Independence struggle

Habibie: Government never sanctioned Timor violence

Associated Press - March 20, 2003

Jakarta -- Ex-president B.J. Habibie told a human rights court Thursday that the bloodshed which swept across East Timor after its independence referendum in 1999 was the work of criminals, not the result of any order from his administration.

Habibie, who took over from Indonesia's longtime dictator Suharto in 1998, allowed the referendum on self-determination in the province that had been occupied by Indonesian troops in 1975.

His testimony appeared to deal a blow to the case of former East Timor military chief Gen. Tono Suratman, who is on trial for failing to prevent the rampage by Indonesian troops and their militia proxies that killed nearly 2,000 before the arrival of international peacekeepers.

It contradicts Suratman's defense argument that he was just carrying out orders from his bosses in Jakarta.

"If there was any link to Jakarta, there would have been a written or unwritten order to carry this out," Habibie said.

"But in fact, the opposite occurred. We prepared systematic measures to prevent [violence]. What happened there was the result of criminal actions and whomever committed them should be put on trial," the former president said.

Habibie, who has lived in Germany since being voted out of office in 1999, rarely visits Indonesia. He has testified via teleconference links in corruption cases involving officials of his administration.

The Timor rights trials in Jakarta have come under fire for acquitting 11 of the 18 officials on trial for crimes against humanity.

Only five defendants have been convicted of prison terms, ranging from three to 10 years, including Noer Muis who replaced Suratman in East Timor. They all remain free pending appeals of their cases. The trials of two military generals are ongoing.

Human rights activists have criticized the trials as a sham, saying they were convened in order to defuse an international drive to set up a UN war crimes trial for East Timor akin to those for ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

East Timor gained full independence in May, after a period of transitional rule by the United Nations following Indonesia's brutal 24-year occupation.

Habibie also defended his decision to back the referendum, saying he wanted to give the Timorese an option between remaining part of Indonesia or becoming independent.

"We discussed the matter, and the decision was made to respect the universal values of human rights," Habibie said. "Therefore, we gave the East Timorese people the opportunity to decide their own fate."

Transition & reconstruction

East Timor: Between a rock and a hard place

Asia Times - March 12, 2003

Alan Boyd, Sydney -- East Timor is preparing for next year's withdrawal of United Nations peacekeeping troops with a diplomatic offensive aimed at confronting worsening security and social tensions.

Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta is pursuing closer ties with the United States and a clutch of Asian states, most of which watched from the sidelines as the republic gained independence from Indonesia in 1999. But he may have miscalculated the depth of hostility in his war-ravaged community toward Washington's belligerent stance on Iraq, and appears equally unlikely to attract much sympathy from Timor's wary neighbors.

In his most divisive initiative since taking office, the former guerrilla leader offered Timor's support to the anti-Iraqi alliance in a column carried by the New York Times and some Asian newspapers in late February.

Horta wrote emotionally of the two decades of tyranny under Indonesian rule that cost the lives of thousands of Timorese, including nine of his own immediate family. "Yet I also remember the desperation and anger I felt when the rest of the world chose to ignore the tragedy that was drowning my people. We begged a foreign power to free us from oppression, by force if necessary," he wrote, in a plea for collective intervention in Iraq. "I know that differences of opinion and public debate over issues like war and peace are vital. But if the anti-war movement dissuades the United States and its allies from going to war with Iraq, it will have contributed to the peace of the dead."

The column caused consternation among peace activists in Timor, with several hundred marching through the capital, Dili, and picketing the US, Australian and British embassies. Similar rallies against the war were held in Western European capitals. At issue was Horta's moral mandate to barter the much-cherished neutrality of Timor for cheap diplomatic points. And disturbing questions were also raised over the veracity of some of his claims.

East Timor Action Network, a US-based group of Timor sympathizers, quickly disputed the historic parallels that Horta had drawn between Iraq and his own country's torturous journey.

"Historical records and statements available to us indicate the East Timorese did not ask for violent intervention to end the brutal ... Indonesian military occupation of their country," the network noted. "Far from calling for other countries to bomb Jakarta, the people of East Timor asked for United Nations peacekeepers. East Timor is free today because its people were courageous and far-sighted enough to emphasize non-violent means of struggle."

Timor has no troops to offer Washington, and negligible diplomatic influence. Horta would have been well aware of the depth of anti-war feeling on an island that is surrounded by secessionist and religious stresses. But he also knew that Dili would need friends badly when the time came for the republic to stand alone and meet its own security challenges from infiltrating militias and mounting social tensions.

United Nations peacekeepers are scheduled to pull out in June next year, ending a four-year transitional period during which Timor's small defense force has been trained to safeguard its own borders.

Militias operating from Indonesia's western half of the island are already making a comeback, raising fears of a recurrence of the vicious attacks on civilians that accompanied a nationwide vote on independence in 1999.

Seven people were killed in January when armed gangs raided the border district of Atsabe. Last month, gunmen attacked a bus and truck in nearby Bononaro, killing a further two people. It is not yet clear whether the militias are backed by Indonesia. However, Fijian troops found 1,000 rounds of ammunition and weapons of a type in use with Indonesia's military when they raided a jungle camp after the Bononaro raids.

In response, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the Security Council to consider delaying the final phased withdrawal of the 4,000 international troops and their support team of 2,300. However, some diplomats doubt that enough cash will be found to keep the operation going, as commitments are already down to about $200 million a year, only a third of the budget awarded to the UN transitory authority that administered Timor in 1999-2000.

While there are concerns over the security implications of a UN pullout, it will also have a substantial economic and social impact in a nation with 70 percent unemployment and few viable industries. Aid handouts, from the UN and private agencies that feed off its work, account for more than 80 percent of economic activity in a nation that has a per capita annual income of about US$480, making it Asia's poorest country.

The government expects to record a budget deficit of $60 million this year, double the 2002 shortfall, and will have few income sources until 2006, when it should receive the first royalties from oil and gas production in the Timor Sea.

Under an agreement ratified with Australia last week, Timor will share the anticipated $60 billion to $70 billion windfall from oilfields in the contested marine boundary between the two countries. However, it will take some time for the benefits to flow through. Because of tough bargaining by Australia, Timor will initially get only about $15 billion spread over 20 years from the Bayu-Undan field.

Prospects are brighter for the neighboring Greater Sunrise field, which is expected to reap at least $40 billion. But most of the field lies in Australian waters, and Canberra refuses to negotiate on its sovereignty; Timor's share will be a meager $8 billion.

"The key issue here is not a legal one, but a moral one. Will a wealthy power like Australia do the right thing and allow East Timor sufficient oil and natural-gas revenues for development to be stable and self-sufficient?" asked David Pargeter, a prominent Australian religious leader and persistent critic of Canberra's policy toward Timor. "And, as with Iraq, a deadline is approaching that could throw one small country into chaos, this time in our neighborhood."

Once viewed as the most likely economic savior of Timor, Australia has sharply cut back on aid since it spearheaded the transitional military presence in 1999, arguing that it is time for other nations to do their share. A sparse $20 million has has been allocated in the 2002-03 budget, though Canberra does give substantial indirect assistance through training, policing and welfare packages.

Foreign Minister Horta, who spent more than a decade in Australia as an exile from the Indonesian administration before independence, had already anticipated the Australian rebuff and started looking elsewhere.

"No East Timorese understands the nature of Australian politics better than Horta," said James Dunn, a veteran Australian diplomat with extensive ties in the region. "Horta has apparently concluded that a close link with the United States is necessary to East Timor's survival as a nation. [Dili] has also formed close relations with Malaysia and Singapore, as well as with South Korea and Japan."

Whether these countries will respond, at the risk of upsetting close ally Indonesia and feeding anti-US sentiment, is questionable, especially if the security situation worsens.

Like Australia and the US, most Asian countries privately opposed independence for the 100,000 Timorese, judging the tiny population too small and undeveloped to achieve sustainable growth. They would have preferred an initial 10-year period of autonomous government under Indonesian and UN jurisdiction, and the reintegration of the island's estranged eastern and western populations to remove the security threat.

Even as the UN withdraws, Dili will have to contend with the diplomatic vacuum over the fate of 30,000 East Timorese who are still being detained by Indonesia in its province of West Timor.

Forced to cross the border by Indonesian forces as an unsuccessful negotiating chip against independence, the exiles officially lost their refugee status in December, and now face an uncertain fate.

"The United Nations and Indonesia hope that ending their status as refugees will force East Timorese in Indonesia to choose whether to resettle or go home. But this assumes that all the refugees have the information and freedom to make a choice without coercion," said John M Miller, a spokesman for East Timor Action Network. "The UN and its international donors must not walk away from this problem, nor should the Indonesian government."

Bright hopes, bitter reality: East Timor after independence

South China Morning Post - March 13, 2003

Chris McCall -- Small boys play on a rusting warship off Dili harbour, the detritus of war that has become their home. On the beach, men scavenge for rubbish they can use or sell.

The East Timorese hoped for something better from independence. Out in the regions, most people are still subsistence farmers and death is a regular visitor. And by June next year, the UN support mission to the government will withdraw, leaving the tiny half- island in the hands of the Timorese political elite, many of whom missed the 24-year Indonesian occupation.

With anti-government riots late last year and now a new wave of militia incursions from West Timor, it already seems a world away from the bright hopes at independence last May. Then, it seemed that the United Nations' transitional administration had, more or less, held things together, despite the odds.

Now the Fretilin government is riven by internal dissent, with three separate factions vying for influence. Opposition groups accuse it of seeking to establish a one-party state while gaping holes remain in the law, which the national assembly appears in no rush to fill. Law and order is deteriorating, and all government institutions are regarded as weak except one -- the military. During riots last December, police opened fire on unarmed protesters, an incident which has yet to be officially explained.

Meanwhile, the UN support mission is trying hard to take a back seat, to keep alive the impression that East Timor is a sovereign country running its own affairs. It is all a bit vague. As one UN source put it: "Everything is so artificial with the UN here, including the economy. I am not overly optimistic."

So who, if anyone, is making the real decisions? In the words of one analyst, around 500 people collectively make all the meaningful decisions these days in East Timor. He compared the new country to other small island-states. Many of the elite are inter-related, they harbour long-standing grudges against one another and their interests frequently conflict. A geneology might be revealing.

In a few years, they will also have something to fight over. East Timor has a horribly bloody past to get over, and faces a potential threat from West Timor, where 30,000 mostly anti- independence East Timorese still live.

Further, within a few years, the hard currency proceeds of its single most important mineral resource -- the oil and gas in the Timor Gap -- will start to flow in. Although the government talks of using this money for development, if the experience of other poor countries is any guide, it could just as easily end up in private pockets.

Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri kept a tight hand on all negotiations dealing with the Timor Gap. Despite his Marxist past, the most powerful man in this Catholic country is a Muslim, the scion of a wealthy family of Yemeni origin.

