Afonso Sávio

Afonso Sávio (* 1946 in Ira'ara near Lospalos , Lautém , Portuguese Timor ; † 1979 in East Timor ) was an East Timorese freedom fighter and a leading member of FRETILIN in Lautém .

Career

Sávio studied at the mission school in Fuiloro and became an officer in the Portuguese colonial army .

Sávio was one of the first FRETILIN supporters in 1974 and became secretary for the Ponta Leste region. When the Indonesian invaders reached his home region, Sávio set up a resistance base for guerrilla warfare on Mount Paitchau . As part of the national wing of FRETILIN and a supporter of President Francisco Xavier do Amaral , Sávio also fell out of favor after his overthrow and was arrested and mistreated by his own men. It was only on the orders of Xanana Gusmão that Sávio was released and returned to Lospalos. He stayed in contact with the resistance movement, for example with Gusmão and Sera Key . Since the leadership of FRETILIN was not ready to clarify the circumstances of Sávio's arrest, he did not return to armed struggle in the bush. Instead, he got closer to his father-in-law, the APODETI veteran Tomé Cristóvão, and made friends with Cláudio do Carmo Vieira , the then Bupati (government president) of the Indonesians for Lautém. Nevertheless, he mistrusted the Indonesians and feared for his life. Sávio was last seen alive on April 17, 1979, probably as a prisoner of the Indonesians. His body was never found. There are still very contradicting accounts about the exact background of Sávio's life during the two years between his release from FRETILIN captivity and his disappearance. Depending on the source, his relationship to the resistance and to the Indonesians is portrayed very differently.

President Francisco Guterres lays flowers on Sávio's coffin (2019)

Afonso Sávio's three brothers were also killed in the struggle for independence and were posthumously honored in independent East Timor. But Afonso Sávio was only rehabilitated by the East Timorese national parliament with resolution 10/2012 due to the contradicting traditions and his burial in the Lautém Heroes' Cemetery was approved as a martyr of the liberation struggle. Since nothing was known about the whereabouts of the corpse, objects were collected in a traditional ceremony in 2013 that were supposed to represent the presence of his spirit. This included a grasshopper that landed on a spread out tais cloth . These were placed in the coffin, which is now in the ossuary of Raça is laid. At the funeral ceremonies, over 2,000 people came over three days and were entertained by the family. The cost was $ 13,000. Xanana Gusmão donated $ 4,000, his brother Horácio Sávio paid $ 3,000, and another brother provided ten head of cattle (buffalo, pigs, goats). With the effort, Sávio's status as a hero in the afterlife should be secured.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Timor-Leste Studies Association: Timor-Leste: The local, the regional and the global , pp. 88 ff., 2016 , accessed on October 13, 2019.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Susana de Matos Viegas, Rui Graça Feijó (ed.): Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: Dynamics of Social and Cultural Cohabitations. Taylor & Franci, 2017, limited preview in Google Book search.