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East Timor News Digest 25 - October 13-November 2, 2003
Melbourne Age - October 20, 2003
Jill Jolliffe, Batugade -- East Timorese self-sufficiency came a
step closer at the weekend as United Nations peacekeepers handed
control of the Indonesian border area to local police.
The UN flag was lowered for the last time as members of the East
Timor Border Patrol Unit paraded with Australian peacekeepers,
who have controlled the northern border zone since 1999. The
peacekeepers are scheduled for pull-out in May 2004.
The UN force commander, Lieutenant-General Khairuddin bin Mat
Yusof, reassured the Timorese officers that they would have
continued back-up.
Timor's Deputy Interior Minister, Alcino Barros, reinforced the
message, saying that "the peacekeepers will step back, and the
Timorese national police will step forward".
UN forces in East Timor will be halved by November, leaving about
1750 blue berets in the country. Independent observers are
concerned that local police, including the border force, are
ill-prepared. Despite intensive training by the UN since 2000,
complaints of arrests without warrant and beatings in custody are
regularly dealt with by the UN Human Rights Office in Dili.
This year police in Maliana were accused of beating an Indonesian
captured for crimes allegedly committed with militia forces in
1999.
An internal UN inquiry recommended that Aquino Borges, one of the
accused, should face charges. The recommendation was ignored by
national and UN police, and the officer is now at the centre of a
new investigation over the fatal shooting last month of a wanted
militiaman, Francisco Viegas Bili Atu.
Associated Press - October 17, 2003
Michael Casey, Jakarta -- The prime minister of East Timor said
Friday that his nation has little hope of overcoming its
desperate poverty unless the United Nations extends its presence
there and donor countries reject proposals to reduce aid.
Mari Alkatiri also told The Associated Press that the country's
future depends heavily on its gaining ownership of vast oil and
gas fields in the Timor Sea known as Greater Sunrise -- an area
also claimed by Australia.
The two countries are scheduled to begin maritime border
negotiations in November. If the talks go well for East Timor,
the country stands to gain $7 billion over the next two decades.
"This is a way to develop our country fully," Alkatiri said in a
telephone interview from the East Timor capital of Dili. "We need
these resources much more than Australia ... They need to
recognize our sovereign rights to this region."
Nearly a year and a half after gaining its independence following
four centuries of Portuguese rule and 24 years of brutal
Indonesian occupation, the country of 800,000 remains Asia's
poorest, its $80 million annual budget dependent on foreign aid.
East Timor's finance ministry released figures this week showing
that the country's budget deficit is expected to nearly double to
$137.9 million by 2007 -- due to delays in developing oil and gas
fields.
Alkatiri insisted that East Timor was making strides, saying the
danger posed by returning militiamen had dwindled in the face of
the country's newly established police force and army.
The Indonesian military and its proxy militias responded to a
pro-independence vote in 1999 by laying waste to the former
province, killing 1,500 Timorese and forcing 300,000 from their
homes.
Alkatiri also said production of rice had jumped 20 percent this
year and investors from across Asia had expressed interest in the
country's fisheries, tourism, small business and agriculture
sectors.
Yet East Timor is lobbying the United Nations to extend the world
body's presence in the country beyond a June 2004 deadline and
wants donors to maintain their current levels of assistance.
The United States has proposed cutting its aid for the fiscal
year 2004 from $25 million to $13 million. Timorese officials
have suggested the increased cost of rebuilding Iraq is behind
the funding cuts -- something Washington has denied.
Alkatiri said the US assistance must not decrease. "It's nothing
compared to what the United States gives to Iraq. This is a new
democracy and it has to be consolidated. This is a country that
is considered an international success story with the UN
involvement. For the sustainability of the whole process, we need
international assistance."
The United Nations administered the territory for 2 1/2 years,
then handed it to the Timorese on May 20, 2002 -- after
establishing a new administration, judiciary, police force and
army, in addition to overseeing the first democratic elections.
The transition was lauded as one of the United Nation's biggest
accomplishments -- and today is seen as a possible model for
Iraq's reconstruction, despite the vast differences in the two
countries' size and character.
About 3,000 international peacekeepers remain in East Timor to
support its fledgling army along with about 500 UN police
officers. Another 1,000 UN staffers are providing technical
assistance for government departments, including in banking,
civil aviation and public works.
Alkatiri said the United Nations should remain in East Timor
until 2006. UN officials have said the international body is
expected to keep a skeleton staff on to advise key government
ministries, though the details remain sketchy.
"The process of development will be delayed a lot if the UN pulls
out or foreign assistance declines," Alkatiri said, warning that
if the government had to spend more on security it could be to
the detriment of health care and education.
Still, Alkatiri, 51, a former freedom fighter who fled to
Mozambique during Indonesia's occupation, expressed optimism that
the country will eventually stand on its own feet.
"Timor in 10 years will be a completely different country," he
said. "Every child will have a good school and every resident
will have good health care, meals three times a day and good
housing."
Labour issues
West Timor/refugees
Timor Gap
Justice & reconciliation
Human rights/law
Aid and development
News & issues
Book/film reviews
Transition & reconstruction
Police take control
East Timor's Alkatiri says aid needed
Labour issues
East Timor unionists end nation's first-ever strike
Australian Associated Press - October 22, 2003
Ben Packham, Melbourne -- East Timorese trade unionists have ended the nation's first-ever strike. The country's aviation workers ended the two-week strike after reaching an interim agreement with air-freight company Timor Aviation Services.