His family has huge landholdings in Dili. In particular, they own the land around the main Dili mosque. Although he heads the government, Mr Alkatiri is not popular. He has no popular constituency as an individual. His strength is his control of the ruling party, Fretilin.

Mr Alkatiri was a member of the first Fretilin government in 1975 and attended the declaration of independence that year. But then he ran away to Mozambique. In December's riots in Dili, properties linked to him or his family were targeted all over the capital, and his house was burned.

UN officials who deal regularly with the government say that Mr Alkatiri, party president Francisco Guterres, better known as Lu-Olo, and Ana Pessoa, a former exile like Mr Alkatiri, are a triumvirate at the top of the government.

People who fought against Fretilin in 1975 are in political opposition now.

The influential Carrascalao family members are the children of a Portuguese dissident of the Salazar dictatorship, exiled to East Timor, and his Timorese wife. Their son, Joao Carrascalao, staged the original 1975 coup that sparked the civil war.

Having lost the war, the family supported the Indonesian invasion, although by 1999 they were pro-independence. Mario Carrascalao was governor under Indonesian rule for 10 years and now leads one of the main opposition parties. Unlike Mr Alkatiri, he is very popular, remembered for his efforts as governor to blunt some of the worst aspects of Indonesian rule from within the system. Ever since the 1975 coup, however, relations between the two brothers have been frosty. Like the Alkatiri family, the Carrascalao family has large landholdings in Dili.

Personal ties within the elite are often complex and confusing. Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta is the childhood friend of former resistance fighter Cornelio Gama. Better known as "L7", Mr Gama has become a focus of dissent against the government among veterans. Attempts to bring him into government have so far failed.

But if anything, feelings are most bitter between Fretilin and its former supporters. In 1975, President Xanana Gusmao was politically a nobody, just a young journalist on the Voz de Timor newspaper. But a few years later he was a leader of the Falintil resistance and ultimately the most senior one that Indonesian forces had not managed to kill. Mr Gusmao took the former armed wing of Fretilin and re-modeled it in his own image, leading it away from Marxist politics and ultimately out of Fretilin altogether.

The new East Timor Defence Force is led by his former commanders and has adopted the Falintil name as its own.

Unfortunately, one of Falintil's early mentors is now back and eager to regain his former influence. Rogerio Lobato is minister of internal administration, a post which gives him control of the police. Within Fretilin, the name Lobato is one to impress with. The minister's brother Nicolau Lobato was a martyr to the cause and a major Dili street has been renamed after him. Nicolau Lobato died in 1978, apparently taking his own life after all his men were wiped out by the Indonesians. Although Rogerio Lobato spent the entire occupation overseas, his name and background has made him a rival centre of power to Mr Alkatiri within Fretilin.

But the past is also these people's Achilles' heel. The question many Timorese ask is why did they leave in 1975? Former president Francisco Xavier do Amaral has said that in 1975 he only recalls giving permission to one member of his government, Mr Ramos-Horta as foreign minister, to leave East Timor. Mr Alkatiri has claimed that he refused to leave East Timor and only went because of intense pressure, but such denials do not sit well with those who stayed. And while Mr Ramos-Horta spent two decades publicly campaigning for East Timor, ultimately winning himself a Nobel Peace Prize, others were a lot less vocal.

Such a volatile mixture would challenge the greatest of political thinkers.

Mr Gusmao has been a stabilising factor, but many people ask what might happen if he was suddenly not there? Who would become president? And would the military, led by men with personal ties of loyalty to Mr Gusmao, accept their new commander-in-chief? Opposition leader Fernando de Araujo says the outlook is bleak: "We have had this situation since 1975, but we are still studying. I don't know when we can become clever. There are some who are clever."

Asked if any of Fretilin's cadres were among the clever ones, he said: "There are some, but the group that is not clever is stronger."

West Timor/refugees

Six pro-Jakarta militiamen arrested

The Jakarta Post - March 18, 2003

Jakarta (Agencies) -- Military authorities in West Timor have arrested six pro-Jakarta militiamen for their alleged involvement in last month's ambush of a passenger bus in East Timor and other acts of violence, agencies reported.

West Nusa Tenggara military command chief Maj. Gen. Agus Soeyitno said the six were arrested last Thursday and Saturday in Belu district, an Indonesian town bordering East Timor.

"They are under intensive interrogation to determine their roles in East Timor violence. We are ready to hand them over to the East Timor authorities on condition that East Timor's government sends us an official request according to the existing procedures," Agus was quoted as saying by Antara.

He said authorities confiscated one grenade from the suspects, who had confessed to dumping their rifles in the jungle. According to recent reports from East Timor, a group of nine gunmen ambushed a passenger bus in Atabae sub-district on February 24, but the attack was foiled by members of the UN Peace Keeping Force (UNPKF).

Military told to shoot armed militia infiltrators

Agence France Presse - March 17, 2003

A military commander overseeing Indonesian West Timor has ordered his men to shoot on sight any armed militiamen found trying to cross the border with independent East Timor.

The order came from Major General Agus Suyitno, the state Antara news agency reported late Sunday.

"If you find any former East Timorese refugee or militiaman crossing the East Nusa Tenggara [West Timor]-East Timor border by carrying a weapon, you are justified to shoot him or her," Suyitno was quoted as telling his troops near the border.

United Nations peacekeeping troops in East Timor have said the well-trained groups of pro-Indonesian former militiamen pose a "real threat" to security in parts of East Timor.

Hundreds of UN troops were deployed to hunt down a group which attacked a bus on February 24 in a border district, killing two people. Four people have been arrested and appeared in court in Dili. Suyitno said another six people suspected of involvement have been arrested in West Timor.

In January attackers killed five people including independence supporters, also in the west of East Timor.

East Timorese officials have blamed both attacks on anti- independence militiamen seeking to destabilise the new country. They say they do not believe that former ruler Indonesia or its military chiefs were behind the infiltrations.

Suyitno said Indonesian security authorities were questioning six men suspected of being behind the February border shooting. He said they were arrested in the Belu district of West Timor on March 14-15.

"They are being intensively questioned and if it is clear that they are the perpetrators of the violence in East Timor, we are ready to help and hand over the suspects to the concerned authorities in East Timor as long as a demand for that is made through the proper procedures," Suyitno said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for the peacekeepers' phased withdrawal to be slowed down to cope with the upsurge in violence by pro-Indonesian former militias.

Thousands of militiamen and their families fled to West Timor after foreign peacekeeping troops arrived in East Timor in September 1999 to halt a wave of militia violence following its vote for independence from Jakarta.

Bracks pledges aid for Timorese fight to stay

Melbourne Age - March 12 2003

Larissa Dubecki -- The State Government will give financial aid to about 1600 East Timorese refugees in Australia fighting to gain permanent residency status.

A $50,000 grant, announced yesterday, will help pay for their legal costs.

Premier Steve Bracks reiterated his support for a special class of humanitarian visa for all East Timorese refugees in Australia, a proposal put to Federal Parliament by Labor.

The announcement was made at West Richmond primary school, where 22 East Timorese children are students.

"Most of these students have been here their whole lives. Most, if not all, have not been to East Timor," Mr Bracks said. "This is a ridiculous situation ... [The Federal Government] needs to change quickly its decision and make sure visas are issued."

But the Federal Government criticised the move as discriminatory to other groups, and said it could raise false hopes among asylum seekers that they could stay in Australia permanently.

"We assume he'll be offering [the funding] to all Victorians rather than working on a discriminatory basis," a spokesman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said. "If there's no lawful basis on which to stay, he's encouraging further delay in the system."

Opposition immigration spokeswoman Julia Gillard said a new class of visa was appropriate, because processing of East Timorese claims was stopped in 1995 and resumed only last June.

"It is true to say that these people no longer have valid refugee claims, because the administration of East Timor has fundamentally changed from the days in which they fled persecution," she said. "But ... they have a special case to stay. Many have been there eight to 10 years."

Applications from 1095 East Timorese have been refused. Another 500 await decisions and 147 have been granted permanent residency.

[With reporting from Australian Associated Press.]

Timor Gap

Timor Sea Treaty - a fair deal?

Litchfield Times (Darwin) - March 19, 2003

Rob Wesley-Smith -- Much joy from NT government and business has accompanied the rushing of the Timor Sea Treaty (TST) through both houses of the Australian Parliament 2 weeks ago. But is it a good deal for both sides?

The process was an affront to good government, designed to avoid scrutiny and rejection. Sen. Bob Brown described it as "blackmail" and others talked of bullying the East Timorese. Both are correct.

Howard and Downer are acting like dictators who have been in power far too long.

While Howard cites UN resolutions as an excuse to commit Australian forces to our own illegal acts of terror against Iraqi civilians and yes Iraqi soldiers doing their patriotic duty, he ignored for 24 years all UN resolutions against the Indonesian military occupation of East Timor.

In September 1999 after massive demand from the Australian public he agreed to Interfet, which went to East Timor after it was a smoking ruin. He now claims to be East Timor's saviour, and thus the right to steal its resources. What hypocrisy!

The oil and gas resources covered by the TST and the Unitisation agreement (IUA) over the huge Greater Sunrise gas deposits are all located north of the halfway line between the 2 countries. This is recognised since 1982 as the Maritime Boundary location by the International Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS). Howard and Downer know this because in March last year they unilaterally withdrew from that UN convention, and that part of the International Court of Justice which administers it.

The Ratification of the TST now allows the complete development of the Bayu Undan oil and gas field by ConocoPhillips if they finally decide it is an economic option. This hasn't happened yet. They have been developing the profitable liquids extraction first stage anyway.

East Timor would have got enough royalties from that liquids extraction phase of Bayu Undan to fund their government for the next 20 years, so they didn't really need the treaty. It is Darwin which needed the Treaty.

We might yet get the world's longest undersea gas pipeline, bringing natural gas to a liquification (LNG) plant at Wickham Point before it is all then shipped to Japan. The NT's greenhouse gas releases will almost double just from this. Our harbour will have a dagger in its heart.

It's hard to see the sense in all this unless gas from the larger Greater Sunrise field is brought to Darwin as well. The price for gas sold in Australia is much less than the international price, so why would they?

If they do extract the gas and sell it as LNG they could do that at sea, either on a large ship or set on a reef structure -- as is planned for Evans Shoal to make methanol.

Should we be excited about the possible Sunrise development? Not at this stage!

Although Australia has forced an agreement which provides it with 80% of the resource, the agreement may not stand up. Illegal, unfair or immoral agreements, particularly if forced by one powerful partner on a weaker one, have the habit of falling over. eg The Indonesian invasion of East Timor, despite Australian governments supporting this, fell over eventually.

This issue is not only about Law, but goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be -- in fact that we have become. Our government on our behalf has adopted the 'right is might' GWBush credo. What is the world coming to?

East Timor, our immediate neighbour, is the poorest country in SE Asia and assessed as equal to Rwanda, worldwide. Are we happy to kick dirt in their faces?

