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East Timor News Digest 2 – February 1-28, 2007
The Australian - February 28, 2007
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Mark Dodd – Renegade East Timor military
leader Alfredo Reinado has threatened to defend himself "to the
death" from a heavily armed post in the central town of Same,
where he was yesterday surrounded by Australian SAS troops.
"I have committed no crimes against Australia or against the
international community, I never threatened any international
life – the real criminals are the leaders of our Government,"
said Major Reinado, who still holds his commission in the
country's armed forces but also faces murder charges over the
violence that swept East Timor last year.
He is accused of leading an attack on loyalist soldiers on May 23
that left five killed and 10 injured.
The Australian-trained former head of the military police this
week fled his hideout in the eastern mountain region of Ermera
for another location in the nearby district of Same, from where
he spoke to The Australian by phone yesterday.
He denied claims he had stolen 25 assault rifles from East
Timorese border guards, saying the firearms had been "loaned" to
him by police colleagues at the weekend so he could protect
himself after reports there were contracts out on his life.
An ADF spokesman said Australian troops were "working closely
with the Government of East Timor after a request by the
President to bring Reinado in". And a senior Dili-based
diplomatic source told The Australian the "specialists are here",
referring to the SAS.
But Major Reinado, who led a 57-man escape from Dili's Becora
jail in August, denied he had fled to Same after learning there
were moves to bring him in before the April 9 presidential poll.
"Running away is not my style. I came here for a holiday, to
relax and many of the police of East Timor have joined me because
it's a fun gang," he said.
He denied he had threatened to kill Australian troops if they
tried to arrest him but issued a veiled warning that he intended
to defend himself against any attack. "I will only surrender to
my own people, to my own justice system," he said. "I will not
give up my weapons. I can die tomorrow, any time, but does that
solve any problems?"
The involvement of the SAS follows a nationally televised address
this week by President Xanana Gusmao in which he denounced Major
Reinado. Following a meeting with UN chief Atul Khare and the
Australian military commander in Dili, Brigadier Mal Reardon, Mr
Gusmao then authorised military action be taken.
Reuters - February 22, 2007
Michelle Nichols, United Nations – The UN Security Council
voted on Thursday to keep peacekeepers in East Timor for another
12 months as the Asia-Pacific's newest nation struggles to
overcome an east-west divide and gang violence.
The 15-member council unanimously agreed to extend the UN
mission of more than 1,000 police until Feb. 26, 2008 after it
was recommended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and pleaded
for by East Timor's Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta.
The council also authorized an additional 140 police to be sent
to the tiny impoverished nation ahead of a presidential poll on
April 9 and parliamentary elections due to be held by June.
Portugal said last week it would supply extra police.
The council expressed "its concern over the still fragile and
volatile security, political, social and humanitarian situation
in Timor-Leste" and said the forthcoming elections would be a
significant step in strengthening democracy.
The resource-rich nation voted in a bloody 1999 referendum for
independence from Indonesia, which annexed its neighbor after
Portugal ended colonial rule in 1975. After a period of UN
administration East Timor became independent in 2002.
But an east-west divide in the impoverished nation of 1 million
people erupted into chaos and gang violence in May when 600
mutinous soldiers were sacked. High youth unemployment also
plagues the country, where more than 100,000 people are
displaced.
Australia, which headed a UN-backed intervention force to East
Timor in 1999, led a 3,200-strong peacekeeping force back to Dili
to combat last year's violence. Canberra still has 800 troops in
East Timor, along with 120 New Zealand soldiers.
Australia agreed in January to provide troops to protect the
current UN mission – approved by the council on Aug. 25 for
six months – and rapid response capacity for UN police.
In an address to the council last week, Ramos-Horta begged
members to "stay the course" with East Timor after describing
building a state from almost zero as a "Herculean task."
UN peacekeepers were first deployed to East Timor in 1999 and
officially left the country in May 2005, leaving UN advisers to
support the development of critical state institutions.
Balibo inquest
Truth & Friendship Commission
Political/social unrest
Timor gap
Politics/political parties
Opinion & analysis
Daily media monitoring
News & issues
Reinado vows not to give in to SAS
UN council extends East Timor mission for 12 months
Hundreds protest at cancelled probe into former PM
Agence France Presse - February 8, 2007
Dili – Hundreds of people protested Thursday over the decision to clear former prime minister Mari Alkatiri of allegations that he formed a hit squad to kill his opponents during unrest last year.
Alkatiri, who stepped down amid mounting unrest and public pressure in June, was questioned by prosecutors in November over allegations that he was involved in arming civilians during bloody unrest in May.
Prosecutors on Monday decided to drop the investigation after East Timor and international prosecutors said they found no evidence to support the allegations.
About 500 people demonstrated in front of the presidential office on Thursday, demanding President Xanana Gusmao order the deportation of the two foreign prosecutors within 24 hours, and that East Timorese prosecutors re-open the case.
Demonstrators calling themselves Movemento Unidade Nacional ba Justica (United National Movement for Justice) carried banners saying: "Puppet parliament" and "Justice should be implemented transparently."
A representative of the protesters met with Gusmao for about three hours.
"We want to remind the president to feel how the people feel," Nino Pereirra told reporters afterwards. "The president appreciates and respects our demands and said that there should be changes in this country, but it should be done democratically," he said.
Alkatiri had vehemently denied allegations that he armed hit squads to silence his political opponents.
The tiny nation of one million was rocked by unrest in April and May that followed the dismissal of soldiers who had deserted, complaining of discrimination from superiors based on whether they came from the east or west of the tiny country.
Some 37 people were left dead in pitched battles between security forces during bloody street violence. More than 150,000 people fled their homes and more than 3,000 Australian-led peacekeepers were deployed to restore calm.
The Australian - February 6, 2007
Mark Dodd – Prosecutors have dropped an investigation into allegations that former East Timorese prime minister Mari Alkatiri ordered a hit squad to kill political rivals, clearing the way for the Fretilin leader to contest April's presidential elections.
Dr Alkatiri, forced to resign last year over the allegations after a power struggle with President Xanana Gusmao, said yesterday he had been told by the prosecutor's office the investigation was closed and no further action would be taken for want of evidence.
"The false allegations, aired with extreme political bias and utmost ill-will, have been found to be baseless when subjected to judicial scrutiny," Dr Alkatiri said in Dili.
Dr Alkatiri, who has long denied any wrongdoing, said the allegations were a "politically motivated smear campaign instigated against my good name and character in East Timor, Australia and elsewhere".
Timor's deputy prosecutor, Ivo Valente, said he did not know of the alleged development, but noted that Dr Alkatiri's case was being handled by the prosecutor-general, who was travelling in Australia.
Dr Alkatiri was alleged by a former cabinet minister to have played a role in the unrest, which killed at least 37 people and saw the deployment of Australian-led international peacekeepers in the tiny nation that won independence from Indonesia in 1999.
As the head of Fretilin, East Timor's largest political party, Dr Alkatiri will be able to contest the presidential election called for April 9. That would appear to rule out a presidential run by Nobel peace prize laureate Jose Ramos Horta, who replaced Dr Alkatiri as prime minister last June 26.
The East Timorese Prime Minister said last Wednesday that he would run for the presidency only if there were no other candidates. Mr Gusmao, who called the elections on Saturday, was elected president in April 2002 and has repeatedly said he will not run again.
But with the field cleared for Dr Alkatiri to take the presidency, an intriguing political possibility looms with rumours that Mr Gusmao will make a run for parliament as member of the opposition Democratic Party.
The former leader of Fretilin's military wing during the Indonesian occupation is East Timor's greatest national hero. His massive personal popularity could be enough to propel his new party to victory in parliamentary polls to be called after the presidential election.
This could see a prime minister Gusmao facing off against a president Alkatiri, reversing the roles of last year, when Australia led a force of 3200 foreign peacekeepers to East Timor in late May after the country descended into chaos following the sacking of 600 mutinous soldiers.
Sporadic gang-related violence has continued in the Asia-Pacific region's youngest country, which has been plagued by poverty and high youth unemployment since independence in 2002.
The changing political environment in Dili came as Foreign Minister Alexander Downer moved to invoke a rarely used "national interest" exemption clause to fast-track ratification of the Timor Sea Treaty through the Australian parliament more than 12 months after the signing of the historic agreement.
The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties was given barely 24 hours' notice yesterday that they would meet Mr Downer tonight and hear why he wanted the committee to rubber-stamp the deal.
In Dili, ratification of the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) has been held up because of ongoing civil strife stemming from last year's political unrest.
Under CMATS, East Timor's revenue share of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas prospect straddling the boundary of the so-called Joint Petroleum Development Area could be as much as $19 billion because of a newly agreed 50-50 split with Australia.
Sydney Morning Herald - February 7, 2007
Lindsay Murdoch – East Timor's former prime minister Mari Alkatiri intends to sue the ABC for defamation over an award- winning Four Corners program that led to him being forced from office.
Mr Alkatiri said yesterday that even before prosecutors in Dili, told him on Monday that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing, he had instructed lawyers in Australia to prepare legal action against the ABC over the program "Stoking the Fires", which was broadcast in June last year.
The program, which focused on power struggles in Dili, won a Gold Walkley, Australia's top journalism award, for Liz Jackson, Lin Buckfield and Peter Cronau.
"The ABC damaged my image, my family and my party," Mr Alkatiri said by telephone from the East Timorese capital.
Jackson reported in part on claims by a former guerilla fighter, Vicente da Conceicao, that Mr Alkatiri had hired him and other men to kill and intimidate opponents. Mr Alkatiri denied the claims, saying they were part of a conspiracy to topple his government. But the President, Xanana Gusmao, said after watching the program that Mr Alkatiri could not remain prime minister.
East Timorese and international prosecutors who investigated Mr Conceicao's claims told the Office of the Prosecutor-General this month they had found no evidence implicating Mr Alkatiri.
Mr Alkatiri also said yesterday he was confident that Fretilin, the ruling party of which he is secretary-general, would win an absolute majority at national elections this year. He had not ruled out recontesting the prime ministership, but definitely would not stand in presidential elections due on April 9, he said.
Under East Timor's constitution, the national elections should be held on May 20, but Mr Alkatiri said the Government would have to be flexible because the country probably would not be ready for the vote until June.
The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has recommended that the UN mission in East Timor be extended by 12 months and that more police should be sent to the country before the elections.
The present UN mission, due to expire on February 25, has 1068 international police and up to 35 military liaison officers. It is backed by 800 Australian and 120 New Zealand troops.
"In order to strengthen security for the critical electoral process, I support the Government's request that an additional formed police unit be deployed," Mr Ban said in a report to the UN Security Council on Monday.
Sydney Morning Herald - February 5, 2007
Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin – East Timor's rebel leader, Major Alfredo Reinado, has agreed to surrender and face charges, including attempted murder, but a deal he negotiated secretly from his mountain base is almost certain to collapse.
The ruling Fretilin party has declared its opposition to the deal for Reinado, East Timor's most wanted man, to face the charges in Gleno, a small town in the country's coffee-growing western mountains where he has wide support.
The Fretilin leader Francisco Guterres, who is the president of the country's parliament, says the deal negotiated by Dili's Office of the Prosecutor-General is unconstitutional and reveals discrimination in the judicial system.
"All citizens must be treated equally and there should not be special courts for criminals," Mr Guterres said.
Reinado's lawyer in Dili, Paulo Dos Remedios, yesterday said the Prosecutor-General, Longuinhos Monteiro, had reached a "verbal" surrender agreement with Reinado, who is accused of ordering the first shots to be fired in bloody violence that erupted in Dili in April last year.
Mr Remedios said he understood Australian military officers played a key role in negotiating the deal with Reinado, who last week threatened to kill Australian soldiers if they tried to capture him and his heavily armed squad of soldiers. Australian soldiers have set up roadblocks around his base camp, four hours' drive from Dili.
Mr Remedios admitted that any agreement to hold a court sitting in Gleno would require approval of the Fretilin-dominated parliament because the town does not have court jurisdiction.
"There is no Gleno court under the laws of Timor Leste [East Timor]," Mr Remedios said.
Reinado become a hero-figure in East Timor's western mountains after he led a mass escape from Dili's main jail in August. His key demand is that he be tried as a military officer and not as a civilian.
"Alfredo ... has been fighting for weapons charges against him to be dismissed because he considers himself to be still a major in the army," Mr Remedios said.
"The Attorney-General has the power to dismiss those charges ... and he is willing to face the court on other charges, including attempted murder, as long as he is tried as a military officer." Mr Remedios said Reinado wanted to return to his position in the army and "be part of the solution to the crisis".
East Timor's President, Xanana Gusmao, has announced that presidential elections will be held on April 9. But he has said that national elections due to be held by May may now be delayed until later in the year.
Mr Gusmao, a former guerilla leader, has repeatedly said he will not stand for re-election and that he wants to spend his time growing pumpkins.
The Prime Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, said last week he would only run for the presidency if there were no other candidates.
Peacekeepers, including Australians, have been struggling to quell gang violence, killings and arson in Dili, where more than 10,000 people are still living in squalid refugee camps.
Melbourne Age - February 4, 2007
Tom Hyland – East Timor's Fretilin party, the dominant political force in one of the world's poorest nations, is pushing for lavish pensions and other benefits for former government ministers.
With East Timor racked by 10 months of violence that has displaced a tenth of the population and caused widespread food shortages, the move has triggered community anger and forced President Xanana Gusmao to use his veto powers.
It comes as Australian and other foreign peacekeepers struggle to quell continuing gang violence, killing and arson in the capital, Dili, and as the UN appeals for aid to help 100,000 people who have fled their homes.
Legislation granting every former minister a lifetime pension equal to his official salary, a government house, car, private staff, diplomatic passports, free international travel and other benefits was passed by the Fretilin-dominated parliament late last year.
President Gusmao has since vetoed the bill, sending it back to parliament. Under the constitution, he will have to approve the bill if it is passed a second time by two-thirds of the parliament, where Fretilin holds 55 of the 88 seats.
The bill, condemned by a coalition of non-government groups, was followed by separate legislation covering pensions for former MPs.
While less lavish than the bill covering ministers, the MPs' bill was still generous by local standards, where one-fifth of the population lives on much less than $US1 a day. That bill, which also faced popular opposition, was modified after Mr Gusmao suggested amendments.
Opposition MP Joao Goncalves said both bills were "unrealistic and inappropriate" given conditions in the country.
"Our people are still facing extreme difficulties, poverty, and members of parliament and government office holders were getting these benefits while the majority of our people are in precarious conditions," he told The Sunday Age.
He said Fretilin had proposed the former ministers bill to "look after their comrades", such as former prime minister Mari Alkatiri and other ministers who were forced to step down last year. One section of the bill, giving former ministers a personal security officer, has caused particular indignation among non- government organisations, given the lack of security in Dili despite the presence of more than 1000 foreign police and more than 1000 foreign troops, most of them Australian.
Continuing gang violence in Dili prompted the Federal Government to update its travel warning for East Timor last week, advising Australians to reconsider travelling there as violence could worsen and Australians could be specifically targeted.
East Timor's Government has asked the UN to send additional police amid fears that security could deteriorate ahead of presidential elections expected to be held in May and parliamentary elections due in July or August.
Despite Government moves to empty internal refugee camps by the end of last year, and threats to end official food relief, continuing violence in the capital forced up to 2000 people to flee their homes in recent weeks.
Last month the UN launched an appeal for $US16.6 million ($A21.4 million) to help the 100,000 people living in official camps, in church compounds or with relatives, to return to their homes.
At the height of the political crisis that erupted in May, 150,000 people were displaced.
The majority, who account for 10 per cent of the country's population, are still too afraid to leave, despite Government pressure. The United Nations and relief agencies report a rising incidence of food shortages and high levels of malnutrition in the country, ranked 142nd out of 177 countries in the UN's index that measures poverty.
In recent weeks, government and private relief agencies have given food aid to tens of thousands of displaced people. Even without the current political and security turmoil, more than 40 per cent of East Timor's people routinely face food shortages.
Jakarta Post - February 1, 2007
Ati Nurbaiti, Jakarta – Timor Leste women activists called for more solidarity and cooperation from Indonesian women to help build their new nation.
At the launch of Independent Women, The story of women's activism in East Timor on Wednesday, activist Florentina Martins Smith said the book would hopefully increase "knowledge and solidarity" toward Timor Leste women, particularly among Indonesian women.
With all the challenges faced by the fledgling nation, "we need lot of cooperation," said Martins, who is from the Timor Leste Women's Organization (OPMT).
The activists said solidarity is also needed to help the reconciliation process between Timor Leste and Indonesia. Both governments set up the Commission for Truth and Friendship (KKP) to examine atrocities before and after the 1999 referendum that resulted in Timor Leste's separation from Indonesia.
In response to concerns that the Commission will stress forgiveness rather than justice, another activist, Bella Galhos, said "most East Timorese hope justice will remain a priority." For this, she said, "we need solidarity from Indonesians."
Catherine Scott, co-author of the book, said given Timor Leste women's widespread experience of physical abuse, "there would be many problems" if human rights violators were not held accountable. "If you cannot see the perpetrator who raped you brought to justice, then how much harder is it to recover from?" Scott said.
Scott and the book's other author, Irena Cristalis, said their book aimed to document the experiences of Timor Leste women as their country went through the rapid changes of the late 1990s.
They invited several women writers – including from Cambodia and Mozambique – to enrich the book with stories of women's activism in their countries, so that Timor Leste women activists could learn more from their experiences.
The discussion was held by an Indonesian women's organization, Kalyanamitra.
| Balibo inquest |
Sydney Morning Herald - February 27, 2007
Adam Bennett, Sydney – A Sydney coroner has invited a former Indonesian general and government minister to give evidence about the deaths of the Balibo Five, as he was again linked to their killings.
The inquest at Glebe Coroner's Court in Sydney is hearing evidence into the death of Brian Peters, one of five Australia- based newsmen killed in Balibo, East Timor, during the Indonesian invasion of 1975.
In what she acknowledged was an "unusual" step, Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch today read an open letter to the court in which she asked Yunus Yosfiah to appear before her.
Mr Yosfiah, a retired lieutenant-general who was a minister in the Habibie government in the late nineties, has been named on numerous occasions during the inquest as the commanding officer of the 1975 Balibo invasion, and the man who ordered the journalists' deaths.
Official government reports have said the five journalists were killed in crossfire between Indonesian forces and Fretilin troops on October 16, 1975.
But several East Timorese eyewitnesses have told the inquest the men were executed and their bodies burnt.
"In the course of the inquest I have heard evidence that you are one of the commanders of the Indonesian forces that attacked Balibo on 16 October, 1975," Ms Pinch wrote in the letter.
"Furthermore, you were one of the first to enter the township and were there when the journalists died. It seems, therefore, that you may be able to provide important evidence about how Mr Peters and his colleagues died and what happened to their bodies subsequently."
Ms Pinch said she had previously sent an invitation to Mr Yosfiah via Indonesia's Ambassador to Australia, Teuku Mohammad Hamzah Thayeb, but had received no response.
Mr Yosfiah today was named again in relation to the Balibo Five, in evidence given by a retired Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) official, Adrian Bishop.
Most of Mr Bishop's evidence was given in closed court, after Ms Pinch yesterday agreed some evidence may prejudice Australia's national security and defence interests.
Mr Bishop had been called before the inquest to give evidence about a string of Indonesian military signal intercepts he saw in December 1975 while working at DSD headquarters in Melbourne.
In summarising some of the secret evidence considered appropriate for open court, counsel assisting the inquiry Mark Tedeschi QC, said Mr Bishop had named Mr Yosfiah in connection with the journalists' death.
"On the intercepts he (Mr Bishop) had seen he reached the conclusion that the journalists had been killed by soldiers under the command of Yunus Yosfiah," Mr Tedeschi said.
In evidence given in open court, Mr Bishop said he had seen a number of low level Indonesian military signal intercepts referring to the deaths of the Balibo Five.
One, dated either October 17 or 18, said "five white people had been killed" in Balibo, Mr Bishop said. Another, dated October 18, said: "We believe the five white people were journalists".
In a final intercept, dated sometime after October 20, the disposal of the journalists' bodies was discussed. "It said that the bodies of the journalists had been reduced to ashes," Mr Bishop said.
Asked by Mr Tedeschi if he saw any intercepts indicating the five men could have been killed in crossfire, Mr Bishop said: "No".
Mr Bishop is the latest commonwealth official to give evidence of seeing intercepts which referred to the killing of the five journalists. The inquest continues.
Australian Associated Press - February 26, 2007
Adam Bennett, Sydney – A NSW coroner hearing an inquest into the death of one of five Australian journalists in East Timor more than 30 years ago has agreed to hear some evidence in secret.
Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch today heard a federal government application that future evidence from commonwealth officials, and subpoenaed documents from the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), be heard in camera at the inquest into the death of cameraman Brian Peters.
Mr Peters and four other newsmen, now known as the Balibo Five, were killed near the town of Balibo during Indonesia's 1975 occupation of East Timor.
Making the application on behalf of the commonwealth, Alan Robertson SC said the DSD documents and parts of the evidence to be given by future witnesses – including former intelligence officers – would be sensitive to Australia's national security.
Mr Robertson referred to two statutory declarations from acting director of the DSD, Edward Clive Lines, in which the intelligence chief said disclosure of the evidence in an open court would "seriously prejudice Australia's national security and defence interests".
"The submission is that some of the evidence will be able to be given in an open court," Mr Robertson said. "Not that the information be withheld entirely."
The application was supported by counsel assisting the coroner, Mark Tedeschi QC, but opposed by counsel for the Peters family, John Stratton.
"These events occurred 30 years ago and... there has been a 30- year history of deceit and cover-up in relation to the true story of how the Balibo Five were killed," Mr Stratton said.
"Thirty years after the events, this material can only be of historical interest. "Any disclosure of material would not hurt the national interest."
Ms Pinch said she was "mindful" of Mr Stratton's concerns, but ruled in the commonwealth's favour. "I am satisfied that the prejudice to Australia's national security and defence interests is real and current," Ms Pinch said. The inquest continues.
The Australian - February 24, 2007
A government intelligence chief destroyed documents revealing the deaths of Australian-based journalists in East Timor in 1975 to stop news of the killings spreading.
The claims, made at the inquest into the death of one of the so- called Balibo Five, came amid allegations that former prime minister Gough Whitlam and two senior ministers knew about the group's fate within days.
The inquest was told how top-secret details about the five deaths began flowing into the Office of Current Intelligence on October 17, 1975 – the day after they died in Balibo.
The Whitlam government delayed confirming the deaths until reports emerged in Jakarta's press on October 20, ostensibly because it wanted to protect the secret sources and operations of the Defence Signals Directorate.
Former OCI senior intelligence analyst Gary Klintworth told the inquest in Sydney yesterday that he saw details about the deaths on October 17 in a signals intercept picked up overnight by DSD from the Indonesian military in East Timor.
It said: "Among the dead are four white men. What are we going to do with the bodies?"
Dr Klintworth said he immediately assumed the intercept was referring to the journalists because he knew they were in Balibo and the Indonesian military was poised to attack. He quickly wrote a briefing note on the deaths for an internal OCI highlights memo that day.
"Australian journalists have been killed at Balibo," the memo said. "There was a report that four white men were killed and instructions were sought as to what to do with the bodies."
But he told Glebe Coroners Court yesterday when he handed the memo to OCI deputy chief John Bennetts that day he was ordered to destroy it, along with a batch of up to 25 copies. Dr Klintworth described the move as unprecedented.
"I think he (Mr Bennetts) indicated that wasn't the kind of information that should be distributed around Canberra," he said. "He didn't want this information to get out."
Dr Klintworth said OCI did not want news spreading about how the Australian government was eavesdropping on the Indonesian military. He said good relations between the two countries was of "paramount" importance.
Official government reports since 1975 have said Brian Peters, Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie and Tony Stewart were killed in crossfire between Indonesian forces and Fretilin troops in Balibo.
However, the inquest has heard claims the Whitlam and Fraser governments lied about the deaths and knew the men were killed on orders from Indonesian forces.
Earlier, OCI's former chief Rowen Osborn said he always assumed Mr Whitlam, his defence and foreign ministers and their department heads were told within days about the DSD intercept regarding the journalists' deaths.
Mr Osborn said he and Mr Bennetts prepared three special reports on the deaths and sent them to a highly restricted group, including Mr Whitlam, his foreign and defence ministers and their department heads. The inquest continues.
Australian Associated Press - February 23, 2007
Paul Mulvey, Sydney – Three decades on, Shirley Shackleton still wakes in fright, sitting bolt upright in bed as she relives the moment she sensed her husband had been killed. It's a recurring, but now rare, nightmare.
Although it may linger a while yet, Ms Shackleton has finally found some comfort in the first open and independent inquest into the events that led to the death of Channel Seven journalist Greg Shackleton and four other Australian-based newsmen in East Timor in 1975.
Successive Australian governments have maintained the men, who became known as the Balibo Five, were accidentally killed in crossfire on October 16, 1975.
Ms Shackleton and other campaigners have long sought to prove they were murdered by the Indonesian military during its invasion of East Timor and the Australian government had covered it up.
Their claims have been supported by several East Timorese eye- witnesses who have told an inquest into one of the men, Channel Nine cameraman Brian Peters that Indonesian soldiers shot or stabbed the men and then burnt their bodies.
Then, on Thursday this week, the Balibo Five families enjoyed a breakthrough for which they had waited nearly 32 years.
The inquest was told the Australian government had lied. It was told successive governments, starting with that of then-prime minister Gough Whitlam, had covered up details of the deaths for the sake of protecting Australia's intelligence service and relationship with Indonesia.
Ms Shackleton said it was the best breakthrough they had had since 1975. "Yes, I've been waiting 32 years for this. This vindicates the fact people here have never given up," she said. "It's wonderful, that's why this inquest is already a success."
Ms Shackleton audibly gasped when former high ranking government officer Ian Cunliffe said a communication between Indonesian forces, which was intercepted by Australian intelligence, indicated the men were shot on orders.