The Australia Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), which helped negotiate the deal, said the interim agreement would deliver workers a 12.5 per cent pay rise as well as penalty payments.
An ACTU spokesman said the agreement would also allow for the arbitration of unfair dismissal claims by two workers, whose case is expected to be the first to be heard under the nation's new industrial laws.
Comment was not immediately available from Timor Aviation Services, which is owned by directors of Harvey World Travel in Darwin.
The company provides customs clearance and handling services to the UN, the Australian Defence Force and freight companies serving Australian oil, gas and mining companies.
It has been in negotiations with the East Timorese Maritime and Transport Workers Union for the past six months.
Meanwhile, the ACTU said Australian unionist Mick Killick was defending assault and other charges laid by UN police after he was arrested on a picket line at Dili Airport.
| West Timor/refugees |
Antara - October 30, 2003
Kupang -- The leaders of two ex-East Timorese refugee organizations have urged the Indonesian government to refrain from deporting 26 East Timorese asylum seekers currently staying in Atambua, East Nusatenggara, citing humanitarian considerations.
"The fate of these Timorese asylum seekers should be settled through the legal and human rights mechanism. So it is not necessary to force them into a situation unfavorable to them," Miguel Epifano Amaral, chairman of the Bati Foundation's Parents' Asssociation, said here on Thursday.
He was commenting on a statement of the Wirasakti military district commander that the military would soon send the East Timoreses asylum seekers back to their home country.
Amaral pointed out the 26 East Timorese nationals were requesting political asylum so they deserved to be treated in accordance with international laws on asylum seekers.
The East Timorese asylum seekers left their homes in East Timor's Bobonaro district as they could no longer bear continuous intimidation and threats from people who used to be proindependence before East Timor seceded from Indonesia in 1999, he said.
Because of the continuous intimidation, the asylum seekers eventually decided to leave their home country and head for Atambua via secret paths to seek asylum in Indonesia.
At present, they are being sheltered at the Belu police station in Atambua while the local police are considering to deport them to their home country.
Amaral said if the government decided to send them back to East Timor, it would be forever held responsible for their fate.
"If they are forced to return to their home country and then get murdered there, who will be responsible for this. The Indonesian government should understand that the reason these East Timorese are seeking political asylum in Atambua is that they feared for their lives," he said.
Deplorable
Echoing Amaral's view, Hukman Reni, declarator of the East Timorese Refugees Presidium (PPTT), said the Wirasakti military distict commander's statement about the 26 East Timorese asylum seekers was deplorable.
The commander was reported to have said that the 26 East Timorese's act in seeking political asylum was nothing more than a "new mode" to engage in crininal activity.
"The commander's statement labelling the asylum seekers as criminals represents a sadistic judgement. This is ridiculous and could enrage the people as a whole," Hukman said.
He said it was highly unlikely that ordinary people like the 26 East Timorese asylum seekers could have criminal intentions.
Therefore, Hukman said, the best solution for the East Timorese asylum-seekers would be for the government to find a way to send them to a country of their choice and not to deport them to their home country where their lives were in jeopardy.
Antara - October 30, 2003
Waingapu -- East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao has expressed anger over attitude of the country's citizens seeking asylum in Atambua, Belu district, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), a military officer said on Thursday.
"President Xanana gets angry because 26 people from East Timor's Bobonaro district left their home town for Atambua only to meet their relatives, not for security reasons," Col. Moeswarno Moesanif, commander of the Wirasakti military command, said when asked for a confirmation here.
The East Timorese people are still under the protection of the Belu police in Atambua since October 15 after entering the district by shortcuts.
They claimed they had been intimidated and terrorized by other residents in Bobonaro. They also faced a food shortage and lacked primary health care from the East Timorese government.
According to Moesanif, some institutions in Timor Leste (East Timor), especially the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), had carried out an investigation but found no intimidation or threats.
He added that the UNHCR had carried out interviews since last Monday to find out whether they were refugees or have to be deported to their homeland.
The Timor Leste government had guaranteed the safety of each of its citizens, so it did not make sense that they have sought for asylum, Moesanif said, adding they would be sent back to their hometowns after the UNHCR has completed its interviews.
At meeting with the commander in Kupang recently, East Timor's Ambassador to Indonesia Arlindo Marchall also said no groups in the country had made the intimidations.
"The asylum seekers went there for economic reasons, rather than for security reasons," he said.
The ambassador pointed out that the best solution was to repatriate them because the government guaranteed the safety of all its citizens.
Timor Leste was a former Indonesian province before seceding from the republic as the consequence of the pro-independence faction's victory in the UN-organized plebicite in Sept. 1999.
The East Timorese people fled to East Nusa Tenggara from their homeland to escape devastating rampages, which broke out shortly after the UN Mission in East Timor (Unamet) announced the outcome of the ballot.
More than 250,000 East Timorese had once taken refuge to the Indonesian province, but most of them had returned to East Timor under the UNHCR and Indonesian government's repatriation programs.
Antara - November 1, 2003
Atambua -- The Belu district government said it was treating the 26 East Timorese seeking asylum in Atambua as foreign nationals.
"We will never treat them as if they are former East Timorese refugees. They came to this district as foreign nationals in dire need of protection," chief of the Belu police resort Adjunct Chief Commissioner Agus Nugroho said here Saturday.
He was responding to a statement by certain quarters that the local government had been paying more attention to the 26 asylum seekers than to former East Timorese refugees residing in emergency camps iu the district.
The statement followed the local government's decision to allow the 26 asylum seekers to reside in a newly-constructed resettlement site, he said.
