Birth of a nation

Newborn nation passes its first democracy test

South China Morning Post - June 1, 2002

Harald Bruning -- Less than a fortnight after becoming the world's newest nation, East Timor is struggling to consolidate its hard-won democracy and solve myriad social problems left behind by Portuguese colonial neglect, brutal Indonesian occupation and rather transitory nation-building efforts by the United Nations.

The half-island's nascent democracy came under threat just one day after it regained its independence on May 20 when East Timorese Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo demanded that a respected Portuguese journalist be kicked out of the country for writing an article that allegedly slandered the Church.

Bishop Belo, who is notorious for his temperamental outbursts, claimed the article by Antonio Sampaio, head of the Portuguese national news agency's bureau in East Timor, was "full of insults".

In the article, headlined "The strength of the Church and the power of a bishop", Sampaio matter-of-factly described the Catholic Church as East Timor's "most powerful institution", maintaining that Bishop Belo was more powerful than the new state's directly elected President, Xanana Gusmao.

Sampaio also claimed that Portugal's pre-1974 fascist regime had relied on the Catholic Church to maintain its colonial rule of East Timor.

The just-installed East Timorese Government must be given due credit for its unequivocal defence of press freedom in reaction to the bishop's explosion of anger.

Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, who is a Muslim, stressed that he would personally "guarantee that the media have freedom in this country, because that's what we fought for".

Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with Bishop Belo, promised he would "never ask for the expulsion of a journalist from my country", stressing that even though he did not always agree with what the media was saying about him or his country, "that's what press freedom is all about". Fortunately, the controversy has died down.

Unfortunately, hard on the heels of the dignified independence celebrations, several Portuguese parliamentarians, on their return from Dili, started belly-aching in Lisbon about the fact that six of them had been forced to share a cramped car during their visit, a situation that had required "some gymnastics" to get in and out of the vehicle. The pathetic bunch also complained that they had been denied "special treatment" by the organisers of the independence bash.

As someone who saw tens of thousands of dirt-poor East Timorese walking for hours, due to a dearth of public transport, to attend the celebrations, sitting on the dusty ground of a dirt field with them because there were no chairs for the public and the press, I can only express disgust at the sheer impertinence of certain European lawmakers.

East Timor should now revive its great slogan in the national Tetum language -- ami mos bele (we too can) -- that it invented to cheer on its small team that participated in the country's first Olympics in Sydney in 2000.

The 800,000 East Timorese must prove they have the ability to run their own affairs with the help, but not the neo-colonialist interference, of friendly nations. The country has a long history of betrayal by foreign countries -- Portugal, Indonesia, Australia, Japan and the United States -- and its own political leaders, some of whom in 1975 begged Jakarta to invade their homeland. Quite rightly, the preamble of East Timor's constitution pays tribute to its people's "centuries-long resistance" to colonialism and illegal occupation.

Hopefully, East Timor's leaders will be particularly careful when handling the sensitive language issue. While the Portuguese language is certainly part of East Timor's multicultural heritage, it should never be allowed to edge out Tetum, which expresses the nation's soul in a way a language imported from Europe cannot.

The departure of the 2-1/2-year UN Transitional Administration, whose well-paid presence an East Timorese priest described as "luxury in the midst of misery", has been succeeded by a democratically elected government that, while depending on foreign donations for the time being, has vowed to develop self- reliance in the long term.

Unlike many other former colonies at the time of their independence, East Timor's leadership enjoys full democratic credentials and a seemingly genuine commitment to the protection of civil and social rights.

After all, the fact that Dili's main waterfront street has been named "Human Rights Avenue" appears to be a good omen for future political developments.

[Harald Bruning is the Post's Macau correspondent.]

Timorese take their time adjusting to luxury of peace

Financial Times [UK] - May 30, 2002

Joe Leahy and Tom McCawley -- When the veteran United Nations official Sergio Vieira de Mello went to Tokyo in late 1999 to lobby donors for funds to rebuild East Timor, he had no inkling of the task that lay before him.

UN security council resolution 1272 authorising the Timor mission had given the charismatic Brazilian full executive and administrative control over the tiny half-island, which had formally voted to separate from Indonesia only a few months before.

But the document provided few other details. It did not say, for instance, that he would have to build a nation from scratch -- from recruiting an army to seeing that the rubbish is collected in the capital, Dili.

"I often joke that [resolution] 1272 is two-and-a-half pages long. It tells us we're responsible for everything but it didn't come with an instruction manual," says Mr Vieira de Mello.

This month he and other officials involved in the international aid effort in East Timor must have breathed a collective sigh of relief. On May 20 the territory and its population of 740,000 became formally independent for the first time in more than 400 years. That followed the peaceful election of Xanana Gusmao, the independence hero and former guerrilla leader, as president a month before.

Full independence for East Timor marks the pinnacle of what has been one of the world's most comprehensive and more successful reconstruction efforts. A former Portuguese colony, East Timor was invaded by neighbouring Indonesia in 1975. When Jakarta lost a UN-supervised referendum on independence for the territory in 1999, angry Indonesian troops and militias destroyed 80 per cent of the new nation's infrastructure and displaced up to a quarter of its population. Now people are moving back, most public services are up and running and there are courts, a central bank and a parliament.

The aid effort in East Timor owes part of its success to the territory's small size and its stable internal security situation. Unlike Afghanistan, which is plagued by ethnic divisions, East Timor's war was with an invader.

East Timor also has more than its share of world-class leaders for a small country. Aside from Mr Gusmao, these include Nobel peace prize winners Jose Ramos Horta, the territory's former ambassador-in-exile, and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, its spiritual leader. The strong leadership enabled better co- operation between international aid agencies and local people throughout the mission.

The process began in October 1999, when the donors conducted a joint assessment of East Timor's needs that partnered international and local experts from each sector. The reconstruction effort also benefited at the beginning from a co- ordinated response from donors. In Tokyo in 1999 the donors agreed to set up the Trust Fund for East Timor to handle about $500m (#342m) in pledges. "One of the disasters in these programmes like this is to have a huge number of fragmented, separate programmes," says Sarah Cliffe, the World Bank's head in Dili.

Another success was the use of "quick-win" initiatives. The World Bank, for instance, supported elections of village councils and then gave them grants for local schemes, such as repairing water systems, as a way of getting things moving.

"Aside from the material benefits of these programmes, they're important for security and for hope in the population, so that people see something is getting going," Ms Cliffe says.

One of the mission's key difficulties, however, has been recruiting and training the East Timorese, or "capacity building", in development jargon.

East Timorese leaders commonly complain that locals were not given more jobs in the UN administration earlier. "I believe that the real capacity-building will start on the first day of independence," says Mr Gusmao.

Part of the problem was a lack of senior technical expertise among the Timorese, who had never run their own state before. Most senior civil servants under Jakarta's rule had been Indonesian. When the UN began casting around for judges for the new judicial system, for instance, the highest qualified East Timorese were undergraduate law students. Today, only about 50 per cent of senior managers in the civil service are East Timorese.

Another shortcoming was that while the mission set up a working judicial system, it did not build a systematic case against those ultimately responsible for war crimes, argues Sidney Jones of Human Rights Watch.

The mission also suffered from the red tape that makes the UN notorious.

Ultimately, though, the fact that people feel safe enough to complain demonstrates that the mission achieved its main objective: to end the cycle of war.

Ordinary East Timorese have been able to enjoy peace for long enough now that they've nearly forgotten the value of it. That's what the UN came to achieve," says a former UN worker.

Transition & reconstruction

Timor gets down to basics

Melbourne Age - June 1 2002

Jill Jolliffe -- A week after East Timor became independent, the terrace of Dili's City Cafe is near deserted. Days before, it was crowded with media crews, international VIPs who had graced the independence ceremony and the United Nations officials who have made it their watering hole since it opened in 2000.

Now they're flying out in droves, and the East Timorese are left facing the harsh realities of self-government after the exodus.

Phones and Internet services in government offices were disconnected on May 25, as computers were trundled out. The phone contracts had been paid for by the now non-existent UN Transitional Administration in East Timor. They should have been renewed by the incoming East Timorese Government of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, but someone had forgotten to ensure continuity.

At the national radio and television station, which has flourished under UNTAET tutelage since 1999, there is a worse crisis; broadcasts might cease in coming days. If the radio goes off the air, the rural population will be isolated because Radio Timor Lorosae, formerly Radio UNTAET, is the only news medium that reaches the countryside.

International donors have invested heavily in the training of young East Timorese journalists, and now 26 face unemployment, along with technical workers. As the crisis develops, Dr Alkatiri visited the station to reassure staff that they would stay on air. Not all are convinced. "Who do we hand power to?" an outgoing UNTAET staff member said. "We have no counterpart in place."

UNTAET officials had repeatedly warned of this danger if the transition was not prepared, but the problem is larger. International donors believe the country's new constitution does not give sufficient guarantees of press freedom, and have withheld backing.

"Alkatiri thought the regulation on public broadcasting would satisfy the donors," a UN source said, "but he underestimated the benchmark they require for media independence."

A compromise is being hammered out -- an emergency $US350,000 bailout package from a few donors to allow broadcasting to continue for several months more.

The average East Timorese is worried about surviving alone, but the UN is not pulling out altogether: UNTAET has been replaced by the UN Mission of Support in East Timor led by Indian diplomat Kamalesh Sharma, with a new support team of international experts.

There are two great sources of anxiety. One stems from the knowledge that Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri's appearance at the independence ceremonies did not indicate that problems with Indonesia have ended. Invited personally by President Xanana Gusmao, she came against opposition from some military circles.

Despite UN promises, not a single Indonesian officer has yet been convicted for 1999 war crimes.

About 50,000 refugees deported to West Timor at that time remain there. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees issued a statement shortly before independence, saying it would no longer provide repatriation assistance, but Commissioner Ruud Lubbers later said UNHCR would extend the deadline by six months.

