5. The Irish Connection

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Tom Hyland was the driver of the No.10 bus from the Phoenix Park to Belfield. He took voluntary redundancy from CIE and immersed himself in the campaign to save East Timor from the genocide taking place there under Indonesian rule. He has become one of the most respected and authoritative figures in the world on the East Timor question. But how did he go from driving the No 10 bus to becoming a world player in this tragic conflict thousands of miles away?

One night in 1992 he was at home playing dominoes with some of his mates. A neighbour called to the door to ask could he watch his television as he had been cut off by Cablelink for not paying his bill. The neighbour wished to watch a documentary called 'Cold Blood - The Massacre of East Timor'. As the programme developed, the game of dominoes was gradually abandoned until everyone was sitting in front of the TV enraptured by what they were seeing and hearing. The programme had a deep effect on all those who watched that night. They were especially disturbed by the scenes from the Santa Cruz cemetery at the funeral of a young boy where the Indonesian Army opened fire killing 250 people. Hyland and his neighbours in Ballyfermot decided to act. They set up the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign to highlight the plight of the East Timorese people. They went from borrowing a typewriter to setting up offices in Dame Street in Dublin.