He said the local government was fully aware that the 26 asylum seekers might have to stay in the resettlement area indefinitely.
The East Timorese asylum seekers left their homes in East Timor's Bobonaro district as they could no longer bear continuous intimidation and threats from people who used to be pro- independence before East Timor seceded from Indonesia in 1999.
Jakarta Post - October 28, 2003
Yemris Fointuna, Kupang -- East Timor President Xanana Gusmao called on East Timor asylum seekers on Monday in the Indonesia's territory of Atambua here to return to their homeland in East Timor. But, his appeal was quickly rejected by the asylum seekers, who still fear intimidation back home.
Xanana conveyed the appeal in a meeting with the 26 East Timor asylum seekers, held in the Belu Police Headquarters, in the Belu regency capital of Atambua. In the short 20-minute meeting on Monday, the President assured them that they would be safe back home. "Your safety is assured back home. The state will assure the safety of its citizens regardless of their background," he said.
Xanana also promised the asylum seekers that his government would take strong action against anybody in East Timor who intimidated the asylum seekers back home. "You have to trust us. If you can't trust us, whom else can you trust?," Xanana told them.
The 26 asylum seekers sneaked into the Indonesian territory on October 15 due to intimidation in their homeland in Bobonaro district, East Timor. Their request for asylum from the Indonesian government is still being processed.
Despite the call to return to East Timor, Cornelio Martins, one of the asylum seekers, told Xanana in the meeting that they doubted that the intimidation would end. The degree of intimidation had been so profound in their homeland that not only the head of the family, but, even the children have also been harassed.
"Neighbors have prevented our children from going to school, only because they are children of ex-East Timor refugees, who once supported the integration of East Timor with Indonesia," said Cornelio. Cornelio went on to say that it would be better for the asylum seekers to die of starvation overseas, rather than being killed by their own relatives or neighbors back home.
East Timor separated from Indonesia after the East Timorese, in a United Nations-sponsored popular ballot in 1999, voted overwhelmingly to establish their own state.
Meanwhile, another asylum seeker Saturnina dos Santos said that the presence of their relatives in Atambua was another reason why they chose to seek asylum in Indonesia. At least, their relatives could give them shelter and help them to start a new life in the Indonesian territory, he said.
After the brief meeting in Atambua, Xanana and his entourage headed to the border of Oecussi and North Central Timor, where he is scheduled to meet pro- integration supporters in the area on Tuesday. During his tour, Xanana is accompanied by East Timor's home minister Rogerio Lobato and deputy speaker of East Timor Legislative Assembly Jacob Fernandez.
Antara - October 27, 2003
Atambua -- The Indonesian military and police have agreed to deport 26 East Timorese who are seeking asylum at Belu police resort in Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province.
"We are determined to deport the 25 East Timorese soon after holding a coordination meeting [with the Indonesian military]," Chief of the Belu police resort Adjunct Chief Commissioner Agus Nugroho said here Monday.
He doubted the confession of the 26 East Timorese that they sought asylum at the police resort after receiving intimidation from other East Timorese.
Both the Belu police resort and district military command had asked for confirmation from the East Nusa Tenggara- East Timor border security task force. However, the latter did not give any sign of the 26 East Timorese receiving intimidation, he said.
Neither did the East Timorese Police (PNTL) nor the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces (UNPKF) in East Timor receive complaint from the 26 East Timorese from Bobonaro district about the intimidation, he said.
The 26 East Timorese consisting of 15 males and 11 females began to seek asylum in Belu district on October 15 after they crossed the border areas via Silawan point in Tasifeto subdistrict in East Timor.
Jakarta Post - October 18, 2003
Yemris Fointuna, Kupang -- As many as 48 East Timorese citizens sneaked into East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province seeking protection from the Indonesia government, claiming they were victims of intimidation, police said on Friday.
Twenty-six of them were accommodated at Belu Police Station, while the remaining 22 are staying at camps along with other East Timorese refugees. Belu Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Agus Nugroho said the 48 East Timorese were from Balibo subdistrict, Bobonaro district, East Timor, and claimed to have been "terrorized and intimidated" by their East Timorese neighbors.
They managed to sneak into East Nusa Tenggara, despite tight border security, he added.
Agus said the 48 were among some 250,000 East Timorese who had fled the carnage at the hands of militia in their homeland in 1999 after it voted to break away from Indonesia in an independence vote.
"They had returned home to Timor Leste [East Timor] under the repatriation program in 2001 after taking refuge in Atambua, Belu regency," he said, adding that some of the 48 refugees were women and children.
Agus said the escape of these East Timorese citizens would affect the smooth repatriation of thousands of refugees still languishing at the camps across East Nusa Tenggara.
The Indonesian government is waiting for a response from the East Timor administration in order to deport its 48 citizens, he said. "We will not go home because we don't want to be bullied by the East Timorese people who do not want us to live there," said Emersia da Cruz, one of the 48 refugees.
Kupang's Wirasakti military commander Col. Moeswarno Moesanip confirmed the presence of the 48 East Timorese citizens who were seeking protection in Atambua.
East Timor's economic recession has also forced them to return to Indonesia to escape destitution in the neighboring country, he said.
Moesanip said that an exodus of more East Timorese people would hit East Nusa Tenggara and other Indonesian provinces, if the Xanana Gusmao government failed to resolve economic difficulties confronting its citizens.
Jakarta Post - October 14, 2003
Yemris Fointuna, Kupang -- At least five of 14 regencies in East Nusa Tenggara have refused to give land for resettlement areas for thousands of East Timorese refugees still languishing in camps across the province.