She caught her breath again when Mr Cunliffe told the court that, having been shown the wire in 1977, he "had been made privy to something which suggested the Australian government had basically been lying".
The brother, sister and son of Channel Seven cameraman Gary Cunningham also sat up in their seats at Glebe Coroner's Court when they heard Mr Cunliffe's evidence.
It was what they and hundreds of other activists had been saying through decades of rejection and dismissal of their claims.
Ms Shackleton said she had received just one phone call from the Australian government, and that was to tell her it would cost $48,000 to bring the remains of her husband and his colleagues home.
She and the other families had to endure the indignity of staying in Australia while their loved ones were buried in what she calls a "bogus funeral" in Jakarta.
She questions why, for a start, the remains were taken from the border town of Balibo in East Timor to Jakarta. She also wants to know who gave them to the Indonesians.
And she will forever hold a grudge against Australia's ambassador to Jakarta at the time, Richard Woolcott, who she says orchestrated the funeral in which the remains of all five men were put in one small child's coffin.
"I don't think there's anything in that grave. It was all show," she said. "It was a token and as such deserves to be seen for what it was – an absolutely cynical exercise. "I was suspicious from the start. Why wouldn't the government want us to go to the funeral?"
The families were dealt another blow when two reports by a former Australian government solicitor Tom Sherman, in 1996 and 1999, concluded that Mr Shackleton, Mr Peters, Mr Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie and Tony Stewart were killed in crossfire.
Mr Cunliffe agreed this week with the families' long-held view that the Sherman reports were a "whitewash".
Despite the repeated setbacks, Ms Shackleton and the others remained determined to uncover the truth. She even confronted Indonesian invasion commander General Benny Murdani when they crossed paths in Dili many years later, demanding to know "what happened to my husband?"
She's afraid of what she might do if she met Mr Whitlam, though. "I'd knacker him," she said.
The first glimpse of good news came late last year, when NSW coroner John Abernethy found a loophole through which he could initiate the inquest, the very existence of which Ms Shackleton believes is a victory in itself.
"It's a triumph for the judiciary, for the families, for all the wonderful activists who have worked all those years," she said.
"And for human rights in Australia. Because, do you want to live in a country where successive governments for 32 years have lied to protect the murderers of Australian citizens, young men who weren't even 30?
"You don't want to have that going on. They got away with murder. It already makes me feel good, this inquest, because it means the chickens have come home to roost. It seems to me that proper respect is being given to these journalists now and they deserve it.
"I knew it would be brushed under the carpet because the lies started on day one. But I always knew it would come to pass, I would live to see something being done. I don't know how good it will be, but I always knew I would be seeing something decisive and this is decisive."
As for Mr Woolcott and the government figures labelled by Balibo Five supporters as the Jakarta Lobby – which includes Mr Whitlam – Ms Shackleton says history has finally caught up with them.
"History will judge them harshly," she said "They'll be seen for what they are – liars.
"If they said nothing on Timor, it would have been better than what they did do. If they had said absolutely nothing on the journalists, it would have been better than what they did do.
"Prime ministers, highly placed officials in foreign affairs, diplomats, they're all tarred with this same horrible disgrace.
"Murder is murder and if you tell lies about murder, it'll come back and bite you on the bum and that's what's happening with this inquest. Woolcott and all of that lot, they got it wrong. They're going to be seen for the fools they are."
But there was hope, Ms Shackleton says, as the brave East Timorese witnesses who were forced to fight their countrymen in 1975 showed by giving stirring evidence against the Indonesians.
"If you show you've got a conscience, you can be redeemed, Mr Whitlam," she said.
Agence France Presse - February 22, 2007
Paul Mulvey, Sydney – The Whitlam and Fraser governments have been accused of lying over the deaths of five Australian-based journalists in East Timor in 1975.
Two former top level government officers told the inquest into the death of one of the journalists today that they saw an intercepted intelligence report in 1977 which indicated the men were killed in Balibo on orders from Indonesian forces.
One of the officers, Ian Cunliffe, told Glebe Coroner's Court the Australian government would have known about the report and had lied and covered it up by maintaining the men were killed in crossfire.
"I had been made privy to something which suggested the Australian government had basically been lying," Mr Cunliffe told the inquest.
His comments brought gasps from some of the Balibo Five's family members who were in court after waiting 32 years for vindication of their claims the government covered up the incident to protect its intelligence service and relationship with Indonesia.
"This is the best outcome so far," said Shirley Shackleton, widow of Channel Seven journalist Greg Shackleton. "I found it very hard not to jump up and cheer in court."
Mr Cunliffe, assistant to the secretary of the Hope Royal Commission into Intelligence and Security in the late 1970s, said he believed the intercepted document could have been seen by then-prime minister Gough Whitlam.
"I believe it would have been passed up the chain of command and drawn to the attention of ministers and, indeed, the prime minister," he said. Mr Whitlam was sacked in November 1975 and lost the subsequent election to Malcolm Fraser's Liberal coalition.
Mr Cunliffe and George Brownbill both told the inquest they believed the report came from Indonesian forces in Balibo to higher command, possibly in Jakarta, and was dated at the time the men were killed on October 16, 1975.
Mr Cunliffe and Mr Brownbill, the Hope Royal Commission secretary, told the inquest they were shown the intercepted wire by an unidentified officer at the Defence Signals Directorate at Shoal Bay in Darwin in early 1977.
Mr Brownbill told the inquest into the death of Channel Nine cameraman Brian Peters the document had three elements.
"The first was a report that as directed or in accordance with your instructions we have killed the five journalists," he said.
"The second was that it had happened at the back of a shed, or room, or behind a house.
"The third element was seeking instructions as to what was to be done with the bodies and personal effects."
Official government reports have said Mr Peters, Mr Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie and Tony Stewart were killed in crossfire between Indonesian forces and Fretilin troops in Balibo.
But several East Timorese eyewitnesses told the inquest last week the men were executed and their bodies burnt.
Mr Brownbill believed the intercept may have been suppressed or destroyed either inadvertently or deliberately.
When asked by his counsel Alan Swanwick whether he was surprised the government would suppress or destroy intelligence, Mr Brownbill said: "That's what governments do."
While he said he was distressed the government kept the families of the five men in the dark, he was bound by the Crimes Act not to make it public.
"I was distressed by their distress, knowing that what was known by the Australian government was not known by them," he said. "But it was not my place to blow any whistles."
If the document had been made public, Mr Cunliffe said it would have alerted Indonesia to Australia's intelligence gathering, compromising the highly secretive operation and the relationship between the two countries. Mr Cunliffe also said keeping the document secret had weighed on his mind for 20 years and it was "my duty as a human being" to speak about it.
Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch called for the unidentified officer at Shoal Bay to come forward and give evidence.
The Indonesian military today denied its army would have made an order to kill the journalists. "Clearly the TNI wouldn't have that kind of policy or order. It is impossible," spokesman Rear Admiral Mohamad Sunarto said in Jakarta.
Australian Associated Press - February 22, 2007
Paul Mulvey, Sydney – A mystery Australian intelligence officer from the 1970s could prove whether the federal government knew five Australian journalists were executed by Indonesian forces in East Timor in 1975. But, despite extensive inquiries and searches, nobody knows where he is.
The mystery man showed an 18-month-old intercepted wire to two top-level government officials at the Defence Signals Directorate at Shoal Bay near Darwin in 1977, but was not identified at the time and has not been heard of since.
The two commonwealth officials, George Brownbill and Ian Cunliffe, today told court the intercept indicated the federal government knew the men were killed on orders from Indonesian commanders.
Mr Cunliffe said it proved the government was lying by claiming the men had been killed in crossfire.
NSW deputy state coroner Dorelle Pinch and family members of the Balibo Five made a plea for the man to come forward and give evidence at the inquest into the death of Brian Peters, a Channel Nine cameraman who was among the five men killed in Balibo on October 16, 1975.
Ms Pinch also has asked for anyone else who worked at Shoal Bay in 1975 to come forward. The man was described by Mr Brownbill as a young man who was probably a non-commissioned officer.
"On behalf of the relatives, I want to make a call to this person because it's very important for the outcome of the inquest that he make himself known to the coroner as soon as possible," said family lawyer Rodney Lewis.
"That's in the interest of justice and the interest of the outcome for the relatives. He obviously knows the source of it (the report) and knows more about it."
Ms Pinch said earlier calls for the intelligence officer had received no response, possibly because of fears he could have been breaking the Crimes Act on security issues.
"This is not the case. Mechanisms are now in place so people can be security cleared to assist me in this inquest," she said.
Ms Pinch asked anyone with information to call Detective Sergeant Steve Thomas on 02 9384 6140 or Crime Stoppers on 02 9384 6110.
Bulletin Wire - February 21, 2007
Paul Mulvey – The widow of one of the Balibo Five has renewed calls for former prime minister Gough Whitlam to appear as a witness at the inquest into the death of one of the journalists killed in East Timor in 1975.
Shirley Shackelton has called on Mr Whitlam to have "the guts" to take the witness stand and reveal what he knew about intelligence reports relating to the Australia-based journalists' deaths during the Indonesian invasion of the town of Balibo.
Ms Shackelton, whose husband Greg was killed in the invasion, noted that Mr Whitlam had written in his 1997 book, Abiding Interests, that he had been advised he could not yet reveal what the government knew.
"I don't want Gough Whitlam hanged, I don't even want Yunus Yosfiah, who led the attack, to be hanged," she said.
A witness to the inquest into the death of one of the journalists, cameraman Brian Peters, identified Yosfiah, who later became Indonesia's information minister, as the officer who gave the orders to kill the five men.
"But I do want them on the witness stand," said Ms Shackelton. "That's why I'm challenging Gough Whitlam to come and just keep his word.
"He wrote in his book that this would all be revealed in the 30- year-rule, but he hasn't done it. That's two years ago, so I'm challenging him to get the guts to come to the court. Spill the beans Gough Whitlam, please. Maybe he is as innocent as he says he is. We deserve to know."
Following an application by Mr Peters' family, NSW Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch ruled last December that Mr Whitlam would not be subpoenaed. But Ms Pinch did not rule out calling Mr Whitlam to testify at the current inquest into Mr Peters' death about the "intentions of the Indonesian government".
Former Australian government officers are due to give evidence about the alleged intercept of intelligence reports from Indonesia in 1975 when the inquest in Mr Peters' death resumes at the Glebe Coroner's Court on Thursday.
Official reports maintain Mr Shackleton, Mr Peters, Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart and Malcolm Rennie were killed by crossfire during the Indonesian forces' attack on Balibo on October 16, 1975.
However, Ms Shackelton says she believes a cover-up was ordered from the highest levels. "The lies started on day one," she said.
Several East Timorese witnesses have told the inquest they saw the men executed by Indonesian forces, later saw the bodies being burned and that orders were issued to destroy any evidence.
Radio Australia - February 22, 2007
Emma Alberici Mark Colvin: The Coronial Inquest into the death of Brian Peters in Balibo, East Timor today heard startling evidence from a former senior federal government official.
George Brownbill was secretary of the Hope Royal Commission into Australia's Intelligence agencies between 1975 and 1977. He told the court that during that time he saw a radio message at the country's Defence Signals Directorate in Shoal Bay in the Northern Territory.
The message was intercepted on the day that five Australian-based journalists died in October 1975. He recalled that the signal was from an Indonesian soldier in Balibo to his commander in Jakarta.
The message read 'as directed', or 'in accordance with your instructions the five journalists have been located and shot'.
The evidence gives weight to the long held suspicions of many that the Balibo Five were specifically targeted and executed by the Indonesian military.
The Australian Government's always denied any knowledge of the Indonesian involvement in the men's' deaths. Richard Woolcott was Australia's ambassador in Jakarta at the time. He spoke to Emma Alberici.
Richard Woolcott: In my view the people who are principally responsible for their deaths are the managements of Channel Nine and Seven. They should never have been sent there into that sort of situation.
Emma Alberici: If it could have been proven that early, that the Indonesians were invading East Timor, that was a big story that needed to be uncovered. So they were absolutely in the right place at the right time to uncover that truth.
Richard Woolcott: Well I don't necessarily disagree with that but there are great risks involved and it's very sad that they paid the price they did.
Emma Alberici: You say you didn't know the journalists were in Balibo?
Richard Woolcott: Absolutely.
Emma Alberici: How much communication did you have with the Defence Signal Directorate in the days before October the 16th, 1975?
Richard Woolcott: Very very little, almost none.
Emma Alberici: Did you do all that could be done at the time to establish the truth about these deaths?
Richard Woolcott: Oh absolutely! Well nobody at the Embassy that I know of, had any idea that there were Australian journalists in that area at the time.
Emma ALBERICI: They were transmitting footage back to Australia.
Richard Woolcott: Yeah but...
Emma Alberici: They had transmitted vision of painting the house in Balibo with the Australian flag.
Richard Woolcott: Indeed but I...
Emma Alberici: It was very public that they were there.
Richard Woolcott: Yeah but in those days communications weren't like they are now. We had no knowledge of that.
Now on the 13th of October, we had gathered intelligence that Indonesian cross-border operations likely to happen and particularly in the Maliana and Balibo area. So on the 13th of October, I sent a cable, cable from Jakarta pointing this out.
Now the obvious implications of that would be if there were any Australians in the area, journalists or whatever, the Government should presumably take steps to have them warned or have the removed or ask the embassy to do something about it.
What I have never known is what action was taken on that cable in Canberra.
Emma Alberici: You never asked?
Richard Woolcott: Yes I did and I never got a particularly clear answer.
Emma Alberici: It mustn't sit very comfortably with you. To know that you had sent this advice...
Richard Woolcott: Of course not...
Emma Alberici:... and nothing was done.
Richard Woolcott:... well it sits comfortably with me that we sent it. I mean the information was there. The action that was taken in Canberra I don't know what it was.
Emma Alberici: If you had these suspicions about Indonesia's involvement in the deaths of these five men, it seems incongruous that you should then seek their assistance in establishing the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
Richard Woolcott: You have to... I was the Ambassador to Indonesia not to Portugal. We also sought the assistance of Portugal through our Ambassador in Lisbon.
Emma Alberici: So are you suggesting that mistakes if they were made, were made in Canberra?
Richard Woolcott: No I'm not suggesting that, because I don't really know what happened in Canberra. All I do know is we reported everything we knew fully, factually and accurately. We were a diplomatic post. Policy is made in Canberra.
Emma Alberici: Surely you would have wanted to have known that Canberra did all it could to ensure that if they did indeed receive your advice, and knew the journalists were in Balibo, that they would do something to protect them?
Richard Woolcott: Well yes. But I don't know whether they knew the journalists were in Balibo. Now you say they should have. But I don't know whether they did.
Emma Alberici: And you never sought to find out.
Richard Woolcott: Yes I did. I asked. And I got a rather frosty reply back.
Emma Alberici: You knew the Indonesians were directly involved in the fighting in East Timor at that early stage, you had received some advice. You knew that the Indonesian Government did not want the rest of the world to know that.
Didn't the thought ever cross your mind that the Indonesians therefore had a clear motive to want to see the journalists dead rather than allow footage damaging to their international reputation to leak out?
Richard Woolcott: Well as I said before we didn't know the journalists were there. The Indonesians had made an assessment that it was in their national security interest, when the civil war erupted in East Timor and the Portuguese abandoned the colony that they were then going to incorporate it.
They had hoped there'd be a three to five year transition period, an educational period, in the hope that when an act of self- determination took place, the people would opt to associate with Indonesia. That of course never happened because of the time frame and the way it developed.
Mark Colvin: Richard Woolcott the former Australian Ambassador to Indonesia in the 70s. He was speaking to Emma Alberici.
The Advertiser (Australia) - February 15, 2007
Hamish McDonald – Indonesian special forces knew five Australian newsmen were in Balibo before they attacked the East Timor village 31 years ago, and intended to kill them, a Sydney court heard yesterday.
In October 1975 Fernando Mariz was a young Timorese conscripted by the Indonesian forces at their headquarters at Batugade, just inside the then Portuguese colony, mostly controlled by the pro- independence Fretilin movement after a brief civil war. Two or three days before the October 16 attack he and other Timorese were listening to Radio Maubere, the public broadcast station taken over by Fretilin in the colony's capital, Dili.
The radio said five Australian journalists were at Balibo, on a hilltop overlooking the Indonesian foothold, to film Indonesian military activity and Indonesian warships firing from nearby waters.
Mr Mariz told the State Coroner's Court that he had told his Indonesian unit commander, known as "Major Leo" about them. "Don't worry, we know already that they are there," Major Leo had replied. "We have good medicine for them."
The Timorese said he had understood from this that the Indonesians intended the journalists to be killed. "We know the mentality of these people," he said, referring to the Indonesian forces he met in the fighting.
An inquest before Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch is investigating the deaths of the "Balibo Five" newsmen – the Australians Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart, the Britons Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, and the New Zealander Gary Cunningham – in particular that of Peters, the only NSW resident.
Yesterday another Timorese auxiliary, codenamed M. 4 to protect his identity, said he had travelled to Balibo from Batugade soon after the attack and had been told by other partisans how the journalists died. They had come out from a house with their hands up, and been taken to the Indonesian chief of the attacking forces. According to these accounts, the officer shouted at them: "You are communists!" before they were killed.
Sydney Morning Herald - February 14, 2007
Hamish McDonald – A former Timorese partisan told a state coroner yesterday he had seen Indonesian soldiers attack two white men trying to surrender after a battle at Balibo 31 years ago.
Augusto Pereira, then an auxiliary with the attacking Indonesian special forces, said the soldiers had "jumped" towards the white men as they stood in the doorway of a house with their hands raised in surrender.
"Two of them jumped on top of the journalists and started to punch them," Mr Pereira told the Glebe Coroners Court in the inquest into the death of the Channel Nine cameraman Brian Peters, who died in Balibo on October 16, 1975.
Peters, along with his colleague Malcolm Rennie and Channel Seven's Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart, was killed in a covert Indonesian attack on the border village, witnesses have told the court.
Mr Pereira said he had only a fleeting glimpse of the two men as his column of local conscripts walked by, with Indonesian soldiers ordering them to keep moving. It was daylight, and fighting had already ended.
About 15 minutes later he had gone with others to look into a house where they had been told there were other dead Europeans, and seen the bodies of three white men in a room.
"We went to look from the back," he said. "I saw three persons dead on the floor in a pool of blood... I didn't notice what they were wearing. I was a bit scared. I just walked away from it."
Another Timorese partisan with the attackers, known as Glebe 7 at the inquest, said he had been ordered three days after the attack to burn the charred remains of five bodies in the same Chinese shop-house.
A fire-damaged radio or tape-recorder and a camera were with the remains, which were put on firewood and ignited with kerosene, he said.
His group was told by an Indonesian special forces soldier known as Kris and an East Timorese partisan called Domingos Kiik Bere that the order to destroy the remains came from the attack commander, Captain Yunus Yosfiah.
"Once we burned the bodies they told us not to tell anything to anybody," Glebe 7 said. Asked if the consequences of talking were made clear, he said: "I could be killed."
The witness said he later served in the Indonesian Army's 744 Battalion raised in East Timor when it was commanded by Yunus Yosfiah and was aware the officer later became Indonesia's information minister.
Radio Australia - February 8, 2007
Reporter: Emma Alberici
Mark Colvin: A witness at the inquest into the death of the newsman Brian Peters in East Timor in 1975 wept today, as he described seeing the five dead Australian journalists in a house in Balibo.
Another witness identified Brian Peters as the first of the five to be gunned down outside what was known as the "Chinese house". Previous official reports have suggested the journalists were accidentally shot in the crossfire of war.
But the East Timorese witness told the court today that there were was no fighting at all between the Fretilin independence movement and the Indonesians in Balibo when the Australians were killed.
Emma Alberici reports
Emma Alberici: Over the past four days, the coronial inquest into the death of Brian Peters has heard from four East Timorese men, all of whom have requested their names be suppressed for fear of reprisals back home.
Their evidence has been explosive, and while much of it has been suggested before, it was never presented to an open, independent court
Previous inquiries into the deaths of the five Australian journalists in Balibo, East Timor in 1975, concluded that they had most probably been caught in the crossfire of war.
But none of the witnesses giving evidence in Sydney this week have corroborated that story. Each of them has detailed a shocking scene of white men surrendering and Indonesian men shooting at them en masse with AK-47 rifles.
It was more than 31 years ago but the emotion of seeing innocent bystanders killed was too much for the man referred to as Glebe Three, as he broke down in the witness box.
With his voice quivering, he reached for a tissue, wiped the tears away and told Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch, of the scene he witnessed as he walked into the Chinese house in Balibo and saw five dead white men in civilian clothes, three sitting down and two lying down. All in pools of blood, either shot or stabbed to death.
He later recalled seeing smoke coming from the Chinese house and being told the bodies of the Australian men were being burned. Fairfax Correspondent, Hamish McDonald co-wrote the book Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra.
Hamish McDonald: Even in the four days of the hearing so far, there's been a noticeable convergence of stories on some central elements of what happened.
One is that it looks like Brian Peters, the Channel Nine cameraman was the first to be shot in the square, as he tried to surrender to the Indonesian Special Forces.
The others may have fled into a Chinese house nearby and three seem to have been shot or knifed to death inside that house, and one other knifed to death as he tried to take shelter outside the house.
Emma Alberici: If we take it they were shot or stabbed, why?
Hamish McDonald: I think it's become clear that the Indonesians thought they had a green light from Gough Whitlam's government to go ahead with this covert attack, and that the Whitlam government would do all it can, would bend over backwards not to condemn it.
However, this was premised on there not being glaring evidence that the Indonesians were doing it. So, it was essentially to maintain the Indonesian cover story that these were local pro- Indonesian forces doing this, fighting back against Fretilin.
Emma Alberici: But if it comes to light that the Australian Government of 1975 under Gough Whitlam knew the Indonesians were about to invade Balibo, and that indeed they also knew there were five Australian journalists in Balibo, there will be a lot of questions to answer I imagine.
Hamish McDonald: Well, I think it's already been conclusively proven that the Whitlam Government was briefed by the Indonesians about what they were going to do and didn't protest beforehand except to say, keep it hidden.
The foreknowledge of the Australian journalists being in the way of that attack is the main issue to be really proven. That would be extremely embarrassing if it was shown that they were knowingly sacrificed for this operation.
Mark Colvin: The journalist and author, Hamish McDonald, speaking to Emma Alberici.
Melbourne Age - February 7, 2007
Hamish McDonald – Former Indonesian information minister Yunus Yosfiah gunned down Channel Nine cameraman Brian Peters as he tried to surrender in East Timor in 1975, a witness told an inquest yesterday.
The shots, allegedly fired by Mr Yosfiah, then a special forces officer, from his AK-47 rifle at a range of three metres, were followed by a fusillade from other troops, killing three other Australian newsmen.
The Timorese witness, codenamed Glebe 2, told the NSW Coroners Court that he recognised Peters from photographs as the journalist who stood ahead of the other three in front of a Chinese shop and house, raising his hands in surrender.
Glebe 2 said he could not hear what Peters was saying but he believed the cameraman was "asking for mercy".
Mr Yosfiah, whom the witness could see in profile from 50 metres away, did not try to talk with the journalists. He fired first, with Peters first to fall. "I believe Yunus killed Brian Peters," Glebe 2 said.
Speaking to The Age from his home in Indonesia this week, Mr Yosfiah denied ordering the killings and said he had never seen the five Australians.
"I never met them, I never saw them," he said in Jakarta. "How can I give an order if I never saw them?" He said he would not appear before the inquest as the deaths had been investigated.
Peters, along with Nine colleague Malcolm Rennie and the Seven network crew of Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart, died during the Indonesian attack on the village held by the Fretilin independence movement.
The witness became a frontman for the Indonesian cover story that the attack was made by Timorese partisans opposed to Fretilin and supporting the then Portuguese colony's integration with Indonesia.
He recounted how his name had been put to a bogus statement that the journalists had been inside a house from which Fretilin was firing and that a mortar shell had set it ablaze.
But the Indonesian colonel in charge of the attack, Dading Kalbuardi, had come to inspect the bodies being deliberately burnt in a different house.
Colonel Dading had called Indonesian and Timorese unit commanders together and swore them never to tell anyone the true version of how the foreign journalists died, the witness said.
When an Australian investigation team visited in 1976, the witness, shadowed by an Indonesian intelligence officer, told them the concocted story.
Melbourne Age - February 6, 2007
Mark Forbes, Jakarta, and Hamish McDonald, Sydney – A former Indonesian military commander has denied ordering the killings of five Australian journalists in Timor in 1975.
As an inquest into the death of Brian Peters – one of the Balibo five – began in Sydney yesterday, Yunus Yosfiah told The Age he had never even seen the men.
"I never met them, I never saw them, up close or from far away," he said in Jakarta. "How can I give an order if I never saw them?"
Peters and four other journalists – Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart and Malcolm Rennie – were killed during an attack by Indonesian special forces in Balibo, a Timorese border town, in October 1975.
Official reports say the men were killed in crossfire between Indonesian troops and East Timorese militia, but their families insist they were murdered.
Counsel assisting the inquest, Mark Tedeschi, QC, yesterday told the Glebe Coroners Court that witnesses would say that Captain Yosfiah, commander of the attacking force, started firing at the men and ordered his soldiers to fire. Mr Tedeschi said Captain Yosfiah then ordered three of the bodies to be dressed in the Portuguese uniforms used by East Timorese Fretilin troops and propped up behind machine-guns.
"In this macabre falsification of evidence to try to suggest the journalists had been combatants, the bodies were then photographed and filmed by two Indonesian reporters," Mr Tedeschi said. The bodies were then burnt, Mr Tedeschi said, before being sent to the Australian embassy in Jakarta to be buried.
An East Timorese witness who trained with the Indonesian military, known by the code name "Glebe 2", told the court that when invading Indonesian troops entered Balibo's town square he saw four white people raise their arms in the air.
