Until 1992, former Dublin bus driver Tom Hyland, by then into his second year of voluntary redundancy from CIE, had no idea about the upheaval on the former Portuguese colony which had been invaded by Indonesia in 1975. "To be honest I wasn't really all that sure where East Timor was." It took a chance viewing of a television documentary to change this for him. "I was at home in Ballyfermot one evening, playing dominoes with some of my mates. A neighbour called to the door, asking if he could watch a documentary on the telly as he'd been cut off by Cablelink for not paying the bill. I'd still mine, so I said `fine, but keep the sound down'. I had no intention of watching it. At first I thought he was having me on. I didn't think documentaries were his thing either."

As Hyland passed the set on his way to resuming the game, he recognised the voice of Olivia O'Leary, then working for Yorkshire television, as she introduced the programme, Cold Blood - The Massacre of East Timor. "My first thought was, `sure that's RTE, why can't he watch his own telly?' Then I realised it was an English programme. I'll never forget O'Leary's words," he recalls, " `Finally, and fully revealed to the outside world, 16 years of continuous atrocity.' We all sat down and watched. The game was abandoned."

The report which followed, of events on the tiny island lying about 600 miles north of Australia, shocked Hyland and changed his life. "The whole thing was terrible, to think that people could be suffering like this. It left you feeling you had to do something, but what? What got to me most were the scenes at the cemetery. People were carrying the coffin of a young boy. All the faces were strained and white. They were all terrified. What on earth - fear, in of all places, a graveyard? What should have been a moment of dignity was one of fear. There we were, me and my neighbours, all shocked and someone said, `Jaysus, we should do something'. It wasn't me who said it. I was the exact opposite. I have to admit I was on the negative side; I just felt: `What could I possibly do?' But you know, I couldn't sleep that night. I got to thinking."

Hyland and his neighbours in Ballyfermot acted quickly and the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign became a reality thanks to their commitment. Having progressed from begging a typewriter, they now have a headquarters in Dame Street.

Hyland does not see himself in charge: "I'm useful because I'm the talkative one, but I'm part of a team." He has, however, became the public face of the campaign thanks to his unique approach. Hyland does not believe on over-complicating issues. As he says himself: "I'm good at spotting opportunities for lifting awareness. Another thing I feel strongly about is making sure things don't go over the top. When a campaign becomes too shrill, it loses its impact and people just don't want to know."

Time and again he has demonstrated his flair for effective, peaceful protest. In 1993, when then Australian prime minister Paul Keating arrived in Ireland on a visit during which he had planned to trace his Irish ancestry, Hyland thought it more important to remind Keating of his country's disgracefully evasive response to the plight of East Timor, formerly a wartime ally. I remember the events, because during an interview with South African Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, she smiled calmly at me and remarked: "There are some people who feel that just because Mr Keating is in Ireland, he should not be allowed to forget his responsibilities."

Although Keating had agreed to meet with the campaigners after the protest, he changed his mind. "He was angry," says Hyland. More recently, of course, it was Hyland who drew support from politicians from all parties when the campaign mounted one of its characteristically peaceful protests in Dublin on November 12th as part of an international call for the release of the Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao.

Regarded by many Timorese as their king, Xanana Gusmao is, as Hyland stresses, "to East Timor what Nelson Mandela is to South Africa".

The situation in East Timor has recently changed slightly - at least to outside eyes. Indonesia has offered autonomy and Xanana Gusmao is now under house arrest. Insiders stress, however, that the atmosphere of fear continues to prevail.

Hyland, an idealist whose dreams are countered by his common sense, is more than a good communicator, he is also extraordinarily good natured and, as has often been pointed out, unfailingly polite. The story of his journey from former bus driver to human rights campaigner is documented in Anne Daly's documentary Dropping the Number 10 for Dili which is to be shown on RTE.

It is Daly's second programme concerning the country. Her first was Grounding a Hawk with a Hammer, the story of four English women who in January 1996 faced criminal charges for having disarmed a Hawk jet fighter due for export to Indonesia and, most likely, for use against the citizens of East Timor.