The rejection was made in a joint statement by the five regents of Kupang, South Central Timor, North Central Timor, Alor and Belu. A copy of the letter was sent to the Coordinating Body for Disaster Prevention and Refugee Handling (Bakornas PBP) in Jakarta.
Stanis Tefa, secretary of East Nusa Tenggara's taskforce of PBP, confirmed on Monday the refusal by the five regencies. "It's true that we have received a written statement from those regents, which says they will not provide land for resettlement areas for East Timorese refugees," he told The Jakarta Post.
Tefa, who is also the secretary of the provincial administration, said the protest would have a serious impact on efforts to deal with the refugees, particularly those who have decided to stay in Indonesia as citizens.
"The regents want the East Timorese refugees resettled outside East Nusa Tenggara because they cannot mingle with local people. That's why we need to find an alternate solution by relocating them to Kalimantan or other provinces across Indonesia." Tefa said the number of East Timorese refugees still in the camps in the five regencies was around 28,000, comprising 9,000 families.
Most of them are former pro-Indonesia militias who were refused repatriation to their homeland of East Timor. The refugees have refused to be resettled in any of the nine other regencies of the province, but it was not clear why.
"Following the rejection, the East Nusa Tenggara administration will ask the central government to find some land outside the province to resettle the refugees," Tefa added.
The refugees were among some 250,000 people who were forced to flee from East Timor during the intense violence in aftermath of the vote for independence in 1999. However, most of them were repatriated to East Timor over the past four years.
| Timor Gap |
Letter published in the Guardian (UK) - October 24, 2003
The Australian High Commissioner believes that the interim legal framework for Timor Sea petroleum development is a winner for East Timor (letters, October 20).
In fact, the real winner is Australia. Under arrangements East Timor signed on its first day of independence, Australia receives revenues from about 59% of the deposits that are closer to East Timor than to Australia. Under accepted legal principles, these deposits would belong to East Timor, but Australia responded reluctantly to requests to begin negotiations on a maritime boundary; preliminary talks begin next month, but as the Australian foreign ministry said: "We wouldn't start putting time frames on it."
If a boundary settlement is not agreed while there is still oil under the sea, Australia's withdrawal from international legal mechanisms for settling boundary disputes will leave the tiny nation without recourse.
Many programmes, including some funded by Australia, teach East Timor about the rule of law. But the lesson of Australia's position is that if the booty is rich enough, law is irrelevant. It prefers to bully a country that needs oil to fund basic health care and education.
Australia claims to be a major benefactor of East Timor, but its assistance pales in comparison with the tens of billions of dollars it will reap from East Timor's resources under current arrangements. In fact, Australia has taken in more (over $1.2 billion) from the Laminaria oilfield than it has given East Timor in aid. This field began production in 1999 while the smoke was still rising from East Timor, but more than 70% of its oil has already been extracted and sold.
[Jesuina Cabral Charles Scheiner Institute for Reconstruction Monitoring, Dili, East Timor.]
The Guardian - October 14, 2003
Jonathan Steele -- Australia, which led an international peace force to help East Timor become independent last year, has become the greatest barrier to the country's hopes of breaking free from reliance on foreign aid, according to stark budget figures released yesterday.
Despite starting out as one of the world's poorest and most war- torn states, East Timor stands to benefit from huge gas reserves which lie under the sea that separates it from Australia.
But harsh Australian negotiating tactics over disputed claims to the gas have forced the government to accept that long-promised revenues will not materialise for several more years, if ever.
As a result the Timorese budget deficit for the three years from June next year will be roughly double the $70m (#42m) previously projected, the finance ministry in Dili announced yesterday.
News of the revenue shortfall came as Xanana Gusmao, East Timor's president, started an official visit to Britain. "We're not asking too much from Australia. What belongs to us is ours. We hope Australia can understand that," he told the Guardian in London.
Mr Gusmao has been dubbed Asia's Nelson Mandela because of his long years in prison as leader of the armed struggle against Indonesian occupation, and more recently as a champion of post- conflict reconciliation.
But he could not conceal his anger at Australia's behaviour. "They still haven't agreed when to start maritime border negotiations," he said.
The huge reserves of gas in question are known as the Greater Sunrise field. Although they are closer to East Timor than Australia, they were "awarded" to Australia under a treaty with General Suharto, in 1989.
Economic factors were a key incentive in making Australia one of the first countries to recognise Indonesia's illegal invasion of East Timor after the territory declared independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975. An international outcry finally arose in 1999 when the Indonesian army and local militias massacred hundreds of Timorese after a nationwide vote to move to independence.
The Timorese government, with the backing of the UN, announced last year that it wanted to renegotiate the boundary line. Under normal international practice it would be fixed as the halfway mark, putting all of Greater Sunrise inside East Timor's waters.
Australia first announced it would not accept any decisions by independent arbitrators such as the international court of justice, thus leaving East Timor at the mercy of bilateral negotiations with its giant neighbour. Then it persuaded cash- strapped East Timor last year to agree that 20% of Greater Sunrise was part of a "joint production area", giving Australia a right to a share. Now Australia is declining to set a timetable for completing negotiations on the remaining 80%. By delaying production, the apparent aim is to press East Timor to soften its claim.
"We don't have to exploit the resources. They can stay there for 20, 40, 50 years. 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," Alexander Downer, Australia's abrasive foreign minister, recently told East Timor's prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, according to a leaked transcript.
