Punitive Damage

In 1991 Helen Todd received the phone call that every parent dreads. Half a world away in East Timor, her son Kamal had been killed. Kamal’s tragic death at the hands of the Indonesian military set Helen on a course that would span five countries and culminate in a landmark legal case in the United States. This story of the courage of a mother and son eerily foreshadows the current events of recent months. “Whether total genocide occurs in East Timor or not depends not only on the will of East Timorese people, but on the will of humanity, of us all.”