John Martinkus (1969 – 2025)
WAR REPORTER AND JOURNALISM EDUCATOR
John Martinkus’s career was defined by his commitment to truth and justice in some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. Born in Melbourne, he studied international relations and began reporting from Indonesian-occupied East Timor in the mid-1990s, often working under extreme conditions and evading military surveillance.
His early articles, published in outlets such as Green Left Weekly, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Age, helped expose the actions of the Indonesian military and the plight of the Timorese people. Martinkus was the only journalist to travel to Alas to investigate reports of a massacre in 1998 and later reported on the militia violence surrounding the 1999 independence referendum. His front-page article in The New York Times on September 9, 1999, coincided with U.S. pressure on Indonesia to allow peacekeepers into Timor-Leste. He chronicled these events in his acclaimed book A Dirty Little War (2001), and continued to report on Timor-Leste’s political developments for decades.
Beyond Timor, Martinkus reported from West Papua, Aceh, Afghanistan, and Iraq, where he was kidnapped in 2004 and released after his captors verified his identity online. In 2011, he was commissioned as the Official Australian War Cinematographer in Afghanistan. He also taught journalism at the University of Tasmania and authored several books, including Travels in American Iraq and The Road: Uprising in West Papua.
In 2024, he was awarded the Order of Timor-Leste for his contributions to the country’s liberation. Martinkus died unexpectedly in Melbourne on September 14, 2025, at the age of 56. He is remembered as a journalist whose work gave voice to the oppressed and helped shape international responses to injustice.
Martinkus was a lecturer in journalism and communications at University of Tasmania from 2009 to 2015, winning a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Community Engagement in 2013.