"I observed some people were lifting their arms up," Glebe 2 said through an interpreter, and demonstrated a surrender pose. The witness said he then saw soldiers start firing at the journalists.
Mr Tedeschi said the inquest would hear evidence of an Indonesian message intercepted by a signals listening station in the Northern Territory, which was sent on the day of the attack.
The message intercepted by the Defence Signals Directorate allegedly contained words to the effect: "As directed, or in accordance with your instructions, five journalists have been located and shot", Mr Tedeschi said.
He said that if the five journalists had been deliberate targets, a possible motive was that the Indonesian government did not want footage of its actions in the invasion to get out because it could compromise Australian support for the invasion.
Captain Yosfiah, a former Indonesian government minister, now a senior official of a leading Islamic party, said in Jakarta he would not appear before the inquiry, as the incidents had been previously investigated. The inquest continues.
[With reporting from AAP.]
Agence France Presse - February 6, 2007
Sydney – An Indonesian military commander who later became a government minister opened fire on a group of Australian-based journalists killed in East Timor in 1975, an inquest heard Tuesday.
The inquest at Sydney's Glebe Coroners Court is examining the death of Brian Peters, one of five journalists killed by Indonesian troops in the Timorese border town of Balibo in October 1975.
Jakarta maintains the so-called "Balibo Five" were killed in crossfire during a skirmish ahead of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor but their families insist they were murdered and there was a cover-up.
The inquest, set up after a request from Peters' sister, heard evidence from an East Timorese witness who said he saw the men being shot.
The witness, known by the codename "Glebe 2," said he had trained with the Indonesian military and was with special forces troops when they went into Balibo in October 16, 1975.
He identified captain Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah as the first soldier to open fire on the five journalists before his colleagues joined in.
Yosfiah, who rose to hold the post of Indonesia's information minister in the late 1990s and is now a retired general, has admitted leading the attack on Balibo but denied involvement in the deaths of the journalists.
The witness told the inquest there had been no shooting from the house where the journalists were staying before the attack.
He said the journalists' bodies were set on fire and military officials warned him not to tell anyone about the shooting, describing it as "top secret."
The witness said he had lied to Australian investigators about the incident, but finally told the truth to an Australian journalist in 1999.
"Because in East Timor I saw a lot of injustice and massacres and as an East Timorese I couldn't support that anymore," Glebe 2 said.
Yosfiah denied the allegations and said that as captain he could not have been at the forefront of the attack.
"This is not the first time – and I do not think it will be the last time either – that they are attacking me. My answer remains unchanged," Yosfiah told AFP in Jakarta, adding that he had "never seen those journalists."
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) hailed the inquest as a chance to learn what happened in the lead up to Indonesia's invasion of the former Portuguese colony a month after the killings occurred.
"This new investigation 30 years after the events offers an historic opportunity to shed light on the death of five reporters who were key witnesses of the Indonesian army's invasion of East Timor," RSF said in a statement issued in Jakarta.
"The occupation and subsequent liberation of this former Portuguese colony were marked by serious human rights violations, including the deaths of journalists."
RSF called on the Indonesian army to provide information on those suspected of being responsible for the deaths.
Peters and fellow Briton Malcolm Rennie were working for Australia's Channel Nine in East Timor when they were killed, while Australians Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart and New Zealander Gary Cunningham were working for Channel Seven.
RSF said the inquest would also examine whether Australian authorities and former Labour prime minister Gough Whitlam were aware of an order to kill the journalists after Indonesian army communications were intercepted.
"All that we learn about Brian will help us to shed light on the other four.... The families have been calling for a special inquest into this case for the past four years. The arrival of a new coroner helped to get things going," Shackleton's widow Shirley said in the RSF statement.
Indonesia in 1976 declared the country its youngest province, but in the face of persistent armed resistance. East Timor achieved full independence only in 2002, four years after Indonesia relinquished control of the territory following a UN-sponsored self-determination ballot.
Radio Australia - February 7, 2007
Reporter: Emma Alberici
Mark Colvin: A witness to the deaths of five Australian journalists in Timor in 1975 told a court today that he'd heard people yelling "there are whites, there are whites" before gunfire broke out.
The man, known only as Glebe Four, is the second witness to suggest in Sydney's He spoke to Emma Alberici.
Ben Saul: Most coronial inquests deal with deaths which happened within New South Wales, or to New South Wales citizens elsewhere in Australia. It's very significant to have a coronial inquest proceeding to investigate a death overseas.
Emma Alberici: Why was it left to the families of the Balibo Five to bring this death to the intention of the coroner 30 or so years later? Why wasn't this investigated by an Australian coroner sooner than now?
Ben Saul: Well, there has been a history of Australian governments not investigating this case for all sorts of political reasons. After East Timor became independent in 1999, the UN tried to investigate the killings of the Balibo journalists, but Indonesia refused to cooperate, and so no evidence could be taken from Indonesian citizens who were there at the time.
Emma Alberici: Shouldn't more pressure have been brought to bear on the Indonesians to cooperate?
Ben Saul: Well, there's a long political history between Australia and Indonesia on this issue.
Certainly members of the victims' families and other groups in the community have applied sustained pressure over the last 25-30 years to ensure that these killings weren't forgotten.
There is evidence to suggest that these killings were war crimes, in violation of international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, which both Indonesia and Australia have signed up to, and the failure to fully investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute war crimes is very significant indeed.
Emma Alberici: If the coroner decides in her judgment to find that members of the Indonesian military, or indeed the Government, were responsible for the deaths of the journalists, what powers would Australia have to bring charges against those people, given the coronial inquest has no jurisdiction to compel witnesses from Indonesia to even appear before it?
Ben Saul: Australia for a long time has had war crimes legislation which allows Australia to prosecute those who are suspected of committing war crimes anywhere in the world. They don't have to be Australian nationals, the crime doesn't have to have taken place within Australia.
The problem is obtaining custody of the suspects, and to do that Australia would need to lodge an extradition request with the Indonesian authorities, and hope that the Indonesians agreed to extradite the suspect to Australia.
Emma Alberici: And if they didn't?
Ben Saul: Well, the extradition treaty between Australia and Indonesia provides that if either country refuses to extradite a national, then they have to submit the case to their own authorities for prosecution.
And that really would depend upon the Indonesian justice system as to whether they thought there was sufficient evidence to prosecute.
Beause there are high-level political and military figures in Indonesia arguably implicated in these killings, it's been very unlikely in the past that these kinds of cases would be seriously prosecuted and brought to trial.
This has been the problem with this case all along, I mean, there's been such a long history between Australia and Indonesia of Australia not, successive Australian governments really not doing their best to uncover the truth here.
Mark Colvin: Dr Ben Saul of the Centre for International Law at Sydney University, with Emma Alberici.
Radio Australia - February 5, 2007
Reporter: Emma Alberici
Eleanor Hall: The NSW Coroner's Court has today begun investigating just what happened to Sydney journalist Brian Peters, 31 years after he died in Balibo in East Timor.
Brian Peters was working as a reporter and cameraman for Channel Nine on October 16th 1975 when he and four news colleagues were found dead during the conflict between defenders of East Timorese independence and forces sympathetic to Indonesian integration with the former Portuguese colony.
There have so far been seven inquiries into the deaths of the five journalists, and two books written about the subject. But until today, no coronial inquiry.
Emma Alberici is at the Coroner's Court in Glebe and she joins us now. So, Emma, what is the significance of this eighth inquiry?
Emma Alberici: Well, Eleanor, this inquiry was brought about by Maureen Tolfree, the sister of Brian Peters, and her lawyer, Rodney Lewis.
In the year 2000, they came to Glebe and lodged a formal complaint with the police. Astoundingly, it hadn't happened until then, and the coroner's court found in 2004 that indeed they did have jurisdiction to hear this matter, and the coroner agreed to hold the inquest.
It was supposed to be last year, but after the rioting in Timor, it was pushed to this year, and there has indeed been a packed courtroom to hear the opening address by Mark Tedeschi, the counsel assisting deputy state coroner Dorelle Pinch, who herself said this was unprecedented in its scope and of historical significance, also because the majority of the 66 witnesses to be called are being brought here from Timor.
Eleanor Hall: Now, what is the scenario being advanced by the counsel assisting the coroner as to how these men died?
Emma Alberici: Well, interestingly enough, the most explosive evidence has been pointed to so far today is that it named Yunis Yosfir, who was appointed Minister for Information in the Habibe Government in Indonesia in 1998, that he actually led the attack on Balibo, back in 1975.
This is not something that's ever been made public before, and counsel assisting the deputy state coroner is saying that up to 1,000 troops bombarded the small East Timorese town at around 6 o'clock in the morning on that fateful Thursday.
Fretilin East Timorese Independence Fighters had already retreated, so there was no other reason for the Indonesian-led attack, other than it was specifically targeting the Australian journalists.
The five men attempted to surrender themselves to the protection of the invading forces but were set upon and either shot or stabbed to death.
And then it's alleged that the Indonesian army clothed them in Fretilin fighter uniforms and placed machine guns by their sides to give the appearance that they were somehow aligned or indeed involved in the fight for East Timorese independence.
Eleanor Hall: Now, Emma, is the inquiry going to hear from this former Information Minister from the Habibe government?
Emma Alberici: Unfortunately, Eleanor, this court doesn't have the jurisdiction to call anyone from Indonesia, which of course has attracted the ire of counsel assisting.
He made quite a big deal, Mark Tedeschi, of the fact that they still invite these people to come forward, all the Indonesians they have called to give evidence have refused to do so, so indeed not even given a response to those calls.
But one person who will be giving evidence, who has never done so before is a man they are calling 'Glebe 2'. His identity will be withheld. He was the leader of the East Timorese partisan soldiers on the Indonesian side. First time we will have heard from him and he was actually there on the day of the attack.
Eleanor Hall: And, Emma, has there been any mention about how much prior knowledge the Australian Government had of the attack, or whether there was any prior knowledge?
Emma Alberici: Eleanor, there's been a lot about that. Indeed, the evidence that will been given will say A, that the Australian Government knew the attack on Balibo was about to take place and B, that the five Australian journalists in Balibo at the time, that they knew they were there.
In fact, the defence signal directorate knew the journalists were there, that's the Australian electronic spy agency, and it said that we will hear evidence by two men who worked with Justice Hope on the royal commission on intelligence and security.
But they both clearly remember that a message they saw was an Indonesian radio message from an Indonesian commander on the ground in East Timor to a senior military officer in Jakarta, which said, "As directed or in accordance with your instructions, five journalists have been located and shot".
And that is a signal that was intercepted by the Australian defence signal directorate.
Eleanor Hall: Emma Alberici at the Coroner's Court in Sydney, thank you.
Daily Telegraph (Australia) - February 6, 2007
Ian McPhedran – At dawn on October 16, 1975, four young Australian-based journalists walked out of a house in Balibo, East Timor, with their arms above their heads. Moments later they were shot in cold blood by Indonesian special forces, an inquest has heard.
For the first time since the alleged execution of the five TV newsmen at the start of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, an open court is taking sworn evidence from witnesses.
According to the evidence, the fifth Balibo victim locked himself in a bathroom but was stabbed in the back with a special forces knife when he emerged.
Glebe Coroners Court yesterday heard Australian officials knew about Indonesia's invasion plans days in advance – but did nothing to warn the five men. In fact, keeping Indonesian dictator Suharto on side was a much higher priority for the Whitlam government of the time.
In a cable on October 15, 1975 – the day before the deaths – then Australian ambassador Richard Woolcott told Canberra that Indonesia was so confident of Australia's support that it "keeps us informed of its secret plans".
Evidence will also be presented that two men working on the Hope Royal Commission in 1977 saw a message intercepted by the top- secret electronic spy agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, which also kept the government fully informed.
According to counsel assisting the inquest, Mark Tedeschi QC, it contained words to the effect: "As directed or in accordance with your instructions, five journalists have been located and shot."
The first day of the inquest into the death of Sydney-based British Channel 9 cameraman Brian Peters was yesterday told by a witness known as Glebe 2, who cannot be identified, that he saw the men with their arms raised before shots were fired.
"At this point [Indonesian Army Captain Yunus] Yosfiah and his team shot the journalists who were unarmed with their hands in the air," a police witness statement said. "I saw them shoot. A lot of them were firing. They fired towards the white people."
Glebe 2 was a member of the pro-Indonesian Apodeti Partisan force that fought at Balibo.
Peters' Melbourne-based Nine colleague Malcolm Rennie and Seven's Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart also died at Balibo.
The Indonesian Government has been asked to assist with witnesses to the inquiry, but has so far refused to respond. The inquest, before NSW Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch, continues.
Gough Whitlam
The Australian Prime Minister gave tacit approval for the invasion. Gave Suharto the "green light"
President Suharto
"Owed Whitlam a great debt for the understanding he had shown of Indonesia's position [on East Timor]"
Richard Woolcott
"Suharto will assume the Australian Government will make every effort to give Indonesia what support and understanding it can" – Oct 15, 1975
Radio Australia - February 6, 2007
Reporter: Geoff Thompson
Mark Colvin: The Coroner's Court in Sydney today was told that the former commander of the Indonesian Military, Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah fired the first of the shots that killed five Australian journalists in Balibo, East Timor in 1975. Mr Yosfiah later became a minister in the Indonesian Government.
Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch was hearing evidence by the eye witness known only as "Glebe Two". This man was a former commander of the partisan group of East Timorese militia which fought alongside the Indonesian Army when the Portuguese pulled out and Indonesia began its invasion.
Glebe Two identified Yunus Yosfiah as a killer. He said he had personally seen him shoot other people during the war in East Timor.
Yunus Yosfiah is now retired, both from the military and from Government. From his home in Jakarta, he spoke to our Correspondent Geoff Thompson.
Yunus Yosfiah: Of course people they're saying that they are false witnesses, a big liar.
Geoff Thompson: Do you admit to being in Balibo at the time?
Yunus Yosfiah: I didn't meet that journalist, close or apart. How could they say that I should? I didn't meet them, I never met them.
Geoff Thompson: But you were there?
Yunus Yosfiah: I never met them.
Geoff Thompson: But you were in Balibo?
Yunus Yosfiah: I don't know what time did they say? Yes, I'd been in Balibo but I don't know what time they talk about.
Geoff Thompson: And what were you doing in Balibo at the time?
Yunus Yosfiah: Okay, I don't want to mention now. Your question has been answered several times, several years ago.
Geoff Thompson: So you deny having anything to do with the shooting?
Yunus Yosfiah: I didn't know, I never asked, I never met them. I don't know.
Geoff Thompson: You deny leading the attack on the Australian reporters?
Yunus Yosfiah: I told you, I never met them.
Geoff Thompson: But you were there at the time?
Yunus Yosfiah: That time, I don't know. No, I'm not there. I wasn't there.
Geoff Thompson: Why are you connected to those events by so many people?
Yunus Yosfiah: Well you can analyse that, okay?
Geoff Thompson: Can you just tell us the answer. To the people in Australia who are asking this question, what is your answer?
Yunus Yosfiah: I never met the journalist.
Geoff Thompson: The witnesses who are speaking in Australia...
Yunus Yosfiah: Big wrong, big wrong, big wrong and big liar. I tell you the truth.
Geoff Thompson: If you are so confident that this is the truth, why won't you come and appear at the inquiry into the death of Brian Peters?
Yunus Yosfiah: Because I know what I did and what I didn't do.
Geoff Thompson: But other people want that question answered more thoroughly.
Yunus Yosfiah: Yes, but I've answered for that question many times across several years, just open the file.
Geoff Thompson: Why not test it before a formal inquiry?
Yunus Yosfiah: The same question, how should I answer the same question many times? You know...
Geoff Thompson: You would have an opportunity to test the evidence and close the question forever.
Yunus Yosfiah: Why should I go there? Why should I... I lost my time a lot, just ask the big liar witnesses.
Geoff Thompson: Do you feel any guilt for what happened?
Yunus Yosfiah: I don't understand you.
Geoff Thompson: Do you have any bad feeling about what happened?
Yunus Yosfiah: No. I didn't feel any guilty for that because I did what I said to you that I never... I never met them and never asked something about them, even close or away, you know?
Geoff Thompson: Do you feel sorry for these reporters? Do you think it was not a good thing that they were killed?
Yunus Yosfiah: Oh yeah, it's a very, very, very bad, very bad, if those journalists were killed on that day, very bad. I know that. I really know about that, you know?
Geoff Thompson: But it wasn't you?
Yunus Yosfiah: Say again?
Geoff Thompson: But it wasn't you?
Yunus Yosfiah: It wasn't me. I never asked and I never ordered and I never get what about that.
Mark Colvin: Yunus Yosfiah, former Military Commander, former Government Minister in Indonesia speaking to our Jakarta Correspondent, Geoff Thompson.
Sydney Morning Herald - February 5, 2007
Hamish McDonald – If Canberra's defence and foreign affairs establishment thought Maureen Tolfree was going to give up, this was another intelligence failure.
More than 30 years ago, she came out from her home in Bristol, England, to find out how her brother Brian Peters, a Channel Nine cameraman, had died with four other Australian-based newsmen at Balibo in East Timor.
The young Englishwoman, who had never been overseas, was baffled by a bureaucratic wall of secrecy, which she, along with other bereaved relatives, has tried to penetrate ever since.
Today, she gets vindication of sorts. An inquest into Peters's death starts at the State Coroner's Court in Glebe, the first independent inquiry of a judicial nature with powers to compel witnesses.
"It's amazing. I never thought it would happen," Mrs Tolfree, 61, said yesterday as she rested after her long flight out to attend the hearings.
The inquest – by a NSW court into the death of a British citizen in a foreign country – is a legal milestone for Australia.
In December 2000, Mrs Tolfree and her Sydney lawyer, the International Commission of Jurists activist Rodney Lewis, went to the Coroner's Court and reported Peters's violent death.
Two years ago, the then state coroner John Abernathy accepted their argument that as Peters had been a NSW resident (the only one among the five, the rest living in Melbourne) his death came within the jurisdiction of the court.
Delayed by last year's turmoil in East Timor, the inquest starts today before the Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch and is expected to run for at least a month.
Among the 66 listed witnesses are a dozen Timorese who were auxiliaries with the Indonesian special forces team that attacked Balibo on October 16, 1975, at the start of a covert invasion of the Portuguese colony. Among them is one man who says he saw two of the journalists after they were captured alive, and then saw them executed by the Indonesians.
A finding of deliberate targeting and execution would bring calls for war crimes cases against the Indonesians involved, some of whom later rose to senior positions – notably the officer in charge of the Balibo attack, Yunus Yosfiah, who became Indonesia's minister of information in 1998.
As delicate for Ms Pinch is the handling of requests from Mr Lewis and the NSW Police for access to personnel and records of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia's electronic spy agency, for what might have been learned about the Balibo killings from intercepted Indonesian signals. Even after three decades, the directorate is claiming immunity on national security grounds from disclosing such material or names in open court.
A legal team from the NSW Crown Solicitor's office, headed by the barrister Mark Tedeschi, QC, is being given conditional access to directorate material to assess its relevance.
Mrs Tolfree became guardian to Peters and his two younger brothers at the age of 15 when their mother deserted them. When Peters decided to migrate to Australia at 19, under a #20 scheme run by the Big Brother movement, she signed the consent forms.
By the time he died, aged 26, she had three children of her own and the two younger brothers to look after.
As pressures eased in later years, she took more time off from her catering work to seek answers about his death. She also joined protests against the Indonesian military, which was being supplied with jets from the British Aerospace factory near her home.
She is not surprised the Defence Department is still trying to shield its knowledge from open scrutiny. "They're going to try, aren't they?" Mrs Tolfree said. "They're not going to open up. They've got a lot to hide."
The Times (London) - February 3, 2007
Lucy Bannerman and Richard Lloyd Parry – In the three decades since Brian Peters died during Indonesia's secret invasion of East Timor, his sister Maureen Tolfree has been told countless versions of who killed him and how.
There was the story put out by the Indonesians in 1975: that he and four fellow journalists died accidentally, caught up in shooting between rival groups of East Timorese. There was the testimony of several witnesses: that Brian and his colleagues were murdered by Indonesian commandos. And then there was the version favoured by the British Government, and by two official Australian inquiries: that, conveniently, it was impossible to know.
One witness said that Peters and five other men, from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, were stabbed with machetes. Another described them being mown down by machinegun fire. A third claimed that they bled to death after being hung upside down and castrated. Their remains – a few bone fragments and ashes – were hastily buried in a single coffin in Jakarta in 1975, and when Mrs Tolfree flew to the Indonesian capital to find out what had happened, a British diplomat met her at the airport and urged her to go home.
For 31 years, the stink of a cover-up has lingered around the tragedy of the Balibo Five, as they are known after the obscure village where they died. But finally the truth may be about to emerge.
Next week, Mrs Tolfree, now 61, will sit in an Australian court where a coroner will conduct the first judicial inquiry into the death of Brian Peters. It is likely to be the last chance to discover who killed the five men, and it will focus further attention on the British and Australian diplomats who tacitly encouraged Indonesia's brutal invasion and did their best to avoid embarrassing its Government with questions about the killings.
Crucially, the inquiry will also hear new evidence from former radio operators at an Australian spy base, who claim that colleagues intercepted a top-secret order from the Indonesian military for the journalists "to be eliminated".
Mrs Tolfree has little doubt that her brother and his companions died for the crime of witnessing and filming the clandestine invasion. "It has been such a long time," she says, "all the years that they have lied to us, all the years that they said they were killed in crossfire, and the awful things that were said about my brother and his colleagues – that they were incompetent and in the wrong place.
"That makes me angry. They were bloody good journalists. They were in the right place – that was their job. I want an apology from the Australian and British governments for lying to us."
Brian Peters, 28, a cameraman, flew to East Timor with Malcolm Rennie, a 29-year-old Scot, who also worked for the Australian Channel Nine. It was a time of tension in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony and a poor pinprick of land surrounded by the military dictatorship of Indonesia.
After a coup in Lisbon in 1974, Portugal began to divest itself of its colonies and in East Timor an independence movement sprang up. But the Indonesian dictator Suharto had other ideas.
Indonesian commandos infiltrated the country to support a handful of East Timorese who opposed independence. When they clashed with supporters of Fretilin, the pro-independence party, the Indonesians portrayed the situation as a "civil war" that threatened their interests. Peters and Rennie went to Balibo to find evidence of Indonesian interference. With them were three journalists from the rival Channel Seven: Greg Shackleton, 29, Tony Stewart, 21, and Gary Cunningham, 27.
"No one really knew what was going on, but Malcolm believed the Indonesians were getting ready for something," recalls Sue Andel, who visited Rennie, her cousin, shortly before he left. "For him, it was the biggest story since the Vietnam War."
When the five men entered Balibo they found and filmed exactly what they had suspected: Indonesian ships off the coast. They slept in an abandoned house. To distinguish themselves from the Fretilin soldiers in the village, they painted the word "Australia" and a crude Australian flag on the wall. Early on October 16, the warships began to shell the village, and Indonesian soldiers and their East Timorese supporters entered the village. The journalists were never seen alive again.
In 1998, a Fretilin soldier named Terrado described how three of the men were dragged out of their house. "We heard them yelling, 'Australia! Australia! Not Fretilin!' They had completely surrendered to the soldiers. By the time they reached the street, I saw them being stabbed and they fell to the ground."
Other witnesses suggested that at least some of the men were shot rather than stabbed. Whatever the truth, their bodies were quickly burnt. The only institution able to press for a full explanation, the British Embassy in Jakarta, washed its hands of the affair, as demonstrated by diplomatic cables published for the first time last year in The Times.
Sir John Ford, the British Ambassador, asked Richard Woolcott, his Australian counterpart, to refrain from pressing the Indonesians for details of the deaths.
"Since no protests will produce the journalists' bodies I think we should ourselves avoid representations about them," he wrote in a cable eight days after the deaths. "They were in the war zone of their own choice."
A later cable says: "Once the Indonesians had established themselves in Dili they went on a rampage of looting and killing... If asked to comment on any stories of atrocities, I suggest we say that we have no information."
The inquiry might be about to reveal the first, conclusive proof those claims were untrue.
Dorelle Pinch, the coroner, has requested evidence from those connected to the Defence Signal Directorate station at Shoal Bay, in Darwin, between October 14 and October 20, 1975. It is alleged that officers in No 3 Telecommunications Unit, a previously unknown spying unit attached to the Royal Australian Air Force, overheard a signal disclosing an order from the Indonesia military to kill the five men.
"If that comes out," said Margaret Wilson, another of Rennie's cousins, "then it definitely puts a different light on things. If the new witnesses confirm the radio messages, then there is very strong argument to say the Australian Government, and consequently, the British Government, knew exactly what was going on."
A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office declined to comment on the hearing. She said: "We are aware of the inquiry, and will wait to hear the coroner's conclusion before making a statement."
The reluctance of witnesses to testify and instability in East Timor have made a full-scale hearing in an international court impossible. The campaigners and relatives were told that, without a body, even inquests were impossible. The breakthrough came thanks to a quirk in the state legislation of New South Wales, where coroners can conduct an inquest even in the absence of a body. Only Peters had an address in the state, but it was enough.
One of those Mrs Tolfree would most like to see held to account is Mr Woolcott, who presided over a hastily arranged funeral in Jakarta to which the relatives were not invited. Indeed, they did not even know it had taken place until grainy photographs emerged 23 years later of Mr Woolcott and a handful of officials in dark glasses as they watched a casket lowered into the ground.
Ms Andel says: "You want to believe in justice. Malcolm did. Who took responsibility on that day? Who gave the orders? Who prevented them from getting that story out?"
| Truth & Friendship Commission |
Sydney Morning Herald - February 21, 2007
Mark Forbes, Denpasar – Tales of blood and tears are flowing from a Commission of Truth and Friendship hearing into the atrocities committed in East Timor about the time of the 1999 independence vote.
Stories of cold-blooded killings of civilians and of the Indonesian military's role in organising and arming murderous anti-independence militia squads are re-emerging. Privately, participants question whether the commission's goals of revealing the truth and promoting reconciliation are achievable.