Dropping the Number 10 for Dili, which took 14 months to film in London, Portugal, East Timor and Indonesia as well as Ireland, focuses on Hyland. "I saw Tom in action outside the Department of Foreign Affairs during the visit of the Australian Foreign Minister," says Daly. "I watched as David Andrews met Tom." For Daly, who has also reported from El Salvador and Chile, what she saw was unique. "In all my years covering situations of conflict, the campaigner is always viewed cautiously. Never before had I seen a situation where there such respect was evident between a politician and a campaigner." Daly remembers observing several members of the Special Branch making their way towards Hyland. The attitude was that of a briefing rather than a reprimand. "It was as if they were saying to Tom, `we're on your side'."

As a reporter, she had that definite frisson which indicated `There is a good story here. This is different.' She knew it was an important moment and that Hyland was unique, determined but neither possessed not obsessional.

He is, indeed, a personable character who laughs often and enjoys reporting on the antics of his dogs, particularly those of Tara, who appears on camera with him. "She thinks she's famous now, she'll be impossible." Once, while in East Timor he was approached by an Australian who asked him: "What is Tom Hyland like?" "He's short, kind of fat, balding and you're looking at him," Hyland replied.

Ballyfermot has always been home. Born there in October, 1952 - "I've the same birthday as Margaret Thatcher, God help me" - Hyland is the fourth of five children.

"My father was a labourer with Roadstone, my mother worked as a cleaner in St James's Hospital. She didn't have a great life. It was hard. I've always felt a bit bitter on her behalf." When Hyland was a child the family home, where he still lives, now alone with his three dogs, was "on the edge of the countryside. Now it's in the middle of Ballyfermot. It's funny how things change."

Both his parents came from Co Westmeath. "We used to go down there, to just outside Moate where my mother came from. We always noticed two things; the milk didn't come in bottles and second, there was nothing for us to do. Me sister and meself there we'd be and" - he poses, twiddling his thumbs, looking ceiling-wards - "nothing to do. City kids, bored stiff. The countryside is, well, something I just don't identify with at all. It was always terrible quiet, too quiet."

Ballyfermot was different. It expanded quickly. At the age of three, he was sent to one of the first playschools opened in Ireland. His family was always poor and he remembers being given a Christmas present at a party given by the local nuns. "They had collected all these toys, all second-hand. I remember being given a three-wheeled fire engine."

School largely passed him by. He left after his Group Cert. "I was no great shakes. But I did like history. I think it's stood by me now. I had to educate myself about East Timor and I've read everything." There were other problems at home. "My father had a drink problem and of course my mother suffered. Many women did. Back in the late 1950s and 1960s, women in Ireland were basically serfs, serving the male population of this country. Nowadays, it's different, most women won't put up with that sort of crap, but then, it was accepted. I remember asking once `Ma, if you could get a divorce, would you?' She said `yes'. "

Mrs Hyland worked as a cleaner into her early 60s. "Then, just as she retired and looked like having some time to enjoy herself, she died." In the winter of 1981, his parents died - within five days of each other. "Ma died first. We decided not to tell Da, as he was in hospital at the time. But I remember arriving in the ward and the nurse just said to me `he's given up' - he had too, he had just lost the will to live.

When Hyland speaks about his younger self it is usually as the child who scored an own-goal. "I had two fantasies; in one I went to Hollywood and be an actor like John Wayne, starring in Westerns. In the other, I played for Manchester United." He never played that much, "but in the dream, I was always the Dublin boy come home to lead my team out . . . `And here is Tom Hyland, returning to his native city'."

When the real-life Manchester United came to Dublin once, they stayed at the Gresham Hotel and Hyland collected most of their autographs. "The one I didn't get was - wouldn't you know - George Best, the best of the lot."

On leaving school, he worked briefly as an apprentice mechanic. "I didn't like it. Very dirty work." He joined CIE and worked as a bus driver for 16 years, often driving the NO 10 route from the Phoenix Park to Belfield. "I got to know various faces from RTE - in later years it made contacting television people a bit easier." He got into squash - "not what you'd expect of me. It's a middle-class game. But I loved it. Don't play it now, I'm too old. But I remember once there was an international competition on and there lots of good players visiting Ireland. Well, myself and a friend arrived at the club in Georges Street." Abbas Khan, then ranked third in the world, was already there. "Give us a game," Hyland requested. The champion agreed. "I was out in five minutes. I think I got to serve, that's about it." At no time does Hyland present himself as special or unique. "I can remember once, probably about 1985, 1986, I gave a fellow a lift. It turned out he was from South Africa and he started to tell me about life in his country. I said: `That sounds terrible. Why don't you just vote the bastards out?' He looked at me and it was only when I looked back I remembered; he looked surprised. `But we have no vote,' he said." Hyland shrugs good-naturedly: "You see, I was never particularly informed." Now he is - and is also well briefed on the respective situations in Burma and Tibet.

