The Irish-East Timor solidarity activist, Mr Tom Hyland, has just concluded a clandestine visit to the illegally-occupied former Portuguese colony. He is carrying a letter from the separatist guerrillas to the UN Secretary General's special representative for East Timor, Dr Jamsheed Marker.
Mr Hyland's role as postman is an indication of a closed society from which the outside world can not be reached by mail. After a first-time four-day visit marked by constant surveillance, Mr Hyland said the "people's suffering under Indonesian rule is much worse than I thought". The heavy presence of troops in Dili lends feeling to the fact of occupation, which since an invasion 22 years ago has meant the deaths - by disappearance, torture, famine and extra-judicial execution - of more than 200,000 people.
But it is the military's infiltration of the society that makes East Timor a particularly uncomfortable place to be. "Hello Mister, where are you from? Why are you here? Where are you going?" was a typical over-friendly greeting in the street. It is well known that taximen, students, and hotel staff are paid by the army for information, especially on foreigners.
The Timorese seem a naturally guileless people forced to be perpetually circumspect. Informers could sometimes tell where we were going, minutes after we had decided ourselves.
Despite infamous human rights abuses under military rule, East Timor has some brave politicians. Mr Francisco Lopez de Carvalho is general secretary of a new body that embraces 31 former integrationists who back an independence referendum.
It includes some of East Timor's traditional liurai (local high kings), owners of traditional land taken by force in the worst war period before 1989, when East Timor was "opened" to foreigners. Last year, only 132 tourists were allowed in.
Mr de Carvalho, himself the son of a liurai, recalled the 1984 killing in Enaru province of Joao Xavier, a Fretilin leader - under the orders of Col Daren Slamet Sidaburdar, East Timor's present military commander.
The captured Xavier was tied, his forearms were slashed in several places, chillies were put in the wounds and he was buried alive. "I know because I was working in intelligence with the Indonesians at that time," said Mr de Carvalho.
The resistance is expecting a secret visit by Dr Marker before Christmas and the letter puts Fretilin's peace proposals to him in advance of the visit. The 1975 invasion has been ineffectually censured 10 times by the UN, but Dr Marker's mission is seen as a possible fresh start.
Challenging frequently quoted Indonesian estimates of rebel strength, sources close to the guerrillas told The Irish Times that over 6,000 fighters are being joined by new recruits. Indonesia constantly portrays the rebels as a nearly beaten force of a few hundred.
Resistance sources gave The Irish Times a convincing picture of a movement for independence which is growing, not shrinking, as Indonesia constantly suggests.
Just before leaving for East Timor, its international representative and Nobel Peace Prize laureat, Dr Jose Ramos Horta, told me that Indonesia has up to 30,000 troops in his country.
But it is not only the older generation that is standing up and being counted in a society where the resistance said the military uses any attempt at "dialogue" to identify dissidents. Dili university students have demanded "a fair investigation", by an international team, of an army shooting spree at their campus on November 14th. Five protesting students were shot "and tortured nearly to death", 10 were arrested and three others remain missing since the incident, they said. The resistance believes the disappearances may be related to the killing of four Timorese which the army blamed on Fretilin. In the propaganda war Fretilin says the military did it. The campus attack was a first for East Timor.
C degree humid heat. Ninety per cent would vote for independence, said resistance sources.
Mr Hyland's visit coincided with that of two UN officials, Mr Miguel Alfonso Martinez and Ms Portia Siegelbaum of the UN Sub- Committee for Discrimination Prevention and Minority Persecution. Mr Martinez said at Dili airport, before leaving, he had seen "no indication of the war that is being portrayed by the media abroad".
The official, who dined with Governor Abilio Jose Osorio Soares, was reported as saying "extraordinary progress" was being made - especially in social, cultural and economic matters in Timor.
He may have had in mind East Timor's ever growing 300,000 transmigrasi, immigrants from neighbouring Indonesian islands who are favoured by Indonesia over the Timorese. Bishop Ximines Carlos Belo of Dili, Timor's other Nobel laureate, has included this aspect of integration under the heading of "cultural genocide".
Mr Martinez seemed not to have noticed he was leaving something like occupied wartime France. Mr Hyland said: "The UN has been as ineffectual in East Timor as it has been in Rwanda."
Meanwhile, President Suharto went on television at the weekend to reassure his people and the currency markets that he is not dead, contrary to rumours. Since September the rupiah has fallen 100 per cent against western currencies and fell again on Friday.
The president said last week he was going to take doctors' advice and not attend this week's ASEAN summit in Malaysia. As the rupiah dropped further he changed his mind, only to change it again the next day.
There is speculation that Indonesia may be about to see the end of the era of Suharto, Asia's longest ruling leader. But resistance sources said that after him there is only "a 25 per cent chance" of a better life for East Timor because of the military's vested interest in guarding its "counter-insurgency training where the people are treated as objects".