On October 16th, 1975, two Australian television crews filmed the secret invasion of East Timor by Indonesian forces, who attacked the seaside town of Balibo. They were Greg Shakleton, a reporter with Channel Seven in Melbourne and Tony Stewart, his sound recordist; and Malcolm Rennie, a British citizen reporting for the rival Channel Nine, with cameraman Brian Peters, also British, and second cameraman Gary Cunningham, a New Zealander.
The journalists were unarmed and dressed in civilian clothes, and had painted "Australia" on the side of the house in which they were staying. Eyewitnesses said that the invaders lined them up against a wall and shot them dead.
Seven weeks later, the day after Indonesian paratroopers landed in the former Portuguese colony as the "real" invasion got under way, another Australian journalist, Roger East, who had been investigating the killing of his colleagues, was taken by soldiers to the wharf at Dili, his thumbs bound with wire, and shot in the head.
The six were the only foreign correspondents to witness the brutality of an invasion and occupation which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of East Timorese. The Indonesian officer in charge of the special unit which attacked Balibo town that day was Yunus Yosfiah. He has always refused to comment on what happened, though Indonesian officials claim the camera crews were caught in crossfire. Today he is a lieutenant general in the Indonesian army. On Friday, in what human rights activists see as a cynical twist in recent Indonesian events, Lt Gen Yunus was appointed Indonesian Information Minister in the new reform cabinet of President G.B. Habibie, responsible for the press and radio and television in Indonesia. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it was deeply alarmed to learn of the appointment, and wrote to Mr Habibie asking how someone with Yosfiah's background "could gain the confidence of our Indonesian colleagues who are anxious to work in a free press environment". Lt Gen Yosfiah promised to help the mass media carry out their duties, adding: "I think press freedom should be in line with the journalists' code of ethics and I am sure the media understand this."
The appointment is a strong indication to students and opposition figures that while President Suharto has been toppled, the system has not changed and the power establishment remains in place. It was the members of this establishment, many appointed to their high office by Mr Suharto, who in the end turned against the autocrat who ruled Indonesia for 32 years, because he had become a threat to their own place in the system. They removed him, some opposition figures maintain, to prevent a real revolution.
No wonder that as they were shepherded out of the Indonesian parliament building on Friday night after a five-day occupation, some students yelled, "Our fight is not over!" The real struggle now begins between the power elite and those who found their voices in the turmoil of recent weeks, from students, academics and journalists to labour and human rights activists.
But the student movement is divided about how to proceed. It is split between those who see Mr Habibie as a handpicked successor who will preserve "Suhartoism", and those who want to give him a chance to respond to the demands for reformasi, the Indonesian word for reform which is now parroted by everyone at every level as the salvation of Indonesia.
The situation is complicated by the fact that students in the popular Islamic Youth Movement see Mr Habibie as a more devout Muslim than Mr Suharto and approve of his inclusion of Islamic figures in the cabinet. An Islamic student activist confronting radical students at the parliament on Friday said: "We want to give him an opportunity to tackle the problems of Indonesia."
Many students are also exhausted after their day-and-night occupation of the parliament which served as their playpen and platform. A student at the University of Trisakti, who passionately spoke to me of the need to demonstrate until deep changes were made, said at the weekend: "We will start classes again on Monday and we will give the new president a little time to make reforms."
Having used student anger to get rid of Suharto, the Suharto-created establishment has now set out to defuse it. The army used persuasion rather than tear gas or bullets to evict the students from the parliament compound. President Suharto's son-in-law, Lt Gen Prabowo Subianto, a hardliner who was implicated in the use of live ammunition against students at Trisakti University on May 12th, resulting in four deaths, has been removed from his post. Video of the shooting shows two military figures firing at students from an overpass, evidence of a deliberate killing designed either to provoke a crisis or intimidate the students.
In Jakarta diplomats say that the chief of the armed forces, General Wiranto, who himself is disclaiming responsibility, has pointed the finger at members of an Indonesian army unit known as Kopassus - whose officers have attended training courses in Australia and the United States - which has also been blamed for a recent series of "disappearances" of dissidents. Which brings us back to the East Timor shootings of the television camera crews.
It was this 10,000-member unit, then led by Lt Gen Prabowo, which carried out the secret invasion of East Timor and is considered responsible by human rights activists for the deaths of the journalists at Balibo.
Students and opposition figures hope the removal of Lt Gen Prabowo signals an end to the repressive measures such as torture and kidnappings which accompanied military attempts to keep the lid on Indonesia during the last three months. But they are not overly optimistic about an onrush of new freedoms. In the post-Suharto era, the old guard, for now, remains in control.