Australian officials were not available last night for comment on the budget figures. "Australia is giving AU$1m in emergency food aid for families affected by a two-year drought and is launching a major new initiative to provide training for East Timor's police," said a spokesman for the high commission in London.
| Justice & reconciliation |
Associated Press - October 23, 2003
Dili -- An East Timorese court Thursday convicted and sentenced two former pro-Jakarta militiaman for murdering three independence supporters during the country's break from Indonesia in 1999.
Anastacio Martins was sentenced to 11 years and 6 months in prison, while Domingos Goncalves was sentenced to 15 years for the killings in Liquica on September 4, just days after East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in a referendum. Martins received a lower sentence because he pleaded guilty to the charge.
Both men were members of the notorious Red-and-White Iron militia, which was formed by Indonesia's military to intimidate East Timor's 800,000 people into voting for continued union with Jakarta.
Goncalves' lawyer told reporters her client would appeal. It was not immediately clear whether Martins would appeal.
Washington Post - October 15, 2003
Alan Sipress, Dili -- Joni Marques is in jail for his role in the ambush and murder of three Catholic priests, two nuns and their traveling companions in 1999, one of the most infamous incidents during this country's violent birth.
As pro-Jakarta militiamen took revenge against those who voted weeks earlier for independence from Indonesia, Marques and his fellow toughs set upon the group when their Toyota four-wheel- drive slowed for a makeshift roadblock of rocks, according to court documents. The attackers riddled the vehicle with bullets. Those who escaped it were assaulted with machetes, including one nun as she knelt by the roadside in prayer.
But the people Marques said were his bosses, and the vast majority of those charged with being involved in the militia campaign of killing, raping and looting, are in Indonesia, beyond East Timor's reach.
A special team of UN prosecutors, operating as an arm of the East Timorese government, has charged 367 Indonesians and their local underlings with involvement in the 1999 violence. So far, only 36 have been convicted, all of them East Timorese, while 280 Indonesians and East Timorese remain at large in Indonesia.
The two countries have no extradition treaty and Indonesian prosecutors and other officials have shown little appetite for aggressively pursuing senior military officers. The armed forces remain the most powerful institution in Indonesia, one that few politicians, judges or lawyers are willing to cross.
To blunt international criticism, Indonesia established a separate tribunal to try suspects charged with atrocities. The proceedings finished in August with the acquittal of 11 members of the security forces while four others were sentenced to short prison terms and remain free pending appeal, prompting US officials and human rights monitors to call the trials seriously flawed.
But the leaders of East Timor disagree about the wisdom of trying to bring to justice those responsible for the killing.
After prosecutors in Dili issued their most ambitious indictment to date, charging seven top Indonesian officers, including former military chief Gen. Wiranto, and the former governor of East Timor with crimes against humanity, President Xanana Gusmao of East Timor expressed dismay with the move, saying that close ties with Indonesia were of utmost importance.
The military commanders, all generals and colonels, were accused of responsibility in hundreds of murders by militiamen under their control. Several of them remain active in the Indonesian military while Wiranto, now retired, is a leading candidate in the presidential election set for next year.
East Timor's prime minister, Mari Alkatiri has been less critical. He said the prosecutions should not harm relations between the two countries and might instead help them come to terms with their troubled history. Reflecting the discomfort in government circles with East Timor taking the lead, Alkatiri said, "Justice for crimes of this nature is above all the responsibility of the international community."
Not having been ordered to change course, East Timor Prosecutor General Longuinhos Monteiro, who oversees the effort, said he is determined to continue. Just last week, prosecutors indicted 17 more suspects, including three Indonesian military officers, for atrocities near the country's second-largest city, Baucau.
"To have justice for those crimes committed in 1999 will ensure that the nation of East Timor will develop with stability and respect for the rule of law and human rights, which is especially significant when a nation is born out of conflict, such as in the case of East Timor," Monteiro said.
Among those indicted in East Timor but still at large is Lt. Syaful Anwar, an officer with Indonesia's special forces, who prosecutors say was behind the attacks carried out by Marques and his men in the Team Alpha militia. "I did not do what I did because I wanted to. It wasn't my idea," Marques said in an interview in prison.
Reuters - October 13, 2003
Jakarta -- A former pro-Indonesia militia member in East Timor has been jailed for 10 B1/2 years for crimes against humanity including one count of murder, East Timor's serious crimes unit said on Monday.
A special judicial panel also found Domingos Mendonca guilty of persecution of independence supporters in the period between April and September 1999, the year tiny East Timor voted to break away from Indonesian rule. The trial was the fourth and final one related to incidents in the Same sub-district, the serious crimes unit said. In the earlier verdicts one ex-militia man received a 12-year sentence, one of nearly nine, and the other eight.
According to the United Nations, about 1,000 people were killed before and after the UN-supervised vote in August 1999, in which the people of the former Portuguese colony voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence.
Pro-Jakarta militias, with support from sections of the Indonesian military, were blamed for most of the violence.
The serious crimes unit has indicted a total of 367 persons since 2000, of whom 280 were outside East Timor's jurisdiction.
Most are believed to be at large in Indonesia, which has thus far refused to send those accused by East Timor courts of human rights violations to Dili to face charges.
East Timorese law does not allow individuals to be tried in absentia.
Indonesian officials have said there is no agreement that permits extradition to East Timor on such charges, and note that Indonesia has in any case set up courts of its own to deal with human rights accusations over East Timor.
But rights groups have criticised the Indonesian tribunals for considering charges against less than 20 people, and convicting only a handful of those.
