The push to declassify intelligence records about Balibo has been led by University of NSW Professor Clinton Fernandes, a former Australian army intelligence officer on the East Timor desk.

In 2011, he successfully won access to 43 Australian government documents in connection with Balibo but has been blocked in his bid to reveal further material, including files that could uncover the level of Australian knowledge about Indonesian war crimes in East Timor and a famine between 1977 and 1979 that claimed up to 180,000 lives.

“The majority of information pertaining to Balibo, held by the Australian government as part of the Defence Intelligence Organisation, has not been released,” Fernandes said on Monday.

“The Indonesian military briefed the Australian embassy before the attack on Balibo, saying that it would be a covert operation where the Indonesian forces would not be wearing Indonesian uniforms or carrying Indonesian flags, and it would be a cover, a deniable accusation. Our embassy knew that. What we don’t know … is if the embassy knew if the journalists were in Balibo. They certainly knew they were in Timor.”

He said documents that had been declassified showed that the Australian government knew what had happened at Balibo immediately afterwards, having intercepted unencrypted Indonesian military radio messages, and the absence of international condemnation of the atrocity gave Indonesia a “green light” to act with impunity in East Timor.

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While the sensitivity around Canberra’s relationship with Indonesia means the full Australian intelligence picture may remain hidden, Shirley Shackleton was able to ensure her husband and his colleagues were never to be forgotten in Balibo and beyond.

She was the driving force behind the Victorian government-backed purchase in 2003 of the house in the town on which the journalists had painted an Australian flag, hoping it would protect them. It was rebuilt as a community learning centre including a memorial to the five men killed.

She also wrote a book, Circle of Silence: A Personal Testimony Before, During and After Balibo, that won a Walkley award in 2010.

“It was Shirley who really was behind [the acquisition of the house in Balibo] from the very start, and wanting to make sure there was a permanent and ongoing remembrance of what happened,” said Steve Bracks, who Victoria premier at the time.

“She was a tireless campaigner for truth and justice. That’s all she wanted and she had to come up against the Australian government and the Indonesian government who knew what happened and refused to reveal it.”

Ramos-Horta said Shackleton’s “soul rests with us in Mt Ramelau”, the highest mountain in East Timor, upon which a statue of the Virgin Mary sits and where the deeply Catholic Timorese believe the spirits of their deceased lie.

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