Book description
An eye-opening, firsthand account of Indonesiaà  s campaign of terror
in Aceh. This is the latest from acclaimed journalist John Martinkus,
whose first book, A Dirty Little War, told the definitive story of East
Timor's passage to independence. In this vivid, eye-witness account,
Martinkus lifts the lid on the brutal, undeclared war in Aceh. Like East
Timor, Aceh wants independence but it is paying a terrible price, and
since September 11 things have got much worse. This book gets inside a
conflict that is happening on Australia's doorstep à Â- but no one seems
to care. John Martinkus was born in Australia in 1969 and grew up in
Melbourne. He studied international relations at Melbourne's La Trobe
university. Following a period studying Russian Language in Moscow he
visited East Timor and in late 1994 began writing freelance stories
about the conflict, which he sold to papers in Australia and New
Zealand. In 1997 he was one of only a few journalists who managed to
interview the Falintil pro-independence guerillas in the mountains of
East Timor under occupation, including the commander David Alex who was
ambushed and killed by the Indonesians less than six months later.
Martinkus returned again in mid 1997 to report on Alex's capture and
death. Martinkus returned to East Timor in mid 1998 and remained there
until after independence in mid 2000, after which he wrote his first
book on the conflict. In that period in East Timor he worked for
Associated Press, Australian Associated Press, Fairfax, The Bulletin and
several international papers as well as writing A Dirty Little War on
the conflict in East Timor (Random House 2001). The book was shortlisted
for the New South Wales Premier Awards and Martinkus was nominated for A
Walkley Award for his AAP coverage of the violence in 1999. Five
separate visits over a period of three years resulted in the book
Indonesia's Secret War in Aceh (Random House 2004).In October 2004
Martinkus was kidnapped outside his hotel in Baghdad by Sunni Insurgents
who released him 24 hours later after using the internet to verify his
status as a journalist.
