Australia honours Timorese guerilla hero in death … if not in life‏

. Rufino Alves Correia

Sydney Morning Herald

LINDSAY MURDOCH IN DARWIN April 23, 2010

SIXTY-FOUR years was not enough time for Australia to award a medal to Rufino Alves Correia for his heroism when he was shot and wounded while trying to protect Australian commandos in Japanese-occupied East Timor during World War II. Mr Correia, 90, has died and was buried in Dili yesterday, six months after a petition signed by 24,000 people asked federal MPs to recognise the sacrifices the Timorese made to help the Australians in Timor.

By the end of the war, between 40,000 and 50,000 Timorese out of a population of only 650,000 had been killed or starved to death. Mr Correia was one of the last surviving Timorese men known as ''criados'' who fought alongside the Australians in one of the most successful guerilla actions of the war. Australian soldiers deployed in East Timor yesterday presided over his funeral at Dili's historic Motael church, a rare honour for a non-Australian citizen.

But authorities in Canberra are still considering the petition for a special Timorese Order of Australia that was organised last year by the Mary MacKillop mission in East Timor. ''Sadly Rufino died without the full recognition he deserved for his bravery,'' said Sister Susan Connelly. She said an honorary form of the Order of Australia could be awarded to non-Australian citizens.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said last year the ''fuzzy wuzzy angels'' or their survivors who helped Australian troops in Papua New Guinea would receive commemorative medals. Mr Correia, who was affectionately known as Rufino, was proud of the time he spent with the commandos, rattling off the names of those he fought with. Every year he would attend the Anzac Day service in Dili.

He loved wearing his commando beret. ''Rufino has never forgotten his Australian friends and similarly has never been forgotten by the Australian soldiers he served beside,'' East Timor's President, Jose Ramos-Horta, said yesterday. But in 2006, before he travelled to Melbourne to take part in an Anzac Day parade, he told the Herald that he always wondered why the Australians ''never came back to help us after the war''.
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