UN peacekeepers remain at the West Timor border, which is quiet, but a decision this week by the Indonesian army to move its regional military base from Bali to West Timor is not reassuring.

"At present East Timor and Australia have yet to become a threat, but in the future things may be different," West Timor Deputy Governor Johannes Pake Pani told The Jakarta Post.

The other great worry is unemployment. Several thousand people have been recruited for the new public service, but the emptying of hotels and restaurants will cut jobs in the service sector.

Nina Sane, 19, and her fiance Januario Tilman, 25, are a typical young couple. They are dirt-poor, but they have an irrepressible spirit, and form part of the human capital that is East Timor's greatest asset as it rises from the ashes. Independence was a joyous moment for them. "I'm optimistic about the future" Mr Tilman said.

Gusmao: 'We are lucky'

Newsweek - May 27, 2002

[East Timor's adored first president says he welcomes the tough tasks ahead. Three years ago, Jose (Xanana) Gusmo was a political prisoner languishing in a Jakarta prison. Today he's president of the world's newest nation. His new job may be even harder than leading the armed resistance to Indonesian occupation: East Timor is plagued by massive poverty, a lack of basic infrastructure, an inexperienced civil service and a rudimentary economy. As he prepared for his Inauguration last week, Gusmo spoke to Newsweek's Joe Cochrane in Dili about the challenges ahead.]

Excerpts:

Cochrane: Where did the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor [UNTAET] succeed and fail?

Gusmo: The main UN mission was to eliminate the [governing] vacuum here and establish the structure of power -- the administrative structure, the judiciary structure -- to prepare this country for independence. That is why we cannot judge achievements in terms of everything that a government must do. Most important for me, the first achievement [was] the establishment of an environment of security and peace. Second, the presence of the international community here [gave us] East Timorese time enough to reconsider, to calm down, to rethink.

Do you think UNTAET could have done a better job?

Not at all. They established an environment that gave confidence to our people. Of course, economic growth is the task of the government, not the task of UNTAET. Our people in the countryside are living in very, very poor conditions.

Some people say that after UNTAET leaves, East Timor's economy will come down. We must learn from this. We need to face real problems.

How can you develop East Timor when your only major industry will be oil and gas?

To tell the truth, we are lucky. We are lucky for not having right now revenues from oil and gas. That will [come] five or six years later. It gives us five years to think about how to improve, how to [take] advantage of other sustainable resources, such as tourism, agriculture, fisheries. We can take advantage of these five years to change our mentality.

Are you worried there will be social unrest once the euphoria of independence passes and the East Timorese realize what a difficult road ahead they face?

No. The euphoria happened in October 1999 [when the Indonesian military withdrew]. Now the expectations will be directed at the government to respond to problems. We've had two and a half years to [realize] we will face difficult times.

Did you expect to have more things in place as you take over as president of East Timor?

No. I cannot demand more. I see all of this as a process. Of course we were very sad about the destruction, but we're also thankful for the destruction. It leaves us the sense that all the development that we can do in East Timor will all be done by us. We can build something new.

What is the quality of East Timor's leadership, aside from yourself and the top ministers in the new government?

I prefer not to be in the leadership right now. I'd prefer new leadership because ... we are all now learning how to do our jobs. It makes no difference whether it is me or others [in office].

You've gone from jailed guerrilla to leader of a sovereign nation. Are you scared at all about the future?

No. Concerned but optimistic.

Land issues/peasant struggle

Indonesia told to forget about getting back its assets

Associated Press - May 31, 2002

Joanna Jolly, Dili -- The government on Friday urged Indonesia to abandon any hope of retrieving assets from its former territory of East Timor, saying Jakarta's brutality and economic exploitation during its occupation nullified any claims to what it left behind.

"East Timor's position is very clear," said East Timorese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Domingos Savio. "If Indonesians want to claim their assets, they can claim them from their own government."

"The Indonesians used our property, cut down our sandalwood, and used our coffee plantations for years," Savio said. "Who is going to pay for all the Timorese killed? All the orphans? All those who were kidnapped?"

East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia in a United Nations-sponsored referendum in 1999. After the vote, anti-independence militias and some members of the Indonesia military killed up to 1,000 people and destroyed much of the territory.

Human rights groups claim 200,000 people were killed or died from disease and famine during the pro-independence guerrilla war in the years before the vote.

Indonesia spent millions of dollars on developing East Timor's infrastructure after it invaded the territory in 1976. Despite this, most of the territory's people 800,000 remained poor during the occupation.

Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said the assets would be brought up with East Timor's government.

"This is an issue that needs to be discussed," he said. "How are we to speak for the many thousands of [Indonesian] individuals who lost their belongings and their property and tell them this is the past?" Natalegawa said the government was currently calculating the value of assets belonging to the government, state enterprises, private businesses and individuals left in East Timor when Indonesia withdrew.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri traveled to Dili to attend East Timor's celebration of official independence on May 20th, when the United Nations, which had administered the territory since 1999, handed over control to a local government. Several Indonesian nationalist legislators opposed Megawati's trip.

Earlier this week, Jakarta asked East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao to cancel a planned trip to Jakarta, saying the Indonesian government was not prepared.

Conflicting claims in no-man's land

Australian Financial Review - May 28, 2002

Geoffrey Barker -- There are three forms of land title in East Timor, reflecting the country's long history of foreign occupation.

Some land, notably rural land, is held under customary communal title. During 450 years of Portuguese rule, 2,709 parcels of land were given to the colonial elites. During Indonesia's 24-year rule, some 44,000 land parcels were handed out.

Among the crimes committed by the Indonesian military and its proxies as they fled and wrecked East Timor in 1999 was the destruction or theft of many land records. Nobody is sure who owns what. Disputes are increasing as different people claim traditional, Portuguese or Indonesian title over the same land.

To further complicate matters, there is much illegal occupation of land and much wrecked and abandoned property.

The East Timorese government has decided that foreigners will not be allowed to own land in the new nation.

It has yet to decide what sort of land rights to give to foreign investors who require security of tenure before making the sort of capital investment that will start effective economic development.

Most observers of the legal system regard stability of land title and land law as the major civil legal issue for the new government to come to terms with.

Decisions about title recognition, land registration and land conflict resolution procedures still have to be made.

But in a country where the Portuguese and Indonesian colonialists in turn acquired land through threats, intimidation or unfair compensation payments, land law and land justice still seem far away.

Militia/West Timor refugees

Independence no cure-all for East Timorese

Washington Times - June 1, 2002

Ian Timberlake, Motaain -- Joao Pereira's East Timor home is just a few miles from here, but until recently it was a distance he had been reluctant to travel.

Fear about what would happen to him, a former supporter of integration with Indonesia, and the government salary he received, tied him and his four children to the Indonesian side of the border, where they lived as refugees for almost three years.

Now Mr. Pereira has had enough. He has gone home, joining an increasing number of East Timorese who opted to return before May 20, when East Timor achieved full independence after 24 years of Indonesian occupation and months of UN administration.

The new East Timorese government hopes the estimated 50,000 East Timorese who remain across the border will follow the lead of people such as Mr. Pereira.

"I want to return to my birthplace," said Mr. Pereira, 47, from behind dark glasses that shielded his eyes from the bright sun as he waited at this border crossing beside two trucks loaded with the bedding, plastic chairs, wooden cabinets and a panting dog he brought with him.

His eldest daughter, Anina, 17, wiped tears from her eyes as they lined up with dozens of other returning East Timorese to get fingerprinted, receive a $75 allowance, and have their photographs taken by Indonesian repatriation officials.

UN officials say 10,000 refugees went home in March and April, the highest level in two years.

About a quarter of East Timor's population -- more than 200,000 people -- have already gone back since they were forced out in September 1999 amid a campaign of killing, arson, looting and forced deportation carried out by armed militias and the Indonesian security forces that created them. The violence was the culmination of a campaign of violence surrounding East Timor's overwhelming vote to separate from Indonesia that, with US approval, seized the former Portuguese colony in 1975.

Many of those who remain on the Indonesian side of the border are former soldiers, police or civil servants who, like Mr. Pereira, continue to receive Indonesian government salaries while they live in Indonesian West Timor.

Like other refugees who are going back, Mr. Pereira seems prepared to take his chances in East Timor rather than rely any longer on his Indonesian salary. He worked for the Department of Information in his home district of Maliana before he became a village chief in 1991.

Those who remain in the camps complain of hunger since Indonesian authorities on Jan. 1 cut off all refugee assistance in an effort to encourage the East Timorese to go home.

Militia and their guns once ruled these camps, but the military and local government turned against them. Without the food and other aid they used as a weapon to hold people in the camps, the militiamen are virtually powerless, said a Western diplomat who closely follows East Timor.

East Nusa Tenggara, the province that borders East Timor, is Indonesia's poorest and could not support the refugees indefinitely. Its people did not like the East Timorese outsiders crowding their land.

The diplomat credits Maj. Gen. William da Costa, the local military commander, for taking firm action against the militias and working with the former UN administration in East Timor to get the refugees home.

"It's an example for all over Indonesia. Of course, he couldn't have done it if he wasn't supported by Jakarta," the diplomat said.

Some refugees remain reluctant to leave the camps for a number of reasons, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Some still cling to their meager Indonesian salaries. Former militiamen remain concerned about how they will be treated in East Timor.

At the Noelbaki camp just outside Kupang, the East Nusa Tenggara capital, refugees endure a miserable existence cooking on open fires outside rows of clapped-together plywood shacks. It is a desolate and windswept place that appeared to have only a couple of hundred remaining residents.

Mr. Pereira and the others would rather take their chances in newly independent East Timor. He and his children joined a convoy of about 20 donated trucks loaded with refugees. They drove slowly past a sparkling bay, leaving behind a simple metal barrier that marks the border with Indonesia.