Florindo de Jesus Brites spoke calmly yesterday of being slashed with swords by militia members who joined Indonesian soldiers to attack the home of the independence leader, Manuel Carrascalao, in April 1999. He fell next to his brother's body. "I couldn't move, I closed my eyes and everything went dark. I think that's why they left me."
Mr Brites, a high school student at the time, was asked about his injuries. He stood and peeled off his shirt to reveal the wounds on his back and arms.
He named the man who stabbed him first – a man from his own village. He also named the soldier he saw shoot his brother in the chest, and described militia and troops firing into Mr Carrascalao's house, killing 12 adults and the leader's 16-year- old son.
Militia and troops had surrounded the house after a radio call for those loyal to Indonesia to "find the CNRT [independence] people; we have to finish them off".
An earlier witness, Mateus Carvalho, the leader of Dili's notorious Aitarak militia, had dismissed the incident as a "family vendetta". Mr Carvalho was an army officer who was ordered to return to his village and form Aitarak. He said he had only acted to protect the community from independence fighters, "I never kill – if I did kill anyone, show me where I dispose of the corpses," he said.
Mr Carvalho's evidence contradicts Indonesian claims that the military had no role in the carnage that left more than 1400 civilians dead. He admitted the army had funded, armed and monitored militia activities.
Massacres in churches, country lanes and villages sound surreal in the sterile atmosphere of the commission hearings in a luxury Balinese hotel. During breaks, music from a Queen album is piped through the room.
The Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and his East Timorese counterpart, Xanana Gusmao, have made it clear they want to leave the bloody episodes behind. The commission's terms of reference state it should recommend amnesties, not prosecutions.
Exchanges between witnesses and the Indonesian-appointed members of the joint commission reveal a continuing gulf.
Mr Brites told of being taken to a military hospital when his wounds became infested with worms. He was given food only if he first sang the Indonesian national anthem, he claimed.
An Indonesian law professor, Achmad Ali, was indignant. "Is there something wrong with being asked to sing?" he asked. "Even in America they sing the anthem. I think it's quite acceptable because you were still in Indonesia."
Witnesses were repeatedly asked why they had been attacked. They must have done something wrong, the Indonesian commissioners said.
Mr Brites had a final plea for the commission. "All the victims, pro-autonomy and pro-independence – the widows, the people who have been handicapped, those who have suffered and those who are orphans – both nations need to look after these people."
The Australian - February 20, 2007
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Bali – A plain-clothes Indonesian soldier gave the order to attack an East Timor churchyard where thousands of civilians were sheltering in 1999, resulting in more than two dozen deaths, a survivor of the atrocity claimed yesterday.
Village clerk Emilio Bareto's evidence at a commission into relations between the two countries contradicted that of former Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas, who denied there had been any Indonesian military provocation in East Timor's bloody road to independence.
Mr Bareto told the Truth and Friendship Commission's first day of hearings that the soldier urged armed members of the Red and White Iron militia to attack the terrified residents of Liquica, west of the capital Dili, after they refused to give up pro- independence leaders believed to be hiding in their midst.
The refugees had gathered in the churchyard as clashes escalated between groups supporting integration with Indonesia, and those supporting East Timorese independence, in the days leading up to April 6, 1999, when the massacre occurred. The refugees mistakenly believed all sides would respect the neutrality of the church grounds.
Mr Bareto told the hearing in Bali he was not aware of there being any political leaders from the CNRT, or National Council of East Timorese Resistance, among the more than 2000 people who were huddled in the compound and the pastor's house.
The Red and White Iron militia was led by Eurico Gueterres, now in jail for his part in the violence that split East Timor in the period leading up to and immediately after its August 30, 1999, independence referendum.
The commission opened with Mr Alatas, who was adamant that despite comprehensive evidence to the contrary, Jakarta military elements were not involved in the campaign of orchestrated violence that accompanied Indonesia's withdrawal from its former province.
Mr Alatas said the police, not the armed forces, were solely responsible for law and order in East Timor up until and immediately after the 1999 vote, and so it was not possible the latter were involved in atrocities.
Asked after the hearing whether, as foreign minister, he should have known of reports his country's military was involved in arming and supporting pro-integrationist militias, Mr Alatas retorted: "Does your Foreign Minister (Alexander Downer) know everything that is going on around him?"
However, former sub-commander of the Dili-based Aitarak (Thorn) militia, Mateus Carvalho, was adamant in his evidence late yesterday that his pro-integrationist group was armed by the Indonesian military (ABRI, as it was then known).
"For me, as a former ABRI member, it was very easy to get weapons from them," said Mr Carvalho, who also served as village chief in Hera, west of Dili. "Our weapons came from the district military commander."
Mr Alatas said it had been impossible to anticipate the result of the sudden shift in Indonesian policy that led to the 1999 vote. This change came about when former president JB Habibie declared that East Timor should be offered independence by way of a referendum, rather than the "special autonomy" planned in negotiations with Dili's former colonial ruler, Portugal.
Mr Habibie, known for his autocratic decisions, was reacting to a letter from John Howard in late 1998 proposing a partial "trial of independence" for East Timor. Mr Alatas said the Prime Minister's letter was not "in itself" the cause of the switch, but Dr Habibie was angered by Mr Howard's "spirit of overzealousness to send troops".
Indonesia's brutal subduing of East Timor, after the 1975 invasion, was regarded by elements in the Indonesian military for more than 20 years as an excuse for unchecked violence.
Sydney Morning Herald - February 20, 2007
Mark Forbes Denpasar – Australia was overzealous and "gung-ho" towards East Timor, the former Indonesian foreign minister, Ali Alatas, has said at an inquiry aimed at healing the wounds left by the bloody aftermath of Timorese independence.
Mr Alatas told the Commission of Truth and Friendship that he did not blame the Prime Minister, John Howard, for the bloodshed surrounding East Timor's independence vote in 1999. However, he said that a letter from Mr Howard to the then Indonesian president, B.J. Habibie, provoked Indonesia's about-face in holding the referendum.
The letter, which outlined Australia's support for an independence vote, was not the "bone of contention", Mr Alatas said yesterday. "It was rather the spirit of overzealousness of Australia suddenly sending troops and the largest contingent. Sometimes it's a gung-ho attitude."
Mr Alatas, who is now a foreign policy adviser to the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was the commission's first witness. He said he was not aware of evidence the Indonesian military was complicit in the slaughter of East Timorese carried out by local militia.
However, witnesses later gave graphic accounts of military members ordering the murder of Timorese civilians. About 1400 people were killed before and after the independence vote.
The commission was established by Dr Yudhoyono and his Timorese counterpart, Xanana Gusmao, in the hope their nations could move on from the bloody events. Amnesty is being granted to perpetrators if they testify truthfully.
The commission was formed after a United Nations report called for war crimes charges against military and militia leaders. Trials in Indonesia, which have convicted only one militia leader, have been widely criticised.
Mr Gusmao and Dr Habibie are expected to give evidence before the commission. The testimony of Indonesia's former military chief, General Wiranto, is also widely anticipated.
The brief of the commission, which comprises five members each from Indonesia and East Timor, is to promote reconciliation and recommend amnesties and compensation. It is unclear if it may recommend prosecutions of witnesses judged to have been untruthful.
Emilio Bareto testified how he narrowly escaped death during a massacre of more than 50 civilians seeking refuge in a church on the outskirts of the town of Liquica in April 1999.
Mr Bareto said he saw an Indonesian officer, a member of his family, order local militia to fire on about 2000 people sheltering in the compound. "He was not armed, he was in civilian clothes," Mr Bareto said.
Before being slashed across his head with a machete, Mr Bareto said he saw several people stabbed to death. Police had earlier secured the roads to the compound to allow pro-Indonesian militia members through, Mr Bareto said.
The commission plans to continue public hearings until June.
Agence France Presse - February 19, 2007
Karen Michelmore and Olivia Rondonuwu, Bali – Indonesia could not have anticipated the scale of violence that followed East Timor's historic 1999 vote for independence, Indonesia's former foreign minister insisted today.
Ali Alatas has told a landmark public hearing that he feared discord among rival factions if East Timorese were given a choice between full independence and the alternative offer of being an autonomous province within Indonesia.
Alatas said he feared those who lost out in the UN-sponsored referendum would not accept the result.
He was right but today said the scale of the unrest that followed the pro-independence vote came as a "painful surprise" to both Indonesia and the United Nations.
Alatas faced questioning over Indonesia's role in the destruction in East Timor at today's landmark opening of a public hearing of the East Timor-Indonesia Commission of Truth and Friendship.
The commission, sitting on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, is seeking to establish the truth behind the 1999 violence which killed up to 1,500 people in East Timor before and after the UN- sponsored ballot.
Alatas spoke today of a December 1998 fax from Australian Prime Minister John Howard, suggesting Indonesia grant temporary autonomy to East Timor for 10 years. But he said the suggestion angered then Indonesian President BJ Habibie and triggered Jakarta's decision to give the Timorese a vote for independence.
Howard's "carefully written" fax said Australia supported Indonesia and its offer of wider autonomy for East Timor but Australia's research suggested it would not work, Alatas said.
"So on January 25, after the letter arrived formally... the president made the decision, the decision we all know," he told the hearing.
"He was a bit angry and wrote his disposition on that letter. He said 'what's the use waiting five, 10, 15 years, we will always be criticised if anything happens but we will still have to spend a lot of money and after 10 years they will say goodbye to us'.
"So if they want independence now, give it to them, a second option for them to choose."
Alatas said he felt "uncomfortable" about the decision to give the Timorese a choice between wider autonomy and independence as he felt those who lost would refuse to swallow the result.
"My worst fears were confirmed as soon as the announcement was made, those who lost did not accept it," he said. "But I could not anticipate that it would take this form, this incredible form."
Alatas said he was not aware of any Indonesian government decision or policy that directly caused the unrest in East Timor. He expressed frustration about the criticism Indonesia continues to face over East Timor.
"Indeed it is a fact, especially after the (Santa Cruz Massacre) 12th November 1991, there is lots of criticism of Indonesia, nothing that Indonesia can or will do is right," he said. "They are indeed prejudiced, anti-Indonesian".
The Santa Cruz Massacre, also known as the Dili Massacre, was one of the most notorious events in a resistance war several East Timorese groups fought against Indonesian forces for independence.
More than 250 East Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops in the Santa Cruz Cemetery in Dili, the images secretly caught on video and broadcast around the world.
Alatas said that after the independence vote, Indonesia continued to consider itself responsible for security in the province and did not want foreign troops on Indonesian soil.
It was not until military chief General Wiranto saw the scale of the violence following the ballot that he changed his mind, and the Australian-led UN mission entered East Timor restore peace, Alatas said.
"I think he had no idea until he entered Dili, he had no idea what was going on there in my opinion," he said.
"When he arrived, he saw the destruction that had taken place, how many houses had been burned... then he saw that he couldn't handle the situation as it was alone. So at that time... he asked the UN to come and assist."
Alatas said Indonesia and East Timor needed to continue to work together to settle their differences.
"Let us look forward and not continuously look backward," he told the hearing.
"I think this is what we countries must try to do, it's in the interests of both that we are are closer.
"For Indonesia, a Timor Leste in turmoil... divided and not progressing, that's a danger for Indonesia because after all, they are part of the archipelago and if something is wrong it will have an impact on us."
The hearing continues this afternoon, with testimony from one of the victims of another attack at Liquica Church, blamed on pro- Indonesia militias and soldiers in which more than 200 people died.
The commission plans to hold five public hearings from February until June, and hear from 78people including Wiranto, former president Habibie, former militia leader Eurico Guterres and East Timor president Xanana Gusmao.
Gutteres is the only person serving a prison sentence for his role in the 1999 violence.
Radio Australia - February 19, 2007
Reporter: Geoff Thompson
Mark Colvin: Indonesia's former Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, has identified a letter from John Howard as the factor that pushed former President Habibie to support a referendum on East Timor's independence.
Mr Alatas was speaking at the opening session of a new Truth and Friendship Commission set up to establish the facts of the violence surrounding the independence vote in 1999.
Modelled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the joint Indonesian and East Timorese body has no power to recommend prosecutions.
But it can recommend amnesties for human rights abusers who cooperate with it. Our Indonesia Correspondent, Geoff Thompson, is at the hearing and he filed this report from Bali.
(Sound of gunfire)
Geoff Thompson: It is the violent events of 1999, seven-and-a- half years ago which are the focus of the long gestating Truth and Friendship Commission, which began hearing testimony in Bali today.
In theory at least, the Commission is modelled along the lines of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And like that body, this joint Indonesian and East Timorese effort can recommend amnesties for witnesses who are forthcoming and cooperative.
A United Nations-supported report by the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation released this time last year, was vast and damning of Indonesia.
It blamed Indonesia's security forces for the deaths of 183,000 civilians, mostly through hunger and illness, as well as most of the 18,600 killings and disappearances between 1975 and 1999.
Those findings were largely buried by Indonesia's President Yudhoyono, and his East Timorese counterpart, Xanana Gusmao.
But today's bipartisan Truth and Friendship Commission has their full support. As a way of addressing the past, and getting on with the future.
The first to appear was Indonesia's Foreign Minister in 1999, Ali Alatas. He detailed how he pushed for special autonomy for Indonesia and said that it was a letter from John Howard to the then President BJ Habibie, which set East Timor on its troubled path to independence.
Mr Alatas said the Australian Prime Minister's suggestion of an interim autonomy period angered Mr Habibie, who saw it as a waste of time and money, and likely to attract further international criticism of Indonesia. Instead, Mr Habibie decided to let East Timor decide its future for itself. After his testimony, Ali Alatas sounded more diplomatic.
Ali Alatas: It was a letter which indeed pushed things as far as President Habibie's views were. But it was quite a good, quite a normal letter.
Geoff Thompson: Do you think the transition or the change or the options might have run smoother if that letter didn't arrive?
Ali Alatas: No, it's not the letter you know which is the bone of contention between the two. It was rather the spirit of overzealousness of Australia suddenly to send troops and send the largest contingent of troops. Sometimes it's a gung-ho attitude etcetera. It was not the letter, it was not the letter.
Geoff Thompson: Ali Alatas also suggested there was bias and even perhaps even electoral dishonesty on the side of the United Nations in favour of independence, and said he could not explain why the vote for independence was so overwhelming when he believed most people in East Timor supported integration with Indonesia.
He also maintains that the police and not the military were responsible for securing the ballot in 1999, and says he had no evidence that the military were really pulling the strings.
Ali Alatas: The Foreign Minister does not know everything the military does. Does your Foreign Minister know?
Geoff Thompson: So, you didn't know that the military was unofficially and directly involved?
Ali Alatas: I don't have any evidence about what you're saying.
Geoff Thompson: But you know it's generally accepted that the military were behind the militia.
Ali Alatas: I don't have any evidence about what you're saying.
Geoff Thompson: But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Ali Alatas: I don't know.
Geoff Thompson: There were few East Timorese at the hearing today apart from the six commissioners taking part. Some of them were human rights activists back in 1999, and looking anxious and disconcerted by the proceedings, they declined requests for interviews.
The East Timorese co-chairperson, Dionisio Babo Soares, said he was aware that the Commission was open to criticism that it is rewriting history and emboldening a culture of impunity in Indonesia, which has seen so few human rights abusers brought to justice.
Dionsio Babo Soares: We will try very hard from our side at least to strengthen the relationship, but we also have to recognise, and I hope this should be recognised by everyone in East Timor and in Indonesia including the commissioners from Indonesia that truth must be revealed and must be established. Without truth, there will not be any long lasting friendship.
Geoff Thompson: Future sessions of the Commission are expecting to hear from Indonesia's former military chief, General Wiranto and the jailed militia leader, Enrico Gutierrez.
In Bali, this is Geoff Thompson for PM.
| Political/social unrest |
Agence France Presse - February 21, 2007
Dili – UN police have arrested 148 people suspected of involvement in a resurgence of street violence in the East Timorese capital, the UN envoy to the troubled country said today.
"In the past three days, the police have arrested 148 people, all related to the security situation in Dili," Atul Khare said.
Seven international UN police officers were injured yesterday in fresh violence on the streets of Dili. Police had stepped up patrols to tighten security following the recent increase in violence, Mr Khare said.
"I do believe that... the people of Timor Leste (Easr Timor) will refrain from (violence), will introspect and will come to the conclusion that attacking the United Nations, which is here to restore peace and calm in their country, is not something which can be praised, it is something that must be condemned," he said. Mr Khare warned of tough action against those involved in the latest street violence to hit Dili since major unrest in April and May last year left 37 dead.
The street violence, mostly between members of rival martial arts gangs, has beset Dili for the past two weeks. Australia yesterday warned its citizens against travelling to East Timor due to the "volatile security situation."
"The situation could deteriorate further without notice and Australians could be caught up in any violence directed at others," the department of foreign affairs and trade said. "There is also an increasing likelihood that Australians and Australian interests may be specifically targeted."
Last year, a protest by disgruntled soldiers rapidly degenerated into clashes between rival security forces and gang wars on the streets of the capital that prompted the deployment of an Australian-led international peacekeeping force. The UN has deployed some 1300 police to help restore order.
Sydney Morning Herald - February 14, 2007
Lindsay Murdoch – The East Timorese Prime Minister, Jose Ramos- Horta, has urged the United Nations to bolster security in his country as Australian and other forces in the capital, Dili, struggle to stop violent street attacks.
Dr Ramos-Horta told the UN Security Council in New York that security in the country was "still fragile and precarious" only two months before presidential elections scheduled for April 9. He urged the UN to approve sending more police from Portugal to join 1313 international police already in the country.
The call comes amid growing fears in Dili that groups are plotting to disrupt campaigning before the elections, and what welfare officials say is a chronic shortage of rice throughout the country. Some people in Dili were told this week to pay protection money or their businesses would be destroyed.
Even though some key gang leaders have been arrested, teenagers are being killed in street fighting almost every day. In the past 48 hours a 13-year-old boy was stabbed three times and a 17-year-old died after being attacked with a machete. One group is planning rallies to protest against the former prime minister Mari Alkatiri being cleared of allegations he was involved in providing weapons to a hit squad set up to eliminate political opponents. The claims forced him from office last June.
A report to the Government this week refers to 20,665 malnourished children aged under 15, and 6718 pregnant or lactating women needing food at centres in seven districts.
Angela Freitas, a 38-year-old East Timorese who was educated in Australia, announced yesterday that she planned to contest the presidency. Dr Freitas, who is in Darwin, described the situation in East Timor as "shameful and disgraceful".
Reuters - February 1, 2007
Jakarta – Forty-seven people have been arrested in East Timor in an operation against gang violence in the tiny territory, the United Nations said in a statement on Thursday.
The arrests were related to rioting and other crimes including homicide, it said. UN police seized weapons such as batons, darts, spears, machetes and home-made fire-arms and explosives during the raids.
A two-week investigation had targeted the Bari Piti and Hudi Laran areas of the capital Dili, both strongholds of gangs linked to martial arts groups, the UN said. Australia led a force of 3,200 foreign peacekeepers to East Timor in late May after the country descended into chaos following the sacking of 600 mutinous soldiers.
Sporadic gang-related violence has continued in East Timor, the Asia-Pacific region's youngest country, plagued by poverty and high youth unemployment since independence in 2002.
The territory of around a million people voted in a 1999 referendum for independence from Indonesia, which annexed it after Portugal ended its colonial rule in 1975. It became fully independent in 2002 after a period of UN administration.
Xinhoua News - February 1, 2007
Canberra – Australian troops have participated in a major armed operation with the United Nations against warring gangs in Timor-Leste in which 50 people have been arrested in the capital of Dili.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio reported Thursday that most of those in custody are members of warring gangs and martial arts groups who have caused havoc in the Southeast Asian nation since it descended into violence last year.
UN police seized dozens of illegal weapons, including home-made explosives and firearms, darts, batons and spears in the operation, in which Australian troops used Blackhawk and Kiawa helicopters.
Meanwhile, the Australian government has again updated its travel advisory for Timor-Leste. The Australian foreign affairs department said Australians and other foreigners have been caught up in recent incidents of armed robbery and assault, and should reconsider all travel to the country.
It warned continuing incidents of violence could deteriorate further without notice, and that there is an increasing likelihood Australians or Australian interests may be specifically targeted in Timor-Leste.
| Timor gap |
Melbourne Age - February 27, 2007
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – A US court has cleared the way for the hearing of a challenge to the rights over the Timor Sea's vast oil and gas reserves.
Lawyers for oil explorer Oceanic Exploration are preparing to take the company's claim against US-giant ConocoPhillips to the US District Court in southern Texas.
Oceanic is challenging ConocoPhillips' rights to 6 million hectares that include the huge Bayu-Undan field that has already given East Timor more than $US1 billion ($A1.26 billion) and is expected to earn up to $US15 billion for the impoverished nation.
Under the Timor Sea Treaty that Australia and East Timor signed in 2002, East Timor is entitled to 90 per cent of the area's petroleum production.
Oceanic claims an agreement with East Timor's former ruler Portugal in 1974 gave its subsidiary Petrotimor exclusive rights to the Joint Petroleum Development Area that includes Bayu-Undan.
The company claims in US court documents that ConocoPhillips stole the concession by bribing Indonesian and Timorese officials over 30 years.
Oceanic claims ConocoPhillips made more than $US2 million cash and other payments to Timorese officials, including former prime minister Mari Alkatiri.
Documents allege millions of dollars was lodged in two bank accounts in Darwin in 2002. Mr Alkatiri and ConocoPhillips deny the claim.
The case has attracted little publicity as it has moved slowly through the US court system for three years. But the US District Court of Columbia brought the case closer to conclusion when it ruled this month that the case should be heard in the District Court of Southern Texas near ConocoPhillips' Houston headquarters.
In a 12-page ruling obtained by The Age, Judge Emmet Sullivan said that in transferring the case from Columbia to Texas he took into consideration the convenience of Australian witnesses.
Oceanic has indicated it will call at least 70 witnesses.
Judge Sullivan said he also decided to order the transfer, which ConocoPhillips requested, in part because "any alleged wrongdoing that occurred in the United States emanated from the Houston headquarters". The District Court of Columbia last September dismissed some legal grounds upon which Oceanic had lodged its claim. But the court denied ConocoPhillips' motion to dismiss the case.
East Timor and Australia last week ratified a pact to split revenue in Greater Sunrise, another field in the Timor Sea that could reap $US10 billion for both countries.
Under the pact, Australia and East Timor agreed to put on hold for 50 years claims to jurisdiction and maritime boundaries. ConocoPhillips is one of the developers of Greater Sunrise, which Woodside would operate if the venture partners decided to push ahead with the project, which has been frozen since 2004.
Agence France Presse - February 20, 2007
Dili – Parliament agreed to ratify an agreement with Australia over the management of oil and gas resources in the Greater Sunrise field in the Timor Sea.
"I am glad because after one year, the parliament finally has approved this agreement," Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta told reporters after the vote, with 48 in favor, five against and three abstentions.
"With this agreement, large investors such as Woodside Petroleum, can start to invest in the Greater Sunrise (field) to manage oil and gas," he said.
Woodside Petroleum, which operates the Greater Sunrise field, froze the multi-million dollar project in 2004 as negotiations between Australia and East Timor dragged on.
Under the accord, Australia and East Timor will split the royalties from the field 50:50.
However, Ramos-Horta conceded that many technical details remained to be settled before such investment could actually take place, such as the pipeline from the field.
It is estimated the Greater Sunrise field could deliver 10 bln usd to impoverished East Timor over 20 years.
The Greater Sunrise deposit straddles the eastern lateral boundary of the Joint Petroleum Development Area, an area agreed for development by both countries in the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty.
It is estimated to have deposits worth more than 27 bln usd over the project's life.
The Australian - February 14, 2007
David Nason, Mark Dodd – The riches from the Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea are set to be unlocked with East Timor's parliament expected to vote on the project next week.
In New York for a UN Security Council session, Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta said he was optimistic the parliament would support both the Greater Sunrise arrangements and the related seabed boundary agreement with Australia when the vote was taken on Monday.
It is likely that Australia will also move swiftly to ratify the treaty. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer could invoke a seldom- used national interests clause to speed its passage through parliament.
"At the request last year of... Jose Ramos Horta, I agreed that the two countries would move through their domestic treaties processes as closely in parallel as possible," Mr Downer said last week.
Under the Greater Sunrise deal, East Timor and Australia will share royalties expected to be worth close to $40 billion over the 30-year life of the project.
The parliament had been expected to wait until after this year's presidential and parliamentary elections before taking up the issue. Presidential elections will be held in April, with parliamentary elections to follow in June or July.
It has raised speculation that pro-Woodside forces in the parliament decided to fast-track the ratification after former prime minister Mari Alkatiri was cleared of criminal charges related to last year's riots in Dili.
Dr Alkatiri is among a number of East Timorese political figures wanting a better deal out of Greater Sunrise.
The Australian - February 7, 2007
Mark Dodd – Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has withdrawn plans to invoke a rarely used national-interest exemption clause to fast-track ratification of the Timor Sea Treaty through parliament.
Mr Downer on Monday advised members of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties that he wanted to rubber-stamp the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea, signed more than a year ago.
A meeting scheduled for 7pm yesterday in which Mr Downer was to have explained his reasons for invoking the clause was cancelled late yesterday afternoon by the Foreign Minister.
It followed a report in The Australian yesterday in which Woodside chief executive Dan Voelte said early development of the lucrative Greater Sunrise oil and gas prospect had been dashed because of civil strife in East Timor.
Concerns have been raised on why no progress has been made on tabling the treaty since its signing.
Under CMATS, East Timor's revenue share of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas prospect straddling the boundary of the Joint Petroleum Development Area could be as much as $19 million.
Timorese critics have accused Canberra of sitting on its hands after promising the deal would be quickly ratified.
| Politics/political parties |
Sydney Morning Herald - February 17, 2007
Hamish McDonald – When nominations close at the end of this month for East Timor's April 9 presidential election, expect to see the start of a process aimed at shaking up the foundations of the new nation's politics.