I know many Territorians have been, and want to be, generous to Timorese, but we must speak up to stop out governments ripping them off.

The East Timor Government regards the TST and Unitisation agreements as transitional until formal EEZ boundaries are in place, leading to formal Maritime Boundaries. Then Greater Sunrise will belong 100% to East Timor.

Australia promised secret aid to seal Timor gas deal

Agence France Presse - March 12, 2003

Australia promised East Timor millions of dollars in a secret aid deal that convinced the world's newest nation to give up claims to a huge undersea gas field, a newspaper reported.

Under unpublicized terms of the deal reached last week on sharing billions of dollars in revenues from gas resources under the Timor Sea, Australia agreed to pay East Timor one million US dollars per year for at least five years beginning immediately, The Australian reported.

Australia also agreed to pay its tiny neighbor an additional 10 million US dollars a year once production from the Greater Sunrise gas field begins around the end of the decade, it said.

The aid promise sealed a controversial agreement under which East Timor agreed to Australia's terms for sharing revenues from the Greater Sunrise field, which is believed to hold more than 30 billion dollars worth of gas.

The special payments were contained in a document signed last Thursday after Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was forced to travel to Dili to secure East Timor's signature on the agreement for Greater Sunrise, The Australian reported. East Timor and Australia had been locked in intense negotiations for months over sharing revenues from gas resources in a joint development area in the Timor Sea and from fields that straddled the joint development area and Australian territory.

The two government's agreed last year on a Timor Sea Treaty giving East Timor 90 percent of the revenues from the joint development area, where one field, Bayu Undan, is ready for development.

But Australia held up ratification of the treaty until East Timor agreed to its terms for sharing revenues from the much larger Greater Sunrise field, which mostly lies outside the joint development area.

The dispute came to a head last week due to a March 11 deadline for development of the Bayu Undan field.

With the threat that developers would pull out of Bayu Undan and deprive cash-strapped East Timor of an estimated three billion dollars in revenues, Australia was able obtain its demand for more than an 80 percent share of revenues from Greater Sunrise.

East Timor had demanded a 50-50 share of Greater Sunrise revenues.

Australian government blackmails Timor into gas deal

World Socialist Web Site - March 12, 2003

Rick Kelly -- The long standing plan of the Australian government to maintain control of East Timor's oil and gas reserves reached its dinouement late last week, as the East Timorese approved the International Unitisation Agreement (IUA) after a systematic campaign of threats and intimidation from Australia.

The East Timorese ceded 79.9 percent of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field to Australia, worth an estimated $50 billion, after the Howard government threatened to withhold ratification of the Timor Sea Treaty (TST), the royalties from which are desperately needed by the tiny, impoverished nation.

Without Australian ratification by March 11, the TST would have collapsed, with the US-based oil company Conoco-Phillips unable to meet its contractual deadline for the extraction of gas from the Bayu Undan field. Worth around $40 million a year, the royalties from Bayu Undan are vital for the very survival of "independent" East Timor, whose 2003-2004 budget featured a massive deficit of $60 million, with total revenues (excluding foreign aid) of just $75 million.

The Australian government bullied and blackmailed the Timorese into an impossible position -- hand over the lion's share of the massive Greater Sunrise reserves, or face the immediate loss of the Bayu Undan royalties. The ultimatum made a mockery of the Howard government's boast of "generosity" in its offer of 90 percent of the revenue from the so-called joint development zone covered by the TST (which includes the Bayu Undan field).

Prior to East Timor's separation from Indonesia, the massive oil and gas reserves were covered by the 1989 Timor Gap Treaty between Indonesia and Australia. This treaty (which was never recognised under international law) rewarded Australia for its backing of Indonesia's brutal invasion and annexation of the former Portuguese colony in 1975, and granted Australia a large proportion of the seabed wealth by fixing the maritime border in a manner highly favourable to Australia. The revenues from the joint development zone were split 50-50 between Australia and Indonesia.

The East Timorese have long rejected the border established by the 1989 treaty and have insisted that it be set according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which would draw the boundary at the half way point between the two states. Under this internationally accepted principle the Bayu Undan reserve covered by the TST would fall entirely within East Timorese territory, as would approximately 80% of the Greater Sunrise reserves. Under the IUA, East Timor now possesses only 20.1 percent of these reserves. A border equidistant between Australia and East Timor would also see the smaller Australian Laminaria/Corallina oil and gas project fall on the Timorese side.

The Australian government's strategy to maintain possession of East Timor's resources centred on its refusal to permit the redrawing of the maritime borders established with Indonesia's Suharto dictatorship. In March last year, the government announced that it would no longer submit to maritime border rulings by the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

Having thus blocked any possibility of a successful legal challenge to its claims all that remained for the Australian government was to browbeat East Timor into submission. The thuggish nature of the "negotiations" was laid bare last week when the transcript of a meeting last November between Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, and East Timor's chief minister, Dr. Mari Alkatiri, was leaked and published on the internet. In the meeting, Downer explicitly linked Australia's ratification of the TST to East Timor's agreement on the separate IUA covering the Greater Sunrise reserves. "We can stop everything," Downer repeatedly threatened.

The meeting also featured the following extraordinary exchange:

Downer: Public opinion think[s] 90 percent [of the reserves in the joint development zone] is very generous. We support the TST which was adhered to and signed.

Alkatiri: It is not with generosity that you gave us 90 percent. We have lost 10 percent.

Downer: We claimed 100 percent and we lost 90 percent -- I think that's a pretty good outcome for you.

Alkatiri: Don't get upset, please speak calmly on this issue. Our 100 percent claim is based on international law and the equidistance line. It was not a random decision. The present issue of generosity -- I do not accept.

After Alkatiri told Downer that "we want to accommodate all your concerns, but accommodating is one thing and scrapings off a plate is another," Downer repeated his refusal to consider modifying the boundaries, saying "you can demand that forever for all I care, you can continue to demand, but if you want to make money, you should conclude an agreement quickly."

Downer went on to tell Alkatiri: "I think your Western advisers give you very poor advice that public opinion supports East Timor in Australia. We are very tough. We will not care if you give information to the media. Let me give you a tutorial in politics -- not a chance."

With the Australian parliament taking a two-week recess, March 6 was the last chance for the government to ratify the TST before the March 11 contract deadline. On March 5, Prime Minister John Howard called Alkatiri, and again threatened to withhold ratification unless East Timor ratified the IUA, thereby ceding 80 percent of the multi-billion dollar Greater Sunrise reserves.

As a senior official close to Alkatiri told the Sydney Morning Herald, "It was an ultimatum. Howard said that unless we agreed to sign the new deal immediately, he would stop the Senate approving the treaty". Howard's claim that his call to Alkatiri had been "totally civil and cordial" was later contradicted by Alkatiri himself who told the media that, "A lot of pressure was done from the Australian government, which was not helpful for the whole process".

On March 6, the day after Howard's threat, the East Timorese called an extraordinary cabinet meeting and passed the Greater Sunrise deal. Only when its tawdry oil grab was successfully completed did the Australian government introduce the TST for ratification.

With Labor Party backing, the Petroleum (Timor Sea Treaty) Bill 2003 was quickly passed by the federal parliament, demonstrating once again that Australia's nakedly imperialist relationship with East Timor has only been possible because of Labor's role.

In 1975 the Labor Party recognised Indonesia's invasion, and in 1989 it was a Labor government that signed the Timor Gap Treaty with Suharto. Neither Labor nor the Coalition parties have ever allowed the widespread and deeply felt sympathy on the part of ordinary Australians for the sufferings of the East Timorese to interfere with Australia's corporate interests in the region.

It was left to the minor parties in the Senate to voice any form of opposition. The Greens leader, Bob Brown, was especially vociferous. "This is the big oil companies, with the active compliance of the prime minister, no less, defrauding East Timor of its resources. It is a fraud. It is illegal," he told the Senate.

After Brown made the perfectly accurate accusation that the government was blackmailing the East Timorese, Liberal and Labor senators united to eject him from the Senate for twenty-four hours. This hysterical reaction only underlined the undemocratic nature of the government's East Timor policy. The timing of the introduction of the TST was not only designed to intimidate and threaten East Timor, but was also meant to deny the possibility of any extended debate on the issues of principle underlying the entire process. Any such debate, both the government and the Labor Party realised, could only threaten to raise popular demands for a fair treatment of East Timor.

Notwithstanding Bob Brown's protestations, however, the Greens also share responsibility for the theft of Timor's oil and gas reserves. Preliminary versions of the TST have been available for some time through the Senate Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, and it has been clear for months that the government's delay in ratifying the treaty was due to intimidation over the Greater Sunrise deal. Despite this, the Greens mounted no political campaign against the government.

Moreover, the Greens were among the leaders (alongside various "left" radical groups) of the "troops in" campaign of 1999. This campaign provided the Howard government with the necessary political cover to dispatch 4,000 Australian troops to East Timor: namely, that they were going for "humanitarian" reasons. The ongoing presence of the troops then provided the government with critical leverage in its "negotiations" with East Timor over the TST and IUA, while the Australian people were deceived into believing that Howard's relations with East Timor were based on altruistic motives.

The reality, as the TST and Greater Sunrise deals make clear, was that Australia's support in 1999 of a vote for "independence" represented merely a tactical shift. The longstanding strategy- control of East Timor's natural resources-remained the same. With the Suharto regime gone, the Howard government calculated that an "independent" East Timor -- inevitably existing in a neocolonial relationship to Australia -- would be the next best alternative in securing Australia's economic and strategic interests in the Timor Sea.

Australia's granting of 90 percent of the joint development zone under the TST in no way represents a significant advance for the East Timorese people. The more substantial long-term benefits have been secured by Australian corporate interests with all of the refining, distribution and servicing projects connected to the Bayu Undan reserves being centred in northern Australia.

Moreover, the Howard government has long made clear that once the oil and gas royalties begin to flow into East Timor Australia's foreign aid will be correspondingly reduced. As Downer put it in October 2000: "The extent to which East Timor itself is able to get the royalties, or a share of the royalties, the size of its share, plays into the overall size of the Australian aid program in East Timor and so on."

The meagre "concessions" contained in the TST ultimately represent the amount calculated by the Australian government to be the minimum required for the maintenance of a semblance of stability and the suppression of social unrest in the poverty stricken nation.

Canberra slammed for 'bullying' Timor

Interpress News Service - March 10, 2003

Kalinga Seneviratne, Sydney -- The Australian government is denying claims that it bullied the world's newest country, and one of its poorest -- East Timor -- to grab a large slice of a US$48 billion gas and oil deal signed between the two countries on Thursday.

The Australian Senate passed the Timor Sea Treaty (TST) late Thursday after intense debate -- but not before Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer signed an agreement in the Timorese capital Dili earlier in the day, covering two gas and oil fields in the Timor Sea that divides the two countries.

During an acrimonious debate in the Senate, Greens leader Bob Brown accused Australian Prime Minister John Howard of "blackmailing" the Timorese prime minister by insisting that if the deal was not signed in Dili, the Australian parliament would delay the ratification of the treaty.