By early afternoon, Mr. Pereira and his family were home in the village of Sanirin. His four daughters arrived to kisses from a relative waiting on the front porch. His son, Atin, 8, did a little dance inside. Adau combed her hair before a mirror in the front room.

The houses in this village are small, thatched-roof boxes made from thin strips of palm wood. A picture of East Timor's president, Xanana Gusmao, seems to be stuck to every one. As the village chief, Mr. Pereira's house is bigger and better than the rest, with wooden-framed windows, a new-looking metal roof and painted walls.

Timor Gap

Timor Gap protests dog Howard

Green Left Weekly - May 29, 2002

Sarah Stephen, Dili -- May 19 marked the turning point of a historic period of transition for the East Timorese people. It was the last day of operation for the UN Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET), bringing to a close more than 400 years of foreign rule.

It was also a day of contrasts, between those East Timorese who are still campaigning for social justice, and those who are content to make peace with East Timor's more recent oppressors -- the governments of Indonesia and Australia -- in the name of "reconciliation".

East Timorese campaign groups and NGOs took advantage of the arrival of Australian Prime Minister John Howard on May 19 to protest against Australia's attempts to block full East Timorese control over Timor Gap gas and oil reserves. Two Australian solidarity activists unfurled a protest banner and were thrown out of a press conference at Dili airport.

Howard's appearance at a second media conference in the centre of Dili was greeted with a protest by 500 East Timorese and a small number of international solidarity activists. A broad coalition of organisations planned the protest as the first stage of a campaign to defend East Timor's economic sovereignty.

Participants included the Labour Syndicate of East Timor; Eusebio Guterres, a member of parliament for the Democratic Party, representing the Labour Advocacy Institute of East Timor; La'o Hamutuk (the East Timor Institute for Reconstruction Monitoring and Development); the Sa'he Institute, a left-wing research organisation; the Timor Socialist Labour Organisation; Groupo Defensor, coordinated by Manuel Carrascalao; the Solidaritas student organisation; and the Pro-Proletariat Movement.

The protest began with a march of 120 people through Dili, starting from the offices of the Socialist Party of Timor (PST). At the busy Marcado Municipal, many onlookers joined the march, swelling the number to around 500.

Protesters carried placards reading, "Howard: you are a thief", "Timor Gap belongs to East Timor" and "Support economic independence for East Timor".

While many speakers at the protest focused on the Timor Gap issue, rally organisers championed the right of national self- determination for Aceh and West Papua. John Ondowame from the Free Papua Movement received wild applause from the crowd when he spoke, surrounded by a sea of Acehnese and West Papuan national flags.

The official independence ceremony began on the evening of May 19 at Taci Tolo, a huge oval on the outskirts of Dili. The road to the oval was blocked off for three kilometres, except for cars carrying UN personnel and dignitaries. Tens of thousands of East Timorese walked for two hours to get to the site.

East Timorese foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta gave a special welcome to the World Bank president James Wohlfenson, and welcomed John Howard as "our friend". In his speech, President Xanana Gusmao also gave a special mention to the "courage" of Howard and former US president Bill Clinton.

The final welcome was for Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who made a late entrance after travelling with Gusmao to the Indonesian cemetery (opposite the Santa Cruz cemetery, site of the November 12, 1991, massacre of East Timorese protesters by the Indonesian army). Horta explained -- in English, which only some East Timorese can understand -- that Megawati had been to "visit the graves of fallen heroes"! Several days before Megawati's arrival, six Indonesian warships carrying 2000 troops steamed uninvited into Dili's harbour.

East Timor's new government faces many daunting challenges. Almost 50% of the adult population is illiterate; unemployment among town dwellers runs at 80%; only 20% of the population are able to access running water.

In his speech, Horta referred to the "outpouring of support" expressed at the Donors Meeting on East Timor, held on May 14-15. A joint media release issued on May 15 by the East Timorese government, UNTAET and the World Bank declared that donors pledged "over US$360 million for the development of East Timor after independence". There was no mention of the fact that this includes money for the exorbitant salaries of UN personnel, who will remain in the country after UNTAET's departure.

Furthermore, donor countries have refused to give money directly to the East Timorese government. Since the United Nations has declined to continue administering its Consolidated Fund for East Timor, East Timor's only option seems to be agreeing to let the World Bank manage the fund, as it has done with the Trust Fund for East Timor, in place since 2000 to fund its own projects in East Timor.

"The new government is unconstitutional", PST president Antonio Lopes told Green Left Weekly. "The constitution states that the elected president must sit together with all political parties and ask the party with the majority of seats in the parliament to nominate a prime minister, then the president and prime minister have to jointly appoint members of the government to cabinet positions.

"But it seems like the government has arranged everything already. Fretilin [which has the most seats in the parliament] has already appointed cabinet positions. They invited the parties to meet today [May 20] as a formality, and Xanana has raised no protest."<%0> When asked why the government felt able to flout the constitution, Lopes explained: "[Newly installed prime minister] Mari Alkatiri and others who have come back from Portugal and Mozambique have marginalised the opposition political parties" whose representatives stayed in East Timor through the last 25 years. "Forty percent of Fretilin members of parliament are from the diaspora", Lopes explained. Asked what the PST thought of the new government's eagerness to make friends with the governments which opposed East Timor's independence struggle, Lopes replied: "Yesterday [May 19] was the day when Alkatiri and Horta were demonstrating that they were on the side of the right wing. They deliberately left out two verses of the new national anthem which were strongly against colonialism and imperialism."

Alkatiri says Australia has promised to renegotiate boundary

Radio Australia - May 28, 2002

[Australia's decision not to negotiate maritime boundaries with East Timor has surprised the new republic's Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. Opposition East Timor MPs have criticised the Timor Gap oil and gas Treaty, saying the maritime boundaries unfairly favour Australia, particularly the Greater Sunrise area -- 80 per cent of which falls within the Australian zone, under the original agreement signed with Indonesia in 1972. Mr Alkatiri says that contrary to Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer's assertion, tax and boundaries have not been sorted out.]

Transcript:

Alkatiri: "No no no no no. This is completely false. I made it clear in Canberra that all this is defined. This is nothing to do with boundaries and we would like to negotiate maritime boundaries in the lunch. Mr Downer responded to me that they are ready to do it."

Snowdon: Why the confusion then? Why are there different positions? Mr Downer says as recently as a couple of days ago, Australia won't renegotiate. You are saying you have an understanding that he intends to. Why is there this difference of opinion?

Alkatiri: "He made it clear at the lunch that they are prepared, they are ready to negotiate the maritime boundaries. This is the reality."

Snowdon: Will negotiations now on maritime boundaries be a waste of time? Do you need to go to the International Court more quickly?

Alkatiri: "No I think the International Court is really out of the question. Australia has already withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the International Court. This was classified by me at the time as an unfriendly act from the Australian government. Now I'm realising that this act is linked to the maritime boundaries. I hope not. But I'm realising that this is really linked to the maritime boundaries -- a way to tighten our hands.

"We are looking to apply international law in the zone and we would like, really to have friendly discussions, friendly negotiations between the two friendly countries. But still business is business. We have to deal with all these things as business."

Snowdon: But how is that possible now?

Alkatiri; "I think that we will try again and we will see."

Snowdon: Do you think that given this latest development that you shouldn't have signed the treaty -- that perhaps it was premature, until you got Australia to agree to definite further negotiations?

Alkatiri: "Not at all, not at all because I still have a lot of instruments to be used even in the treaty itself. I think the signing of this treaty was the right move."

Snowdon: Do you now expect parliament to ratify it, given the latest development with Australia indicating that it's not interested in negotiating any further beyonf unitisation?

Alkatiri: "It depends on the clear position of Australia because for sure, if I decided to table it in the parliament it would be ratified. But I only will do it if it really can help me serving in the best way, my people."

Snowdon: So you might be reconsidering?

Alkatiri: "I think that it is better to start talking again with the Australian government and try to know clearly, formally what their position is."

Snowdon: Can we talk about East Timor as a newly independent country. Do you worry about the future?

Alkatiri: "Not at all. I'm always an optimistic person. We are going to face a lot of challenges but I do believe that we will overcome."

Snowdon: On some of the issues facing East Timor from this point I wanted to ask you if you hold quite different views to President Xanana, on the issue of reconciliation with senior militia leaders who led much of the violence in 1999.

Alkatiri: "The only difference is because I still think there is no reconciliation without justice. Justice for me is a bridge to have real reconciliation. This is the only difference. But it seems to me that President Xanana is beginning already to understand this position -- that justice is very important. I'm not against amnesty. That's why the government is preparing now a law of amensty but justice is very important."

Justice & reconciliation

New future, hidden past

SBS Dateline - May 29, 2002

[In the 2.5 years of UN administration in East Timor, the UN has been criticised for failing to pursue those responsible for the atrocities of 1999. With new president Xanana Gusmao`s commitment to reconciliation with Indonesia and its former militia, there are fears that justice will be equally elusive in an independent East Timor. Dateline`s Mark Davis reports.]

Reporter: Mark Davis

The survivors of Maubare are celebrating their first week of independence. Just west of Dili, this was one of the birthplaces of the militia movement.

It was neighbours who killed, raped and tortured here throughout 1999 at the bidding of the Indonesian Army. The task of reconciliation in a now independent East Timor will be most sorely tested here. Florindo de Jesus Brites played dead when he was attacked by militiamen. His back is so severely hacked that he's too embarrassed to show it to the camera. His right arm is crippled. Florindo's brother was killed in front of him. A particularly painful memory for the whole Brites family this week as ex-militiamen are being deliver into town for the independence celebrations. If all goes to plan, they will soon be resettled here.

Anselmo (Translation): Excuse me. If there is no law, no government and we have to deal with this ourselves. We could do it today. Get them all.