As he has consistently stated to widespread disbelief, the President, Xanana Gusmao, the hero of East Timor's independence struggle, will not stand for another term. But don't believe his story that he wants to become a farmer and grow pumpkins.
In parliamentary elections later this year, Mr Gusmao will stand for election at the head of a new, inclusive political party using the name of the National Council of Timorese Resistance, the CNRT. This is the coalition that achieved an independence vote in the tumultuous 1999 referendum. The aim is to knock the Fretilin party off its pedestal as the dominant political force and remove its majority in the parliament. This was formed from an earlier elected constituent assembly when the United Nations interregnum ended in May 2002 and the new nation was declared.
Meanwhile, the current Prime Minister, Jose Ramos-Horta, is expected to stand for president, in a job swap closely co- ordinated with Mr Gusmao, according to sources close to the two leaders.
Mr Ramos-Horta was a founder of Fretilin in 1974 and Mr Gusmao an early member. However, both withdrew to a party-neutral position during the Indonesian occupation out of disillusionment with Fretilin's exclusive ways and some violent characters among its exiled leaders.
Mr Gusmao's push into active politics means East Timor is heading into months of competitive electioneering. The risks of violence and clashes are high.
Fretilin's assumption that it would naturally rule the country for 50 years has already been shattered by last May's violence. This led to its prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, standing down and its home minister, Rogerio Lobato, facing charges of arming a party hit squad.
Even though prosecutors have recently declared a lack of evidence to charge Dr Alkatiri over the hit squad, they are demanding a seven-year jail term for Mr Lobato. The stain hangs over Fretilin.
In any case, Dr Alkatiri is no great vote-winner, despite being a competent manager of government. Of Yemeni descent and one of the country's small Muslim minority, he spent the 24 years of Indonesian occupation in Mozambique and Angola, and has little affinity with the ordinary citizen. As prime minister he clashed with the powerful Catholic bishops.
Fretilin's leadership is thus heading for a shake-up to counter Mr Gusmao, and perhaps position it to join a unity government after the elections. Moderates such as the Deputy Prime Minister, Stanislau da Silva, or the Foreign Minister, Jose Luis Guterres – who challenged Dr Alkatiri at a party congress last May – are likely to make a move.
Mr Ramos-Horta, the Nobel Peace Prize co-winner, will play a critical role in holding East Timor together if he wins the presidency, as he probably will, given his own popularity and Mr Gusmao's backing.
The presidency would give him more leverage to engineer a solution to the split in the country's small army that precipitated last year's troubles. Nearly 600 of its 1600 soldiers were sacked last March after protesting against alleged discrimination, and became a restive element. Known as the "petitioners", they remain outside the army but are being paid salaries to keep them happy while their future is sorted out. On the other side of the dispute is the army chief who sacked them, Brigadier-General Taur Matan Ruak or "TMR".
As the revered former commander of the anti-Indonesian guerilla resistance after Mr Gusmao was captured, TMR is entrenched in his job, although his standing is damaged by the split. He refuses to negotiate with the petitioners en bloc but has agreed to talk to them individually about a return to the ranks.
It remains to be seen how TMR will address their grievance – that army leaders, mostly veteran "Lorosae" officers from the wilder eastern side of the territory, where guerilla activity was strongest, had discriminated against young "Loromonu" recruits from the western districts close to the Indonesian border.
However, the split runs much deeper in East Timor's complex ethnic and linguistic make-up, going back to pre-colonial times, and spread from the army into gang clashes in Dili last year.
As president, Mr Ramos-Horta would use his role as commander-in- chief rather more "actively" than it has been so far. But getting TMR and the other ex-guerilla army leaders to take his guidance will be a big task.
The Australian - February 5, 2007
Mark Dodd and Nigel Wilson – East Timor's ruling Fretilin Party has threatened to withdraw from parliamentary elections unless they are held before the end of May, following confirmation a presidential vote will take place in April.
President Xanana Gusmao, who set April 9 as the date for presidential elections, has repeatedly said he will not run again. However, he is widely expected to form his own political party and run as an elected member of parliament.
Under East Timor's electoral law, parliamentary elections must take place a minimum of 80 days after the presidential vote. This means the parliamentary poll will most likely be held in late June or early July.
But Mr Gusmao's weekend announcement triggered a threat from Fretilin that it would boycott the parliamentary ballot unless it was held before May 20. Fretilin believes any vote held after that date would be unconstitutional.
East Timorese Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta said as recently as Wednesday that he would not run for the presidency unless there were no other candidates to rule the emerging country, which has been plagued by political instability and violence.
"If there are no other people (as candidates), if everyone thinks I have to accept the responsibility because the state needs it, then I will think it over again," Mr Ramos-Horta said.
UN police backed by Australian and New Zealand military personnel last week arrested 47 suspects, including the leader of a martial arts gang believed responsible for much of the street violence in Dili that has racked the capital for months.
An assortment of weapons were seized during the arrests, including clubs, home-made explosives, darts, knives, machetes and bows and arrows.
Law and order is a pre-requisite for the holding of free and fair elections. The National Electoral Commission has been established and started voter registration in Dili last week.
However, the poll dates are set to delay a start on the $8billion Greater Sunrise oil and gas prospect.
Ratification of the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea, signed in January last year, and the Greater Sunrise International Unitisation Agreement, signed in 2003, has been held up because of the civil strife.
Under CMATS, East Timor's share of the revenues from Greater Sunrise, which straddles the boundary of the Joint Petroleum Development Area between Darwin and East Timor, could be as much as $US14 billion ($19 billion) because revenues will be shared 50-50 with Australia, compared with 80-20 as originally proposed.
But some Fretilin members and independents in the Dili parliament are unconvinced the revised deal under CMATS is in East Timor's interests.
East Timor wants any liquefied natural gas development of Greater Sunrise to be within its borders, which Australian resources company Woodside maintains is uneconomic.
Woodside chief executive Don Voelte was hoping to have progress on Greater Sunrise "early in the New Year", but this hope has been dashed because all major parliamentary action is on hold until after the elections are held.
| Opinion & analysis |
Sydney Morning Herald Editorial - February 28, 2007
At the beginning of this month's long overdue inquest into the deaths of the five Australian-based newsmen at Balibo in 1975, the Crown counsel heralded the hearings as the first "open, public and completely independent" inquiry of a judicial nature into the case. Yet as the inquest moved this week into the knowledge of Australia's electronic intelligence agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, the court was closed to the public and the media for long stretches of key testimony.
The Deputy State Coroner, Dorelle Pinch, agreed to these conditions after the Federal Government's counsel produced sworn letters by the DSD's chief that Australia's defence would be weakened by disclosure of its "sources and methods" – even those from 1975. To her credit, Ms Pinch has kept some DSD evidence in the public domain, including content of certain intercepted Indonesian military signals. But the interested public will continue to wonder whether the agency is revealing all that it knows.
As noted by counsel for one bereaved family, attempts to find out what happened at Balibo met 30 years of "deceit and cover-up" in Canberra. Already DSD intercepts are appearing that were not produced to earlier, internal government inquiries. Two former senior public servants have recalled in detail seeing, while with the Hope royal commission into intelligence and security in 1977, a critical intercept that seems to have vanished. They see it as entirely possible this has disappeared into some "deniable" DSD oubliette. Questions have been raised whether the DSD tones down some intercepts in translation. The agency is thus under some scrutiny itself.
This will double public scepticism about its claim that the "sources and methods" of 31 years ago remain vital national security secrets. The Soeharto regime fell nearly nine years ago. That the DSD can intercept radio signals and tries to crack foreign ciphers is widely known, not least to Indonesia. The agency and its targets have moved on to an entirely new age of satellites, digital communications and computer-generated ciphers.
The legal precedents cited by the Commonwealth counsel for closed hearings relate to recent or continuing terrorism cases, in which security agencies are battling a present-day threat, not to the vintage electronic intelligence scene of 1975. In this case, the public interest in open justice must outweigh DSD jitters. The coroner should have refused the Commonwealth's application for secrecy, and allowed senior federal judges to decide the issue if it went to appeal.
Sydney Morning Herald - February 24, 2007
Hamish McDonald – Australia's spooks are often aghast at the way highly classified intelligence material and techniques leak out into the public domain in the United States.
For example, a year or two into the "war on terror" it became quite widely known that US agencies were using speech recognition software on huge volumes of mobile and satellite phone traffic to pick out the voices of known al-Qaeda operatives, some of whom had conveniently given samples on Al-Jazeera TV.
But maybe this reflects a recognition in the great American fountainhead of innovation that technologies are evolving rapidly, and that any tech-savvy person could have worked out the existence of this capability from published knowledge.
Contrast this with the current picture in courtroom No. 2 in the NSW Coroner's Court, where an inquest into the deaths in October 1975 of the Balibo Five newsmen in East Timor is under way.
Many now rather aged former officials in Canberra's defence, foreign affairs and intelligence echelons are being quizzed about their memories. In the past two days, the inquest has focused on the Government's archive of intercepted Indonesian military signals relating to the deaths.
The intercepts that have been presented are handled as though Australia's very existence depends on them being kept secret.
Each bit of paper is kept in its own manilla envelope, in the briefcase of an officer of the Defence Signals Directorate who sits at the back of the court.
When one needs to be shown to witnesses, he hands it to the Crown counsel assisting the coroner, Mark Tedeschi, QC, who is sworn to secrecy. Only the witness and the deputy state coroner, Dorelle Pinch, can then read it. Its content cannot be mentioned in open court. Counsel for other interested parties, like bereaved family, have limited access and are thus hobbled in their cross- examinations.
When a witness strays into sensitive areas – like decryption of Indonesian signals – up jumps the senior counsel for the Federal Government, Alan Robertson, to head off a line of questioning.
On Monday, when the inquest starts hearing a number of former Defence Signals Directorate and other intelligence personnel, the inquest will probably get even more tightly constrained.
Written statements are heavily blacked out, and it is understood the Commonwealth lawyers are arguing for all the evidence to be heard in camera, even possibly with the state reporting staff and other court aides replaced by federal personnel.
All this to protect intercepts that evidently do not include the bombshell produced on Thursday by the two former Hope royal commission staffers George Brownbill and Ian Cunliffe – that they were shown an intercept in 1977 at the directorate's Shoal Bay station indicating the newsmen were deliberately killed on orders from the Indonesian command.
It will be argued that more than the content, the security blanket protects "sources and methods". But those in use in 1975 are almost as historic as the World War II Enigma operation, now the subject of films and novels.
The Indonesian special forces in Timor were using morse code radio and Swiss electro-mechanical encryption machines not unlike the Enigma sets. A switch to satellite data transmission and computerised encryption took place more than 15 years ago.
Shoal Bay, with its operators in headsets transcribing morse signals and bulky telex machines, was a different era.
That it was listening to Indonesian signals was no secret – even the targets used to send Christmas greetings on air to "all our friends at Shoal Bay".
Certainly there are still some intelligence secrets from the late 1970s that are still validly protected, but these should not be among them – or at least the Commonwealth should have to argue the case, perhaps to an independent panel or bench.
As it seems to be heading, the inquest will end without answering the puzzle of the Brownbill-Cunliffe testimony, and will leave allegations of a cover-up continuing to hover.
There is no sign yet of a concerted effort to verify the source of the intercept shown to the two officials, by interviewing all directorate personnel on duty at Shoal Bay at the time. But after the strong testimony of the two men, it can no longer be dismissed as a probable hoax, mistake or other canard.
This should be of interest to all government officials in charge of security, not least the new Secretary of the Defence Department, Nick Warner, who is in the prime position to prod the intelligence community into full co-operation.
In 1998, while in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, he was charged with providing the second Sherman inquiry all intelligence material relevant to the Balibo case. What he showed Tom Sherman evidently did not include anything like this intercept. Verifying he was not hoodwinked by some informal conspiracy to bury this intercept, or dispelling any charges he was part of it, should add a personal impetus.
The intelligence methods of Balibo belong in a museum. The ridiculous effort to protect them will only make it harder for the current intelligence generation to make a case for secrecy.
Jakarta Post Editorial - February 23, 2007
The Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF), set up by Indonesia and Timor Leste, has finally begun to show its face with its inaugural public hearings.
There is apprehension all around as we follow testimonies regarding the violence before and after the 1999 referendum which led to Timor Leste's independence.
There has already been at least one blunt verdict since the first of several planned hearings started Monday: "There will be little transparency and no accountability," wrote blogger James Dunn, a former expert on crimes against humanity for the United Nations.
But there have been other voices, like that of 19-year-old Belinha Alves, who was among the audience listening to the testimony in Sanur, Bali. Already a witness to much violence despite her young age, she told The Jakarta Post of her high hopes for the CTF process.
"What matters most is a peaceful future. But we also need to know the truth about our past," she said, adding that she trusted the commission would provide the public with this truth. "We will accept the report (of the CTF)," she said.
It is voices from Timor Leste's young generation, like that of Alves, which make us pause and reflect. In simple black-and-white reality, Indonesia was a harsh and often evil colonizer, but with a benevolent face. So much so that many Indonesians were shocked when most Timorese opted for independence. Therefore, those guilty should be punished so we can all start anew.
In the world of Alves and many others, Timorese and Indonesians alike, close relations are shared. This reality, and the obvious need for the young nation to work with Indonesians for its future – without being blocked by angry, powerful quarters fearing prosecution, led Timor Leste President Xanana Gusmao to make a controversial decision and agree to the joint commission.
Based on the "new and unique approach" to "seek truth and promote friendship", as the CTF's terms of reference state, it was essentially a compromise to the other option of dragging suspected violators of human rights in then East Timor to an international tribunal. Such calls increased in the wake of the acquittal of almost all 18 defendants in Indonesian trials of human rights violations in East Timor.
The formula itself poses a despairing prospect for survivors. Even with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as inspiration, experts from South Africa have cited the deprivation of the right to justice for victims.
Pessimists like Dunn, including many Indonesians, do not even expect that the CTF can come up with a credible report, one which Alves and other Timorese would willingly accept – let alone come close to the credibility enjoyed by Timor Leste's earlier truth and reconciliation commission.
This then is the most crucial expectation of the CTF, as it is not tasked to prosecute rights abusers. A credible report from the commission is the last chance Indonesia has to show the world it is sincere about revealing the truth about the 1999 violence in East Timor, and not, as cynics would argue, only rushing to achieve friendship, while forgetting the past.
The world has already given us an opportunity to enforce our own laws on human rights, but since the results of the 2002 trials its trust has almost vanished.
Failing to produce a credible report would leave no other option but to bring suspected violators of human rights to an international tribunal.
Achieving justice for all victims will be arduous. But the minimum expectation is that victims will have their stories told.
A credible result of the CTF would thus be at least an account of what happened, according to the nearest possible truth, free from narrow nationalist inclinations and the instinct to protect the esprit de corps of Indonesia and its military.
This is where concerns lie, in whether Indonesians, particularly those in the CTF, have such freedom. Another concern is whether Indonesians themselves are ready for the truth, as they were rarely exposed to other versions of what their supposedly heroic, selfless soldiers were doing in the territory.
As a CTF member and retired Indonesian general has said, a compromise that is part of reconciliation requires sacrifices. On Indonesia's part, as Agus Widjojo has said, this might mean apologizing to the Timorese for mistakes in the past, including apologies from the Indonesian Military.
This is far from a commitment to bring justice to victims, but it is a start.
CollegiateTimes.com - February 21, 2007
Brett Morris – On Monday, a commission set up by Indonesia and East Timor began its first hearing to further reconciliation between the two countries over the violence that occurred during 1999 when East Timor voted in a referendum to declare independence from Indonesia.
The Commission of Truth and Friendship consists of 10 members, including experts from both countries. However, the new commission will do little to bring justice to those responsible for the crimes perpetuated during the 1999 referendum, as it lacks any real power.
One good reason Americans should care about East Timor and the pursuit of justice for victims in the country is that the US government is directly complicit – and by extension American citizens are complicit – in not only the slaughter that occurred in 1999, but in a more than two-decade-long genocide against the East Timorese people. Only when US citizens understand what has happened can true justice be administered and proper pressure be exerted to promote meaningful reconciliation.
In 1965, an Indonesian general named Suharto took power in Indonesia and installed a dictatorship. He proceeded to murder hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of landless peasants and wiped out the mass-based communist political party that had been run by the peasants. The CIA described this as "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century," comparable to the likes of Hitler and Stalin, though they were happy to hand over lists of suspected communists to the Indonesian military.
The media, always willing to demonstrate their subservience to power, described the slaughter as "a gleam of light in Asia" and that "almost everyone is pleased by the changes being wrought" (New York Times). Suharto was praised right up through the 1990s in the US media – as a "moderate," "at heart benign," "soft- spoken, enigmatic" and a "profoundly spiritual man." The Clinton administration declared that Suharto was "our kind of guy." Corporations, always the government's main constituents, quickly moved in to do business with Suharto's regime, which was described as an "investors' paradise." Chevron and Texaco ran a full page ad in the New York Times titled "Indonesia: A Model for Economic Development."
In 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor, replacing the colonialist Portuguese. The United States and its ally Australia knew the invasion was coming and essentially authorized it. The United States and Australia reasoned that it may be possible to get a better deal on oil reserves in East Timor with a United States- backed Indonesia in power instead of allowing East Timorese independence. At this time, Indonesia was receiving over 90 percent of its arms from the United States in the name of "self- defense" for Indonesia. After the invasion, the arms flow increased at the same time that an arms suspension was declared publicly.
The United Nations Security Council ordered Indonesia to leave East Timor. This failed as then-UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan explained in his memoirs that he took pride in making the United Nations "utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" because the United States "wished things to turn out as they did." Although he admits that by this time 60,000 Timorese had been slaughtered in the invasion with US arms, "almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War." The arms flow peaked during the Carter administration, with the ultimate death toll of East Timorese standing at about 200,000, in the worst case of genocide relative to population since the Holocaust.
Finally, in 1999, East Timor held a referendum on whether to become independent of Indonesia. The population was very courageous and voted that they wished to be independent. Indonesian militia forces backed by Jakarta moved in and killed over 1,400 people and left more than 250,000 displaced.
The Clinton administration insisted that East Timor is "the responsibility of the Government of Indonesia, and we don't want to take that responsibility away from them," despite the fact that Indonesia is a US-backed state under United States control. This was made evident a few days later when Clinton, under enormous international and domestic pressure, reversed the more than two-decades-long support for Indonesia's crimes in East Timor and informed the Indonesian military that the United States would no longer support their crimes. Indonesia quickly complied and immediately withdrew from East Timor. East Timor became an officially recognized state in 2002.
With the magnitude of such crimes, it is necessary to ensure justice through careful and deliberate proceedings. The current commission has no power to bring prosecutions and will have no legal ramifications whatsoever. It can only offer advice. In fact, the commission is most likely an attempt to forestall any real investigations of the crimes. A panel of experts from the United Nations has described the current commission as inadequate. Human rights groups and the Catholic Church in East Timor have described the commission as an "attempt to bury the past rather than pursue justice."
The United Nations should establish an international war crimes tribunal to truly make sure that justice is brought to the perpetrators of crimes in East Timor. Such a body would have enough power and clout to bring criminals to justice. However, it should not be forgotten, that if it was not for United States support and complicity of Indonesia for over two decades, the initial slaughters and eventual invasion could have been easily halted beforehand with a simple command from the master.
Posted on the East Timor News List - February 13, 2007
James Dunn – The current coronial enquiry into the death of Brian Peters at Balibo in October 1975 has brought back vivid memories of a crisis in which I myself played a part.
Then I was in Dili leading an aid mission, which was aware of the presence of those five newsmen at Balibo, and the risks they were taking. I did not share their apparent confidence that their neutral status as journalists would be recognised, and made a last minute attempt to persuade them to pull back from the border area, based on our assessment that an Indonesian attack was imminent.
Two days later I was summoned to an urgent meeting with the Fretilin military commander who told us that the small Fretilin garrison at Balibo had withdrawn in the face of an attack by a large Indonesian force, one supported by tanks and artillery. We gleaned from two members of that garrison that the journalists had probably been summarily executed by the invading troops, an assessment I conveyed by telegram to Senator Willissee, the then Australian foreign minister.
Since then a lot more information has surfaced from witnesses to the tragic events of that time, especially since the end of Indonesian occupation, and it is now really beyond doubt that the newsmen were summarily executed by a special forces unit led by Captain Yunus Yosfiah, who later spent years in East Timor, much of the time commanding one of the most notorious TNI battalions. He subsequently had advanced training in the UK, at an establishment not far from the home of Brian Peters, one of his victims. Yosfiah eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant general, and is now retired. His last post was that of information minister under President Habibie.
Unfortunately, whenever Balibo revelations surfaced our governments moved to question or even discredit them, frustrating the efforts of surviving relatives to achieve closure on this distressing incident.
The current coronial enquiry offers a glimmer of hope that closure will finally be achieved. There is, however, much more to the Balibo incident than this apparent summary execution, and the outcome of the trial could stir those muddied waters, bringing pressure to bear on the parties involved.
Firstly there is Indonesia's role. Jakarta repeatedly insisted the newsmen were killed in crossfire between the warring parties – a tragic accident. If the coroner concludes that the execution was not only deliberate, but was ordered by the TNI command in Jakarta, it will become a more serious matter, despite the lapse of time. At least Indonesia will owe the surviving relatives a formal apology, perhaps from the President. Here it could get complicated, for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, then a captain, was a member of the force that invaded Dili on 7 December 1975, inevitably raising questions about his own role in relation to the atrocities that occurred then, though I hasten to add that during my investigations into such matters, I never came across evidence of any personal involvement of Indonesia's president.
Secondly, the most worrying legacy of Balibo emerges from the roles of Australian governments. From our sophisticated intelligence operations the government knew the newsmen had been executed, and also knew of the atrocities that followed the invasion, but proceeded to cover up for the Suharto regime. John Howard changed course somewhat in 1999, when Australia played a leading role in the INTERFET intervention, but the cover-up policy was unchanged. Hence, Australia continued to discourage exposure of incidents that would expose the TNI's brutal culture. Thanks to that veil of protection a number of TNI officers responsible for crimes against humanity continue to hold senior military posts. We have helped protect a brutal culture from exposure, in effect hampering the fulfillment of Indonesia's transformation to democracy, as well as denying justice to the victims.
The coronial will at best result in only a partial disclosure of what happened at Balibo, and who responsible. Those of us who have long been involved in this matter have mostly focused our anger and accusations on the Indonesian military commanders responsible for the killings back in 1975. It is time we focused on the role of the Australian political establishment whose compliant attitudes and lack of moral courage not only allowed those responsible for the killing to escape, but, arguably, by pandering to the ambitions of the Indonesian generals in the first place, actually encouraged them to believe that they could commit these murders with impunity.
In a sense the Balibo incident represents the tip of an ugly iceberg, one composed of calculated deception, inhumanity and disingenuity. Hopefully the coronial enquiry will encourage an honest approach to a sequence of events that dishonoured the governments and politicians of this country, creating an expectation that in the name of anti-communism or anti-terrorism Australians are prepared condone atrocities.
Sunday Star Times (New Zealand) - February 11, 2007
Anthony Hubbard – The New Zealand government didn't want to make a fuss about the death of Gary Cunningham. It privately supported the Indonesian invasion of Timor, and Cunningham's death was a PR problem.
Cunningham, a New Zealander, died along with four other Australia-based journalists when Indonesian troops swept through the Timorese border town of Balibo in October 1975. Evidence last week at an inquest in Glebe, Sydney, supported what had been long suspected – that Indonesian soldiers murdered the five in cold blood.
A new book by Maire Leadbeater on New Zealand and East Timor shows that officials and the then Labour prime minister, Bill Rowling, did not want to rock the boat over Cunningham.
There would be no "necessity for New Zealand to become involved in the dispute" over his death, officials told Rowling in June 1976. The government's inaction over Cunningham caused little public challenge, Leadbeater writes in Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand's Complicity in the Invasion and Occupation of Timor- Leste.
Australia was by then coming under pressure from the Australian Journalists Association, and ministry officials prepared a briefing for Rowling on Cunningham.
They told him: "There would seem to be no clear-cut case against Indonesia for any specific violation of international law." There was no real need for New Zealand to take action.
To do so "would harm our own relations with Indonesia". The ministry said Cunningham was an Australian resident, employed by an Australian organisation and a member of the Australian Journalists Association. Although he was a New Zealand citizen, his close family lived in Australia. It was shocking that a government should do so little to investigate the death of one of its citizens just to appease a foreign power, Leadbeater told the Sunday Star-Times. Leadbeater, a long-time campaigner on East Timor, is the sister of Green MP Keith Locke, who will help launch her book in parliament on Wednesday. Former Labour Foreign Minister Phil Goff will also speak.
The Australian inquest – held to investigate the death of Brian Peters, an English-born Channel Nine cameraman living in New South Wales – last week heard evidence that Indonesian soldiers killed the journalists.
Official reports said the men were killed in crossfire between the Indonesians and East Timorese militia. But a Timorese witness, known only as Glebe 2, told the inquest that he saw Indonesian special forces officer Yunus Yosfiah shoot Peters as he tried to surrender.
The shots fired by Captain Yunus from his AK-47 at three metres' range were followed by a fusillade from other troops, killing three other journalists, he told the Glebe Coroner's Court.
Peters raised his hands with empty palms outward, said a report in the Sydney Morning Herald. "I believe that he was asking for mercy," the witness said.
Yunus, who was Indonesia's information minister for a year from 1998, told the newspaper the allegations were nonsense. Neither he nor other Indonesian officials or soldiers will give evidence at the inquest.
The accusation against Yunus is not new. It has been made in previous books and by UN investigators, but Indonesia has done nothing to bring him to justice.
The Australian inquest is the first independent judicial inquiry into the Balibo killings that has power to compel witnesses. But it is powerless to force the alleged Indonesian killers to testify.
