander General M. Jusuf and field commander Brigadier
General Dading Kalbuadi, had U.S.-supplied OV-10 Bronco aircraft now. They were
using radio intercepts, intelligence from captured or surrendered Fretilin
members. They had Lobato’s position pinpointed.
The pursuit focused on the central sector: Turiscai,
Maubisse, Manufahi. Elite units from Kopassandha (now Kopassus) were deployed.
This wasn’t a manhunt anymore. This was a kill mission.
“Fretilin’s strength is shrinking,” Brigadier General Dading
Kalbuadi told Tempo magazine. Shrinking. Like a dying fire. Like hope
running out.
The unit that closed in was Nanggala 28, led by a young
officer named Prabowo Subianto. They moved silently, exploiting the exhaustion
of Lobato’s guards, who were worn down by constant aerial bombings and
logistical blockades that left them starving.
---
Which brings us back to where we started: Mount Mindelo,
December 31, 1978.
Armed contact erupted that morning. The Indonesian forces
had superior logistics, better physical condition, better weaponry. They
executed a coordinated ambush. Lobato’s group was cornered in a ravine.
The battle was fierce but unequal. According to Kompas,
Lobato—armed with an AR-15—was fatally shot in the leg and thigh. Twenty-two of
his followers were killed alongside him. Some accounts say that even after
being wounded, he kept fighting. Refused to surrender alive to the forces he’d
opposed for three years.
No white flag was raised.
When the firefight ended, Nanggala 28 approached to confirm
the kill. The body, already going rigid, was identified as Nicolau dos Reis
Lobato. The primary objective of Operation Seroja. Mission accomplished.
The news was radioed to command in Dili, then relayed to
Jakarta. A New Year’s gift to the New Order government. Happy 1979.
Lobato’s body was airlifted out by helicopter. His followers
were left where they fell. Survivors, under Xanana Gusmão’s direction, escaped
toward the eastern sector to continue the fight. Because that’s what you do.
You keep fighting until you can’t anymore.
In Dili, they didn’t bury Lobato right away. They put his
body on display for the press, for military documentation. Photos
circulated—painful historical records showing his corpse presented to
Indonesian journalists like a trophy buck.
Then they flew the body to Jakarta. The official reason was
never explained. Speculation suggests it was for forensic identification, to
prove to President Soeharto that it was really Lobato, that the nightmare was
over.
After landing in Jakarta, all trace of the remains vanished.
No official burial records. Some believe he was interred at Kalibata Heroes’
Cemetery in South Jakarta, possibly under code “62” or in an unmarked block for
unidentified figures. A revolutionary buried in his enemy’s cemetery, unnamed
and unmourned. There’s a kind of horror in that.
From Xanana Gusmão to Taur Matan Ruak, successive East
Timorese governments have asked Indonesia for information, for the return of
Lobato’s remains. President Francisco Guterres Lu Olo declared it a national
priority. In 2003, a skull was found behind Mari Alkatiri’s home, suspected to
belong to Lobato, but tests were inconclusive.
In Timorese culture, the soul of the deceased cannot rest
unless the bones are returned home through traditional ceremonies. So Nicolau
Lobato is still out there somewhere, still waiting to come home. Still trapped.
---
His name lives on at East Timor’s main international
airport: Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport. Every visitor who
arrives sees his name first thing. His statue stands at the Comoro roundabout,
the focal point for national ceremonies every December 31—National Heroes’
Day—honoring the fallen leader.
But his bones? His bones are still missing. Still lost.
Still somewhere in Jakarta or buried in some unmarked grave, waiting for
someone to bring them home.
That’s the real horror story here, friends. Not the battle,
not the death—those are just the mechanics of war, the expected outcomes when
you pick up a gun and fight for something. The horror is what comes after. The
uncertainty. The not knowing. The soul that can’t rest because the body can’t
come home.
Nicolau dos Reis Lobato died on December 31, 1978, but in a
way, he’s still dying. Still waiting. Still fighting that last battle on Mount
Mindelo, over and over, in the memories of those who survived him.
And that, I think, is what hell really is. Not fire and
brimstone. Just an endless loop of the worst moment of your life, playing on
repeat, forever and ever, amen.
Sleep well, if you can.
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