East Timor, which became independent in 2002 after a transition period under UN administration, has thus far convicted 36 of those it has accused.
| Human rights/law |
Online opinion - September 23, 2003
Nick Ferrett -- It may be that Australia fails in its bid to obtain chairmanship of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. That would make Greg Barns happy, apparently. It would also make the serial and serious abusers of human rights among the members of the committee happy. Having at its head a country with a track record of pluralism and equal opportunity would do serious damage to the UN's current status as a protest organisation rather than a force for change in the abuse of human rights.
Barns cites the Keating era as a golden age for human rights advocacy in this nation. Human rights was hardly Keating's strong suit. This is the man who the Indonesians called their "brother in arms". The man who trained the troops who massacred the East Timorese. The only time he had a fight with any leader of a government committed to serious abuse of human rights was when he had a brawl with Malaysia's Mahathir -- over trade.
Does everyone forget that during the Hawke and Keating eras we were urged not to impose Western values on those from non- European cultures who came to our shores? That was code for authorising the abuse of women by cultures which treated women as chattels. It was the basis for ignoring the human rights abuses in many Asian countries for the sake of trade. As for the approach to China, Bob Hawke shed a tear for those massacred at Tienanmen (and I believe he was genuine) but trade continued unabated.
Paul Keating was a supporter of the government which sanctioned the invasion of East Timor and later, as Prime-Minister, became the biggest advocate of the military dictatorship which repressed our war-time allies. By contrast, John Howard took politically risky steps to help bring about East Timor's independence, then acted to clean up the mess in which people like Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating had been complicit.
Don't forget that when Laurie Brereton, as foreign affairs spokesman for the ALP, came out against the previous Labor policy of support for the annexation of East Timor, he was lambasted by Gough Whitlam, the great defender of the people, as being uneducated. I thought Gough had educated everyone of Laurie's generation.
The Labor Party has a long and sorry history of being out to lunch on human rights. The only time it has done anything serious on a fundamental issue of human rights it has been to sell out freedom of association by reinforcing compulsory unionism in the workplace and at universities. It was the inventor of mandatory detention. It was the inventor (and only serious advocate) of racially discriminatory immigration policy in Australia.
If I had a say in who was to chair a committee on human rights, I think I would look for someone who came from somewhere where the people held pluralistic values, abided the rule of law, gave its citizens equal rights under the law, didn't shoot or gas them when they dissented, fed those of its citizens who couldn't afford to feed themselves, looked after those of its ill citizens who couldn't afford to look after themselves, educated all of its citizens and was governed according to the democratic will of the people -- as opposed to the sort of people who commonly run various elements of the UN now. Somewhere like my country.
The UN is often in danger of being held in contempt by liberal democracies precisely because it offers them so little despite accepting so much from them. It is most often held in contempt by liberal democracies governed by parties (unlike the Labor Party) which are free of historical ties to the biggest abusers of human rights seen in the twentieth century -- the communist regimes of Europe and Asia.
| Aid and development |
Lusa - October 21, 2003
Dili -- East Timorese leaders, returning home from a European tour, expressed optimism Tuesday about continued European Union aid but said Dili's expectations should be "realistic".
Acknowledging that crises like Iraq were syphoning "billions" from aid budgets, President Xanana Gusmao said he was convinced that European governments "accompany our difficulties, know our difficulties and want to continue helping us to be a success story".
Gusmao, speaking at a news conference on his return from Europe, underlined that Dili's expectations must be "realistic".
He added, however, that his talks in Italy and Britain convinced him that East Timor remained on Europe's agenda.
Also participating in the news conference, Foreign Minister Josi Ramos Horta noted that East Timor had enjoyed a "disproportionate" amount of European aid in the last few years. "In per capita terms, East Timor has received more aid from the EU than any other country" in Southeast Asia, Ramos Horta said.
In July, the EU's external relations commissioner, Chris Patten, told Lusa that Brussels' aid to Dili would likely be cut by two- thirds to about USD 8 million in 2004.
Dili, he added, had already received some USD 140 million in EU assistance. Diplomats have told Lusa that, beyond reduced direct aid to Dili, the EU was considering a "significant aid package" in the framework of the bloc's aid and trade agreement with the so-called ACP countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
| News & issues |
Daily Telegraph (Sydney) - October 31 - 2003 Friday
Keith Suter -- The largest loss of life ever sustained by the Australian media industry took place on October 16, 1975, at the East Timor village of Balibo. Five journalists were killed. All the governments that had citizens involved in the deaths have refused to reveal all that they know.
One of the 20th century's biggest wars -- in per capita deaths -- arose from the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor. The official date of the invasion is usually given as December 7. But five journalists knew the date as being October 6. They were killed before their story could get to the outside world.
Today the house where they stayed at in Balibo will be opened as a community centre. East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao and Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, (whose government has financed the restoration) will do the ceremony. Guests will include Shirley Shackleton of Victoria, whose husband died in or near the building.
In 1974, the Portuguese military overthrew the government in Lisbon. The new Portuguese regime wanted to quit East Timor quickly.
Indonesia feared that a flourishing democracy in its island chain could encourage parts of its own country to seek independence. Indonesia's aggressive intentions were endorsed by Australia's Labor Government.
Television journalists Greg Shackleton, 29, Gary Cunningham, 27, Tony Stewart, 21, Brian Peters, 24 and Malcolm Rennie, 29, travelled to the west of East Timor expecting to film invading Indonesian forces. All five were working for two Australian commercial TV networks but only two of them were Australian; Peters and Rennie were British and Cunningham was a New Zealander.