Brown called the agreement on developing gas and oil in the Timor Sea "blackmail of the clearest order against our poorest Timorese neighbor".

Alkatiri told the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) that "a lot of pressure was done from the Australian government, which was not helpful for the whole process".

If the Timor Sea Treaty had not been ratified by this Tuesday, the contracts with the petroleum companies would have run out, depriving Australia and East Timor of revenues.

Brown was thrown out of parliament for refusing to withdraw his allegations, but they prompted Howard to make a special statement to parliament denying that he had tried to "intimidate or strongarm" East Timorese leaders over the deal.

Howard called claims of blackmail "totally false", although leaked documents published in online and print media showed contentious discussions between Canberra and Dili late last year on revenue-sharing from resources in the Timor Sea.

Downer admitted that the negotiations were tough but played down suggestions from the opposition that it has led to acrimonious relations between the two countries. "Australia is on Australia's side and East Timor is on East Timor's side. So inevitably they have been lively negotiation, bearing in mind the enormous amount of money that's at stake here," he said.

Under the Australia-East Timor agreement, the first slated project is the $18 billion Bayu-Undan field, which falls completely within a joint petroleum development area established under the Timor Sea Treaty.

Under the treaty, the two countries have agreed that East Timor would get 90 percent of the revenue and Australia 10 percent from the project, which will be spread over a period of 20 years beginning in 2004. It is estimated East Timor will earn $15 billion and Australia $2.5 billion over this period.

The contentious issue is the neighboring Greater Sunrise field, which Australia claims falls 80 percent within Australian waters. This means East Timor would be entitled to only 20 percent of the revenue from this venture.

Under the agreement signed in Dili, Australia is expected to reap $38 billion from these oil and gas fields, while East Timor will get a meager $8 billion.

The deal will also bring substantial benefits to the Northern Australian town of Darwin, where a gas pipeline will be constructed across the sea to process the gas, and export to Japan and other countries. Up to 1,500 jobs will be created during the construction phase and more than 100 ongoing jobs after that.

Ever since the Timor Sea Treaty was negotiated two years ago, the Australian government has made a big issue of how under the accord it has given away 90 percent of revenues to be raised from the development of the area.

After the signing of the Timor Sea Treaty in May, Howard said: "We must serve our own interests, but also ensure that we are fair and generous to the people of East Timor."

But many East Timorese do not see it that way. In fact, they have been calling for the renegotiation of maritime boundaries drawn up between Indonesia and Australia after the 1975 Indonesian annexation of East Timor, an act that Australia recognized.

Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta said in August that "Australia is getting the lion's share of the revenue without really being entitled to it, and Australia knows very well that it is not entitled to it".

He indicated then that East Timor might take the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. But, last year, in a move that astonished the international community, Australia withdrew from the ICJ's jurisdiction on maritime boundaries -- making independent arbitration impossible.

Meantime a leaked transcript of a meeting between Downer and Alkatiri in Dili in December, published on Friday by the Australian alternative news website crikey.com.au, says there was heated debate regarding the maritime boundary issue.

At one stage, it said that Downer, irritated by Alkatiri's consistent reference to renegotiating maritime boundaries, said: "To call us a big bully is a grotesque simplification of Australia. We had a cozy economic agreement with Indonesia, we bailed East Timor out with no economic benefit. Our relationship is crucially important, particularly for you, East Timor."

Later, Alkatiri said: "It is not with generosity that you gave us 90 percent. We have lost 10 percent". To that, Downer replied, "We claimed 100 percent and we lost 90 percent -- I think that's a pretty good outcome for you."

"Our 100 percent claim is based on international law and the equidistance line. It was not a random decision. The present issue of generosity -- I do not accept," replied Alkatiri.

Downer ended the meeting by saying: "We're very tough. We don't care if you give information to the media."

It appears that the deal on oil and gas development was signed on Thursday without any hint of renegotiating the maritime boundaries.

Some critics are now asking whether Australia's sending of troops to East Timor in 1999, to help in its quest for independence, had been done with an eye on these oil and gas deals.

Brown told ABC Radio: "'Blackmail' is a word that has been used in the parliament a thousand times, but it is never more appropriately used on this occasion."

How they fooled us on East Timor

Melboune Age - March 11 2003

Tim Colebatch -- They fooled me. Perhaps they fooled you, too. These days the spin doctors are everywhere, and they know how to pull the wool over our eyes.

A year before East Timor became independent, Australia announced what seemed a noble gesture. It would cut its own share of oil and gas royalties from the joint petroleum development area (JPDA) in the Timor Sea from 50 per cent to 10 per cent. The new nation could take 90 per cent.

This means East Timor will gain 90 per cent of the royalties from the big Bayu-Undan gasfield, due to begin production next year. Project partners put the value of its exports over the next 20 years at $30 billion, of which $6 billion would be revenue for East Timor.

At face value, Australia had unilaterally given away $2.5 billion to $3 billion in long-term revenue to its young neighbour.

But that was only half the deal. What gradually became clear was that Australia also insisted that East Timor virtually sign away its claim on two other proven oil and gas deposits in the Timor Sea, together double the size of Bayu-Undan.

The big one is the massive Greater Sunrise gasfield, 450 kilometres north-west of Darwin, the little one the Laminara Corallina oilfield further west. Both of them are far closer to East Timor than to Australia. Both are claimed by East Timor as offshore territory.

Yet Australia made it part of the Timor Sea Treaty that in the seas outside the JDPA where both governments claim sovereignty -- including 80 per cent of Greater Sunrise and all of Laminara Corallina -- 100 per cent of royalties would flow to Australia.

The treaty added a proviso that this was "without prejudice" to the permanent seabed boundaries the two countries would negotiate in future.

In theory, these could shift the boundary in East Timor's favour. In theory, Australia might then agree to give East Timor a bigger share of royalties. But as we shall see, that is unlikely.

When the East Timorese then kept raising the unfairness of this deal, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer moved to lock them into it. Australia refused to ratify the Timor Sea Treaty until East Timor signed a "unitisation agreement" in which 82 per cent of royalties from Greater Sunrise would flow to Australia, and just 18 per cent to East Timor.

A transcript of negotiations in Dili last November 27, leaked to the website crikey.com.au, quotes East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri as complaining that Australia was insisting on boundaries it had negotiated years ago with Indonesia, and offering his country "scrapings off a plate".

Downer became vehement in reply. "We are not going to negotiate the Timor Sea Treaty -- understand that," he told Alkatiri. "It doesn't matter what your Western advisers say... There will be no new joint development area for Greater Sunrise... We are very tough. We will not care if you give information to the media. Let me give you a tutorial in politics -- not a chance."

And so it continued until last week, when as the Australian Senate was finally allowed to debate and ratify the Timor Sea Treaty, East Timor's Government simultaneously signed a unitisation agreement giving it just 18 per cent of royalties from Greater Sunrise.

In a short video produced by Sydney-based film-maker H. T. Lee, Timor Gap Oil and Gas: Don't Rob Their Future, oil and gas consultant Geoff McKee estimates that in fact, Australia stands to take 60 per cent of the royalties from known energy resources in areas claimed by both countries, while East Timor gets just 40 per cent.

Sources familiar with the negotiations say these numbers ignore big differences in the status of the projects. Bayu-Undan is now on the starting block, with contracts signed to export all its gas to Japan, ultimately after processing into liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Darwin.

Its money will start flowing to East Timor next year, and will help the new nation through the critical early years when it must catch up in education, health care, infrastructure and jobs.

By contrast, Greater Sunrise is now in limbo, a deposit in deeper seas, with no guaranteed markets, and relying on an untried technology of conversion to LNG on floating platforms. In a secret memorandum signed last week, Australia promised East Timor a further $US10 million a year if and when such offshore production begins, a concession worth up to $A500 million over its lifetime.

It is also unclear where the boundary should be. Australia's definition follows its continental shelf, which extends under shallow water almost three-quarters of the way across the Timor Sea. East Timor defines it as a line through the middle of the Timor Sea. There are legal opinions behind both views. What is clear is that this issue will never be settled by an independent judge. Last year Australia suddenly excluded both the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea from arbitrating any dispute on its maritime boundaries.

East Timor may negotiate for changes, but we will decide, and there will be no appeal. We have looked after our interests well. It's a pity about theirs.

[Tim Colebatch is economics editor of The Age.]

Justice & reconciliation

Slow road to justice

Time Magazine - March 24, 2003

Lisa Clausen -- The young boy returned to the mountain village of Letefoho in fear and disgrace. He was a child in 1999 when, swept up in the militia violence that followed East Timor's vote for independence, he burnt down his aunt's house and fled. When he finally came home this year, the teenager had no idea of what he would face. He bought new roofing material for his aunt and waited. And in a public ceremony last month, he apologized to her and to his neighbors, and was forgiven.

Across East Timor, hundreds like him have come home. A few have returned to beatings. But many more, in village hearings organized by the nation's one-year-old Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), have been accepted back into their communities. In the Letefoho area alone, the CAVR has been asked to help with 39 such meetings since December. But reconciliation with their neighbors is not the only justice the East Timorese want. For more serious crimes, for the killings, rapes and torture of 1999 and the 24 years of Indonesian occupation before that, they want the justice of a courtroom. That process has been slow and hard. And when last month's indictment of key Indonesian military figures for war crimes was welcomed by the population but not by President Xanana GusmC#o, many East Timorese felt more confused than ever about when justice will be done.

The 1999 campaign of violence forced an estimated 250,000 people into West Timor; some of whom had fled there to leave their crimes behind.

Today all but about 28,000 have come home, among them those accused of lesser crimes, such as assault, intimidation and theft. So far, 200 of these have volunteered statements to CAVR. Such gatherings, says Commissioner Isabel Guterres, can be emotional events: "They hug and cry and say, 'You are like me. We are the little people.' It's the leaders they want brought to justice."

Charged with doing that is the nation's new judicial system, along with the UN-established Special Panel for Serious Crimes and the investigators of the Serious Crimes Unit. There's been some progress, with 32 convictions so far, and 58 indictments- involving 240 people-issued by the Se SCU. But more than half the accused remain at large in Indonesia. And creating a judicial system from nothing has proved a massive task. Delays, language problems and inexperienced lawyers plague the system, says Nelson Belo of the Judicial System Monitoring Programme: "Defendants don't know their rights or understand the court process."

Amid the frustration, good news came on February 24, with the lodging in Dili of the most significant indictments yet: charges against the former governor of East Timor, and seven key military figures, including the now retired Indonesian Minister of Defence, General Wiranto. Charged with crimes against humanity, the eight were indicted for 280 alleged murders, based on more than 1,500 witness statements. The charges brought "new hope to the people," says Jose Luis de Oliveira, head of the NGO Yayasan HAK. "Before that people were feeling frustrated that politicians were not being vocal and nothing was being done."