The number of people killed throughout Indonesia's secretive occupation may never be known. Justice is unlikely to be delivered for them. But the slaughter of 1999 is a different case. International investigators have had full access to the crime scenes for 2.5 years. Evidence and testimony abounds of Indonesian atrocities, but little has come of it. The full extent of the numbers killed is still concealed. Some believe deliberately downplayed, and Indonesia's role is being washed away by the day.

Jose Ramos Horta, East Timorese Foreign Minister: His Excellency, president-elect Xanana Gusmao soon will walk in with President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia.

Xanana Gusmao's almost single-minded desire for reconciliation has effectively ended any international interest in the pursuit of justice here. Gusmao may have the finest of reasons for placating a dangerous neighbour. But the goal of diplomacy and politics internationally or in Timor is rarely to reveal the truth. As the UN ends its mission here, primary responsibility for prosecuting Indonesian atrocities in East Timor belongs to the Indonesian justice system. An optimistic arrangement to say the least, when the criminals weren't just in the army, but in the government itself. For this group, the prospect that Indonesia will prosecute any of its own is a farce. Many now suspect that the new government will push no harder than the UN did to reveal the truth about what happened here. An accusation that Ramos Horta is getting increasingly prickly about.

Jose Ramos Horta: Some people enjoy the feeling that they have exclusive truth on what is right and what is wrong. They have a monopoly on virtues. They would like us, the only statement that will satisfy them, if we make very loud statements about the War Crimes Tribunal, for instance. We have said time and again that justice has to be delivered. But, if the Indonesian side itself carries out justice and is seen to be fair, then justice is served.

The Indonesian system is no more likely to serve the interests of justice today than it was in 1999. Then, the priority of its government and army was to destroy evidence and the principal evidence being bodies. Journalist John Martinkus saw the same pattern emerge after the referendum that he'd witnessed throughout the previous year.

John Martinkus, Journalist: At the time when the evidence was most widely available, like say down in Suai, you went down there, there was blood on the ground, human hair everywhere, there's bits of clothing, there's personal possessions covered in blood scattered everywhere, it's obvious that something very bad has happened here and as the witnesses said themselves, the Indonesian military came and drove them away in trucks.

Reporter: As a clean-up operation?

John Martinkus: And the same thing happened in Maliana, and the same thing was happening in Dili even as INTERFET arrived. Bear in mind for the first couple of days the INTERFET only had the airport and that little area around the trees around the port. And in my mind, that was one of the reasons why the Dutch journalist Sander Thoenes was killed for straying up to Becora. He was kill by the Indonesian military, and that's been thoroughly established. Because they didn't want journalists running around, they didn't want people finding out the extent of what had happened before they had finished tidying it up.

When Australian-led INTERFET troops arrived in September 1999, they developed a policy of only commenting on bodies found. No comments were ever made about evidence of body disposal. Nor any comment about the involvement of Indonesian forces in the killings, despite ample first-hand accounts.

John Martinkus: It really was too give Indonesia the diplomatic sidestep they needed to avoid responsibility for their actions, which is why they formed the militias in the first place. That falsehood and that devolution of responsibility is still happening today. That's why the justice issue has been shunted to the side, because nobody really wants to go after the perpetrators because it would lead right to the top of Indonesian society and the East Timorese leadership either believe that in order to have a national -- a small nation alongside powerful Indonesia, that's what they have to do, they have to lie on their behalf.

During five months of INTERFET control, the official death toll slowly crept up to about 250, where it remained for the rest of the year, when the UN authority took control and maintained the policy of commenting only on retrieved bodies.

UN official: Well I know probably how many graves there are in Liquica, but I'm afraid ... under the UN sanction, I'm not allowed to tell you that.

While the world was making judgments about whether to pursue Indonesian officials and soldiers for their crimes, those judgments were being based on ludicrously low numbers that stretched from 100 to 250 dead. No mention was made of those dumped at sea or dragged across the border. Joaquim Fonseca is a director of Yayasan Hak, the most prominent legal aid and human rights group in East Timor. He represents families of the missing and the dead. Joaquim has virtually stopped bothering passing over any files to UN investigators and has little confidence that things will change with an independent government.

Reporter: It's now an independent nation, but who amongst the politicians have any interest in this?

Joaquim Fonseca, Yayasan Hak: No. That is why our message is clear to the family of victims and survivors. Under the current circumstances, under the current setting, the law is touching no-one. Basically the position of the family of victims is to let them know this is the reality. Let's not be romantic about the situation.

Jose Ramos Horta: The Security Council has said time and again, the Secretary-General has said time and again that we must give a chance to the Indonesians to bring...

Reporter: Jose, do you believe the Indonesians are going to do it?

Jose Ramos Horta: It is not a question of me believing, you know. I just don't think that it is proper for anyone when a court has taken place that we still pass judgment on the judges, on the prosecutors and so on. I'm not an activist. Maybe it's easy for an activist, for a journalist to do that. A court is a court.

The people of Maubare have shown extraordinary faith in the promises that have been made to them for the past 2.5 years -- that reconciliation and justice would be delivered together. At this safe house just behind the main street, three militiamen are reintegrating into Maubare during the independence celebrations. The last time they were here they were burning to it the ground.

Man (Translation): When we came to Maubare, we wore ninja masks on our heads. We destroyed the houses because we were following orders from the leaders of the group.

This man was a commander of a militia unit and admits that men in his unit killed people in this area. He's prepared to talk about it in exchange for his safety and freedom.

Man (Translation): Laurindo and Silvestre did the shooting. This is what I saw. They shot the couple in front of the chapel.

The few prosecutions that have occurred are of Timorese militiamen in Timorese courts. But those cases are rare and are likely to remain so while Xanana continues to try to entice militias and their families to return from Indonesia. The two younger men claim to have never seen a single killing or even assault in their right months with the militias. They haven't returned to give evidence. They returned when they heard the message of amnesty and forgiveness. A policy that will enable them to return to their home village soon.

Reporter: And what is that process? How does that happen and when do you find that out?

Young Man (Translation): We will go home after this party and then we will see.

At the other end of this small town, the Brites family are dealing with the return of the militias. When the militia movement began here at the beginning of '99, Florindo and his brother fled to Dili, along with hundreds of others from Maubare. They took refuge here at the house of Manuel Carrascalao. Hundreds of victims of beatings, rape and torture were sheltering here when the militias came to Dili. It was a massacre at the hand of some of their own neighbours.

Florindo (Translation): They used a car to break the gate down. Then the militia and Indonesian army went in. We were scattered everywhere, some ran inside the house, some jumped over the fence. They went in and killed those inside the house.

Reporter: So you went to Manuel Carrascalao's house?

Young Man (Translation): Yes, I went.

Man No 1 (Translation): I saw them stabbing Mr Manuel's son. I was by the car.

Florindo (Translation): Three of us ran and jumped onto the fence wall.

They had already killed some of my friends Eduardo, Joao and Natalino. When they came out of the house they saw the three of us on the wall.

Young man (Translation): We were standing next to the car.

Reporter: And you watched as the people were killed?

Young man (Translation): I didn't see, I didn't go into the house.

Florindo (Translation): They shot at us and my friend Alfred Sanches fell to the ground and they killed him. Eduardo and I remained in the tree and they kept shooting, shooting, shooting and Eduardo died in the tree, then fell to the ground. They waited for me, I spoke to them before they began chopping me with their machetes.

Reporter: And were there dead people at this point or were there people jumping the fence?

Young man (Translation): They came out and said there are dead people inside.

13 bodies were retrieved from the house and grounds. Most of them from Maubare. But at least another 40 people are still missing, and no body means no chance of justice.

Florindo (Translation): We feel deeply hurt inside, we are all in pain, but we cannot do harm to them because our nation has something called law.

The death toll quoted in the first 12 months after the carnage was so low that officials and journalists more recently began referring to a thousand dead. But even this may be a fraction of the truth. Xanana Gusmao has never disputed these widely quoted figures, nor to the best of my knowledge has Ramos Horta since INTERFET and the UN began their investigations.

Jose Ramos Horta: The figure I have heard and I have used ranges from -- and because I cannot say a precise figure -- ranges from 1,000 to 10,000. That's my personal belief.

Reporter: Look, I might be misinformed, but this is news to me to hear you saying that it's up to 10,000. I mean this has been a critical issue in the international media -- it's been a critical issue.

Jose Ramos Horta: I say it could be as high as 10,000. I said it before. I don't remember when and I remember it had been quoted, but it is, you know, an absolutely wild guess.

If the Indonesian Army learnt anything in East Timor, it was a lesson in how to escape the judgment of either the law or history -- leave no bodies behind. An accusing finger points from this grave. But proper graves are rare in East Timor. (Reads from gravestone): He was assassinated barbarically by monstrous militias.

Rui: They cut his neck and take out his tongue.

The story of the rest of the dead may never emerge. What monsoonal rains haven't destroyed, 2.5 years of disinformation and silence probably has.

Human rights/law

Law comes to East Timor

Australian Financial Review - May 28, 2002

Geoffrey Barker -- Life is cheap and law is scarce in East Timor. How effective justice will be remains to be seen as the new nation's police and legal systems are being put in place.

As in every area of East Timor's administration, the problems are immense and resources, human and material, are extremely limited. But a safe domestic environment and effective criminal and civil justice are so crucial to its social, economic and political progress that a special urgency surrounds the construction of police and judicial systems.

Many international observers believe the new Government is about to install a Portuguese legal system, which they fear might have less rigorous protections for individual rights than either the present UN system, or the various Anglo-American systems.

Australian and US legal experts in East Timor have detected resistance to their offers of assistance and have been given hints that there is a strong preference for Portuguese criminal and civil law.