Australia became aware of the killings within hours, says Leadbeater. "There is no doubt that Australia worked assiduously to help Indonesia cover up the murders." Australian Signals Intelligence transcripts included radio messages such as: "Among the dead are four (sic) white men. What are we going to do with the bodies?"
The Australian government said as little as possible publicly and "also helped to perpetuate the lie that the deaths were mysterious and the culprits unknown", Leadbeater writes.
"When Australian diplomats confided their concerns to their New Zealand colleagues, they did not speak about the journalists' families or express fears for East Timorese. They were worried about the impact on the bilateral relationship of the cumulative effects of 'these irritants'."
Australia was warned about the invasion, but no attempt was made to warn the journalists, who were known to be in the area to be attacked.
"It may never be known whether the Australian officials and ministers deliberately sacrificed the lives of the journalists, or whether key people were simply distracted and did not put two and two together," Leadbeater says.
However, the Sydney inquest may help clear up the mystery – unless Australian government secrecy stymies it. Australia's electronic spy agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, is claiming immunity on national security grounds from revealing what it learned about the killings from intercepted Indonesian communications.
The counsel assisting the coroner in Sydney, Mark Tedeschi QC, referred to the intercepted messages and said a possible Indonesian motive for eliminating the five journalists was to prevent a public outcry in Australia that would have undermined the then Australian government's tacit approval of the invasion.
Australia, the United States and New Zealand had told Indonesia they would play down the invasion of the former Portuguese colony.
Foreign Affairs officer Merwyn Norrish told visiting Indonesian officials in Wellington on December 8, 1975, that New Zealand "had a private and a public position with respect to Timor".
In correspondence made public in 2002, Norrish said: "Publicly we had sought to emphasise the need for an act of self determination, wherever that might lead, while privately we acknowledged that the most logical solution would be one that led to (Indonesian) integration (of East Timor) through self- determination."
The policy of tacit support for the Indonesian occupation continued for many years under National and Labour governments.
A National government downplayed the death of another New Zealand citizen in East Timor in November 1991. Kamal Bamadhaj, of mixed Pakeha and Malaysian parentage, was shot dead in Dili after a massacre by Indonesian soldiers of protesters at Santa Cruz cemetery.
The New Zealand Embassy in Jakarta said the aim should be to get the balance right between demonstrating very serious concern about Kamal's death and avoiding an excessive reaction that might cause "unnecessary damage to an important bilateral relationship".
In spite of a strongly worded formal request for an explanation, Leadbeater says, "initial firmness melted quickly".
Leadbeater, whose book uses government documents issued under freedom of information laws in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the US, says New Zealand's record on East Timor was deplorable. But the documents also showed that the government was sensitive to public protest.
In March 1995, for example, the government postponed a military training visit to New Zealand of five Indonesian army officers after a poster campaign in Wellington asked: "Why is the NZ air force training the Indonesian military to kill the people of East Timor?"
A New Zealand diplomat's letter to an Indonesian admiral, later released, explained: "The reason for the postponement is due to increasing interest among the New Zealand public over recent matters in East Timor." It also blamed "a small but sophisticated and well co-ordinated lobby, sympathetic to the claims of East Timorese exiles, who seek any opportunity to generate anti- Indonesian feeling".
On September 10, 1999, US President Bill Clinton effectively reversed the Western position by insisting Indonesia allow an international force into East Timor to halt massacres by Indonesian and Timorese militias. On the same day, New Zealand suspended its long-standing defence ties with Indonesia.
In August, 78% of Timorese voters had rejected an Indonesian proposal for Timorese autonomy within Indonesia. The country became independent in 2002.
Sunday Star Times (New Zealand) - February 11, 2007
New Zealand's shameful record over East Timor comes into focus again this week. A Sydney inquest is delving into the murder of five journalists, including New Zealander Gary Cunningham, during the Indonesian invasion in 1975.
And a new book by Maire Leadbeater exposes in detail New Zealand's complicity both in the invasion and the murderous Indonesian occupation of what is now Timor Leste. It is an open question whether our politicians and officials have learned the right lessons from this disgraceful business. So let's list them.
The first is that the self-proclaimed "realist" school of international relations is blind and self-defeating. Hard-headed diplomats in western capitals made a conscious decision to feed East Timor to the Indonesian beast. They did not want a small, easily sacrificed nation to upset an important ally in the Cold War. They feared Fretilin would take Timor into the communist camp, although Fretilin was actually a social democratic movement. They decided that independent Timor, in short, would be better dead than red. But throwing Timor to the dragon did not "work".
Timor resisted and for the next 30 years there was a rising tide of international woe that infuriated the Indonesians and disgraced the West. That is the flaw in the policy of realpolitik. By placing "national interests" ahead of any moral consideration, it underestimates the permanent influence of morality in human affairs. Timor refused to allow itself to be a pawn in the bloodless chess game of international diplomacy. Protesters and journalists refused to let Timor die.
Timorese courage and international outrage finally led to Timorese independence. Publicity was also crucial – and that is the second lesson from Timor. If the leaders of the West had had their way, Timor would have been quietly strangled and buried in a distant corner of the Indonesian empire. Henry Kissinger told President Soharto to do his invading fast.
"It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly," Kissinger told the tyrant. But it is difficult, in the era of instant global communication, to keep murder quiet.
And that is the third lesson of East Timor: diplomacy should never be left to diplomats and politicians. Both groups are, by nature and training, inclined to appeasement, deal-making, secrecy and cynicism. Left to themselves, they will try to "fix things": and the usual result will be to sacrifice the weak to the strong, the defenceless to the aggressor, justice to "peace and quiet." That is why they need always to be watched and held to account. Diplomats in particular have created an aura of expertise in order to protect their power. Foreign affairs, they would have us believe, is a high intellectual mystery open only to the specially-trained. In fact, this is nonsense.
Thirty-one years after the first massacre, who has been proved right about East Timor? Not the highly-educated and well-informed officials who thought Timor could be quietly suppressed. Not the politicians who thought appeasement of Indonesia was the only realistic option. Not the thugs in Jakarta who thought Timor was a small morsel to swallow. The ones who were proved right were people like Jose Ramos Horta, who kept the flame alive during decades of darkness. They were the journalists who kept telling the truth about genocide and the mothers of murdered sons who refused to be fobbed off with official lies.
This is the triumphant message of East Timor: that courage and truth-telling will defeat the professional deal-makers and appeasers. There is an analogy here between the "realists" of diplomacy and the hard-right proponents of free-market economics. Devotees of realpolitik think nations do nothing but follow their own interests. The marketers believe that individuals merely pursue their own economic advantage. Both are catastrophically wrong.
| Daily media monitoring |
Detention of Major Alfredo
The request to capture Major Alfredo has been reported by all national media. According to Timor Post, Alfredo has had the support of many people but at the same time creating concern among the population. This daily also reported that, according to information received, the international forces were a distance of 200 metres away from Alfredo and his group in the village of Same, Manufahi District, and were also using airplanes in their attempts to capture them. In the Parliament, MPs debated the capture of Alfredo hoping that it would not cause a negative impact on the population. MPs Antonio Ximenes (UDC) appealed to the government, the UN and Major Alfredo to come to an agreement and avoid bloodshed among the population. Clementino Amaral (KOTA) is of the opinion that Alfredo will not easily submit to capture. Amaral also appealed to those involved not to shoot at each other, as it would leave the population in panic and seeking refuge somewhere else. Joco Goncalves (PSD) said there are many versions of the alleged confiscation of guns at the border post and therefore it needs to be investigated. He said that he hopes Alfredo peacefully surrenders and avoids any reaction that can lead to further problems as many youths are behind him. A university student by the name of Eko Nata Jeronimo said he agrees with the request of President Gusmco for the international forces to capture Alfredo but the government should also carry out an investigation on how the guns were taken from the border police posts. Jeronimo is of the opinion that if the BPU received professional training from the international forces to provide security to the nation, how could they just let the guns be taken away from them. MP Elizario Osorio Florindo (Fretilin) is of the opinion that Alfredo must be captured alive, to collect all evidence. Mariano Sabino (PD) said the State must balance the demands of Alfredo and his group in relation to justice, to the political and military crisis of April/May 2006 adding that the capture of Alfredo would have an impact on the election process and that it would not put an end to the crisis if justice is not applied to all the authors of the crisis.
According to the media, the International Stabilization Forces (ISF) have started setting up security operations in some districts and roads block to Same stopping the population from traveling in and out of that district.
Despite the encirclement by the forces, Alfredo has reportedly said that he would not accept being captured based on the orders of the President and the State, saying they do not have the right to give orders to capture him since the orders must come from the Prosecutor General. Alfredo has also reportedly said that he borrowed the guns from BPU to protect it from some Fretilin leaders who want to use them for their political interest. He pointed out that BPU Commander Antonio da Cruz, Bobonaro District Commander Antonio Maulata and some leaders of Fretilin met last week to draw up plans, designed by da Cruz, to attack him. Alfredo said he's sad that a police commander in uniform is using his job to defend the interest of a political party and not the population. He said that Antonio da Cruz had previously joined Rogerio Lobato and Mari Alkatiri to distribute guns to civilians. PNTL BPU agent, Joao Martinho who joined Alfredo, also affirmed that Alfredo took the guns from the police post at Tunubibi border because some political party leaders want to use them for their party interest.
The spokesperson for the Petitioners', Lieutenant Salsinha Gastco, told the media Tuesday in Same/Manufahi District that the petitioners are considering to submit to the command under the leadership of Major Alfredo as the superior commander, if Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta does not have the goodwill to resolve the problems the petitioners are facing. According to STL, a big group of petitioners have joined Alfredo and his group in Same/Manufahi following his disappearance from Aifu/Ermera weeks ago. Gastco stressed that the case of Alfredo and the 'petitioners' are different but he considers Alfredo as his superior when they are together. In relation to the recommendations of the Notable Commission, Gastco reiterated that the 'petitioners' are willing to return to F-FDTL Headquarters and resolve the problems only after those responsible for discrimination within the national defence force face justice. He blames both former and present Prime Ministers and Fretilin government for failing to resolve the problems of the petitioners, noting that they made many promises but there has been no concrete implementation on the ground. The petitioners' spokesperson further said that the government has neglected the people therefore his group is prepared to give their lives to safeguard the nation and help the people.
Youths in Same/Manufahi have peacefully protested against the operations of the International Stabilization Forces demanding that RDTL constitution be respected or the population will stand up to defend it. According to one of the demonstrators, Francisco da Costa, the action was also to support Alfredo and stressed that Alfredo's presence in Same has not caused any trouble. He said that they are not happy with the International Forces presence in the area. (TP, DN, STL)
Rice from Singapore arrives in Dili
About 200 tones of rice from Singapore are scheduled to arrive in Dili today. According to the Minister of Development, Arcanjo da Silva, after 14 March, another 2000 tones of more rice will be imported to the country and 2000 more from Thailand on March 24. Da Silva said the government has allocated 280 tones of rice for sale in Dili at the price of US$2 per 5 kilograms. In the meantime, there has been criticism by the President of the Trades and Industry Council, Ricardo Nheu, that the quality of rice provided by the government for sale is 25-40% rot. (STL)
State empowers ISF to capture Alfredo
Timor-Leste government, President of the Republic and the National Parliament have empowered the ISF Forces to urgently capture Major Alfredo and his group in relation to the attack and the removal of weapons at the border police posts of Maliana and Suai on Sunday. Addressing the nation on Monday evening, the President of the Republic who is also the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, said there is no other way to resolve Alfredo's problem since he has clearly shown that he does not respect the State or its institution by dismantling the Police Force. The President appealed to the population to sit quietly and cooperate in order for the operation to proceed smoothly. The President said everything had been done to resolve the problem of Alfredo through passive means in an attempt to avoid a military solution. He said that Alfredo has manipulated the situation by being inconsistent with what he says.
In relation to the attack, Minister of Interior Alcino Barris said an investigation will be carried out on the commander of the Border Patrol Unit (BPU) and his elements regarding the ransacked weapons. He said that he wants to know why the police didn't react to the attack. Barris said, according to information he received, 18 men carried out the attack, which resulted in the loss of 25 weapons from the posts of Maliana and Lolotoe. He refused to further comment on the issue.
In the meantime, contacted by phone on Monday, Major Alfredo Reinado said that he did not steal weapons. He said he asked nicely for them from BPU officers to defend the population and that this can be confirmed with the police officers at the border. Alfredo said he has 16 weapons and not 18 as has been claimed by the Minister of Interior.
According to Timor Post, a source that refused to give a name, confirmed that three weapons from Salele-Suai were taken in an amicable way and not stolen. The source said that when Major Alfredo and his group arrived at the Salele post there were six BPU officers. Upon Alfredo's request for the weapons to defend the population, three of the officers left their posts and guns behind which were then confiscated by Major Alfredo and the remaining three ran away from their post with their guns, the anonymous source said. (DN, TP, STL)
CNRT Party to deceive the people: Alkatiri Speaking in Oecussi during the swearing-in of Fretilin Special Region Monitoring Electoral Commission for Oecussi enclave, the party's Secretary General Mari Alkatiri stated the he doesn't want the party to sleep and take for granted that they've won the elections because some people who want to put down Fretilin are working on strategies to create a new party called the Timorese National Resistance Council (CNRT) which would also be a party to deceive the people. Alkatiri further said that right from the start the war against Timor-Leste was to make Fretilin disappear by killing Nicolau Lobato and his colleagues but despite that Fretilin continued to grow. He also underscored that the party no longer supports independent candidates for the presidential elections as they have their own. (STL)
Fretilin gave me a three legged chair: Ramos-Horta
Ramos-Horta described his power in office since taken over the Premiership position as a three legged chair given to him by Fretilin to sit on. He asked how can one sit on a three-legged chair trying to balance without falling and with hot coal beneath the chair. He said that he had accepted the responsibility as Prime Minister due to the crisis and because the President of the Republic, Fretilin Central Committee (CCF) and the two Bishops had bestowed their trust in him. Speaking during a gathering in Laga to announce his decision to run for the Presidential elections Ramos-Horta told the people present in Laga, in Baucau District, that following the crisis of 28 April 2006, he alone traveled along the roads to see the situation, that he traveled to the airport to meet with the IDPs at different times of night, he persuaded people on the streets to return to their residents, visited the wounded from both UIR, PNTL and F-FDTL in the hospital and traveled to all the districts to reassure the presence of the State not seeking power or a seat. Ramos-Horta said some people have asked him to be accountable for his work as Foreign Minister and Cooperation to which he replied that the whole government must be accountable for the people. He said that under his leadership he had established good cooperation with Asia, Africa, Europe and North America and diplomatic ties in 101 nations. The Minister also praised the people in the districts for their maturity for not getting involved in the crisis that had only affected Dili. (STL)
Japanese government financial assistance for elections
The government of Japan has decided to donate a total of US$723,000 to the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections through UNDP. According to a press communiqui received by Diario Nacional the financial assistant would help the implementation of the elections to proceed successfully. (TP)
FI shot to defend themselves: Rerden
The commander of the International Security Forces, Brigadier Mal Rerden reportedly said the forces acted in self-defence on Friday when they were attacked, leaving one Timorese dead and two injured. Rerden further said two soldiers were involved in the shootings, one has been injured and an investigation is being undertaken. Meanwhile MP Antonio Ximenes (PDC) said he totally rejects the attitude of the Australian forces in the shootings of IDPS, adding that the people of Timor-Leste have many times become victims of the Australian Forces as a result of their actions. Members of Commissions A, B and F of the Parliament have begun their investigation and according to Alfredo da Silva, a member of Commission B, families of the victims claim that the Australian forces were patrolling the area in the airport and started shooting as a provocation to the population. They said the victims were in the process of moving to dryer grounds within the camp due to the rain when they were shot by the forces. According to MP Antonio Ximenes the youth killed was a university student in his fifth semester. (DN, TP)
UNPOL and GNR tortures students
Students University of UNPAZ have condemned the actions of UNPOL namely GNR and the Royal Malaysian Police for allegedly torturing two UNPAZ students detained during the protest in front of the government palace on February 20. In a joint press conference held Friday, representatives of UNPAZ, UNTL, UNSIL and UNMAR said they held the demonstration in a peaceful manner to call the attention of the leaders the problem of rice shortages which was affecting the population. (STL)
Major Alfredo's group attack police post in Maliana
The border post of Maliana police, southeast of Timor-Leste, was attacked today by a group of men, headed by Major Alfredo Reinado, a source investigating the incident told Lusa. According to the same source, the attackers removed at least 17 weapons from the police post. It is unknown whether there were injuries or deaths during the incident. Major Alfredo, former commander of Timorese military police, was the relevant figure of the military-political crisis of April/May 2006 in Timor-Leste. On 30 August, last year, he escaped from Becora prison, Dili where he was detained for illegal possession of war materials. Three weeks ago, the Prosecutor General of the Republic and Alfredo Reinado signed "an explicit agreement' in Gleno to resolve the situation of the military, Timorese Prime Minister Ramos-Horta revealed to Lusa Saturday. He said there was an explicit agreement signed by the two in which for the first time, Reinado compromised to be heard on the weapons case, Ramos-Horta said at the time. Still in agreement with the Prime Minister, Alfredo Reinado had also agreed to appear before Justice in the case of shootings which occurred on May 23, 2006, in which allegedly one member of F-FDTL [Falintil-Forgas de Defesa de Timor-Leste] was killed by him. During the interview with Lusa Saturday, Ramos-Horta added, "I hope that the agreement will have a logical conclusion with the arrival of Reinado in Dili." (DN)
Lawyer denies allegations involving Lobato
The Lawyer representing Rogerio Lobato has condemned rumours of Rogerio's getaway to another country as irresponsible, stressing that his client continues to be in his residence in Farol. Nelson de Carvalho said such rumours are spread to further damage the reputation of his client. (TP)
I'm not confronting Lu-Olo: Ramos-Horta
UNDERTIM and Fretilin Grupu have supported Ramos-Horta's candidacy to the Presidential election claiming he has the capacity to take the nation forward. Introducing the presidential candidate at his home town of Laga, Baucau District, Cornelio Gama alias Laga L7 said his party, UNDERTIM has only trusted two people President Xanana Gusmco and Ramos-Horta therefore when Xanana declined to run for second term in office his party proposed Ramos-Horta. He also appealed to those present to accept the results of the elections. Speaking on the occasion, Ramos- Horta said he chose Laga because the people and the village is poor but good and that he is ready to take on the responsibility of the 13 districts. He said that the people who have supported him are some from UNDERTIM, Fretilin, PSD, PD, CPD RDTL and ASDT, adding that his spokespersons are Dionisio Babo, Victor da Costa and L7. Ramos-Horta stressed that he accepted the responsibility from UNDERTIM party because the majority of the members are poor people, without shoes and are former veterans, clandestine and resistance fighters who gave their total support for Falintil. He said he is not scared to run against other candidates as he is not competing against Fretilin but is a candidate of the people and the political parties who have collected 7000 signatures. The Nobel Laureate says he fully respects Lu-Olu and therefore he is not confronting Lu-Olo as he was also the founder of Fretilin and the history should not be removed. He said "if you belong to one party you must open your doors to all the parties'. (DN)
If Fretilin wins justice will be put in order: Alkatiri
About 10,000 people attended Fretilin's gathering on Saturday in Oecussi for the swearing-in of members for the monitoring commission as well as to present Francisco Guterres "Lu-Olo"as the new presidential candidate. Speaking during the event, Mari Alkatri, the party's Secretary General said if Fretilin wins both Presidential and Parliamentary elections the priority would be to adjust the justice system. In the meantime, it was reported that the Ferry's first trip to Oecussi was delayed by a few hours due to an overload with Fretilin leaders, militants and members of the government who were participating in the Fretilin gathering. Some of the population from IDP camps who wanted to return to Oecussi managed to get in the ferry. Following a heated argument some people had to leave the boat, reported the media Monday. (DN, TL, STL)
Population attacks Chefe Suco
A group attacked Chefe Suco of Vila-Verde on Wednesday disagreeing with the government program to sell rice. According to Andre Fernandes, chefe suco of Vila-Verde, a group of people who disagreed on buying rice from the government attacked him by throwing a spear missing him but hitting the door of his house following an agreement by the community to have rice on sale in their area. Fernandes is of the point of view that these people do not want to pay for the rice saying the rice from the government should be free of charge and not for commercial purposes.
250 tones of rice to the sub-villages
The Ministry of Labor and Community Reinsertion and the Ministry of Development plans to distribute today a total of 250 tones of rice to vulnerable people in 24 sub-villages of Dili. In the meantime, Deputy Prime Minister Estanislau da Silva reportedly said rice import will arrive in the country sometime this week. Da Silva said there are no indications that anyone has died as a result of food shortage and stressed that the problem can not be resolved with rock attacks. (DN, STL)
Students rejects CVA program
University students from UNTL, ARY, UNDIL, Dom Martinho and UNPAZ held a meeting and called on the attention of the country leaders that the recent public hearing program of Comissco Verdade e Amizade (CVA) in Bali does not reflect the victims' wishes and it has been a manipulation by holding the hearing in Bali rather than Timor-Leste. The students' appealed to the government and the Parliament to pay more attention to the peoples concerns and problems stating that the time is not appropriate to discuss the demands of CVA but the friendship within the country to stop the violence here and that for justice to prevail there should not be amnesty. The sovereign bodies must focus on the basic necessities of the population. They also called on the abolition of the pension for members of the Parliament and lamented the action of UNPOL in detaining and torturing two of their colleagues from UNPAZ. The groups' spokesperson said they rejected the CVA public hearing in Bali because they don't want the involvement of the victims and their families, adding that the group will continue to fight for justice to the victims in a spirit of nationalism and patriotism. The group said it is not affiliated with any political party. (DN)
People have questioned UNPOL operations: Barris
Minister of Interior Alcino Barris said the some actions of UNPOL have raised a few questions among the population for detaining members of one group and not the others. Based on this matter, Barris said he constantly meets with UNPOL and has brought the subject to their attention, adding that both the MI and UNPOL will be discussing operation strategies and he hopes that it will proceed properly in the long term.
President of Partido Democratico (PD) Fernando Lasama reportedly said UNPOL is already discriminating in relation to security by providing security to Mari Alkatiri who is no longer the Prime Minister. Lasama wants to know why so many numbers of UNPOL provided security to Alkatiri during a political activity in the District of Gleno. He said if that is the case then he would request UNPOL for security for PD political campaign but stressed that if his party would ask for security it would create a perception among the community that leaders are scared of their own people. Therefore, he asked UNMIT to look into this matter as it is not appropriate. He said that if this is the case then all parties are entitled to security and not only Fretilin. President of PMG, Hermenegild "Kupa" Lopes said his party considers the actions of the police discriminatory because Mari Alkatiri is not a member of the government or the prime minister. He said the government is also responsible for not removing the assets still used by Mari like the house he is staying, the car and the bodyguards. (DN, STL)
Impact of rice crisis
The impact of the rice crisis in the country has led to damages of the Ministry of Development building, government and UNMIT cars. Two government cars were burned and seven UN cars were damaged from rock throwing. (TP)
'I will assure Security and Stability': Lu-Olo
Francisco Guterres Lu-Olo said in a press conference held on Tuesday at CCF Comoro that he will together with the other Organs of sovereignty to work towards assuring stability. He said that he can't use the law anyway he likes, because the law is above everyone, and it should be applied equally to all. " If I become elected as President of the Republic I will follow the Constitution...it's a democracy and I will accept whatever outcome will be, "sad Lu-Olo. (Diario)
'Need to put posts in areas of conflict': Alcino Barris
Minister of Interior, Alcino Barris on Monday at the Ministry of Interior, told Diario that some police posts are already in place but in some areas the delay is due to the need for rehabilitation including water supply and the installation of toilets and electricity. He said that every day he requests the UNPOL to expedite plans as quickly as possible in order to put the posts in problematic areas like Fatuhada, Ailok laram, Bairro Pite, Matadouro and so on, to prevent conflicts from escalating.
The Minister of Interior, Alcino Barris said that, members of the Unit of Rapid Response (UIR), beginning next week will be able to carry pistols when responding together with UNPOL to any incident. (Diario)
'Criminal do not deserve security': Sabino
The General-Secretary of Democratic Party (PD), Mariano Sabino said that Mari Alkatiri is a criminals and doesn't deserve to have tight security in instances such as when the Fretilin party went to the District of Ermera for their consolidation. He said security is for the entire population and not just for leaders only, he told STL at Hotel Dili on Monday. He added, "Mari was afraid and that's why he had security from UNPOL, GNR and the Pakistani forces because it was from his incompetence and the distribution of guns to civilians that made this crises escalate." (STL)
Government doesn't hire judges and Prosecutors from CPLP - Sarmento
Minister of Justice Domingos Sarmento, on Monday at Hotel Timor, responded to the questions concerning the Judges and Prosecutes from CPLP countries that are working in Timor-Leste. He said that its not the Government that hires the judges and persecutors, its the UN. "He said they are here not representing a CPLP country; they are here as internationals judges and prosecutors, according to the law of Timor-Leste " Code of Judicial Magistrate decree" which allows international judges and prosecutes to come and work together with Timorese judges and prosecutors in the Courts, Sarmento said. (STL)
Statement of father Maubere irresponsible - Estanislau
Vice Primer Minister with Minister of Agriculture Estanislau da Silva talking to the journalist at the NP said that he considers the statement made by Father Domingos Soares Maubere as irresponsible because he accused the Government of keeping the rice and selling it to militants of Fretilin. "I say this because as a militant of Fretilin, I have not bought any rice from here. In my office I receive people from all other political parties such as Joao Goncalve, Clementino Amaral, Vicente Maubusi and others. The Government is making an effort to help the population. We have already contacted the Governments of Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and Vietnam regarding this matter and in a week or two rice will arrive here. Therefore, for I ask the priest instead of merely talking, to come to the Government for clarification," Estanislau said. (Diario) Population attacked cars and the MD building
Shortages of rice is the reason people of Dili threw stones at the MD building, while the Minister was having a meeting with the partners on possible ways to solve the shortages,on Monday morning. Some managed to break into the warehouse and by night hundreds of people where gathering there to see if they could get some rice. UNPOL was already deployed there to obstruct and made some arrests. According to TP, the presence of UNPOL there made the people angry and they started to throw stones at the UNPOL officers there.
