Dark tourism in Timor-Leste: An examination of foreign tourists' visits to the Santa Cruz cemetery and the Comarca Balide prison via analysis of Tripadvisor reviews

Abstract

During the brutal Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste from 1975 to 1999, over 100,000 Timorese out of an estimated population of 650,000 lost their lives; thousands more suffered a range of horrific human rights violations. This paper discusses ‘dark tourism’—tourism linked with this violent past—in Timor-Leste's post-independence era. The paper focuses its analysis of dark tourism on two of the most well-known tourist sites linked with the Indonesian past, both sites of former violence: the Santa Cruz cemetery and the Comarca Balide prison. It looks specifically at international tourists' experiences at the two sites. The paper contributes to debates over the morality of dark tourism, as well as to human rights and transitional justice literatures that examine how memorialisation efforts play out on the ground. It argues, among other things, that a view of dark tourism as purely amoral thrill-seeking or voyeurism should be tempered. The case of Timor-Leste shows us instead that dark tourism can play an important role in individuals' attempts to understand, learn more about, and otherwise make meaning out of complicated pasts of violence.