Whatever judicial system is adopted, the international community will expect it to be independent, expert, objective, public, and free of political interference and corruption in a nation in which virtually all government power is held by the Fretilin, the political wing of the guerilla organisation that led the war of independence.

Most current police and judicial activity in East Timor involves the pursuit and prosecution of crime -- the serious crimes of murder, genocide, torture and other so-called crimes against humanity perpetrated by Indonesian- backed militias between January and October 1999, and "ordinary" post-1999 crimes of murder, assault and theft.

There is little civil and commercial litigation or law, for that matter, although sorting out the confused and uncertain land title laws and resolving rival land claims is looming as a challenge with major implications for foreign investment in East Timor's under-developed economy. (See box.)

The daily law-and-order reality is that East Timor is an endemically violent society. Australian Federal Police Commander Bill Quade, chief of operations for the United Nations police force in East Timor, says the homicide rate is high and that killings occur over trivial matters. He cites the killing of one man over the ownership of a coconut tree and others over land and cattle ownership disputes.

Quade worries about the high incidence of domestic violence, especially serious assaults by men on their wives. At least 20 cases a week -- a fast-rising number -- are being reported to police. "It's part of the culture," says Quade. "The men want to be dominant persons and don't like it when they are challenged. It's been going on for decades."

Quade also notes an increase in opportunistic theft in the six months he has been in East Timor. He speculates that it may increase in coming months as the UN downsizes, the economy contracts and jobs are lost.

The nascent legal system faces these challenges with few courts, few judges, few prosecutors, few defence counsel, few public defenders and, for the moment, an interim transitional set of laws and legal processes that combine UN regulations and Indonesian law to the extent that it is consistent with international human rights standards.

Melbourne lawyer Caitlin Reiger, who heads the international Judicial System Monitoring Programme (JSMP) in Dili, says the country has only two functioning District Courts, at Dili and Baucau. The Court of Appeal has not functioned for months because not enough judges have been appointed.

According to Reiger, there are about 30 judges, 30 prosecutors and only 11 public defenders, all of whom have lacked experience and needed training and mentoring. Some have gone through quickie legal training courses in the Northern Territory.

During the UN transitional administration, East Timorese judges have sat with international judges. They were in fact the first East Timorese judges to sit in judgement on East Timorese people

Their task has been onerous. They lack adequate resources, including research facilities and administrative support. Moreover, as a recent JSMP report noted, the country needs not only a functioning legal system to deal with ordinary crime, but also has to deliver justice for crimes committed during the period of Indonesian occupation.

"Faith in the judicial system has to be established here," says Reiger. "You are dealing with a community that has never had an impartial justice system."

Some faith appears to have been given to the community in the prosecution of former militia murderers. Sentences of 12 years' jail were imposed on 14 convicted killers. Of 10 militia tried for crimes against humanity in Los Palos, several received up to 33 years' jail following multiple convictions.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been established to enquire into human rights violations between 1974 and 1999, to facilitate "community reconciliation with justice" for perpetrators of less serious crimes.

President Xanana Gusmao has made repeated appeals to the East Timorese to accept these people back into their communities once they have served sentences and apologised.

Less faith has been established in the ability of the police and legal systems to handle so-called "ordinary crimes", particularly domestic assaults. Commonly, perpetrators are arrested, spend a night in a cell and are released back to their families the next day. The assaults, often fuelled by alcohol, continue.

In many parts of East Timor, Reiger points out, people have no knowledge or experience of the formal judicial system and rely instead on traditional village forms of dispute resolution.

On the front line of law enforcement, Bill Quade and his colleagues at UNPOL (the UN police) are pushing to raise the East Timor Police Service to what Quade calls "a standard we feel comfortable living with" before the international force pulls out in January 2004.

So far about 1,800 East Timorese police have been recruited and the new government expects the force to reach its approved strength of 2,800 by 2004. Quade says the East Timorese Police are "dedicated, enthusiastic, but need to be supervised closely".

He says a major national crime investigation unit has been set up and that applications have been called for an anti-corruption unit.

The new Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in its first public report, said the East Timor police service needed to be Australia's first priority for security aid and suggested a long-term program of about $6 million year.

ASPI also suggested Australia's interests would be served by helping East Timor develop its criminal code, courts, judiciary and prisons.

Australia has so far committed to a four-year, $150 million program of aid to East Timor, but without special provision for the police.

It remains to be seen how well the ASPI proposal would mesh with what its report called "the system of European law that East Timor is seeking to establish".

But if East Timor does not adopt internationally acceptable law and and order and justice systems, it is doomed to the banana republic status of so much of what is left of the lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) world.

Indonesia

East Timor tells Indonesia to drop its asset demand

Agence France Presse - May 29, 2002

Newly independent East Timor urged former ruler Indonesia to drop its compensation demand for assets left behind after Jakarta ended its two-decade occupation of the country.

But Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta played down Jakarta's decision to postpone indefinitely a visit by Dili's new leaders to Indonesia which had been scheduled for Wednesday.

"We should best not talk about assets. If they [Indonesia] want to talk assets, East Timor lost much more," Ramos Horta told a press conference.

He said thousands of homes and buildings were burnt down during the violence that surrounded the August 30, 1999 UN-organised ballot that led to the separation of East Timor from Indonesia after 24 years.

"A lot of our people also died, around 2,000," Ramos Horta said, adding that both sides should take the "zero sum" approach.

"The two countries should seek their own solution. If Indonesia gets any claim from its citizens regarding losses they suffered, Indonesia should attempt to seek an alternative.

"East Timor will also face the claims from its own people and try to handle them," Ramos-Horta said.

Pro-Jakarta militiamen in East Timor, backed by senior Indonesian security officials, waged a campaign of intimidation before the independence vote and a bloody and destructive "scorched earth" revenge campaign after the result was announced.

Ramos Horta said that at every meeting between officials of the two governments, Jakarta had always raised the matter of compensation for public and private assets. But his government had yet to officially present its stance.

Ramos Horta described the postponement of the visit by himself, President Xanana Gusmao and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri as a matter of protocol.

"Indonesia wants this visit to be a state visit and therefore it would need more preparation, and good protocol dictates that all the senior officials, including the president and the foreign minister, be in town for the visit," he said.

"The visit has been delayed by the Indonesian side who informed us that the visit be postponed because there were still a lot of preparations to make." He said Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda was currently outside Indonesia.

Gusmao, president of the nation which achieved independence just nine days ago, had planned to make his first overseas trip as head of state to Indonesia to symbolise a new chapter in relations. Indonesia's foreign ministry said the visit had been postponed "till a mutually suitable time and date can be arranged" due to scheduling problems. It denied the move was related to any outstanding disagreements or intended as a snub.

Indonesian claims over assets are one bone of contention. Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and annexed it the following year in defiance of most of the world. It spent millions of dollars on infrastructure during its 24-year rule, which also cost at least 100,000 East Timorese lives.

Gusmao was to leave Thursday for a visit to South Korea, during which he will attend the World Cup's opening ceremony and hold talks with officials before returning home.

Ramos Horta was due to leave with Gusmao for South Korea. He will go on to Spain, Ireland, Britain, Norway and Australia before returning on June 20.

News & issues

The Dili dynasty

Finanicial Times - May 31, 2002

Eric Ellis -- For most of the chic clientele at Dili's City Cafe, the awesome struggle facing the Democratic Republic of Timor Lorosa'e seems the least of their concerns.

The cafe caters to the 8,000 or so "internationals" who staff the United Nations mission in East Timor, and a score of them are enjoying a coffee break from Dili's 36eC swelter. The animated talk is of weekends in nearby Bali, of buying Mediterranean condos with their ample, lightly taxed UN salaries, and of which blighted hotspot will next require their nation-saving skills.

The scene, watched over by a 70-year-old East Timor man lingering over a coffee, is in marked contrast to the reality outside. Two weeks earlier, East Timor's independence was formally proclaimed but, in spite of hopes of a petro-dollar bonanza in the neary Timor Sea, Dili is by no means Dallas.

For most Timorese, even after three years of the UN's benevolent dictatorship, life is a precarious hand-to-mouth hardship. But, at least the killing has stopped. Abandoned by Indonesia when it finally accepted East Timor was a lost cause, the militias that trashed Dili after the UN-sponsored independence referendum in 1999 have dispersed.

The 70-year-old man strokes his long, grey beard. Three years ago, and two doors from where Manuel Carrascalao now reflects over his coffee, his youngest son, Manuelito, 17, was mutilated by the Aitarak militia in the Carrascalao family home. The eldest son of 14 Carrascalao children, Manuel has vowed to his family, East Timor's grandest and richest clan, that he won't trim his magnificent beard until his boy's killers are convicted.

That may be a while. The Aitarak's leaders are sheltered by their Indonesian sponsors in Jakarta and neighbouring West Timor. And the East Timorese are being urged by their new president, the Mandela-Che composite Xanana Gusmao, to forgive past inhumanities with South African-style reconciliation.

The Carrascalao family is well-schooled at fashioning triumph from adversity. Its members have been doing it for a century, against a ceaselessly shifting backdrop of civil war, revolution, intrigues and exiles in Portugal, Australia, Indonesia, Africa, Macau and now, full circle, to an independent East Timor.

The family's story begins two continents away in the tiny Portuguese village of Sa~o Bres de Alportel on the Algarve. The early 1900s were turbulent times for Portugal. Civil war and a politicised clergy had crippled the First Republic. Portugal suffered 45 governments in 16 years and, by 1926, the military had lost patience. Five decades of rightwing dictatorship -- 40 years of it led by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar -- had begun.

Manuel Viegas Carrascalao, the original patriarch and father of the coffee-drinking Manuel, moved to Lisbon and found work as a printer. By the mid-1920s, and impatient for change, this tall, young anarchist with a persuasive oratory had become a leader of Portugal's biggest trade union. Lisbon's generals accused him of rebellion. They jailed him, tortured him and, in 1927, deported him to East Timor, Portugal's penal colony in the East Indies.

