Punitive Damage

During a demonstration in Dili in 1991, the 20-year-old student Kamal Bamadhaj, a New-Zealand-Malaysian sympathiser of the East-Timorese independence movement, was killed by Indonesian gunfire. Just like 270 others. However, the difference was that Kamal’s family would not rest before the circumstances surrounding his death were cleared up, whereas the East-Timorese victims were swept under the Indonesian carpet. PUNITIVE DAMAGE reconstructs the last months of Kamal’s life by using letters and by speaking with his mother, his girlfriend and his friends from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where Kamal studied political science and Indonesian. It was there that he got involved in various student movements that fought for more democratisation in Indonesia. In 1994, the investigations by Kamal’s mother, Helen Todd, resulted in a lawsuit against the Indonesian general Sintong Panjaitan, who had been responsible for the attack that killed Kamal. The film has the form of a trial: many of the interviews are structured as interrogations and testimonies. In addition, photographs and footage from the Indonesian army provide an idea of the torture and atrocities committed by Indonesian soldiers. Acting as witnesses are people like Constâncio Pinto, the leader of the East-Timorese resistance, and journalist Alan Nairn, who is specialised in human rights issues and the Indonesian history.Director Annie Goldson is one of the most prominent documentary filmmakers of New Zealand. She made socially committed films about the American Black Panther movement (FRAMING THE PANTHERS), the situation in Northern Ireland (COUNTERTERROR: THE NORTH OF IRELAND), and other subjects. For PUNITIVE DAMAGE, she did continuous research for two years and travelled to Australia, New Zealand and the Malaysian rainforest.