At dawn on October 16, 1975, about 100 Indonesian commandos and some pro-Indonesian East Timorese attacked the East Timorese defence force (Fretilin) in Balibo. All five journalists were killed.
Controversy continues over how they died. The original Indonesian explanation is that they were killed in crossfire between rival East Timorese groups (the Indonesians could not admit that they were inside East Timor). An East Timorese explanation was that they were killed by Indonesians during the fight. Other East Timorese argued that they were executed after the Fretilin survivors had fled and the fighting had ceased: they knew too much.
A sixth journalist, Roger East, an Australian freelancer, went to Dili, East Timor's capital, in November, to cover the invasion and find out what happened to the five journalists. He was the last journalist left in East Timor when Indonesia invaded in force on December 7. On December 8 he was captured by Indonesian forces and shot dead.
The Australian Government has always known more about Balibo than it has admitted. There was the problem that Australia was implicated in the Indonesian invasion. In September, 1974, Gough Whitlam, it seems, had advised President Suharto that Australia would not oppose an Indonesian takeover of East Timor. In mid- October, an Indonesian official secretly briefed Australian diplomats in Jakarta on the impending attack.
Some Australians knew of the Balibo deaths immediately but were not allowed to talk. The Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) was monitoring Indonesian military activities. At 6.45am (East Timor time) on October 16 it heard the military report on the dead white men.
Nearly a month after the killings, Indonesia gave the Australian Embassy in Jakarta a box containing charred human bone fragments, some camera gear, notebooks and papers belonging to the journalists.
Finally, there is the role of human error. The television companies had not advised the Australian Government of the travel plans for their journalists (who were not in radio contact). The Australian Embassy in Jakarta did not know the journalists were at Balibo.
Meanwhile, the Indonesians and Australian diplomats hoped that the military campaign would be over quickly and so the fate of East Timor and the journalists would soon be forgotten.
But the Balibo story refused to go away. The overall East Timor story did not go away. The Indonesian and Australian governments expected a quick Indonesian victory. Instead, the people of East Timor fought back -- at a considerable cost to themselves. Their tenacity was rewarded in 2002, when an independent East Timor became the 191st member of the United Nations.
Melbourne Age - October 31, 2003
Jill Jolliffe -- Today's pilgrimage to Balibo by the families of the five television reporters killed in an Indonesian attack on the East Timorese border town 28 years ago is a turning point in their unfinished mourning and in their quest for the truth about the killings.
They were refused visas to attend the funeral of their loved ones in Jakarta in November 1975, and have never been certain that the remains buried in the presence of a handful of diplomats are really those of the dead journalists.
Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie were killed on October 16, 1975, as they filmed evidence that Indonesia was invading East Timor, then a Portuguese colony.
The 15 relatives have travelled from Australia and the United Kingdom for the opening of a memorial community centre for the people of Balibo. The centre is sponsored by the Victorian Government. It is located in the house where the Balibo Five, as they are known, slept in the days before their deaths, but is not the house in which they died. Dubbed the Balibo Flag House, it was here that they painted an Australian flag on an outside wall to signal their neutrality in the event of an attack.
East Timor's independence last year, after a 24-year struggle against Indonesian occupation, has made the memorial possible, as has Premier Steve Bracks's determination to correct the historical injustices suffered by the families, three of whom live in Melbourne.
Peters' sister Maureen Tolfree has travelled from Bristol, in Britain, to attend the ceremony. She was pleased to hear that Timorese President Xanana Gusmao and Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta would participate.
"I always thought that when the Timorese were free they would honour the journalists," she said. "Regarding closure, how do you define it? We still don't know where their bodies are. Until there's a full judicial inquiry and a calling of the witnesses, there's no closure."
Like the families of the Bali bomb victims, the relatives want to end their mourning, but there is a stark contrast between the two groups. The families of the Bali victims were treated with respect and sympathy by the Australian Government, which helped them cope with their grief and insisted on the rigorous Indonesian police investigation that led to the bombers' arrests and convictions.
Attitudes to the Balibo deaths have changed recently, but the families -- who are British, New Zealander and Australian -- recall their shabby treatment for many years by their respective governments. All three countries accepted the annexation of East Timor by the Soeharto regime, and the families' questions were inconvenient. They grieved unnoticed, and for years Shirley Shackleton (wife of Channel Seven reporter Greg), veteran campaigner for an inquiry, seemed a voice in the wilderness. Five of the men's parents have died since 1975.
"I don't begrudge the Bali families," said Paul Stewart, the brother of Channel Seven sound operator Tony, "but it's ironic that our memorial is occurring after the whole nation focused on the Bali bombing anniversary. We're another group that lost people on foreign soil, but this is only happening 28 years later."
Four inquiries commissioned by Australia since 1975 have merely reinforced the relatives' belief in a continued cover-up.
Frustration increased with the apparent shelving of a United Nations inquiry begun in 2000. Technically, it is still underway, as East Timorese Chief Prosecutor Longuinhos Monteiro confirmed to The Age, and the families want to know why it has been inactive since late 2001.
It represented the first possible neutral inquiry into the Balibo killings. After interviewing witnesses for several months, a police team, led by an Australian, submitted a legal brief asking the UN's prosecutor to indict three men for murder: General Yunus Yosfiah, who was commander of the special forces unit that attacked Balibo, intelligence agent Cristoforus da Silva and East Timorese militiaman Domingos Bere. Yunus was information minister in the 1998-99 Habibie government and, now retired, lives in Java.