But not everyone in East Timor rejoiced at the news. Instead, a political flurry has erupted, with Gusmsni expressing his dismay about the impact such high-profile charges may have on East Timor's evolving ties with its powerful neighbor. The independence of the judicial process is clear, says Gusmao's chief of staff, Agio Pereira, "but the President also considers the relationship with the Indonesian government to be of paramount importance for our own development." For now, the indictments remain in limbo: East Timor has no extradition treaty with Indonesia, and it's unclear whether the warrants, which must pass through the foreign ministry, will even be sent to Indonesia. But the symbolism is potent-which is why Foreign Ministerr Jose Ramos Horta travelled to Indonesia soon after the indictments were lodged to reassure Indonesia that the bilateral bond remained the new nation's focus. "Justice must not come second," says Pereira, "but the issue the President raises is how to honor justice-and that is not by revenge." For GusmC#o, the best way is economic development. "It will be meaningless if we have all the perpetrators in jail, but the people continue to face infant mortality, endemic and epidemic diseases, without a decent home, without clean water and food," he said on February 17. Gusmsmo argues Indonesia is the key to such growth. The UN mission in East Timor agrees. Says mission chief Kamalesh Sharma: "I'm hopeful that the maturity of relations between both countries would insulate them from the trials and tribulations of the independent decisions of a judicial process."

But many are deeply unhappy that their popular president, a former resistance leader and prisoner, seems willing to put that relationship above key indictments. "For us it is justice first, not development," says Yayasan HAK's de Oliveira. "Justice is not about destroying the relationship between Indonesia and East Timor but it is a fundamental need of the people."

JSMP's Belo says people are pessimistic about the indictments, and feel the UN too has "washed its hands of them." Others are simply confused. "People feel men like this should have to take responsibility for what they did," says Sister Theresa Ward, who has been working with East Timorese since 1995. "They can't understand why these men won't face court." A lifting of poverty is vital, says CAVR Commissioner Isabel Guterres, but everywhere, people ask when justice will come. They are willing to wait, she says, "but something must happen." As they wait, the East Timorese have new violence to worry about. A riot in Dili in December has been followed this year by two attacks outside the capital by armed gangs, prompting the UN to recommend a slowing of the planned phased withdrawal of its 3,800-strong peacekeeping force. Only one of the gangs was caught, and PKF Commander Major-General Tan Huck Gim says another five could be at large, despite PKF efforts to find them. Some local communities fear the gangs are returning militia; Tan says though they may contain some ex-militia, the gangs have more basic motives: "They come to steal and they go back to where they're from because they know the people and the terrain-and they know who there has money." The military chief rates the gangs as East Timor's biggest long-term security threat: "The people of Timor-Leste are justifiably concerned."

If such gangs are indeed driven by hunger and poverty, President Gusmao may be right in seeing economic development as his nation's ticket to stability. Now he must reassure his people that some delay in the quest for justice is a price worth paying for their future prosperity.

Old grievances fester as the justice system stalls

South China Morning Post - March 13, 2003

Chris McCall -- In the mist of East Timor's central mountains, Florindo Soares explains why he helped kill his neighbour's brother 25 years ago. Outside the schoolhouse, a bird of prey circles majestically over a lake backed by lush rainforest, like an omen. Nine months after East Timor finally gained independence, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has come to Catrai Leten to help its people iron out their differences, East Timor-style. In 1977 this was a war zone, one kept well out of the world's eyes by the Indonesian invaders.

Six "deponents" have asked for forgiveness for their past crimes through a traditional reconciliation ceremony.

But this process is not supposed to deal with murder cases. It was designed largely to give lower ranking militiamen a chance to apologise and make amends for relatively minor crimes they committed under threat of death in 1999, things like house burnings. Mr Soares was an accessory to murder.

Apparently for lack of an alternative, the commission has had to deal with Soares' case as well. And that means he will never be tried. Once these hearings are complete, no further legal action is possible, unless the deponent fails to comply with the punishment set down.

In Soares' case, the punishment is a public apology and participation in a traditional reconciliation ceremony involving chewing the betel nut. The victim's family does not appear totally satisfied with such justice.

By his own reckoning, Soares is now 45, but he looks a lot older. He is clearly a broken man. He says he voted for the ruling Fretilin party in the 2001 general election and for President Xanana Gusmao last year. For around two decades, however, he worked for the Indonesian military as a hansip, a member of the civilian assistance forces the military (TNI) employs all over Indonesia.

At the height of the war between Indonesia and Fretilin, Soares was ordered to kill Maukoli, a local man who was distantly related to him. The order came from the TNI commander for the area.

The killing took place in Pahe Luha, a village a short distance from Catrai Leten. At the time, thousands of East Timorese were starving as Jakarta carried out a war of attrition against Fretilin, and were desperately hunting for food wherever they could find it.

Maukoli had been spotted foraging for food and wood near the edge of the Fretilin zone. The local Indonesian military commanders decided his loyalties were suspect and that he had to be killed. They ordered their Timorese assistants to carry out the job, and it fell to Soares' unit.

He led Maukoli out into the forest. But at the last minute, he could not carry out the deed. Another man who had accompanied him, Maumali, pulled the trigger. Soares said: "I did not shoot him. I ordered another person [to shoot]."

When East Timor's Truth and Reconciliation Commission received a request that this incident be dealt with through a public hearing in Catrai Leten, it flagged the case as unsuitable. But the Serious Crimes Unit, which vets all such requests, allowed it to go through anyway.

Serious crimes are defined as murder, rape, torture and the organising of violence. Although no one doubts that Soares would likely have been executed himself had he refused to carry out the order, normally a case such as this would be considered outside the remit of the commission.

Commission officials said they could only assume that the Serious Crimes Unit realised a crime that took place so long ago would simply never become enough of a priority for them to deal with. Their own mandate from the United Nations only permits the Serious Crimes Unit to deal with crimes committed in 1999.

While the politicians wrangle over the indictments in Dili of former Indonesian military chief Wiranto and top militiamen Joao Tavares and Eurico Guterres, a host of other crimes like this remain unsolved.

Commission officials privately admit they are frustrated with the slow work of the Serious Crimes Unit, whose staff are simply snowed under with cases. They have more than 1,000 murders to deal with from 1999 alone. So far only two cases have actually reached trial, and only one has been concluded.

Commission officials said they can only assume Soares' case got the green light because the Serious Crimes Unit knew it would take too long to deal with in any other way.

Although Maukoli's immediate family embraced Soares and publicly accepted his apology, they clearly have not forgiven him. Maukoli's nephew Angelino Martins, who spoke for the family at the hearing, said he believed Soares should still be tried for what he did. Furthermore, he said, the man who actually carried out the murder, Maumali, is still living freely in the area. They have never revealed where Maukoli's body lies.

"At that time there was still war so we did not dare check. Up to now he has not shown us the place where he is buried," said Mr Martins, 39. "I am disappointed, because of the loss of a member of my family."

Maukoli could not read or write, he added, insisting that he genuinely had been foraging for food.

Prosecutor General Longuinhos Monteiro makes no bones about his deep concerns over the justice system's future. Even after the UN planned withdrawal next year, the justice system will still need major support, he said, and it remains a big, open question as to whether that support will be there. The UN spends US$40 million a year on serious crimes, while it does not have even US$4,000 to spend on ordinary crimes, Mr Monteiro said.

Smoking heavily in his office, Mr Monteiro shows a legal order issued by one of his own investigating judges. For cultural reasons, many East Timorese are unhappy about having an autopsy performed on a relative's body, even when the demands of justice require one.

In this instance, an investigating judge caved in to a family's demands to release the body of a victim in a recent shooting incident. The shooting was an important case, linked to a recent string of militia incursions from West Timor.

"They say it doesn't matter whether there is justice or not," said Mr Monteiro. "We are told we violate human rights because we damage the body."

Leaving aside the larger issues of whether or not Wiranto and his fellow top officers will or should face trial, justice in East Timor is already on very shaky ground. With the UN mission due to leave next year, the fear is that time may be running out.

The Serious Crimes Unit has come up with a list of 281 cases relating to the 1999 violence, of which only 10 have been cited as priorities. About 98 suspects are still outside East Timor, most if not all in Indonesia.

"How are all these cases going to be tried, given the resources there are here?" said one UN source in Dili. "Are they going to be finished by June 2004?"

Human rights trials

Appeals over acquitted Timor suspects to be filed next month

Associated Press - March 17, 2003

Jakarta -- Prosecutors plan to soon appeal a string of verdicts acquitting Indonesian police and military officers accused over the violence that swept East Timor during its break from Indonesia in 1999, a court spokesman said Monday.

Critics say the acquittals by a human rights court in Jakarta of six military officers, three policemen and two former East Timor government servants on charges of crimes against humanity show that Indonesia is not serious about seeking justice.

The 11 are among 18 officials on trial over a campaign of terror by Indonesian troops and their militia proxies aimed at forcing people to vote for continued union with Jakarta. Nearly 2,000 civilians were believed killed.

Only five defendants have been convicted of prison terms ranging from three to 10 years. They all remain free pending appeals of their cases. The trials of two military generals are ongoing.

"All the prosecutors dealing with those acquitted have submitted their appeals to the court," said Judge Andi Samsan Nganro, a spokesman for the Jakarta court.

"We are in the process of finalizing the dossiers, and hopefully we can file the appeals to the Supreme Court in April," he told The Associated Press.

Earlier Monday, Supreme Court chief Bagir Manan installed six judges to try the appeals.

Human rights activists have criticized the trials as a sham, saying they were convened in order to defuse an international drive to set up a UN war crimes trial for East Timor akin to those for ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

In a sign of growing frustration with the legal process in Indonesia, East Timorese prosecutors indicted last month several senior generals, including then military chief Gen. Wiranto, over the violence. Jakarta said it would ignore that indictment.

East Timor gained full independence in May, after a period of transitional rule by the United Nations following Indonesia's brutal 24-year occupation.

Jakarta general found guilty in Timor rampage

Straits Times - March 13, 2003

Robert Go, Jakarta -- Indonesia's human rights tribunal yesterday convicted Brigadier-General Noer Muis, a former military chief in then-East Timor, of crimes against humanity committed just before its independence referendum in 1999.

Gen Noer, who served as a colonel in charge of 10,000 troops at that time, is the highest-ranked Indonesian military officer to be found guilty by the courts on Timor-related charges to date.

Prosecutors told the court that while the officer did not take part in the violence, he failed to prevent pro-Indonesia militia from unleashing their anger on pro-independence civilians.

Judges said Gen Noer had prior knowledge of the militia's plans, but allowed them to go on a rampage after Timorese voted overwhelmingly to separate from Indonesia.

An estimated 1,000 people lost their lives during the militia's brutal campaign.

Gen Noer was convicted on three specific incidents -- two in the capital of Dili and one in Suai region -- where nearly 40 people died.