MP Antonio Ximenes said to TP that he doesn't blame the population for behaving in this manner as it is the fault of the Government and UNMIT and if they don't solve this quickly the population will break into other warehouses. (TP)
Government debating Alfredo's case: Monteiro
Prosecutor General, Monteiro said the government plans to advance Alfredo's case by debating it this week in the Presidential Palace. The hearing process will be decided next Thursday. Monteiro said it would be a high level government meeting that would try and find a solution to the case. He refused to comment on any interference from the government. (STL)
We cannot deny violence in Dili: Bishop Basilio
The Bishop of Baucau Diocese, Basilio do Nascimento said the problems in the country are mainly centered in Dili and not in the districts stressing that security should be a contribution from all the people. In a separate article in Diario Nacional, the Bishop reportedly told the media following a meeting with President Gusmco that it would be difficult to resolve the crisis in Dili and, therefore, he suggest all those responsible for the country offer the best option to overcome the problem. (STL, DN)
Ambassador disappointed with lack of participation
Malaysian Ambassador to Timor-Leste, Mohd Azlan Razali stressed disappointment on the lack of participants to the conference on Timor-Leste Accession To Asean Dialogue Series, noting that more Timorese should attend such important events. Ambassador Razali said that, based on the information he received from the government of Timor-Leste, members of the National Parliament, civil society, NGOs and other entities related to the economic areas were all participating but in reality not many representatives of the mentioned institutions were present. (DN)
Parliament asks minister to resign following escape
Members of Commission A of the National Parliament want the Minister of Justice to resign following the escape of six prisoners from Becora Prison on Saturday. Alexandre Corte-Real said the minister must be responsible as it is the second time prisoners have escaped from that prison, noting that the escape of the prisoners can be a threat to the community. Corte-Real said when Alfredo and other people escaped from Becora prison the Minister of Justice blamed the international forces that were providing security but the minister must ask himself what has gone wrong. MP Antonio Ximenes (PDC) argues that the prisoners are escaping because they have completed their temporary detention and their cases should already be processed in the court and that the Minister should resign based on lack of capacity to manage his ministry, as should the President of the Court of Appeal, Claudio Ximenes for the prisoners' pending court cases. He also blames the Minister of Interior for weak security measures within the jail. In the meantime, the Minister has announced the establishment of an investigation commission to look into the escape. (STL)
PNTL still too inexperienced to carry operations alone
Minister of Interior, Alcino Barris said PNTL is still not experienced in holding operations alone hence they continue to work with UNPOL. He said that only with time after all the PNTL officers are reactivated and the structures established, will PNTL take over the responsibilities and UNPOL will be in the role of advisors. Barris stressed that PNTL still cannot hold operations due to the conditions of the equipment but in the meantime some of the PNTL officers are now involved in various department like traffic or criminal investigation and soon they will also be stationed in vital areas like the courts, power stations, ports, etc. (DN)
15 political parties contesting elections
A total of 15 political parties have now registered in the justice Ministry and approved by the Court of Appeal, Minister of Justice Domingos Sarmento told the media Monday. According to the Minister, all the parties are contesting the 2007 legislative elections. (STL) Rice shortage not government failure: Ramos- Horta
Prime Minister Ramos-Horta said the problem of rice shortage in the country is not the government failure but a regional problem. To overcome the problem, Ramos-Horta said the government plans to import rice from China. In the meantime, Falintil former commander for region IV, Ernesto Fernandes Dudu said the government is distributing rice only to members of Fretilin, the martial arts group PSHT and Korka. (TP, STL)
Members of martial arts group sentenced
On Monday, the court sentenced 17 members of the martial arts group PSHT to 10 months imprisonment for attacking the police squad in Bidau, Akadirihun in December.
UN considers Alfredo a threat to elections
All the media reported on SRSG's press conference Friday. In Saturday's headlines, Timor Post reported that the UN considers Major Alfredo a threat to the elections because he still has some heavy firearms and he is a fugitive. But the SRSG hopes that Alfredo will submit peacefully to justice. On Monday, STL reported that SRSG Khare reportedly said UNMIT would suggest the establishment of a pact for the political parties to abstain from violence and money politics in order to have successful elections, underlining that the election would be a unifying and not a divisive element for the people of Timor-Leste. Hence the people and the leaders must be committed to peace and stability and also in order to have a successful election, UNMIT is providing security. Mr. Khare also informed during the press conference that UNMIT's mandate would be extended for another year due to the security situation in the country and that the UN Security Council has decided to increase the number of police to 140 and they would also monitor the situation in the districts. (TP, STL, DN)
Becora prison escapees
Six prisoners have reportedly escaped from Becora prison by climbing the back wall of the prison with a rope and escaping through the cornfield. According to DN, the prison area has been under the presence of strong security from the Australian forces which chased and captured one of the escaped prisoners. STL reported that the escape occurred on Saturday afternoon at around 15:30hrs. Manuel Exposto, Director of the prison, said the international forces and police have been notified and are taking over the case. (DN, STL)
Alkatiri incites situation
Fretilin's consolidation gathering and the swearing-in of members for monitoring the 2007 election in Ermera was under tight security from the international forces and UNPOL, reported STL Monday. According to this daily, Gleno stadium was encircled with UNPOL security and only people with Fretilin membership card were allowed in. STL also reported that the presence of Alkatiri was seen as an incitement. According to STL, the numbers of Fretilin members from Ermera could be counted but adding the members from some nearby districts one could say that about 500 people participated in the gathering.
Alkatiri reportedly told the crowd Saturday that it is guaranteed that Fretilin will win 60% of the votes in the District of Ermera even though it is the opposition area, adding that he will return to campaign. (STL, DN, TP)
Cancellation of tourist visit an exaggeration: Guterres
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Jose Luis Guterres reportedly said the decision of UNPOL to cancel the visit of about 1000 tourist to Dili was a bit exaggerated and was not in agreement with his office. Guterres further said he did not receive information and should be consulted on the decision about the cancellation noting that the decision gives a bad image to the country, reported Timor Post Saturday. In relation to the tourist visit, MP Elizario Ferreira (Fretilin) said any decision from UNPOL has to be in consultation with the government as the problem in the country is between Timorese people and not against foreigners. He cited as an example, traders from China and Indonesia who go everywhere without any problem.
Diario Nacional reported that the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation was not happy with the decision of UNPOL's SMS to about 1000 tourist, without notifying the government of their decision to stop the tourist from visiting Dili. In a separate article, the same daily reported SRSG Khare as saying that the UN did not cancel the tourists' trip, but that the tourists refused to disembark when their demands for police personal security were not met. Timor Post Monday reported that SRSG Khare rejected accusations that UNPOL cancelled the tourist visit, adding that the tourists made the decision not to come to Dili.
Presidential candidates Partido Social Democrata (PSD) has nominated MP and founder of the party, Lucia Lobato, for the April Presidential elections. Lobato said she would focus on five points for her campaign, strengthening of the national unity, strengthening Timor-Leste sovereignty, equal rights for women and men, honouring the war veterans and strengthening the justice system.
The people from the districts of Manatuto, Aileu and Oecussi have elected and supported the President of Fretilin, Francisco Guterres 'Lu-Olo', for the April Presidential elections. Alkatiri reportedly said he fully supports Lu-Olo, but the decision needs to be made by the party's National Political Commission.
Prime Minister Ramos-Horta told the media Saturday, upon his arrival from New York and Germany that it is very hard to run as a candidate for the presidential elections in Timor-Leste hence he needs to think whether to run as an independent or through a political party. The Prime Minister also said that the international community, starting from the government of Germany, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia and many countries in the Asian countries have asked him to take the responsibility as the President of the nation. He said a team has already started collecting signatures to candidate him but it is a decision he is yet to make, stressing that even if he does not run for the elections he will continue to work for the country in many areas such as ambassador, professor, within NGOs or preparing to be the candidate for the Secretary General post in 2012.
Lobato likely to be sentenced to over 30 years
Prosecutors have warned that based on the evidence from the witnesses, former Minister of Interior Rogerio Lobato is likely to be sentenced to over 30 years in prison. Prosecutor Bernardo Fernandes and Felismino Cardoso said that based on the accusations Rogerio Lobato has breached three articles of the penal code (Indonesia) and UNTAET regulations currently in force. He is being accused of using and distributing weapons to civilians, embezzlement or use of state properties without justification and tentative homicide. The accusations were made verbally in court and the case will resume on March 7 to allow the court analysis before presenting the final verdict. (DN, TP)
Horta and Taur must be honest: Pinto
Political observer Julio Tomas Pinto said statements by Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak and Prime Minister Ramos-Horta were more of a political nature than based on justice. Pinto said both entities should speak on what they knew about the distribution of guns, noting that the declaration of Taur has left many people sad and pessimistic about the justice process. According to Julio Pinto the statement of the two Timorese leaders not only defends Rogerio Lobato but the elite politicians and can also be interpreted as saying that justice is only for the small/common people. He also said people who wanted to support Horta for the Presidential elections have now withdrawn following his court statement, and in the case of Taur's statement, have left many involved in the justice process deceived as it can be assumed that Taur does not want confrontation with Rogerio Lobato's supporters, and also his statement in court is totally the opposite of the statement he gave to the International Commission Of Inquiry. Therefore the political observer says it is imperative they are honest and state what they know about the distribution of weapons from Rogerio Lobato or face not having the trust of the people to take the nation forward. (TP, DN, STL)
Company protest cancellation of tourist visit
About 400 tourists were scheduled to disembark in Dili on Thursday for a few hours to visit the capital and other symbolic sites but were stopped on orders from UNPOL due to security reasons. Zacarias Costa, the director of the tourism travel company Mega Tours protested at the cancellation of the visit which had been organized several months in advance in conjunction with the government's tourism department, noting the company has incurred financial losses, not to mention discouraging future tourists from travelling to Timor-Leste. Da Costa said many UNPOL officers were at the port to provide security but could not do anything as the decision had already been made by some UNPOL officers and not further negotiation could take place as the captain of the cruise decided to continue with the voyage to Darwin. (TP, STL)
PSD will not support Ramos-Horta for elections
Mario Carrascalao, President of PSD said his party has withdrawn their support for Ramos-Horta's candidacy for the Presidential elections for not behaving as an independent person and as Nobel Laureate during the crisis, reported Timor Post Friday. Carrascalao said the court statement of Ramos-Horta in relation to the distribution of guns allegedly being distributed by Rogerio Lobato influenced his party's decision to support the candidacy. (TP)
Public audience on project bill
The National Parliament is holding public hearings on the proposed bill on clemency and amnesty with the various civil society institutions including international representatives to hear their opinions and suggestions on the bill. Vicente Faria, President of Commission A of the Parliament in charge of this matter, said the bill was previously proposed in 2001-2002 but was not passed. Faria said due to the current crisis it is important for the document to be legalized with the intention to find political and judicial stability to ensure that the law is not against the Constitution. He said that amnesty can only be given by the President of the Republic when someone has been already convicted.
Jose Luis Oliveira from HAK Association reportedly told Timor Post following his participation in the hearing that the irony of the proposed bill is that it focuses on amnesty for people involved in murder, distribution of guns, corruption, crime against public order and so forth but it does not cover the defamation crime. He agrees Timor-Leste must have amnesty laws but stressed it would not resolve the current crisis. (DN, TP)
Government supports demonstration
The peaceful demonstrations yesterday organized by 32 chefe de sucos, and sub-administrators of Dili have been reportedly financed by the Government Ministry of Labour and Community reinsertion. The aim of the event was to call for the population, namely the youth in Dili, to refrain from violence. Addressing the demonstrators, Minister of Education Rosalia Corte-Real said her ministry is concerned with the future of the nation's youth and the general population as well but the country is in the hands of the youth to carry it forward. Minister for Labour and Community Reinsertion Arsenio Bano appealed to the population and the youth not to allow the capital Dili to be a place of violence and said that since the election is nearing, people should not bow to any political pressure and they choose who they want. He told the crowd that the government will resume the two dollar program, work for cash but reminded them not to use the cash to buy steel/iron to turn into weapons (rama ambon). Bano also appealed to the demonstrators not to let themselves be used by other people for their own political interest. He said they should work together in the neighbourhood to maintain peace in order to normalize the economic activities. (TP)
WFP distributes over 500 tonnes of rice
The World Food Program (WFP) in conjunction with the Ministry of Labour and Community Reinsertion (MTRC) has distributed a total of 54 tonnes of rice and 50.820 tonnes of oil to the IDPs since the month of January. Manuel Barbosa, WFP program assistance coordinator, said according to plans, food would also be distributed in the district of Atauro. To respond to the rice shortage in Timor-Leste which is affecting the population, the government decided to sell its stock in storage at the normal price. (TP)
One member of F-FDTL released
A member of F-FDTL has been released on conditional bail and three others including a member of PNTL continue on detention in relation to the shooting incident on May 25 2006, which killed 9 PNTL officers. The three F-FDTL members have been transferred to Baucau prison following complaints of security and problems with some the prison guards.
Taur does not believe Rogerio involved in guns distribution
F-FDTL Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak told the court Tuesday he does not believe Rogerio Lobato distributed guns to civilians to destabilize the nation. During the testimony, the head of the national defence forces also said he learned of Railos group through the international media, and the issue of guns distribution was raised by Ramos-Horta in the former Prime Minister resident. Following the meeting, he issued a document to the then Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, the Court of Appeal and the President of the Republic asking for the inspection and control of guns for both institutions, F-FDTL and PNTL, but Paulo de Fatima Martins, then PNTL Commander General said the weapons were no longer in the storehouse as it had been shifted to Aileu, Liqui‡ a and elsewhere. Taur said he was in shock to learn the storage was empty. He apologized to Rogerio adding that he was emotional at the time as he had learned Rogerio Lobato was taking over the post as Minister of Defence. The Brigadier General continued that on April 29 they held a cabinet meeting in Alkatiri's residence to analyse the situation because PNTL command had lost control of the situation and were facing many difficulties and, it was thought, required F-FDTL assistance to deal with the violence that erupted from the petitioners' demonstration. During another meeting, Taur Matan Ruak said he suggested to PNTL to be in charge of the security the capital while F-FDTL took over responsibility of the outskirts of Dili as the petitioners were moving out town. In relation to the attack in Tibar, Taur said he received information from the battleground that the people attacking F- FDTL headquarters were civilians, petitioners and PNTL, dressed in military and PNTL uniforms. He said he learned of Railos and his group through the report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry and acknowledged the distribution of weapons to civilians namely the former veterans to reinforce against the systematic attack on F-FDTL by Major Alfredo, PNTL and civilian groups. Taur told the court the situation was aggravated on May 24 when Major Alfredo and a group of 10 URP from Aileu attacked F-FDTL in Fatuahi, his residence in Dare, the Military Police Headquarters and F-FDTL Headquarters in Tasi-Tolu. He said the attack was well planned and organized, stating it was a political conspiracy to destabilize the nation through the armed forces in order to have an outside intervention. The Brigadier said during the Council of Defence meeting it was decided to request international intervention to avoid further problems.
Rogerio Lobato's defence lawyer, Paulo Remedios, told the court that early Tuesday, morning 13/2 a black car without plate numbers and with armed people threatened him at his residence. He asked the court to take measures but was told by the President of the Judges, Ivo Valente, to present his complaint to the Public Ministry.
Jose Edmundo Caetano, lawyer for the Justice and Peace of Dili Diocese, said the international authorities in the court needs to further learn the legislation of Timor-Leste rather than implement laws to confuse the people and contribute to the deterioration of the situation which can lead them not to believe in the laws of the country as a result of their irresponsibility. (DN, STL, TP)
UNMIT ask Longuinhos to re-establish contact with Alfredo
Acting SRSG, Eric Gim Tan and DSRSG Finn Reske-Nielsen met Timor-Leste Prosecutor General Longuinhos Monteiro Tuesday and requested him to re-establish contact with Major Alfredo to continue with the dialogue process. According to Longuinhos, he is still undecided whether or not to contact Alfredo due to the many arguments it instigate. Deputy SRSG Tan has stressed that UNMIT wants strongly to continue with the dialogue in order to pursue Alfredo to peacefully follow the justice procedures. (TP)
UN ask politicians not to use children for political interest
The UN has requested political parties in Timor-Leste not to use children for their political interests, DSRSG Finn Reske-Nielsen said during his speech at the launch of the UN Global study on the violence against children at Hotel Timor in Dili. Reske- Nielsen also appealed to the parents, the martial arts groups and other organisations not to use children for their political aim, reported Timor Post today. According to the study, violence against children exists in Timor-Leste within families, schools, institutions, working places, communities and on a daily basis, said the DSRSG Finn. (TP)
One house damaged following police search
One house and some of its contents were damaged when UNPOL searched for illegal weapons. According to Timor Post, GNR police searched the house in Palapaso, Farol, suspecting of having weapons. Eight people were detained but seven were released later. Elda da Costa the owner of the house said she's not happy with the way the police, especially GNR, conducted the operations as they entered the property without a search warrant and authorization from the people living in the house. Da Costa said the police in a convoy of four cars entered her house while the family was asleep early in the morning. The family had moved to the state-owned house after their house in Ailoklaran was set on fire.
In the meantime, UNPOL spokesperson, Monica Rodrigues, said UNPOL has captured one person who was involved with the large group of people on Monday in attacks against police patrolling in the area of Comoro, resulting in broken windows. The person is under investigation. Another person was detained when they tried to stone two police in vehicles in that area as well, Rodrigues said. She said police continue to investigate and detain those involved in the violence. (TP, DN)
7-7 not involved in violence
The General Secretary of the martial art group 7-7, Sanamia, said his group has not been involved in the confrontation in Bairro Pite. Sanamia said according to information he received, the organization 0-0, claiming not to be part of any martial arts group, were the ones involved in the violence. He further said the names of the two organizations are being used to put extra burden on the government's work. He said that up to-date the leadership of 7-7 and PHST is going well and it continues to put efforts towards stopping violence that involves members of both organizations. He also asked for forgiveness to the people of Timor-Leste for the behaviour of some of his group's members and appealed to other martial arts organisations to work together with the government, PNTL the international police and military to bring stability, freedom and peace to the country. (STL)
It would not be easy to replace Xanana: Tilman
MP Manuel Tilman said the replacement of President Xanana Gusmao would not be easy due to the problems the country is currently facing. Tilman said all the problems can be resolved following both Presidential and Parliamentary elections and Timor-Leste has been lucky to continue to have the assistance of the international community in terms of financial and humanitarian assistance. He said apart from the assistance of the international community, Timor-Leste has its own money but he classified the problem the country is facing, as a 'weak state' due lack of authority by the four main pillars of the State.
The Deputy President of Partido Democratico (PD) has stated that although his party has already elected a candidate for the Presidential election, they would continue to support Xanana if he changes his mind and decides to run for the second term. Jose Nascimento Buras said PD was the party that supported Xanana candidate in the last election hence it would be appropriate to consult with him first before presenting the party's nominee.
Mario Carrascalco, President of PSD reportedly said the President of the Republic could take a drastic or preventive decision to overcome the security situation which the government has claimed to be back to normal but the situation is seen by the population contrary to the government's claim. He said many problems remain unresolved, which according to the President of PSD is "opening the door to violence." He is of the opinion President Gusmco can contain the situation by dissolving the Parliament and the government due to the undelivered promises. Mario Carrascalco said problems might increase with the Parliamentary elections and he cannot see anyone with a better 'background' to replace Xanana and able to deal with the problems since Xanana himself could not do it. (DN).
Vehicles checkpoints
In preparations for the elections, PNTL and UNPOL established checkpoints for vehicles to ensure the ownership, drivers' licences and to search for any illegal weapons. The checkpoint was requested by the government and is operated mainly in the capital Dili. (DN)
Court rejects priest's statement
In a last minute decision the court decided not hear Liquiga's Fr. Giovani's statement following a request by Lobato's defence lawyers. According to Fr. Giovani, he was scheduled to testify in court on Monday as per the court letter but was told it was no longer necessary. The priest became angry and said the court was playing around with people's dignity. He said on behalf of the Liquiga parish, he is writing a letter of complaint to the court to clear his name and the parish since a statement made in the court by the Liquiga Administrator alleged that he (Giovani) was involved with Fretilin Secret group, led by Railos. Lobato's defence lawyer, Paulo Remedios, said they did not want Fr. Giovani to testify in court because they did not know what he was going to testify.
According to Timor Post, around 400 people in 20 trucks travelled to Dili to support the priest from Liquiga parish. Supporters of the priest were attacked by unknown groups in Comoro roundabout as they travelled to Dili, leaving 10 people injured and one dead. Marcelino Serao, 30 years of age, was hit on the head with stones and died when he fell off one of the trucks. He was taken to the hospital but passed away before reaching medical assistance. His body was taken back soon after to Liquiga. One of the priests who also took part in the convoy said the people travelled to Dili to show their solidarity with Fr. Giovani who was scheduled to testify in court and they are part of Liquiga parish and were not politically motivated. (TP)
ISF supports government dialogue with Alfredo: Mal Rerden
Malcolm Rerden, Commander of ISF says the forces continue to support the government on the dialogue with Major Alfredo to find a solution, adding that the government had requested the international forces to provide security and to support negotiations with Alfredo. Rerden stressed that the role of the ISF is to support the international police and assist the government of Timor-Leste to maintain stability and a peaceful environment to enable the Timorese people to resolve their differences. He said the international forces would provide assistance to find a peaceful solution. In relation to Alfredo's comments that he moved from Aifu, Ermera District due to threats and interference from the ISF, Rerden said the operations of the international security are not limited only to one district but they assist the UN throughout the territory to create a secure environment conducive to the elections.
In relation to Alfredo's hearing in Gleno, claimed by Francisco Guterres 'Lu-Olo' as unconstitutional, Prosecutor General Longuinhos Monteiro suggested to Guterres' advisor to carefully read the Constitution before giving advice to Guterres. Monteiro underscored that the hearing process in Gleno has been carried out in the past by the Court and the Public Ministry, noting that Dili District Court is responsible for the judicial areas in Dili, Aileu, Liquiga and Ermera. The Prosecutor further said the request for the hearing to take place in Gleno came from Alfredo but he would consult with relevant entities before making a decision. (TP)
Archive of Alkatiri court case
Jose Luis Oliveira, Director of Hak Association, reportedly said the leaders of Timor-Leste are exhibiting neo-colonialism practices as the State is depending on the people of Comunidade Paises Lingua Portuguesa (CPLP). He said that the demand of MUNJ demonstrators to expel CPLP staff is based on the reality on the ground. He said the aim of the recruitment of people from CPLP, especially in the judiciary area, is to reinforce Timor-Leste judicial system but somehow they tend to guide the nation towards Portugal's system. He said that the judiciary process has not been impartial and that Alkatiri's case is not the only one; there have been many similar cases in the past. The Director of Hak is of the opinion Alkatiri's case should not be closed since there are still the cases of Rogerio Lobato and F-FDTL who are accused of distributing guns to civilians. He said a the decision to archive Alkatiri's case has been unjust and it should be re- opened
Joao Mariano, President of the Republican Party (PR) said the international prosecutor who made the decision to archive Alkatiri's case lacks integrity. He said the decision has left many questions and doubts about the judicial process in Timor- Leste.
Francisco Guterres 'Lu-Olo' said justice should not be forced by individuals for political interest as it is an independent body and within it there exists the competence to makes decisions. (DN, TP,)
Women's participation in elections
A workshop to encourage women's participation in the election process had been organized by the government Office for Promotion and Equality, IRI and USAID with the theme "Increase and Strengthen Women's Participation in the General Elections". The training between 8-10 of February was attended by women from the 13 districts and it is a continuation of a training which started a few weeks ago open to women of all political parties. (TP)
Government will not speculate high price of rice
Deputy Prime Minister Estanislau da Silva has said that the government will not authorize anyone to play with nutritional necessity of the population and stressed that the government will intervene to guarantee the supply of rice in the country. Da Silva further said the shortage of rice in the shops is not reasonable because Timor-Leste brought sufficient rice to compensate for the reduction of the locally produced rice and added that if necessary the government will take new measures to supply rice at an acceptable price. The Minister said some locally produced rice has been affected due to the long dry season. It is reported the price of rice has increased up to 30 and 40 dollars per bag, excessively high compared to the usual price of 14 dollars. (STL)
Fretilin will face many challenges
About five thousand Fretilin supporters gathered in Same, Manufahi District for the swearing-in of members of the monitoring election commission as well as for the party consolidation for the south region. Speaking at the gathering Mari Alkatiri, Fretilin's Secretary General, said the party would face many challenges in the Presidential and Parliamentary elections, adding that the consolidation is also an opportunity to prepare the structure at the national and rural lrvels to monitor the election process. Alkatiri said it is time to start organizing since many people are surmising that Fretilin is already weak due to the crisis. A total of 1,174 members are now part of Fretilin's monitoring commission for the south region. PNTL, UNPOL and GNR provided security following rumours of attacks during the ceremony that took place in Same soccer field on Saturday 10/2. Following the ceremony Mari Alkatiri told the media he believes Major Alfredo Reinado would not use guns against Fretilin people but for political influence during the elections. Mari further said that Alfredo has personally stressed that he is not alone and is not getting any support, and if that is the case how can it be possible for Alfredo to travel freely within the territory without anyone detaining him, asked Alkatiri. He stressed that Australian forces were the ones providing him security, and they insisted he was still in Aifu following Fretilin's notification to UNMIT of his disappearance from the agreed place.
