Photo: RNZ
Twenty-five years after their peacekeeping tour of duty in East Timor, Kiwi military veterans returned to visit the place and people among whom they worked.
The return to Timor Leste is covered in a documentary, to be released on Anzac Day. About 5,000 New Zealand military personnel served in what is now Timor-Leste between 1999 and 2002, in a peacekeeping mission sanctioned by the United Nations.
It was the country's largest military deployment since the Korean War. In 1975 Indonesia invaded and annexed East Timor in a brutal occupation, with international investigators finding up to 183,000 people were killed.
A referendum was launched in 1999 - supervised by the New Zealand Police - and 78 per cent of the East Timor population voted for independence.
Violence soon followed and New Zealand played a key role in the subsequent UN peacekeeping efforts.
It was on patrols in the Timor jungle where Private Leonard Manning was killed in an ambush.
Four other New Zealanders would die on tour in Timor Leste - but not in combat.
Retired police officer Ray Sutton was on the island for the independence referendum and witnessed the violent fallout from it.
Kathyn also speaks with veteran Rachael Collins who was a medic and one of the only women in the first Timor deployments and Jeff Hampton was the documentary's producer.
Photo: NZDF