But, even in Dili where he worked on a coffee plantation, Manuel Viegas did not follow the rules. In 1928, he met Marcelina Guterres, daughter of a Timorese nobleman, a liaison that discomfited the authorities. A Portuguese man could take a Timorese mistress but to be so public and, worse, to marry her, was intolerable.

Ostracised but undeterred, they began a family: Dora born in 1929, then Maria, Manuel (of the beard), Ermelinda, Mario, Artur, Alice and Jose, born during Japan's brutal occupation of East Timor. "My father refused to go to Australia with the other Portuguese. He stayed in East Timor to resist the Japanese," says 10th-born Joao.

The Carrascalaos later returned to Salazar's Portugal. Manuel Viegas was now regarded as a hero for keeping the Portuguese faith in Japanese-occupied East Timor. He was received by the wily Salazar, who wanted him to return to Dili. Manuel Viegas negotiated terms with the dictator, winning title over a 386- hectare East Timor coffee estate and returning rehabilitated in 1946 with state honours, later becoming Dili's mayor.

The charismatic radical Lisbon had once reviled was now part of Portugal's landed establishment in East Timor. In 1954, after 26 years of child-bearing, in which four more children were born, the family was complete. Twenty years of relative peace followed in Portugal's sleepy Asian backwater. But, on April 25 1974, Portugal's military ousted Salazar's heir, Marcello Caetano, creating a vacuum in East Timor and an opportunity for Indonesia -- and for the talented Carrascalao children, who had inherited their father's restlessness.

Three main political parties emerged in East Timor: the Jakarta- backed Apodeti sought integration with neighbouring Indonesia; the Frente Revolucionaria de Timor L'este Independente, or Fretilin, demanded a Marxist independence; while the Uniao Democratica Timorese, organised by three of the patriarch's children (Manuel, Mario and Joao Carrascalao) and the landowners' party, favoured a gradual pro-Lisbon independence.

But, in 1975, Lisbon reneged on a referendum. The Carrascalaos' UDT seized power on August 11 only to be ousted nine days later by Fretilin's guerrillas. East Timor was engulfed in a short but nasty civil war that ended on December 7 that year when Indonesian marines stormed Dili's front beach (the rusted landing craft are still there today).

With tacit approval from a Washington anxious to prevent communism's spread in post-Vietnam Asia, East Timor would be Indonesia's 27th province for 24 years.

The old don Manuel Viegas, meanwhile, was in Lisbon. A four-packs-a-day smoker, he had come to Portugal in early 1975 for treatment for lung cancer, intending to return to Dili when he recovered. But this once-towering man of East Timor, now wizened by his own excess, could do nothing as his adopted homeland was brutalised.

His family were now displaced -- the boys were prisoners of the Indonesians, the girls stranded in Lisbon. In 1976, Manuel Viegas died penniless and defeated. "He wanted to come back to East Timor to die but the Indonesians wouldn't let him," says his son Joao. "He didn't even have enough money to buy cigarettes. Completely broke, no house, no property anywhere else except East Timor and now that was gone."

The next 24 years were difficult. Manuel Viegas' wife Marcelina never saw her family together again after 1975. Dora died of cancer in 1980 in a Portuguese refugee camp. Joao, his wife Rosa and her brother, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, were exiled to Sydney with Ermelinda, Artur and Francisco. Gabriela became a journalist in Melbourne. Alice, living in the Mozambican colonial capital, Loureneo Marques (modern-day Maputo), divorced her Portuguese banker husband and joined her sisters in Australia. Manuel, however, stayed in Indonesian East Timor, doing contract work for the military, living in the family home in Dili until it was destroyed in the 1999 militia violence.

The coffee estate was trashed, but 175 hectares of farmland outside Dili, where Marcelina had raised produce to feed her family, became an Indonesian military barracks. (Today, it is a Carrascalao-owned apartment complex for foreigners, one of Dili's most lucrative businesses.)

Power also nourished the Carrascalaos. The UDT party attempted a coup, fought and lost a civil war. Some family members joined Fretilin and later the exiled resistance group, CNRT. In-law Ramos-Horta is East Timor's foreign minister. The opportunist Manuel was a parliamentarian for Portugal and Indonesia and, when the independence tide turned in East Timor, joined the CNRT.

Of the three last-born children, the youngest Natalia is a centre-left MP in Lisbon, sisters Angela is a prominent Aids campaigner and Gabriela runs TV Timor Lorosa'e, East Timor's public broadcaster.

Other members of the family have also fared well. Maria's son Vasco runs Portugal's government-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino in Dili. Former Portuguese prime minister Anibal Cavaco da Silva is a distant cousin, as is Joao Tavares, the militia leader whose thugs destroyed Dili in 1999 and who sports the watch of one of the five Australian-British journalists murdered by the Indonesian military in 1975.

So it seems almost natural that the guerrilla leader-cum- president Gusmao is a distant cousin on Marcelina's side. Mario, one of the UDT founders, followed a different path. He married a Portuguese woman, and became Indonesian and a highly paid foreign ministry official. Improbably, he was appointed Jakarta's ambassador to Romania.

His daughter, Sonia, is an Indonesian soap opera queen who starred in Blue Skies Again, a 1991 Indonesian propaganda film about East Timor.

Son Pedro is an oil man active in the Timor Sea negotiations. In 1982, Mario agreed to become Jakarta's governor in Dili, presiding over a directive that banned the Portuguese language. Not long after, he told Gusmao in a jungle rendezvous that his liberation movement was doomed.

Mario's governorship draws mixed reviews. Arch-nationalists condemned him as Jakarta's stooge. Moderates, including Gusmao, insist he was a necessary buffer in Jakarta for East Timor when actual power rested with the rapacious Indonesian military.

One western diplomat remembers Mario "as almost a fifth columnist in the great Iberian tradition" leaking details of atrocities, notably the 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre in Dili when Jakarta's military murdered 250 people, the turning point for Indonesian legitimacy in East Timor. Disgusted, Mario resigned the following year.

Ramos-Horta calls him "a man of integrity", adding that he "saved a lot of people during those years". Today, this great East Timorese survivor leads an opposition party in East Timor's parliament. He's a moral authority and advises Gusmao but has little direct power. "My real family is the Timorese people," he says.

High in the sierra west of Dili sits a sprawling plantation house. Nine of 14 Carrascalao children were born in this earthy yet elegant setting, named for their father's ancestral home a lifetime away in Portugal. With its cool air and breathtaking vistas, Fazenda Algarve has been lovingly tended by generations of feudal retainers, their teeth stained betel-red. The estate's grounds burst with wild poinsettia, bougainvillea and hibiscus, the surrounding spurs studded with arabica coffee plants.

The Carrascalaos will once again gather here later this year. The talk will be of the family's renewed interests -- in banking, hotels, property, coffee and oil -- and the ceremony as meaningful to them as last month's independence party in Dili.

The ashes of Don Manuel Viegas Carrascalao, transported from Portugal, will finally be interred in his adopted soil. Marcelina will be buried beside him. The patriarch's deathbed wish will have been fulfilled. And, for this remarkable family, in an independent East Timor, there will at last be some closure. At least for the time being.

Language & culture

Pupils, teachers tongue-tied in East Timor

Jakarta Post - May 29, 2002

Pandaya, Dili -- There is a tragicomedy taking place in the East Timor's elementary schools. It revolves around the teachers' low proficiency of the Portuguese language, which the government has decided to use as the official language of instruction for grades one to three.

The problem is that very few teachers have a reasonable mastery of the language of the former colonial master. They speak their mother tongue, Tetum (also spelled Tetun), and Bahasa Indonesia, being products of the Indonesian educational system.

So now they must teach their pupils in broken Portuguese, because it is required by the constitution.

And the students? They speak the same languages as their teachers. Generally, they can address their teachers with a few standard phrases in Portuguese, such as "good morning". The teachers say their pupils have only very basic reading and writing skills in Portuguese.

"Yeah, it is funny but we have no other choice because [teaching in Portuguese] has been made obligatory by the government," said Anacleto da Costa, a teacher at the St. Yosef Catholic school, which is located across from the Indonesian military cemetery in Dili.

The government began reintroducing Portuguese in grade one of elementary schools three years ago, when the former Indonesian province voted to secede from the Republic. This academic year, the mandatory Portuguese affects grades one to three. For grades four through university, Tetum and Indonesian will continue to be the languages of instruction.

For the younger people, Portuguese is the language of the older generations, who still have strong cultural and emotional ties with Portugal and its former colonies such as Mozambique, Angola and Guinea. Powerful figures from this circle continue to dominate the decision-making process in Timor's Parliament and government bureaucracy.

Portuguese used to be widely used by educated Timorese until Indonesia annexed the territory in 1976 and imposed its language and educational system.

The choice of Portuguese as one of the two national languages shows the determination of East Timor's leaders to align the country with Portuguese-speaking countries.

Article 13 of East Timor's constitution stipulates that while the official languages are Tetum and Portuguese, local dialects will be "nurtured and developed". Indonesian and English are mentioned in Article 159 as "working languages that may be used in the government along with the official languages as long as they are still deemed necessary".

The use of Portuguese as one of the country's official languages, as mandated by the constitution, has drawn strong criticism from younger East Timorese, who prefer Indonesian or English if a foreign language must be adopted.

"It is to accommodate the ego of the 'gray' generation," said Eduardo, a university student who said he knew nothing about Portuguese. "Indonesian or English would be a better choice. Indonesian is widely spoken and English is the world's official language."

Interest in English has risen along with the presence of a large number of international staff members of the United Nations and non-governmental activists from English-speaking countries. Besides, the country has been sending its best and brightest students to study in countries like the US and Australia.