The UN and East Timorese prosecutors have offered various reasons for the lack of action. They spoke this week of the changed mandate of the UN mission in East Timor since independence -- it previously administered the territory but now assists the independent government. Reference was also made to the reduced budget of the UN-funded Serious Crimes Unit and its decision to concentrate on war crimes committed in 1999 as priority cases.
The prosecutors agreed that a lack of co-operation by the Indonesians was a key factor in the investigation's unofficial shelving. In late 2001, Jakarta told the UN prosecutor, Mohamad Othman, that it would not provide access to nine people sought for interview, including General Yunus.
But the prosecutors agreed that Indonesian hostility to prosecutions did not have to get in the way of progress in an investigation, as demonstrated by the case of Dutch journalist Sander Thoenes, who was murdered in Dili in 1999. His alleged killer, Lieutenant Camilo dos Santos, was indicted earlier this year, despite a hostile environment, and is now on Interpol's wanted list.
Associated Press - October 29, 2003
A former militia leader, who was sentenced to 10 years for his role in the 1999 East Timor violence, unfurled a giant Indonesian flag yesterday and called on the country to "rekindle" its nationalist spirit.
Eurico Guterres unveiled the 1000m by 6m red-and-white flag in Kupang, an Indonesian town close to the border with East Timor. "Hopefully, this giant flag can rekindle the spirit of nationalism that united Indonesia on October 28, 1928," said Guterres, referring to the date of a historic independence pledge by Indonesian youth, remembered as a key step in the country's path to freedom from Dutch colonial rule.
Guterres was the leader of a feared militia in East Timor's capital Dili that went on the rampage when the territory's voters opted overwhelmingly for independence in a UN referendum in 1999. Last year, an Indonesian court sentenced him to 10 years in jail for his role in the campaign of killing, burning and looting that left 1,000 people dead. Guterres, who is an Indonesian citizen, remains free on appeal.
After his speech, about 2,000 high school students paraded with the flag down the main street of Kupang, about 1,000 kms southeast of Jakarta. Officials from Indonesia's record museum pronounced the flag the largest ever created in the country.
| Book/film reviews |
Sydney Morning Herald Book Review - November 1, 2003
["A Woman of Independence". By Kirsty Sword Gusmao. Macmillan, 321pp, $30.]
Peter Pierce -- Kirsty Sword Gusmao's "A Woman of Independence" begins in what may be the middle of a long journey. It is May 19, 2002, birthday of the "newest nation", the independent state of East Timor. Gusmao bustles us into the confusion and celebrations of that day as she prepares for the ceremony at which her husband, Xanana Gusmao, will be sworn in (somewhat against his inclinations) as the first president of East Timor.
The excitement, relief and a sense of great achievement pardons such a sentence as this: "'A luta continua [the struggle goes on],' I whispered into his beard as finally he reached my side and the sky erupted in colourful bursts of fireworks."
Her path to Gusmao's side had been arduous and must, at times, have seemed a forlorn enterprise. Sword takes us back to 1990, when she made her first trip to East Timor. Her mission was to deliver materials to supporters of independence, to dodge through thickets of spies and informers. At the same time, one supposes, she was beginning to take the measure, in person, of what had until then been a cause, however passionately espoused, rather than a place. She came to Dili in part because Joao, her Timorese boyfriend, with whom she studied Indonesian at Melbourne University, had "brought East Timor's sad story to life for me".
In 1991, Sword moved to England with Joao to work on the Refugee Studies Program at Oxford University. A life course had been set. We are not given much of the process of Sword's engagement with the movement for independence, although we gather something of the cost to her in the loss of an "ordinary" life, the denial of comforts and security. Moreover, she had committed herself to what might have been a lost cause. If there were doubts, they are not confided. Momentum is all. Before the year was out, Sword secured a job with an English television documentary team that would make a film of the struggle in East Timor.
That experience made Sword determined to move closer to the action. In May 1992, she went to Jakarta, where she supported herself by teaching English. That November, she learned of the arrest, in Dili, of Gusmao, leader of Falintil, "the national liberation army" of East Timor.
Within 18 months, they began to correspond -- "to 'speak' to one another in our letters with the intimacy and trust of lifelong friends". Soon she became his English teacher and confidante.
Now the genre of the prison letter is a sexed one. Sometimes the correspondence is between desperado and dupe. Sometimes romance by proxy is the consequence, as here. Sword confesses that she feared others would "see our relationship as mere infatuation on my part and hopeless romanticism on Xanana's".
At the same time, she believes that by falling in love, "I had put my life on a parallel course with his and indeed that of East Timor".
Hence the subtitle of her book: "A Personal Story of Love and the Birth of a New Nation." Yet analysis is not absent. After one frustrating conversation, she is annoyed by Gusmao's "arrogant selflessness". Sword stayed the course -- surviving black- listing, meeting Nelson Mandela -- to be on hand when Gusmao was eventually released from prison.
Their private life is kept that way. To some degree, this is because it was subsumed by the bloodiest stages of the fight for independence, the depredations of the Indonesian-backed militias. Independence won, and tasks of different sorts imposed themselves.
At this point in the narrative, for the first time Sword's prose loses some of its edginess, its searching self-criticism: "The needs of the people are overwhelming and Xanana and I grapple with them at a personal level each day, as well as in our official capacity as public figures." But this is a rare (and excusable) hollow note in a forthright, intelligent, unsentimental book. It also suggests how, as one battle for independence was won for a nation, the two principals of this story sacrificed much of their own.
[Peter Pierce is professor of Australian literature at James Cook University, Queensland.]