He was given a five-year jail sentence, but remains a free man pending an appeal.

The court's decision came as Indonesia faces increasing pressure to show its resolve in prosecuting its own military officers who are accused of human rights violations, particularly in relation to events in East Timor, now known as Timor Leste.

Observers say Gen Noer is only the third security officer to be convicted by the tribunal.

Of the 16 defendants whose cases have been completed so far, 11 have been acquitted. The cases of two others are pending trial.

With human rights organisations calling the tribunal a 'whitewash' and a 'sham', Indonesia's reputation depends on the outcome of the trials.

Mr Arief Budiman, who heads the Indonesian programme at the University of Melbourne, said: 'There is tremendous pressure on Indonesia to deal with the atrocities in Timor Leste.

'The country is still dependent on foreign aid and has to showcase how it takes the trials seriously.'

In addition to financial aid, there is the issue of military assistance, which a number of Western countries, including the US and Australia, have suspended pending the trials' completion. But for the government, there is also the consideration that many Indonesians view the accused officers sympathetically and believe they were only doing their job.

Mr Arief doubts that more senior officers, including former military chief General Wiranto, would face charges domestically or be handed over to international tribunals.

He said: 'Indonesians see these convicted individuals as sacrifices made to appease the international community. But if the government does more than that, it risks creating domestic problems for itself.'

Military governor guilty, but still free

Australian Financial Review - March 13, 2003

Andrew Burrell, Jakarta -- A senior Indonesian military officer convicted yesterday over the bloodshed in East Timor in 1999 will remain free, despite being sentenced to five years jail for failing to prevent attacks against civilians in the former Indonesian province.

Brigadier-General Noer Muis, who was Indonesia's last military governor in East Timor, is the highest ranking Indonesian officer to be convicted by the Human Rights Court in Jakarta. He rejected the decision and said he would appeal.

Under the Indonesian legal system, a defendant found guilty and sentenced to a prison term can be permitted by the court to remain free, pending an often lengthy appeals process.

Muis is the fifth person to be sentenced to a jail term by the court, which has been accused of delivering soft verdicts and erroneous acquittals.

A total of 18 Indonesian officials and militia members have been tried over the violence that erupted before and after the independence referendum in East Timor in August 1999.

An East Timor human rights activist, Hendardi, last night rejected the Muis verdict as too soft, and said the court's credibility had been damaged from the beginning.

"Because it didn't include [former Indonesian military chief] Wiranto and other big fish as suspects, we must question the credibility of the tribunal," said Mr Hendardi, the chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid Association.

Muis was accused of allowing pro-Indonesian militias into the town of Suai to attack a church in which 27 people died in September, 1999.

He was also accused of allowing militias and police officers to invade the home of Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo. At least 15 people died in that attack.

Last month, Muis was among those charged with crimes against humanity in separate proceedings in East Timor.

Yesterday's sentence is the harshest handed down since November, when Eurico Guterres, the notorious former militia commander, was sentenced to 10 years jail for inciting a massacre at the Dili home of an independence leader.

Meanwhile, former Indonesian president B.J. Habibie, who authorised the United Nations to hold the independence ballot, will be the star witness at the trial of Muis's predecessor, Tono Suratman, at the Human Rights Court next week.

Dr Habibie has returned to Indonesia from his base in Germany to attend a meeting of former world leaders, including former Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser.

Indonesia

East Timor Indictments: A chance to save reform

Jakarta Post - March 10, 2003

Aboeprijadi Santoso -- Instead of expressing regret over Dili's indictment of Indonesian generals (as East Timor President Xanana Gusmao did) or flatly rejecting it (as Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda and President Megawati Soekarnoputri hastily did), Jakarta and Dili would do well to review their policies and consider the long-term implications of the issue.

A new myth has emerged since East Timor's independence in May last year. In order to foster a good relationship with Jakarta, it is believed, Dili should avoid sensitive issues, including efforts to bring those responsible for killings, deportation and destruction in East Timor in 1999 to justice. For Jakarta, having been humiliated when it lost East Timor's independence vote, would only be too happy to welcome a new neighbor that puts the importance of a good relationship before everything else.

This myth ignores four intertwined factors, ranging from international support for East Timor and for the indictments, to the need in Indonesia for real reform.

First, a tiny half-island amidst a great archipelagic neighbor, East Timor's geo-political predicament is unfortunate since it virtually dictates much of the country's foreign policy outlook. Metaphorically, East Timor has, in fact, opted to become a Finland, an independent country living in the shadow of or dependent upon its powerful neighbor, the Soviet Union, rather than a Baltic state, which evolved from domination to occupation by the same giant.

But, unlike Finland or the Baltics in the past, post-Cold War, independent East Timor has obtained the good will and commitment of the international community, which has, in the past, ignored its sufferings, to help the country if its security is at stake.

A recent proposal by UN Chief Kofi Annan to postpone the withdrawal of UN troops from East Timor and its endorsement by the UN Security Council, expresses that awareness acutely. Annan has explicitly spoken of a real threat by former pro-Jakarta militias both inside the country and from Indonesian West Timor.

While the war on terrorism and the crisis on Iraq have pushed the case of crimes against humanity committed by the Indonesian officers and the militias in East Timor in 1999 from the front pages, the issue has certainly not been, and will not be forgotten.

Second, the elections in East Timor in 2001 and 2002 have proved beyond doubt that Xanana Gusmao and Fretilin are the country's most legitimate leader and ruling political party. Whatever the differences between the president and the party on the issue of Dili's indictment of the Indonesian generals, the fact that matters most, is that the judicial authorities in Dili will continue the proceedings. The ruling party and the local populace have strongly supported the process. Reports have indicated that the Dili indictment, if it continues to be ignored by Jakarta, may in the long run damage the popular support for the president, who is sincerely concerned to preserve a good relationship between his country and Indonesia.

Local human rights organizations have expressed concerns on the issue. Perkumpulan Hak's director Jose-Luis de Oliveira has pointed out that victims of the 1999 mayhem have begun to ask, "whose president is Xanana Gusmao really?" For a small population whose majority suffered under the Indonesian Army and had been victimized by the rampage, that's a pregnant question -potentially critical even for a charismatic leader who liberated his country from the colonial joke.

It is too early to conclude on this double institutional leadership, but with a potential threat to the leadership of Xanana Gusmao whose presidency, modeled on the Portuguese, is not as strong as the US's or Indonesia's -- Jakarta cannot simply rely on President Xanana's good will. On the contrary, if Jakarta wishes to help strengthen Xanana's position, it should seriously consider Dili's indictment.

Third, East Timor's civil society is not alone in demanding justice on the violence in 1999. There has always been and still is relatively broad international public opinion supporting these demands, including human rights organizations in Indonesia, which call for breaking the chain of impunity.

For a number of generals with leading positions at the ministry of defense and the military headquarter in 1999, were neither investigated (including former coordinating minister Gen. (ret) Feisal Tanjung) nor tried (former military chief Gen. (ret) Wiranto). Seven independent researchers in a document titled, Masters of Terror: Indonesia's Military and Violence in East Timor in 1999, Canberra, 2002 have listed 11 major events, 124 officers and militia members as (possible) suspects and several institutions and military and police units as possibly involved in the violence and its planning.

Yet of those, only five cases were selected for Jakarta's trial, one was dropped, and of the 18 suspects tried, most have been acquitted and a few got light verdicts despite a minimum sentence of ten years defined for crimes against humanity.

Not surprisingly, the Dili indictments, issued by the UN- sponsored Serious Crimes Investigation Unit within the East Timor justice system, has been welcomed and seen as implicit criticism of Jakarta's "fake" trials.

Fourth, for the Megawati government to cooperate with the justice authorities in Dili would not only be a unique political and moral investment, both internationally and domestically, but it would also be an important contribution, on the part of Jakarta, to foster a good relationship between Indonesia and East Timor, and, ultimately, real reform in Indonesian politics and reconciliation with East Timor.

The political leaders' indignant responses, first, to President Megawati attending East Timor independence day, and, second, to the loss of Sipadan and Ligitan islands at the World Court last year, revealed the depth of the humiliation Jakarta felt, more than it has publicly admitted, since it lost East Timor. With the shame so deeply felt about East Timor, a creative and imaginative policy change in Jakarta by responding positively to the indictment on 1999 violence could restore the country's dignity and may have a liberating effect. But Megawati is not the type of leader who would initiate a policy break and, with her close links to the military's top-brass, it is hard to envisage such a change.

Yet that's precisely the point. With the military leaders' growing impatient with Aceh and Papua, some have envisioned the possibility of a military strike without presidential consent, ignoring that civil supremacy that rests with the president, who is also the commander-in-chief.

President Megawati could justifiably strike back and restrain her generals. With the Timor atrocities in 1999 now recognized as the Army's achilles heel, she could acquire the leverage and seize the momentum to liberate the Army from its post-colonial trauma in order to definitely close Indonesia's Timor chapter.

For now, the least Jakarta can do, if it is to prevent an international tribunal and to restore Indonesia's dignity after the shameful events of 1999, is to encourage the generals to fully cooperate with the justice authorities and human rights institutions in Indonesia and East Timor.

[Aboeprijadi Santoso is a journalist from Amsterdam.]

News & issues

Iraq: Ramos Horta preferred longer for the inspectors

Lusa - March 20, 2003

Geneva -- The minister of the Foreign Affairs of Timor said Wednesday that a "better solution" for the problem of Iraq "would be that the United States gave longer to the inspectors from the UN".

In statements to the Agency Lusa, Ramos Horta maintained that "himself Saddam Hussein will have some humility and some feeling for his country he should leave to avoid a war and he remove the arguments to the Americans to will attack".

The minister said do not he perceive as he is that Saddam Hussein, that he has 12 old years to fulfill the resolution of the United Nations and 4 more months to fulfill the resolution 1441 of Security Council, knowing the dangers to that exposed his country and the Iraqi population, he still did not he deliver everybody the information regarding the solid weapons of destruction.

"When a leader of State does not fulfill the his obligations, does not accept that himself invertam responsibilities. The responsibility of this situation is of the Iraq", said Ramos Horta.

Despite of defend that the United States should give longer to the observers, the minister recollected that noutras situations already functioned without the guarantee of the Security Council.

"In Rwanda, the Security Council had not intervened, what was an immoral act, because they permitted hundreds of thousand of persons to die," he said.

"It is a tragedy. Even if the loss of civilian lives is minimal as promised by the Americans, is always a tragedy, last some days or weeks" referred by the way from the expected American intervention in Iraq.

Ramos Horta affirmed, however, expect that the worries of the world do not come back everybody for that region and that "the reconstruction of the Iraq do not have impact in the programs of the others countries", as Timor, Cambodja, Afghanistan or the Africa.

Ramos Horta said he still expected that "the war finishes quick and a democratic regime will be built in the Iraq", recollecting that in the Afghanistan "had very positive changes".

The civil society is for the foriegn minister of Timor the new element of this conflict.