An official household survey conducted in 2001 by the Planning Commission shows that Portuguese is used by only 5 percent of the population, slightly higher than the 2 percent who use English. Tetum is used by 82 percent of the population and Indonesian by 43 percent.

Supporters of Portuguese as an official language of the nation argue that the language is necessary to maintain the Portuguese cultural values that became deeply rooted in East Timor after 450 years of colonization.

"Tetum is no longer adequate to express ideas in this era of fast developing science and technology, so over the course of time it has come to include Portuguese words," said lawmaker Jacob Xavier, a Portuguese-educated politician who chairs Partido Do Povo de Timor (Timor People's Party).

Even so, the cash-strapped East Timor government has yet to upgrade its teachers' Portuguese skills to fulfill its dream of having a Portuguese-speaking population.

Minister of Education, Youth and Sports Armindo Maia said that although the Portuguese language issue created some controversy in the beginning, people had begun to accept it.

High on the ministry's agenda is to import Portuguese-language textbooks and to send more teachers to Portugal to learn the language.

But the government's plan has failed to impress skeptics like Anacleto da Costa, who claims to have attended countless Portuguese courses and received heaps of certificates, but still finds the language too difficult to comprehend.

He said: "I am skeptical that the Portuguese language campaign will go anywhere in the foreseeable future, because the pupils live in communities that speak Tetum and Indonesian. Their environment doesn't support the use of Portuguese for communicating in real life."

International solidarity

`Your struggle is our struggle'

Green Left Weekly - May 29, 2002

[The following is a slightly abridged version of a speech given by Sarah Stephen, a member of the Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific brigade to East Timor, at a protest organised by a number of East Timorese groups in Dili on May 19.]

Today is the last day of the United Nations running East Timor. Tomorrow, the East Timorese people will begin to govern themselves.

In Australia, many of us have campaigned hard for a free and independent East Timor. Australian governments have always supported the Indonesian occupation of East Timor -- from Gough Whitlam to Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard.

But many people in Australia disagreed with the government. After the referendum in 1999, through street protests we forced the Howard government to send the army to East Timor to stop the Indonesian military and militia killings.

John Howard sent troops, but John Howard is not your friend. The Australian government still doesn't care about the people of East Timor. If Australia cared about the East Timorese people, the government would not be stealing East Timor's oil! You have lived so long with war, occupation and destruction, but the spirit and determination of the people can achieve many things -- rebuild cities and towns, build up agriculture. But you need resources to do that, you need money. But not money from the World Bank, from the IMF. Not loans which you have to repay by cutting wages, health, education.

The oil in the Timor Sea, which is worth many millions of dollars in royalties, gives the East Timorese people the chance to climb out of poverty. But the Australian government is doing everything it can to deny East Timor that future.

Australia is ignoring international law and using its strength to force East Timor to accept less than it is entitled to.

In Australia, we will not stand by and let this happen. We will fight the government's exploitation of East Timor. We will defend your right to economic independence.

Your struggle is our struggle. Viva Timor Leste!

International relations

East Timor dilemma for ASEAN

Asia Times - June 1, 2002

Alan Boyd, Sydney -- Worried about the strategic vulnerability of its eastern flanks, Indonesia is discreetly lobbying for East Timor to be granted early observer status in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Diplomats said that Jakarta would seek the help of a third party, probably Malaysia or the Philippines, in achieving a consensus for Dili to be given the same access as Papua New Guinea to ministerial summits. The Philippines has invited the newly- independent state to send representatives to ASEAN's next high- level gathering in July. But it will only be permitted to attend official public functions.

Myanmar blocked a bid in February by Manila to sponsor Timor as an observer on the grounds that former Timorese resistance factions had links with the pro-democracy movement within Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) is thought to have first had contact with the Timorese at regional human rights meetings in Thailand and the Philippines as long ago as 1991.

However, Yangon is reportedly upset that the ties have continued since East Timor voted for autonomy from Indonesia in 1999, after sustained pressure was exerted on Jakarta by Western countries. The ruling junta, renowned for a xenophobic reaction to liberation movements elsewhere, apparently fears that a similar international campaign could end its four-decade grip on power in Myanmar.

Indonesia, uncomfortable with its position as former colonial master, did not publicly support Manila's bid to secure observer status for Timor, but raised no objections in closed sessions. Having Dili as a consultation partner would help allay concerns among Indonesian military planners that the western half of divided Timor might eventually seek to follow the same independence path.

West Timor, annexed by Indonesia in 1949, has become critical to Indonesian forward defense strategies since the loss of the eastern province because of a perception in Jakarta that Dili could be used as a foothold by ambitious regional powers.

Government leaders are especially concerned at the influence Australia has gained over East Timor by virtue of a large military contingent and geographical proximity. Australia has left no doubt that it wants a friendly or neutral East Timor following independence to safeguard its northern borders and protect lucrative oil interests along their sea border.

According to diplomats, Indonesia is pushing for another discussion on East Timor's status at the July meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers, but wants the initiative to be seen as coming from the Philippines. Apart from having the most liberal foreign policy in ASEAN, Manila is viewed as having more sway with Dili because both countries have majority Christian populations.

Malaysia, also uneasy over Canberra's intents in Timor, is viewed as another potential ally, while Singapore and Thailand have expressed guarded support.

It is unlikely that a vote will be taken in July, as the issue would have to be considered first at a leadership level, after an evaluation of the republic's ability to fulfill observer requirements. This study will undoubtedly conclude that East Timor is not ready for the costly demands of committee sessions that come with full membership of ASEAN, but that it could handle a lower-level commitment. East Timor has already attended several ASEAN meetings as an official guest, but badly needs a higher profile to secure economic aid and establish trade links.

As an observer it would be permitted to host unofficial consultations and sit in on the annual ministerial meetings, which also include top ministers from ASEAN's liaison partners in Europe and North America.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) expects economic growth in East Timor to slow to zero this year, as the initial rush of international aid tapers off and budgets are diverted to cover grass-roots development projects. Foreign assistance of US$150 million-$170 million will be needed to keep revenues in the black during the next three years, though royalties from gasfields in the Timor Sea will start to filter through in fiscal 2005.

Economic standing is a sensitive point with the more advanced ASEAN states as a result of the premature decision to admit Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos when membership was last expanded in the mid-1990s. Only Vietnam has since achieved a level where it can contribute economically to the grouping by participating in free-trade accords.

The other three nations are struggling even to meet manpower obligations for membership. Dili, which fully expects to be preoccupied with domestic issues such as housing and health services for at least the first three years of independence, has given mixed signals on its desire to join ASEAN.

Ramos Horta, now the foreign minister, angrily condemned ASEAN's diplomatic paralysis in late 1999 and said East Timor would seek membership of the Pacific Forum instead. But this year he has been talking up the importance of ASEAN, though not as a priority issue. It was unlikely, he said, that an application would be lodged for at least three years.

Malaysia initiated the last expansion as a security mechanism against Chinese ambitions within Southeast Asia, at a time when American military influence was waning. But there is little urgency this time, at least outside Indonesia.

Although ASEAN's charter leaves the door open for additional states, the message in diplomatic circles is that membership is effectively closed despite a burgeoning queue of applicants. Apart from Papua New Guinea, which would theoretically be next in line, overtures have also been made by India, Australia and New Zealand; the latter two have already brokered a trade accord with ASEAN.

Complicating the issue is a parallel bid to draw China, Japan and Korea into a broader East Asian caucus, though ASEAN may opt out for fear of surrendering to northern Asian economic influence.

Nevertheless, there is a feeling within ASEAN that the bloc has a moral obligation to treat East Timor as a special case, both for compassionate reasons and as recompense for its shabby treatment of the province before and during the autonomy crisis in 1999.

Not a single ASEAN voice was raised when Jakarta incorporated East Timor as part of its territory in 1975, probably because of US pressure exerted through the anti-communist alliance in Indochina. ASEAN continued to back Indonesia against Portugal when the territorial issue was referred to the International Court, even when Western European nations retaliated by downgrading their relations with the bloc.

As recently as five years ago, activists from East Timor were being harassed during visits within the region and in some cases were denied visas for human rights meetings within ASEAN. Even so, in 1999 the US and Australia pushed hard for ASEAN to take the lead in putting together an international peacekeeping force to end the bloody reign of terror by Indonesian troops that were resisting independence. But initially at least, ASEAN again succumbed to pressure by Jakarta and sheltered behind its much- tarnished policy of non-intervention, paying a steep diplomatic price in the process.

Similarly, regional leaders made no effort to pass the burden to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the only permanent consultative security body in Southeast Asia, which also includes the US and north Asian states. ARF, widely viewed as an ineffectual talking shop, suffers from having no official agenda on human rights. It has taken vague positions in the past -- most notably on Myanmar -- but these have had the undesirable effect of raising the tolerance level for perceived abuses. There was a reprieve in 1999 when Indonesia's B J Habibie unexpectedly dropped his opposition to the entry of an international force to restore law and order in East Timor, allowing some ASEAN countries to send troops as part of the United Nations transitional authority.

Yet the initiative of putting together the force was instead taken up by Australia, which gained wide accolades for carrying off a particularly difficult logistical operation and continues to benefit both strategically and economically. Ironically, Jakarta had wanted a force that would be entirely composed of troops from ASEAN or other parts of Asia. The solution was a typical ASEAN compromise: members would be permitted to participate, but only on an individual basis. Even then, ASEAN continued to muddle its position. The Philippines, despite being one of the biggest participants in the peacekeeping force, subsequently opposed moves for the UN Human Rights Commission to hold an international probe into the East Timor situation. On the other hand, ASEAN did eventually act against one of its own members, and Timor may well turn out to have been a watershed in ASEAN's external relations.

Redefined, the ground rules imply that interference is acceptable as long as collective stability is at stake, whether on a security or economic level.

The next test could well be a partial breakup of the Indonesian archipelago.

