Helping an island in distress

The two of us are sitting in a partitioned-off space which forms the entrance lobby to a worn-around-the-edges office, high up above Dublin's Dame Street. Fortunately, there are no visitors just now, but behind the partition the phones are hopping. Calls are coming in from a host of dignitaries, among them, the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Liz O'Donnell, and Euro MP Mary Bannoti.

"I'm sorry, Tom is in a meeting, I'll get him to call you back." Marsha Thompson is fielding the calls today. Tom Hyland, co-ordinator of the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign, is indeed in a meeting. He's sitting opposite me, leaning forward on the hard, polypropylene chair, recalling the moment he first heard of the tiny island in the Indian Ocean, which has become a major part of his life.

He's told the story a thousand times, but it remains as fresh and fascinating as ever. He's a born storyteller. It was a Tuesday, he says - it had to be, because that was the day he and a group of friends used to collect their dole and meet at Tom's house in Ballyfermot, Dublin, to play dominoes or cards.

A neighbour, whose cable TV had been cut off, called around to watch a programme on ITV. The fact that Olivia O'Leary was the programme's anchor-woman caught Hyland's attention.

"Maybe Jim was codding me and the programme was on RTE after all," he muses. He listened to make sure. "I heard Olivia talk about years of continuous atrocity being finally and fully revealed to the outside world. I saw young students running out of a seminary and being shot. One of the students wore a rosary ring."

Hyland was gripped. He suggested that his friends stop their play and watch John Pilger's First Tuesday programme on East Timor, for a while. They were shocked at the suffering of East Timorese at the hands of the Indonesians.

"We'd never even heard of them before, yet one third of their population had been killed," he says. "I couldn't sleep that night."

The following morning, the group met and decided to take action. But what? They were all unemployed - without even a telephone between them. This didn't stop them ringing Yorkshire Television, which had made the programme. They were referred to the Indonesian Human Rights Campaign in London.

Standing in a phone box in Ballyfermot, Hyland had to repeat his message - "We want to help" - twice. They couldn't understand his accent, he laughs.

The group set up office in Tom's tiny front parlour. To get started they had to beg and borrow. People were extraordinarily generous, he says. One organisation donated a typewriter, another paper. Eventually, they were given a telephone and later a fax machine.

They held their first protest - a prayer service - outside the British, American and Australian embassies. These countries were all supplying Indonesia with arms.

That was back in 1992. Since then, the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign has come a long way. What it has achieved is extraordinary. Thanks to a small group of dedicated activists, most people in Ireland are now acquainted with - and growing numbers are concerned about - East Timor and its plight.

The island's problem has even been taken up at government level. As Ministers for Foreign Affairs, both David Andrews and Dick Spring have raised the issue in Europe and at the United Nations. Hyland and his friends have created a powerful and highly effective lobbying machine.

Initially, though, Hyland was full of doubt. "There I was, challenging visiting prime ministers and I'd ask myself: what on earth have you got yourself into? Then I'd remind myself that we were delivering a message for people who couldn't do it for themselves."

His expulsion from the Philippines with Nobel prizewinner Mairead McGuinness in 1994 was a watershed. "From then on we were accepted as a serious human rights group," he says. "The experience also taught me something about politics. Indonesia had put pressure on the Philippines to expel us. But I've learned that,, if you stand up to the bully, you will win in the end."

Indonesia's interference did indeed backfire - it was an enormous publicity coup for the East Timor campaign.

Thanks to the campaign, Hyland has become a national figure, but he remains unchanged. He still lives in the family home in Ballyfermot with his four dogs and doesn't own a car. Instead, he relies on public transport to ferry him about.

"As a former bus driver, I get a reduced rate monthly bus ticket and student rate train fares," he explains. And his salary? "I don't draw a salary," he says. "I'm on a community employment scheme. It pays £20 a week more than the dole. It's enough for me to live on. I don't need a salary."

Trocaire is the East Timor Campaign's main source of funding. The group also raises money from its school talks. In Dublin alone, the organisation boasts some 30 volunteers. Groups have been set up in Belfast, Galway and Laois.

Since the fall of President Suharto earlier this year, conditions have improved in Dili, the capital of the former Portuguese colony, but in the countryside things are much the same. "Human rights remain a major issue and need a political solution,';' says Hyland. The Timorese have rejected a proposal which gives them autonomy in return for international recognition that the country is legally part of Indonesia.

"Our fear is that the people will be sold out for a second time," he comments. Nonetheless, the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign will support any decision made by the Timorese people, Hyland says.

"When a solution is in place this campaign ceases to exist," he promises. Fortunately, the skills honed by the group will not be lost to the human rights' cause. They'll work with other groups in Ireland, in a low profile capacity, he says.