The foreign minister of Timor considered it still possible and "necessary" the reform from the UN, defending that the United States should do efforts in that sense.

Ramos Horta affirmed still discord personally "that continues with the five permanent countries in the Security Council since to II World War", defending still the elimination of the right of veto and the approval of the decisions by a majority of two thirds.

Ramos Horta visits Portugal from 31 from March to 6 of April. Before, the Ramos Horta, that cancelled a visit to the Kuwait due to the threat of war in the region, will go to Rome to the Vatican.

East Timor: Dili's leaders 'shocked' by war against Iraq

Lusa - March 20, 2003

Dili -- East Timorese leaders expressed their "extreme preoccupation" and "shock" Thursday over the launching of war by Washington and London against Iraq.

President Xanana Gusmco appealed to the international community "not to spare efforts to minimize the social, psychological and economic impact of war on the Iraqi people brought by military intervention".

Without directly denouncing Washington, Gusmco recalled that his country was just emerging from the ravages of conflict, underlining East Timor's commitment to "dialogue" in resolving international crises.

He stressed that "respect for international law" was "fundamental for multilateral action" against terrorism and the trafficking of arms, drugs and people.

In turn, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri issued a statement saying his government was "shocked" that a "peaceful and consensual solution" had not been found within the UN Security Council, stressing Dili believed "more time" should have been given UN weapon inspectors in Iraq.

"The UN system should function in such a way as to never permit unilateral decisions by any country or group of countries in the search of solutions for problems that affect all humanity", Alkatiri said.

Separately, the United Nations mission in Dili advised its staff to take "increased precautions" against the eventuality of reprisal terrorist attacks in the wake of the US-led campaign in Iraq. The UNMISET mission noted, however, that it had no indication of increased security risks.

SAS soldiers cleared of torture claims

Radio Australia - March 17, 2003

An Australian Army inquiry, yet to be released, has cleared members of the elite SAS of torture claims in East Timor. But it's believed the inquiry currently has an open finding on the central allegation, that 11 Timorese were held handcuffed and blindfolded for two days without food and water. It's understandood the inquiry found no substance for two other allegations, that 'trophy photos' were taken alongside the corpses of militimen, and that Timorese were to pushed to within centimetres of the corpses battle scarred heads.

Presenter/Interviewer: Rafael Epstein

Epstein: After the dramatic shooting of two SAS troops in an ambush in October 1999, it seems clear East Timorese already captured that day were subject to the resulting anger from Australian troops. Eleven Timorese had earlier been taken at road blocks, they were flown back to the airport in Dili by Army helicopter.

The central allegation is that the 11 captives were forced to sit cross-legged, blindfolded and handcuffed for two days and were denied food and water. If true, it's illegal under international and Australian military law.

After speaking to 350 witnesses, including soldiers from the UK, New Zealand and Australia, and some of the Timorese who were mistreated, the inquiry returned an open finding.

A senior source with access to the inquiry says investigators, quote: "Often get contradictory evidence with such claims," but, quote: "There was no evidence." An open finding means there is, quote: "Some substance to the claim, but no conclusive evidence."

Those who have an open finding against their name include members of the Australian Army's Military Intelligence Corps. It's understood that they determined the way suspects were held. AM was told they and a handful of other soldiers, not SAS troops, were, quote: "Absolutely not allowed to deploy to the Gulf this year."

The Prime Minister says he won't pre-empt the Army's official findings.

John Howard: Well, I am generally aware of that and the matter is being dealt with in accordance with the appropriate processes.

Journalist: Do you have anything to add?

John Howard: No, no, I don't explain something about an internal matter of that kind. It's being handled in the appropriate way, I'm told, and when the result of the investigation and enquiries have been completed, then the military will have something further to say about it.

Rafael Epstein: The Opposition says after two years the Army should release the inquiry's results.

A former SAS trooper, who says he has not spoke to investigators, told Perth's Sunday Times, the SAS were involved and he made two more claims. That SAS troops took trophy photos posing alongside the corpses of militiamen killed in the day's earlier shooting and that troops forced the faces of Timorese suspects right up to the heads of those corpses.

But investigators say there's no evidence for those allegations. They say the suspects were asked to come to a tent in a civil way to help identify the dead militiamen and they found no evidence of photos beyond those taken for operational reasons.

The inquiry looked at a range of allegations in East Timor. It cleared elite SAS troops of any major wrongdoing but some ADF troops, blocked from deploying to the Gulf, will wait for the inquiry's end to find out if they'll have a permanent black mark against their name and whether they'll face further investigation.

Government defends restrictions on foreigners

Lusa - March 10, 2003

Dili -- The East Timorese government defended today the imposition of restraints on the activities of foreigners in Timor-Leste and rejected suggestions of that the proposed law about immigration and asylum presented to the National Parliament violates international rights.

In statements to the Agency Lusa, the Minister of State and President of the Council of Ministers, Ana Pessoa, argued that the proposed law is less restrictive than those in force in several countries and intends to avoid "interference of foreigners" in matters of the East Timorese State.

"Not only does it not violate [rights], according to my understanding of what is stated in the Constitution [of Timor- Leste], that foresees ways that the restriction of rights can be done", she affirmed. "We know that there are not abstract and absolute rights. The individual right is given up, for example, before the collective one. This proposes merely to stop the interference in internal matters", she maintained.

Ana Pessoa considers it necessary to avoid foreigners promoting, for example, actions of protest in Timor-Leste that can "go against Timor's national policies". "We want to assume responsibility for the demonstrations that we do", affirmed the Minister of State and President of the Council of Ministers. "We do not want to assume [responsibility for] demonstrations with one Timorese and 500 internationals, and if it threatens the politics of our State, when the protest is a majority of foreigners, that in their country they do not dare to protest", she said.

For Ana Pessoa, it is "fundamental" that any foreign citizen in Timor "respects the independence and the sovereignty" of the country, avoiding "giving lessons to the Timorese about questions such as human rights". "We know about human rights, because we suffered those abuses personally. We are the first not to forget about human rights, neither our own nor those of others", she emphasized.

The proposed law of the government is being analyzed by the National Parliament, jointly with a second text about this same theme presented last year by the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Timor. The document of the government was criticized by some international jurists, in particular facts the strong restrictions applying to the activities of foreign citizens in Timor-Leste.

Lawyers contacted by Lusa suggest that the articles violate the Constitution of East Timor, because the Constitution states that foreigners' rights are conferred by the fundamental law of the country. Article 11 from the proposed law, for example, refers that foreign citizens are not allowed to "exercise activities of a political nature or interfere, directly or indirectly, in matters of State", also being prevented from "organizing or participating in demonstrations, parades, assemblies and meetings of a political nature".

They are not allowed to organize, create or maintain societies or any entity of political character, "even if its goals are only the publicity and the distribution, exclusively between countrymen, of ideas, programs or norms of action of political parties of their own countries".

According to the proposal, the foreigners in Timor cannot "pressure his countrymen or third persons to adhere to ideas, programs or norms of action of parties or political groups of any country".

The foreigners also cannot hold the majority of the capital of a social company of communication, without prior authorization of the government, or of a national company of commercial aviation. They are not allowed to participate in the administration or social sections of unions and professional associations, or "give religious advice to the Forces of Defense and Security".

Religious, cultural, recreational, sporting, charitable or aid associations that are exclusively or mostly formed by foreigners "are obliged to register in the Department of the Interior". Jurists contacted by Lusa believe that, given the existence of the principle of reciprocity, the imposed restraints to the foreigners in Timor will end up affecting the rights of East Timorese citizens in other countries.

"It is specially ironic that a country that lived during years depending on demonstrations of his citizens in other countries now prevents foreigners from having any political associations in Timor-Leste", commented a lawyer.

Ana Pessoa rejected the argument of reciprocity, considering that the Timorese regulation "is no more restricted" that those of other countries, "as is the case in Australia". "If there is an illegal Australian immigrant here, we give him more guarantees than an illegal Timorese immigrant has in Australia", she affirmed.

"Here, he is presented to a judge within 48 hours. The illegal immigrants in Australia do not go to judges and stay for months in detention centers waiting for decisions about their cases", said. In case of Portugal, Ana Pessoa remembered that Timorese who did demonstrations in Portugal did so "as Portuguese citizens", and that cannot "be compared with the current situation". "Now, we will have to obey the Portuguese law. If the Portuguese law says that foreigners cannot demonstrate, obviously then the Timorese is not going to demonstrate", she added.

Religion/Catholic Church

Catholic influence wanes, but religion still plays a role

South China Morning Post - March 13, 2003

Chris McCall -- It is only a rough map, but the message is clear. East Timor is shown surrounded by Falintil freedom fighters, with a huge cross close to Dili. In the new, independent East Timor, the strange quasi-Catholicism of Sagrada Familia can finally be expressed openly, even if it is not exactly an orthodox brand of Christianity.

"Viva Sagrada Familia", declares the writing on a wall in the home of former resistance fighter Cornelio Gama -- known as "L7" -- who founded the movement in 1989.

The "holy family" certainly would not have made such a public appearance a decade ago. According to the founder, Sagrada Familia played a major role in undermining Indonesian rule in East Timor. It came at a time when Indonesia was systematically trying to wipe out the Timorese identity and replace it with its own, quasi-Javanese, quasi-Islamic identity. Mr Gama founded the organisation as a means of combatting Indonesian propaganda against the resistance. Coming out of the jungles at night to cement their ties through traditional ceremonies involving chicken sacrifice and other animistic rituals, it became a resistance within a resistance and is still spoken of in hushed tones by the more radical East Timorese.

"The Indonesian army brought false rumours," said Mr Gama. "They said that Falintil in the jungles were all dead."

First came reconciliation in the towns, then the ceremonies at which they were expected to swear an oath. Members of Sagrada Familia had to return to traditional Timorese culture, much of which would make orthodox Catholic clerics shudder. Thanks to Sagrada Familia, Mr Gama claims, Falintil was able to move freely again. This programme helped Falintil re-establish itself after being almost wiped out by the Indonesians, he said.

Sagrada Familia still exists. Also euphemistically referred to as the "Baucau group", after Mr Gama's native area, it is a political force to be reckoned with, although exactly what it stands for is not clear, other than a very basic kind of social justice. "It is there to bring peace to all the people," said Mr Gama.

East Timor is often referred to as a Catholic region, and technically it is true. The black headscarves often worn by girls in Dili might not look out of place in a colonial-era Sunday school photograph taken in Lisbon.

But even church leaders say that one of the less welcome by- products of independence will inevitably be some weakening of the church's influence, which grew strong only during the Indonesian occupation, thanks to a clear threat of Islamicisation. A quasi- religious cult similar to Sagrada Familia, calling itself Colimau 2000, has recently sprung up in the border areas.