Admitting East Timor would reinforce the awakening of ASEAN, as Dili, with its revolutionary background and strident demands for justice over alleged Indonesian human rights violations, could hardly be expected to take the traditional compromising route.

Taking in the former guerrillas carries its own risk of deepening divisions between the more autocratic regimes, with their insistence on restoring the status quo, and the liberal wing that wants a more proactive external policy. But at least it might help keep ASEAN honest.

Economy & investment

Portuguese likely to be East Timor's telco

Melbourne Age - May 30 2002

Jill Jolliffe, Dili -- A Portuguese company is poised to win a $US16 million contract to set up East Timor's new telecommunications network, further consolidating Portugal's commercial influence in the new nation.

Australia's Telstra had declined to bid for the contract, even though it has been running East Timor's phone and Internet network since 1999. Another Australian-led consortium failed to submit its tender documents on time.

This left Portugal Telecom International as the only bidder. Portugal already has considerable commercial and cultural influence in its former colony, which has chosen Portuguese as its official language, along with the Timorese language Tetum.

East Timor's Minister for Transport, Communication and Public Works, Ovidio Amaral, told The Age there was no competition from Australian companies.

He said the Australian-led consortium Telekomunikasaun Timor Lorosae (TTL) had prequalified but failed to submit its tender by the May 14 deadline. TTL partners included British Telecom and Germany's Siemens company.

TTL executive chairman Robert Cooksey had requested an extension of the deadline after being unable to secure an airline seat as flights to Dili were booked out by visitors to the independence celebrations on May 20. He was permitted to file documents by e- mail, but the minister said they had not been submitted on time either.

Mr Cooksey disputed this and said he had told the East Timor Government last week that TTL would dispute the exclusion in court.

Nor had Telstra entered a bid. "Telstra knew it wouldn't earn profits after independence," Mr Amaral said. "There will only be a profit margin of around 10 per cent involved."

He said Telstra's relationship with East Timor had been established with the UN administration on its entry into the territory in 1999, and had been renewed regularly on a 90-day contract basis.

The Portuguese tender will be assessed for two months and, if it meets required standards, negotiations will begin in July for the Lisbon-based company to establish the new system.

Most Dili homes have not had fixed telephones since Indonesia's 1999 scorched-earth withdrawal, and there are only six landlines in each of the country's 12 other districts.

Mobile telephones paid for by the outgoing UNTAET administration were cut off in government offices throughout the country last Friday, with the incoming East Timorese administration having no alternative contracts in place.

Mr Amaral said the fact that Portugal Telecom International would be working in Portuguese had not influenced the company's chances. "It's not a criterion for the tendering, but it is an advantage," he said.

Last year Telstra officials here were criticised by the UN, which alleged the company had taken substantial revenue out of East Timor and put very little back.

Telstra entered the territory at the UN's request, principally to provide mobile phone services to peacekeepers in a territory entirely bereft of telecommunications.

Telstra spokeswoman Karen Gomez said from Sydney that it had not tendered for the telecommunications contract because "it was not part of our international business strategy in the short term".

History

Book explains Habibie's bold decision for referendum

Radio Australia - May 29, 2002

As East Timor struggles with its new relationship with Canberra, a book is being published on Australia's role in that extraordinary journey to independence from 1998. Titled "Deliverance -- The Inside Story of East Timor's Fight for Freedom", it's the work of two Australian journalists, Don Greenless in Jakarta and Robert Garran in Canberra. It starts with the bold decision of Indonesia's distracted President, B.J.Habibie, to move for what became the independence vote in East Timor in 1999.

Presenter/Interviewer: Graeme Dobell, Canberra.

Speakers: Journalist Robert Garran, one of the joint authors of "Deliverance - The Inside Story of East Timor's Fight for Freedom".

Garran: "Habibie was a new president, he was under a lot of political stress, he was trying desperately to make his mark in the international community, he was more of an internationalist than many other Indonesian leaders had been because he'd spent many years in Germany. He understood the importance of foreign perceptions about the direction Indonesia was taking."

"At the same time within Indonesia there'd been quite a strong debate over quite a long period about the future of East Timor and the best way to take it forward, and this is another issue which hasn't really emerged very much in the public discussion about it. But for at least five or six years there'd be discussions under the Suharto regime about ways to provide some form of autonomy for East Timor. And Habibie was very beholden on a group of Muslim intellectuals who'd been promoting this argument privately within the Indonesian regime, and they had a big influence on his thinking, so [there was] a coalescence of a whole lot of factors."

Dobell: Why does a president who is uncertain in many ways weak, who's legitimacy is under question, why does he face down Indonesia's military and throw open this issue?

Garran: "Well that's another surprising part of the story which emerged from our research. The military didn't explicitly and overtly resist the decision. I mean they resented it, and they sought to undermine it but at the time it was made within the cabinet room they didn't oppose it."

"There's a nice story about a discussion between Alatas and Wiranto, the military commander when they're presented with Habibie's proposal and one of them says to the other, 'have you seen this proposal, you know, do you know what's going on here?' And they had a little discussion before the cabinet meeting about it, but they don't oppose it in the meeting. And there's several reasons why they perhaps didn't oppose it, one was probably they thought they could undermine the decision if it was going the wrong way, but the other one is they were really very ill- informed about sentiment in East Timor. They actually thought for a long time they would win, if there was some sort of process of self-determination that they'd win it."

Dobell: At the time there was a lot of debate and a lot of argument that Australia could have done more to head off the violence, to stop that use of militia. Do you judge that Australia did have an ability to have saved lives?

Garran: "Beyond what it did no I don't judge, I think Australia actually handled the diplomacy of that pretty well, there are a few stumbles as I said earlier, I think Alexander Downer wasn't straight with the Australian public in his comments in the first part of the year about what was known."

"But I don't believe that more international pressure would have achieved an earlier international intervention, I just think it was -- there was enormous resistance in the Indonesian system to international intervention. And intervention without Indonesian support would have been regarded as an invasion, it would have caused enormous conflict, it would have caused enormous hostility between Indonesia and Australia and whoever the other countries were supporting the Australian position. And Australia alone didn't have the military strength to play that sort of game and it wasn't going to get international support in an environment where Indonesia didn't support the peacekeepers going in."

Dobell: How then do you mark the performance that we have seen from the United Nations and from Australia?

Garran: "It was successful for both Australia's point of view and the United Nations point of view. I mean of course, it goes without saying that you would have much rather had an outcome, which didn't involve the violence and the deaths that occurred in the mayhem."

"But it's very difficult I think to argue a plausible alternative scenario which would have led to a substantially better outcome, I mean other than the unlikely event that Indonesia all of a sudden became a benign, wise international player and decided that it was going to peacefully handover this territory that it had fought to keep for 25 years. I mean the alternative scenarios might sound attractive but they're just not realistic ones."

Book/film reviews

Two stories of a nation's struggle for freedom

Green Left Weekly - May 29, 2002

Review by Jon Land -- This is a two-part series looking at how two different individuals begin new lives in East Timor following the August 31, 1999 referendum on independence.

Rosa's Story, which screened on May 23, is a particularly moving account of the hardship encountered by Rosa Martins, a young widow struggling to support her family. Her plight is reflective of the many problems that women in East Timor face.

In the lead up to the referendum, Martins went to the mountains and remote areas of the country to secretly distribute pamphlets urging people to support independence. This often meant going to places where there was a large Indonesian military and pro- Indonesia militia gang presence. To be found with pro- independence material would mean certain torture and death.

Martins was among the hundreds of East Timorese who fled to the UN compound in Dili during the militia rampage that began after the result of the independence referendum was announced on September 4, 1999. She and her children still carry the scars on their bodies from the razor wire that cut into them as they scrambled over the compound wall.

Today, Martins lives in total poverty, in a small shack in the hills behind Dili. Three of her children live in orphanages far away in the eastern part of East Timor. It took her 18 months of saving just to afford the bus trip to take the three children who still live with her to visit the rest of the family.

The second part in the series, Lu Olo's Story, features Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres, a former guerrilla fighter who is president of Fretilin, one of the main political parties of the Timorese resistance. Fretilin now holds a majority in the new East Timorese parliament, of which Lu Olo is the speaker.

Lu Olo joined the armed resistance when he was 17 years old and remained in the jungle and mountains for more than 20 years. During this time he avoided all contact with any town or village -- for many years his family assumed he was dead.

He candidly tells of the difficulties involved in shifting from being a guerrilla leader to becoming a parliamentarian. His family want him to re-marry (his wife Isabel, also a guerrilla fighter, died in the early 1980s in battle). Re-integrating back into civilian life is difficult for most former guerrilla fighters, especially those thought to have been killed. They are seen as ghosts in the land of the living.

Lu Olo's Story follows Guterres on the campaign trail for the Constituent Assembly election held last August. He travels from town to village, with other Fretilin leaders, speaking at meetings and rallies.

The film also touches on some of the political differences and tensions among the East Timorese elite during the campaign period. It does so mainly by featuring the Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT), a party led by Xavier do Amaral, once a leader of Fretilin and East Timor's first president (when independence was declared in 1975 just prior to the Indonesian invasion).

Do Amaral has a strong traditional base in the central part of East Timor and his party has many in its ranks who would otherwise identify as supporters of Fretilin. Since the election (in which the ASDT won the largest block of seats after Fretilin) there has been a rapprochement between the two parties.<%0> Guterres talks of Fretilin supporting Xanana Gusmao as a presidential candidate for Fretilin, though Fretilin leader Mari Alkatiri, in an informal discussion, remarks that Gusmao "thinks history only started in the 1980s with him".

Amidst the mostly superficial reports from the corporate media covering East Timor's independence, these two films are a refreshing reminder of the very difficult and complex social and political issues confronting the people of East Timor. It is a shame they are being screened so late in the evening.