In a separate article on STL, Mari Alkatiri said only frustrated people are establishing movements to impose orders on the State to execute their demands, adding that despite the demonstrations, the state continues to function normally. He also said some people are trying to re-establish CNRT (Conselho Nacional Resistencia Timorense) which originated out of Fretilin to counter Fretilin but they only have historic symbols and not strength to do the work.
In the meantime, MUNJ coordinator Augusto Junior Trindade has lamented the incident of stone throwing by members of Fretilin near their headquarters in Comoro when the demonstrators were travelling back to Liquica. Trindade said he has requested UNPOL to detain those involved in the incident witnessed by the police as they followed the demonstrators. (DN, TP, STL) Amnesty legislation to rescue the distributors: Mario Carrascalao
The proposed legislation on amnesty presented by the Parliament plenary session to Commission A, responsible for human rights and justice matters, would be a document to rescue some leaders involved in the distribution of guns during the crisis period, said Mario Carrascalao, President of Partido Social Democrata (PSD). Carrascalao said the document would not protect the common/small people. Speaking in Petileti, Com, sub-districts of Lautem, to present the program of his party, Carrascalao explained that people are entitled to amnesty after they have been sentenced or are serving a jail sentence and not for people who have not yet gone through a trial process. He said that the government of Fretilin has betrayed the veterans and former Falintil as they are now living without dignity, without any allowance or assistance in light of the money the government spends on travelling. The President of PSD also said the Fretilin government has also betrayed Xanana Gusmao for blocking his way with the Constitution and not allowing him power to work for his people. (TP)
Alkatiri responsible for guns distribution: Alfredo
The case allegedly involving Mari Alkatiri in the distribution of guns to civilians that is now archived has been manipulated, Major Alfredo Reinado reportedly said. Reinado is of the opinion that the case should not have been closed as Alkatiri was the head of State and he must therefore assume responsibility. According to Alfredo, the weapons distributed by Rogerio Lobato were of interest to Fretilin to extend their government mandate. He said the prosecutors must explain to the population the closure of the case to enable them to understand and be more aware of the process, noting he doesn't trust the prosecutors since they were not aware of the notification letter handed to Alkatiri. In relation to his whereabouts, Alfredo told Timor Post last Friday via telephone and reported today that he has moved out of Aifu due to the movement constraints the Australian forces had bestowed on him. He said the move to Aifu was based on the agreement made by him, Prime Minister Ramos-Horta and F-FDTL Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak but he feels he is being treated differently as per the agreement. Alfredo is aware that the Australian troops are now searching for him in the villages and telling the population he must support the government but according to Alfredo there is economic and political interest as promised by the Timor-Leste government. As military he said he is aware what the Australian troops can and cannot do, stressing he is still in Ermera district awaiting the court hearing. (TP)
Court to continue to be firm: Sarmento
In relation to the protest organized by MUNJ demanding transparency in the court proceedings, Minister of Justice Domingos Sarmento said the court would not bow to any pressure and will continue to be firm on its decisions according to the rules. Referring to the demands of MUNJ to expel two internationals, Prosecutor Felismino Cardoso (Cape Verde) and Bernardo Fernandes (Portugal), for alleged manipulation on the letter of notification to Mari Alkatiri, Sarmento said that any citizen has the right to present their complaints to the Prosecutor General and to the Magistrate Council of the Public Ministry if a Prosecutor is not functioning within the legal framework of the Public Ministry. He appeals to the citizens to understand that justice should not be carried out according to a person's or group's wishes. The Minister also said that the recruitment of international staff is done through the United Nations and the UNDP and not through bilateral agreements with the CPLP countries with the aim of reinforcing the country's judiciary system. A total of five international and nine national staff are currently working in the Procurator of the Republic.
Prosecutor Felismino Cardoso reportedly said they are performing their duties without any political interference and they are working in Timor-Leste under the recruitment of the UN and not CPLP countries. Cardoso added, the decision to close Alkatiri's case in the meantime is due to insufficient evidence but it could be reopened if there are more indications of Alkatiri's involvement. He told Timor Post that when Prosecutor General, Longuinhos Monteiro returns from his Australian trip he has to explain to the population about the decision taken on the case to avoid further confusion.
Yesterday MUNJ met with President Xanana Gusmco and handed him a letter containing various points but the main point asks for the prosecutors and judges from CPLP countries to leave the country. Copy of the same letter was handed to the Prosecutor General's Office and to UNMIT. (DN, TP, STL)
UNMIT facilitating process of hearing for Alfredo
Speaking to the media during UNMIT's weekly press conference Thursday, Acting SRSG Eric Huck Gim Tan said UNMIT has been facilitating the judicial process including plans for a court hearing process for Major Alfredo in Gleno, Ermera District. The Acting Head of UNMIT further said the UN wants to find a peaceful solution to the situation and that includes dialogue for the hearing process which will continue when the Prosecutor General returns from Australia. On the same occasion, speaking about the demonstrators, Tan said that if MUNJ would not follow the peaceful path, UNPOL would have to take actions. In relation to rumours of another protest by people from the east in support of Alkatiri, Acting SRSG Finn said UNPOL had not received any information or notification but if the information is correct, the police ensure the maintenance of law and order as the security in Dili is part of the responsibility of the UN police.
UNPOL Police Commissioner, Rodolfo Tor also informed the media Thursday, that although UNPOL does not know the whereabouts of Major Alfredo the International Forces know where he is as they are the ones providing assistance and security. And Acting SRSG Tan also denied rumours that Alfredo has fled his latest location saying it is likely that the people are not seeing him but he is still in Aifu as per the agreement to find a solution to the political military crisis. (DN, STL, TP)
Youth rejects forces presence
A group of youth and members of the community from Lautem district staged a protest which began Tuesday, 6/2 against the presence of the international forces from New Zealand. The Administrator for that district, Olavo Monteiro, said that the community is arguing that the platoon is not needed in that area as the situation is stabilized. Although he sees the presence of the troops as important due to the election process, the Administrator said that the youth and some members of the community continue to demand their withdrawal. Monteiro said despite clarifications, negotiations are currently in process between the head of the platoon and the youths. STL reported that almost 200 people are holding a demonstration against the presence of the Australian troops in Lautem for the past two days. MP from Fretilin said youths are protesting against the work of the troops claiming that the Australian military has not been impartial and is not putting in the effort to capture Major Alfredo since he fled from prison. The community has also complained that the troops are questioning them on whether the majority of Fretilin members are from that district. (DN, STL)
PG irresponsible in issuing letter: Soares
Aderito de Jesus Soares, human rights advocate, said Timor-Leste Prosecutor-General lacks serious sensibility to the public's right to understand the judicial process. Soares stressed that before issuing the letter to Mari Alkatiri about dropping charges against him, the Public Ministry should have explained to the public the efforts made and their conclusion for the public to understand the process and why the investigation stopped. He said the letter has created confusion among the public and is not helping to resolve the crisis. Soares would like the Prosecutor- General to clarify the issuing of the notification letter. He said that the Prosecutor-General was in Australia and aware of the letter while his Deputy made public that he was not aware of it. The announcement of the letter was made public by Mari Alkatiri. According to Soares, the work of the Prosecutor is unprofessional and he does not have the competence to be in charge of an institution as it is clear that both the Prosecutor-General and his deputy are not speaking the same language. (TP)
I would have become SG if it wasn't for the crisis: Ramos-Horta
Prime Minister Ramos-Horta has reportedly said that if it was not for the military and political crisis in the country, he had the chance to become the United Nations Secretary General.
He said many nations, including permanent members of the UN Security Council and high-level US politicians supported his candidacy to replace Kofi Annan, noting it was not his intention to become the Prime Minister for nine months. In relation Alkatiri's demand for the Prime Minister and the President to publicly acknowledge their mistake, Ramos-Horta said he would not comment. He said he wanted to emphasise that his work was not to become the Prime Minister for a short period and if it wasn't for the crisis, today he would probably be sitting in New York. He said that even before presenting his candidacy officially he already had many supporters. Ramos-Horta said the population knows that during the crisis he was the 'bridge' for dialogue in Timor-Leste to prevent the country from falling into a civil war. He further said that right from the beginning he believed that Mari Alkatiri was not involved in distributing guns to civilians. (TP)
Case involving Malaysia UNPOL needs investigation
Military and political observer Julio Tomas Pinto said the government, the Malaysian Embassy and the UN must establish a team to investigate the case involving the damage of religious symbols allegedly caused by the UNPOL officers from Malaysia. Pinto said that during the Indonesia period, Indonesian soldiers also did the same and the population stood against the military. He is of the opinion that with such an attitude, the population will have a bad perception of the Malaysian police officers, therefore the investigation is crucial as an apology for their actions. (STL)
Candidates kick start campaign
The Presidential candidates have already kick started their campaigns. On Wednesday, Manuel Tilman (KOTA) launched his campaign accompanied by the national well-known singer Leo Moniz and his band at Hotel Timor. Materials to support his campaign included white T-shirts with the slogan "Vote for me, Tilmana", red caps and black and white flags. Tilman said if he becomes the President, his focus would be on PNTL and F-FDTL, the youth, the IDPs and his first program would be focused on F-FDTL, and then the petitioners. He said he would station F-FDTL throughout the country the same as during the Portuguese period and he would then look into the petitioners' problems and a large recruitment as per the latest legislation, which had just been approved. Tilman wants PNTL to become an institution with prestige and have their own living headquarters.
Another candidate, Avelino Coelho said if he is elected as President his priority would be to defend the economy for the people, as it is the main factor for social injustice in the country. He said if his party wins the Presidential elections they would put pressure on the government and the parliament to define the investment politics and become partner in the investment process to the population. (STL)
Rice shortage in East Timor
In response to rice shortages in Timor-Leste, the company Timor Food has pledged to import up to 10,000 tonnes of rice from Thailand. The owner of the company who refused to give his name said the warehouse is now empty and consumers would have to wait two weeks. He said that the imported rice would be expensive but of better quality. (TL)
Rogerio distributed guns to reinforce public order: Ramos-Horta
The Primer Minister Ramos-Horta in his statement at the Court of Appeal on Tuesday 2/2, said that Rogerio distributed guns to reinforce public order because, according to him, after the incident on 28 April, he travelled all night until morning around the city, in front of embassies to verify if the city was protected by the police but unfortunately he found none. Also, on the 29 April many PNTL officers abandoned their posts increasing the risk, according to rumours, that the petitioners were going to attack the government buildings. He said that the police wouldn't have the capacity to establish law and order and that the former Minister of Interior, to avoid all this from happening, gave orders to give guns to civilians to restore order.
Horta said he doesn't know if the actions of Rogerio are politically correct or incorrect, but that a closer look should be taken at that stage of the situation. He also said he didn't believe that Lobato had intentions to destroy his country.
According to Horta, it was only on 28 May that the Commandant of PNTL Paulo de Fatima Martins informed him that the PNTL guns used by UIR on the border had been transferred to Dili. Martins did not explain clearly who gave orders and for what purposes the guns had been transferred to Dili.
Ramos-Horta said that the incident of 28 April 2006 in front of the Government building was with the intervention of a third party but he did not name that third party. (Timor Post)
The MUNJ wants the CPLP prosecutors to leave East Timor
Agosto Junior Trindade, the coordinator of the Movement of National Unity for Justice (MUNJ), told STL at the demonstration site that he would demand the President of the Republic to expel the international prosecutors Felismino Cardoso and Bernardo Fernandes from Timor-Leste within 24 hours and declare them as "persona non grata". He also said that if the President of the Republic, the Public Ministry and UNMIT don't take any measures in this regard, the MUNJ will conduct a huge popular action. (STL)
Longinhos admits Alkatiri case closed
Timor Post reported today that the Prosecutors General Mr. Longinhos Monteiro in an interview with The Age, in Sidney- Australia, on Monday (05-02) stated that he is aware that the Public Ministry had notified the ex-Primer Minister Mari Alkatiri of the dropped charges against him due to of lack of evidence, but he said that the case can be reopened if new evidence emerges. (TP)
Recommendation of actual situation from NGO Forum
Timor Post reported that yesterday The NGO Forum in Timor-Leste, FONGTIL, PDHJ and JSMP gave recommendations to National Parliament, focusing on the security situation, assistance to victims, judicial processes including disciplinary and administrative actions, following the monitoring of the actual situation after the crisis.
In a press conference held in the FONGTIL office, Maria Vaconselhos, representative of JSMP stated that they welcomed the government resolution of 13 December 2006 regarding social assistance or a pension to families of PNTL and F-FDTL officers who lost their lives, became injured or lost their houses and/or belongings. The assistance will be carried out through the Ministry of Labour and Community Reinsertion.
Regarding the screening of the PNTL officers, the recommendations were presented to UNMIT and the Ministry of Interior to carry out one process only so as not to confuse the public and the PNTL officers and also to make public the screening process. Maria further stated that a re-evaluation should be carried out of both PNTL and F-FDTL to determine their involvement in the crises. This is important, she said, to gain the public trust and avoid discriminatory treatment to those two institutions.
Speaking to the media, Mr. Clementino dos Reis Amaral stated that the situation within the country lies within the Fretilin party because it's the ruling party.
Asked about Maj. Alfredo leaving his station in Aifu, Ermera, Clementino said that this incident yesterday made the population panic but again it's the responsibility of the Government, Fretilin, as the vice president of commission B deals with security and defence issues of this country. He said if the situation continue as it is, the up coming general elections will be affected.
Questioned about the notification letter from the Prosecutor- General in regard to former Primer Minister's case, Clementino said that the information coming from the Prosecutor's offices is confusing even to someone such as his self with knowledge of the Law. (TP)
90 per cent of the population in Lospalos starving
Member of National Parliament, Armindo C. Dias, told STL that 90 percent of the Lospalos population is starving because their crops such as corn and tapioca has been devastated by mice and grasshoppers and the lack of rain fall. So far a child has died as a result of this. He added that the people are resorting to coconuts and jackfruits for consumption. Another member of the Parliament, Rui Antonio, also reinforced that this year the population find a lot of constraint in food shortages especially the ones living around the coast.
They stated that all the data being presented to the Government through the Ministry of Labour and Community Reinsertion has produced no response. (STL)
Public ministry drops Alkatiri case
Speaking to the media following the letter of notification from the Public Ministry dropping the charges against him, Mari Alkatiri said that on 20 August 2006 President Xanana Gusmao wrote him a letter and attached a copy of a program aired by ABC. In the letter the President stated that there was evident proof in the program that he committed crime hence forced him to step down from his post. The former Prime Minister further said, the President's letter calling for a meeting with the Council of State seemed to him to be more of a court to judge him rather than a meeting. He said the President's message to the nation on 22 June 2006 attacked his party and mainly him. He said his message stained his name and affected his family and his political party. Following Fretilin's Central Committee meeting on 25 June, the party reiterated their trust in him but he decided to resign on June 26 2006. Alkatiri said that a few hours after his resignation the Prosecutor General notified him that he was the accused of criminal acts and therefore he should quickly respond through the legal process. He congratulates the judiciary system for carrying out their work with dignity adding that the conclusion of the justice process is that those who have been accused of wrong-doing are right and those that have not been accused of wrong-doing are wrong.
In a separate article, the former Prime Minister said he does not want to be like other people who practices politics by manipulating the justice system. He said he wants to use politics against politics and demands that Mr. President Xanana and Prime Minister Ramos-Horta publicly acknowledge that the allegations against him were not based on strong evidence. He further said he will send the letter from the Prosecutor's Office to President Xanana with a message that great friends publicly acknowledge their mistakes, and doing so will strengthen their friendship.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Ramos-Horta has refused to comment on the decision of the Public Ministry, adding that he has not directly heard from Alkatiri. Ramos-Horta stated that since it is the decision of the court he will follow the process and will make a statement when appropriate.
MP Cipriana Pereira (Fretilin) said the decision to clear Mari Alkatiri's name is a victory for Fretilin party. (DN, TP)
Proposed amnesty bill to protect leaders: Oliveira
Jose Luis Oliveira, Director of Hak Assoiciation, considers the proposed bill by the National Parliament on amnesty for those people indirectly involved in cases backdated from 30 June 2006 to 1975, as protecting the elite and that it puts the burden on the common people. Oliveira said the definition of 'not directly involved' applies to the leaders or the elites as they are the ones involved in drafting the plans and giving orders but are not directly involved in the implementation at the ground level. According to the law, these people bear greater responsibilities than the one implementing the orders. He is also concerned with the victims when the legislation is implemented noting that CVA is focused mainly on the possibility of amnesty to the actors of 1999 violence but does not focus on the victims rights. He said it would be great injustice not to focus on the victims. He wants the Parliament to hold seminars and consultations before advancing with the law. (TP)
Major Alfredo has gone missing
Timor Post reported today that Major Alfredo and his followers have gone missing since January 31, following the meeting with former Falintil commanders, Mauhunu, L7 and Dudu. A source close to Alfredo said the group is in the surrounding area monitoring the situation, stressing that Alfredo is willing to participate in the justice process. The same source said the population is aware of their movement and the group will soon return to Aifu. (TP)
Detention by UNPOL and UIR not transparent
Floriana Rego, Coordinator of the IDPs at Vila-Verde Cathedra, said the operation of UNPOL and UIR have not been transparent in the detaining of martial arts groups in Bairro PitE, Ailoklaran and Tuanalaran. She said the detention should not be focused mainly on one group, noting that such action can lead to further confrontations. More people keep seeking shelter at the church since January 23, she said. (TP)
Malaysia police damages religious symbols
The front page of STL carry the article related to religious symbols being damaged by Malaysia police. MP Tilman would like UNPOL to correctly identify members of Malaysia Police (POLMA) who have entered KOTA headquarters on 23 January early in the morning and damaged the religious symbols. The request was put to the Parliament plenary session on Monday.
Ramos-Horta likely to be next president
Prime Minister Ramos-Horta has reportedly said that if Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak does not want to run for the presidential elections he is ready to go ahead with his candidacy but only if the people put their trust in him. Ramos-Horta said the person to take over the President's position must be someone that has good international relations and is aware of the internal matters. He hopes that apart from Manuel Tilman (KOTA) and Avelino Coelho (PST) there will be more candidates, noting that both candidates can play a crucial role and Tilman has had extensive experiences in the Parliament in the past five years. The Prime Minister feels it is convenient for someone who has fought against the occupation inside the country during 24 years, to be the next president, He said that he wants to retire and to give the new generation the chance to lead the nation.
In Monday's edition, Timor Post reported that Ramos-Horta is not yet certain whether he will run for the Presidential post hence he will wait until the last day.
President Xanana GusmA#o announced on Friday that the Presidential election would take place on April 9, just after Easter. He had previously stated his intention not to run for the 2nd mandate. (DN, TP, STL)
Court hearing for members of PSHT
Judges have decided to give preventive detention to 32 members of PSHT including its president Jaime Xavier Lopes, while 17 were free on condition that they present themselves to the police station once a week.
Those on preventive detention will undergo further investigation. According to Antonio Freitas, Public Private Defender, his clients have been accused of committing violence and are likely to be sentenced for over one year imprisonment based on evidence including the finding of weapons in the house. Freitas is not happy with the accusation that his clients were involved in the violence, burning and killing of people in the capital Dili. He further said that police captured his clients while they were defending themselves from a group intent on attacking PSHT headquarters in Ailoklaran. The Public Private Defender also rejects the accusation that his client had the red and white flag and used the words Allah Akbar before attacking the population. He said that the name PSHT is derived from the Indonesian language because that's where the organization originated from and the connection of the group to Indonesia is totally based on sports as opposed to being political. The hearing was under tight security, reported Diario Nacional. (DN)
UN wants Alfredo to answer to justice: SRSG Khare
SRSG Atul Khare has stated that the UN mandate in Timor-Leste continues to demand Major Alfredo to answer to a court, reported Diario Nacional Monday. During the meeting with civil society, organized by the NGO Forum, FONGTIL, last week SRSG Khare said the aim of the various meetings held with Alfredo which included representatives from the government and the international forces is to convince Alfredo to follow court procedures, adding that the meeting between Alfredo and the Prosecutor General was to clarify the accusations against him.
Reporting on the workshop held in Dili on Friday and Saturday about the socio economic situation in Timor-Leste, it was noted that SRSG Khare has acknowledged that some progress has been made in the past five years under Fretilin's leadership but some serious problems need to be taken into consideration in order to alleviate poverty in the country. He said that security is a challenge for the political developments, stressing that security and poverty reduction are inter-related. (DN, TP) Decree law will affect many people
The decree law 19/06 on the Careers Regime and the Management Roles and Leadership of Public Administration has become a concern as it would affect many people, said MP Elizario Ferreira (Fretilin). Based on the concerns, the MP has requested the State Minister to clarify the aim of the law. He said the Parliament would look into it even though the document has been approved. Many people would have to be downgraded from levels 6 or 7 to between the levels of 1-3 when the law is implemented said Ferreira. (TP)
Elections are not UN's responsibility: Reske-Nielsen
Speaking during UNMIT's weekly press conference in Dili on Thursday, DSRSG Finn Reske-Nielsen said that the election of 2007 is the responsibility of the Timorese people and the Government. Unlike the elections of 2001 and 2002, conducted by the UN, this year elections would be conducted by the government of Timor- Leste, said DSRSG Reske-Nielsen. Mr. Reske-Nielsen points out that one of the events that already took place is the voters' registration which started on Monday and would continue to the sub-district levels in order to allow all Timorese to participate in the process. He further said that UNMIT and the UN family members will continue to provide assistance to the election process, and that it has provided experts to STAE, CNE, and the Parliament. The Deputy SRSG also said a team of senior members of the UN had carried out a series of consultations in Dili and Liquica Districts and will visit other districts in the next few weeks to have a complete understanding of the situation, the people's expectations and the challenges leading up to the elections. He said that the challenge would be to hold successful and democratic elections as per the people's wishes. In a separate article, DSRSG was quoted as saying that the Independent Electoral Certification Team, appointed directly the UN Secretary-General has a few recommendations to the government to make changes in order for the elections to proceed successfully and in accordance with the international standards. In terms of security, Mr. Reske-Nielsen said it is improving but that it would not be correct for the UN to say the security situation was sufficient to hold elections. But the UN believes that there is goodwill from the government in taking into account the recommendations of ECT to hold a fair and just election process, said Mr. Reske-Nielsen. At the same press conference, UNPOL announced the detention of 47 people in Ailoklaran, Bairro Pite on Wednesday 31/1 including the leader of the martial arts group PSHT, Jaime Xavier Lopes. Commissioner Tor said the 47 were in police custody awaiting court trial. On the same operation, Commissioner Tor said many weapons were seized and that the group are well structured with the capacity to destabilize the nation. (TP, DN)
Prosecutor violates constitution
President of the National Parliament, Francisco Guterres 'Lu-Olo' said Prosecutor General, Longuinhos Monteiro has violated the Constitution for signing an agreement with Major Alfredo Reinado to appear in Gleno Court. Guterres said he does not understand why the court hearing for Alfredo needs to be in Gleno Court while for other citizens hearings are carried out in Dili. He considers the latter decision as disrespect to the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, adding that all citizens must be treated equally and there should not be special courts for criminals. The President of the Parliament agrees that there is discrimination in the judiciary system. He said some citizens abide by the justice system, but in some cases the Prosecutor does what he wants as in the case of Major Alfredo. He said that on 19 December the court issued a warrant to capture Alfredo and his group but it has not been executed. Major Alfredo has reportedly said he met and discussed with the Prosecutor General to advance his case, adding that he stood up for the political interference on the institution and as a military police he worked to stop the aggression, hence it is time to follow the judicial process. He said the delay in the court process is due to its impartiality and interference or manipulation from political interests. In a separate article, former Falintil member, Cornelio Gama, L7 said a planned coup d'etat by Alfredo is false as he personally met with Alfredo who confirmed to him it was all rumours. Gama, former Falintil Commander Antonio Manecas, Mau Hunu and former veteran Ernesto Fernandes held a meeting with Major Alfredo sometime this week. (STL, TP, DN)
Horta wants to stop justice process: Corte-Real MP Alexandre Corte-Real (UDT) said the decision of Prime Minister Ramos-Horta to close his door to members of MUNJ for holding a peaceful demonstration can be interpreted as trying to stop the justice process for those responsible for the crisis. He said this attitude has raised many concerns among the community that Ramos-Horta is trying to stop the justice process. The MP said the Minister should open his door and listen to members of MUNJ even if the government is not taking any measures. (STL)
Alfredo court hearing likely to be at Gleno
Major Alfredo has reached an agreement with the Prosecutor General Longuinhos Monteiro to appear in court in relation to the incident of April 28, 2006. He will follow the judicial process and has stated the he will follow the court hearing in Gleno. (DN) Government Receives Temporary Homes
The Norwegian government through the Norwegian Refugee Council and UNICEF officially handed over 100 temporary homes in the area of Tasi Tolu to the government of Timor-Leste on Wednesday. It is a complete house with clean water and sanitation, reported Diario Nacional Thursday. The same type of homes will be constructed in Hera, Tibar and Becora for the IDP's. (DN)
President must gather former fighters: Ximenes (STL)
David Ximenes, the Secretary of State for Veterans Affairs and Former Combatants stressed that President Xanana Gusmao must gather all former combatants including the youth who participated in the resistance to stop the violence. Ximenes said many of the combatants are now scattered in the various political parties to give dynamic to the democracy but when violence occurs the combatants have the duty to stop it. Cornelio Gama, alias L4, former combatant and President of the political party UNDERTIM, said he would work with the government to find a solution to the current situation (DN)
UNPOL and forces detains member of group
UNPOL and the International Forces launched an operation in Dili on Wednesday that resulted in the detention of 56 elements in connection to the martial arts groups that have created disturbances in Dili. The operation with a great capacity of members of UNPOL, Australian military black hawk helicopters and GNR concentrated in the area of Bairo Pite and Ailoklaran. Among those detained were some leaders of PHST and 7-7. According to UNPOL Dili District Commander, Antonio da Silva, the aim of the operation is to bring peace and tranquillity to the population. (DN, STL)
[Compiled by teh UNMIT Public Information Unit.]