Many campaigners eventually acquire a sense of self-seriousness. He hasn't but thinks this does happen when there is fundraising involved. "We are here to heighten awareness, that's what we want to do." He has visited East Timor twice, the second time when filming the documentary last December: he says it is a beautiful place "but very difficult to travel in. It is mountainous. The East Timorese are gentle, South Sea islanders. But there is incredible tension." In two weeks, he will return. Is he looking forward to this? "No. Firstly. I hate flying and it's an 18-hour flight. The last time I had to get off the plane in Germany. But it is also very frightening there, the atmosphere is one of fear and suspicion."

Describing the way in which the Indonesian military police has infiltrated Timorese society, he says: "The situation is such that many Timorese who worked for the military police have been told that if freedom comes they will be killed by their own." Thus, the fear has become double-pronged.

On the day NATO begins bombarding Belgrade, Hyland agrees it defies belief - even allowing that crimes against humanity are a feature of history and are continuing to the present - that Indonesia's invasion of East Timor on December 7th, 1975 remained a secret for so long. That said, academics, mainly in the US, Britain and Australia, have amassed a considerable body of scholarly work dealing with Timor's history up to and since the invasion. A committee of international jurists for East Timor is monitoring the situation.

But life there remains one of the oppressor and oppressed. Indonesia, the fifth-largest country in the world, covering an area equal to the distance between Lisbon and Moscow, invaded a country with a population of about 600,000 - a third of which is believed to have been massacred. Grotesquely, the Indonesians have erected a massive, 27-foot statue of Christ overlooking Aria Branca, a beautiful beach where thousands of East Timorese were slaughtered. Hyland refers to East Timor as being the "27th province of Indonesia . . . How can they murder innocent people at will and then erect crosses honouring God?"

What seems a cynical cover-up, obviously agreed between the major powers, certainly helped: the vast oil reserves of the Timor Sea must have played quite a role in the international silence over the years. News has filtered through, of course, though Hyland has never forgiven the international journalistic community for not having been more active - "considering the fact that five journalists lost their lives there, six when you count the man who went out to find out what had happened". Some awareness was also raised by Timothy Mo's fine novel The Redundancy of Courage, which was published in 1991 and set in an unnamed island clearly based on East Timor.

The campaigning journalist John Pilger went to East Timor in 1993 to make a documentary, Death of a Nation - The Timor Conspiracy. That programme contains footage from an interview with the former Tory defence minister, Alan Clarke. When Pilger points out to him that the Indonesian regime has killed, proportionally, more people than Pol Pot killed in Cambodia, then asks Clarke: "Isn't that ever a consideration for the British government?", Clarke replies: "It's not something that often enters . . . my thinking, I must admit . . . I don't really fill my mind much with what one set of foreigners is doing to another."

Pilger, with mounting irony, continues: "Did it bother you personally when you were the minister responsible that British equipment was causing such mayhem and human suffering, albeit to a set of foreigners?" Clarke stares and replies: "No, not in the slightest."

Should East Timor finally win independence, what will Hyland do? "I'd like to go there and visit the families of the people I have met. I wonder what they'd make of me and my Dublin accent?" He pauses. "Something I've always wanted to do is open an animal sanctuary. Maybe in Co Clare. Have a place that is a refuge for everything - dogs, cats, birds, even rats. I've always felt that until we start respecting animals, acknowledging that they are entitled to have their dignity, to enjoy their life, what hope have we got of some kids ever learning how to respect human life?

"It may sound a bit simple-minded but I've often seen the mindless cruelty kids commit against animals and it seems like only a step or two removed from the evils we commit against each other all the time."

Dropping the No 10 For Dili, written and presented by Anne Daly, will be shown on RTE 1 on Tuesday.