Shortly before independence last year, Nobel Peace laureate and former Dili bishop Carlos Belo issued a tirade against the less desirable influences brought by the United Nations, in particular the growth of prostitution. Former governor Mario Carrascalao recalls the subtle attempts to Islamicise the East Timorese. Groups of Timorese were shipped to other parts of Indonesia, apparently in the hope of Islamicising them through intermarriage and increased contact with Indonesians.

The threat may not be quite over. East Timor is one part of the world that Osama bin Laden has specifically mentioned as a focus of his concern, a part of the Muslim world, in his view, that has been separated from the rest.

In Mr Carrascalao's view, foreign missions in Dili should be very careful, particularly those of countries like Australia and Portugal that have supported the United States' war on terror.

"They consider Australia to be to blame for East Timor becoming free of the effort of Islamicisation," he said. "In a situation like this you had better pay attention to everything."

International relations

What Australia lost in Timor

Sydney Morning Herald - March 8 2003

Richard Woolcott -- John Howard may regard intervention in East Timor as Australia's "most positive and noble act" in 20 years, but our most senior former diplomat sees only needless damage to relations with Indonesia and unnecessary suffering for the East Timorese.

It was the East Asian economic crisis of 1997 that projected East Timor back into the spotlight. B.J. Habibie had become the third president of Indonesia in May of 1998 after widespread demonstrations and the resignation of President Soeharto. He was mercurial, intelligent and unpredictable. He believed it was his destiny to lead Indonesia, but I always regarded him as an interim president.

Habibie wanted to solve the East Timor problem, about which he knew very little. In June 1998 he announced that Indonesia was ready to consider a special status for East Timor. This meant autonomy and was a major change in policy.

At a fateful cabinet meeting on January 27, 1999, Habibie brandished a letter sent by the Prime Minister, John Howard, the previous month suggesting that, after a period of autonomy, there should be an act of self-determination in East Timor.

Habibie considered it illogical for Indonesia to go on subsidising a costly autonomy which might well lead to independence. He had said privately to colleagues: "Why do we have this problem when we have a mountain of other problems? Do we get any oil? No. Do we get gold? No. All we get is rocks. If the East Timorese are ungrateful after what we have done for them, why should we hang on?"

So Habibie told his cabinet that Indonesia should move straight to a choice between autonomy and independence for East Timor. Surprisingly, the only dissenting voice was the foreign minister, Ali Alatas, who felt that such precipitous action was dangerous -- not least for the East Timorese, who were ill prepared for independence.

Alatas apparently received no support. The economic ministers were glad to be rid of the cost. Some of Habibie's stronger Islamic ministers were happy "to be rid of 600,000 Catholics", as one put it. The minister for defence, General Wiranto, reportedly agreed with Habibie's decision on condition that there was no suggestion that the 1975 intervention in East Timor by the armed forces was wrong. He would not oppose Habibie, in the belief that Habibie's policy would fail, as would his attempt to be elected president. This would keep Wiranto's own political ambitions alive.

That such a major decision could be taken without full consideration and with such limited discussion by an impatient, erratic interim president can only be regarded as irresponsible.

The East Timorese resistance leaders, Xanana Gusmao and Jose Ramos Horta, and the head of the Catholic Church in East Timor, Bishop Carlos Bello, had all said as late as 1997 that a viable independence in East Timor required a preparatory period of five to 10 years' autonomy. Most South-East Asian leaders shared this view and were concerned about the sudden rush to a vote in East Timor. Some believed it was unwise for Howard to have written his letter which, given Habibie's temperament and that he was a temporary president, elicited the reaction it did.

Had my advice been sought, I would have suggested that countries which could have influenced Habibie (the Unites States, Germany, Japan, the other ASEAN countries and Australia) should have immediately urged him to change course. Habibie could have been pressed to offer not a vote on autonomy that would, in effect, be a vote for early independence, but a period of autonomy for, say, five years during which the cost of administering East Timor would be borne by Indonesia's major aid donors.

This may have prevented the spiteful devastation after the UN vote in August 1999 and would have been much less costly to donors, including Australia, than the UN Assistance Mission to East Timor (UNAMET), followed by the force led by Australia to restore order (INTERFET), the UN force which replaced it, and the repairs to infrastructure damaged in the violence of September 1999.

It was not in Australia's or South-East Asia's interest in 1975 for an unstable, left-wing, independent East Timor to appear. This may also be true of 2003. But interests can be identified and defined more readily than they can be advanced or achieved.

The practical realities that Australia and South-East Asia faced by late 1998 were quite different from those of 1975. The Cold War was behind us; Vietnam, so feared by ASEAN countries after the US defeat there, had become a member of the organisation; East Timorese leaders, in particular Gusmao and Horta, had been highly effective advocates of East Timor's right to self- determination; and Indonesia had completely failed to win over the East Timorese people (despite considerable investment in infrastructure and education) in a way not anticipated in 1975.

The Howard Government saw in Habibie's interim presidency an opportunity to redress what many Australians considered to be the hardships inflicted on the East Timorese and the denial of a proper act of self-determination since Indonesia's incorporation of the former Portuguese colony in 1976. The way for an Australian initiative was opened by Habibie's wish to relieve Indonesia of a continuing and costly problem that was damaging his country's international standing and his belief that he could strengthen his chances of becoming Indonesia's democratically elected president in 1999 by offering the East Timorese a chance to determine their own future. The Howard Government believed it could engineer a regional diplomatic success.

The Government also had a domestic political agenda. The Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs, Laurie Brereton, had made a strong statement in August 1998 criticising the East Timor policy of Australian governments, especially the Whitlam administration. This was a factor in the Government's decision to announce a changed policy. It also suited the Government to promote the theory that the Whitlam, Hawke and Keating governments had behaved immorally and improperly in the 1970s, '80s and early '90s.

Howard donned the mantle of a belated supporter of self- determination in East Timor and of what he is prone to call true Australian values. Howard has described Australia's involvement in East Timor since 1998, including his leading role, as "the most positive and noble act by Australia in ... international relations in the last 20 years".

Most South-East Asian leaders have a different perspective. For example, Malaysia's mild-mannered deputy prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, has said publicly that the Australian Government was "not sensitive to South-East Asian feelings". The senior minister in Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, has said it was imprudent for a prime minister to write a letter in the terms Howard did to an erratic and temporary president. I have encountered similar views at senior levels on visits to Thailand and the Philippines.

The Howard Government believes that thanks to its decisive action and East Timor's independence in May last year it has achieved a diplomatic triumph. I accept that Howard and the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, believed that what they did was right in the circumstances as they interpreted them. But the road to hell is sometimes paved with good intentions.

The likelihood of the widely predicted violence which erupted in September 1999 was unfortunately overlooked. Our style was also offensive to many in our neighbourhood, although it struck a responsive chord in sections of the Australian community. We chose to take the lead, to force the pace and to issue ultimatums. In Indonesia and the wider region, and to some extent in Australia, our style was seen as excessively assertive, jingoistic and triumphalist. The Government would have been more effective and generated less animosity if it had been less prominent, more persuasive, less insistent on taking the lead and less demanding in pursuing its objectives.

In the afterglow of what it regards as a success in righting a wrong, the Government must live with the consequences of its policy. The most obvious is an independent East Timor to our immediate north, an outcome each of Howard's and Downer's predecessors since Menzies in 1963 hoped to avoid. But independence is what the majority of the people of East Timor wanted and what many Australians supported. While it may not be in our national interest, East Timor's independence is a reality to which the region must now adjust.

The second major consequence is that our relationship with Indonesia has been substantially damaged and may take years to repair. While some of the anger is due to Indonesia looking for scapegoats for problems largely of its own making in East Timor, a large section of the Indonesian community is alienated from Australia and a large section of the Australian community likewise from Indonesia. As an Indonesian minister said to me last year about Australia: "We are neighbours; we have to work together. But we don't trust you and we don't much like you now." It is simply not in Australia's interest to have such a troubled relationship with our largest and closest neighbour.

Australians are seen as having had an excessive and unbalanced focus on East Timor. To other countries, including Japan, China and the nations of ASEAN, as well as India, Pakistan and even the US, the paramount issue in the region is the successful transition in Indonesia to a more stable, moderate, representative government, the recovery of the Indonesian economy and a willingness to deal with extremist Islamist organisations.

Despite the moral outrage in Australia over the shocking events in East Timor in early September 1999, the reality is that East Timor is seen in the wider scheme of developments in Asia as a secondary issue compared with the future of Indonesia. One of our continuing problems is the extent to which our policy towards Indonesia has been, and still is, observed through the prism of East Timor.

Another consequence is that Australia faces an indefinite period of substantially increased expenditure to support and aid an independent East Timor. We have a moral obligation to do so, having made ourselves a party principal. At best we may see in the future an economically struggling, quasi-democratic state with a benign relationship with its large neighbour, Indonesia. There is, however, a danger that we could find ourselves supporting indefinitely a factionalised, unstable mini-state characterised by chronic dependency and ongoing problems with its large neighbour.

I hope not. Otherwise we will see that evangelical altruism can have a high price tag, without necessarily achieving the hoped- for results, as the US has found in Haiti. A senior member of the Bush Administration has already made this analogy. He told me in Washington in July 2000: "East Timor will be your Haiti." Australians can only hope he is wrong. I DID not meet Xanana Gusmao until July 2000. We got on surprisingly well, given the very different attitudes we'd adopted in the '70s when I was ambassador to Indonesia and he was in the hills above Dili fighting as an insurgent against the incorporation of East Timor in Indonesia. The reason was that I had been arguing in public after September 1999 that the issue was how best to accommodate an independent East Timor in the existing South-East Asian and South-West Pacific regional architecture.

Gusmao said he was pleased to hear these views from a former senior diplomat who had in the past accepted the incorporation of East Timor into Indonesia. Gusmao is flexible, forgiving and magnanimous. Having fought against Indonesian forces, he nevertheless recognised that Indonesia would be of critical importance to an independent East Timor's future. Over a private lunch in Jakarta in June, 2001, he, Ali Alatas and I discussed the need for East Timor and Indonesia to heal the wounds of the past and look to the future.

I visit Indonesia regularly and know Megawati Soekarnoputri. In March 2001, when she was still vice-president, I told her I was aware that she had not welcomed the separation of East Timor from Indonesia or the way it had occurred, but it was a reality. She agreed that Australia, Indonesia and an independent East Timor needed to co-operate closely to ensure a sound mutual relationship. I also suggested it would be important symbolically if Megawati were to receive Gusmao and Horta.

In the event, Megawati received Gusmao shortly after she became President in July 2001. East Timor formally celebrated its independence in Dili on May 20, 2002. Megawati, despite strong political opposition in the Indonesian Parliament, wisely attended. The symbolism of Gusmao and Megawati, arms raised and hands clasped, being cheered by the East Timorese gave some grounds for optimism.

[Richard Woolcott was ambassador to Indonesia at the time of Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor. His diplomatic career spanned the second half of the 20th century. This is an edited excerpt from his autobiography, The Hot Seat, $45, to be published by HarperCollins on March 15.]