News & issues

East Timor airline unveiled

Sydney Morning Herald - November 27, 2008

Lindsay Murdoch and Scott Rochfort – East Timor will today unveil its first national airline, Timor Air, with plans to operate flights to Australia and Indonesia.

The airline's founder and major shareholder, Jeremias Desousa, a Timorese-born Australian businessman, said he planned to build the airline from one leased 94-seat Embraer to owning four or five planes within five years.

"I intend to grow the airline cautiously," Mr Desousa said yesterday from Dili, where East Timor's President, Jose Ramos Horta, will unveil the airline at a ceremony this afternoon.

The Government supported the airline and had accepted a free 10 per cent stake in it, he said.

From February 2, Timor Air will operate daily flights from Dili to Darwin and Dili to Denpasar, in competition with Air North and Indonesia's Merpati.

Air North will lose its monopoly on the Darwin to Dili route. Passengers have complained for years about the airline's high fares, no-frills service and frequent off-loading of luggage.

East Timor Government tourism officials told the Herald that Air North's operation of the route had hindered efforts to boost the country's tourism.

Mr Desousa said he had not established Timor Air to undercut the fares of competitors.

A Brisbane company, SkyAirWorld, has signed on as operator of Timor Air's aircraft for the first year, providing pilots and crew.

SkyAirWorld in January formed a joint venture with the Indonesian low-cost carrier Lion Air to establish a domestic airline in Australia. But amid signs of a slowdown in the domestic aviation market, it appears the plans have been shelved.

Timor Air is seeking code-share arrangements with Qantas.

Retired general Prabowo meets former battleground foe

Jakarta Post - November 21, 2008

Jakarta – The former commander of the Indonesian army's special task force [Kopassus], Prabowo Subianto, held a friendly meeting with former enemy, Lere Anan Timur, in Jakarta on Friday.

During the meeting, Lere, a former commander of the Fretilin guerrilla army, was accompanied by Timor Leste's deputy defense minister, Julio Thomas Pinto.

"A meeting like this is very important. In the past we went head to head as enemies. We fought each other. But now, we are together to bury all the hatred and replace it with a friendship bond," Prabowo said, as quoted by kompas.com.

During the meeting, Prabowo proposed the return of bodies of deceased Indonesian military officers to make it easier for families and relatives to pay their respects.

Lere, meanwhile, requested improved access for the Timor Leste government to files regarding Indonesia's military operations in Timor Leste during the New Order period, as part of an effort to write objective historical accounts of the war between the two nations.

Lere said the Timor Leste government had made formal proposals of the request to the Indonesian government.

Indonesia and Timor Leste were both facing the challenge to answer demands of victims of the war, particularly for their compensation and matters regarding their livelihood, Lere said. He also called on Prabowo to visit Timor Leste soon.

Politics/political parties

Opposition party threatens to leave the Timorese Parliament

Lusa - November 10, 2008

Lisbon – The Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (Fretilin) threatened to abandon the Timorese Parliament by the end of the year, accusing the deputies of the parliamentary majority of complicity with the local government and a boycott of the initiatives of the opposition.

"Parliament has become an instrument of government, giving no chance to opposition questioning certain matters of national interest, as happened in the discussion of the General State Budget this year," the president of Fretilin, Francisco Guterres Lu'Olo told agency Lusa.

Lu'Olo accused members of the Alliance for Parliamentary Majority (AMP), led by the National Congress for Reconstruction of Timor- Leste (CNRT), the prime minister Xanana Gusmco, of "being accomplices of the government," which has prevented the Parliament of carrying out his duties in the legislature and supervision of the executive.

"A majority can support the government but support of the government does not mean making laws against the Constitution, not become an accomplice of a government that acts outside the law. If we do not correct these situations leave Parliament," he said.

The Fretilin, which won the elections in 2007 with no majority, holds 21 of the 65 seats in the National Parliament of East Timor and does not recognize the legitimacy of the executive led by Xanana Gusmco.

"If they continue like this, the decision may be tomorrow, could be the day after tomorrow, may be in a month, before the end of this year," he added, refusing to say whether an exact date.

Mobilization

The decision was taken on Saturday, during a meeting of the central committee of the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (Fretilin), which has also decided to organize the "March of Peace."

"We will mobilize the masses, the militants of Fretilin to fall someday," said Lu'Olo, explaining that the date of the parade depends on the conclusion of the "structural readjustment" of the bases of the party.

The mandate of the elected representatives responsible for local structures has ended. Fretilin is in the process of electing new leaders in 13 districts, 65 subdistrict and more than 400 villages.

So far, was elected 40% of local leaders and, according to the president of Fretilin, is completed only when the whole process is set to be the date of the march.

According Lu'Olo, a decision that left the meeting on Saturday are "political response" to the current situation of party government.

"Things are not going well. The government led by AMP said it did practically nothing and what is happening is that there is poor governance, there is corruption, collusion and nepotism abound in this government. Therefore, we take this decision as a political response," he concluded Lu'Olo.

[Unofficial translation from Portuguese posted by ETAN.]

Social conflicts/refugees

Services struggle as East Timor empties refugee camps

Radio Australia - November 21, 2008

East Timor's government says closing the country's internal refugee camps represents only a small part of the effort needed to ensure a full recovery from the civil conflict of two years ago.

More than 100,000 people fled their homes and settled in camps across East Timor when violence erupted in 2006.

As Radio Australia's Stephanie March reports from the capital, Dili, officials and aid agencies have been discussing the challenges posed by the large numbers of refugees now returning home.

East Timor's prime minister, Xanana Gusmao, says land issues and a lack of job opportunities are among the problems that need to be addressed, now that more than half of the nation's internally displaced people have returned to the communities they fled from two years ago.

The government is struggling to provide adequate services such as water and education to communities where large numbers of refugees have returned in recent months.

Finn Reske-Neilsen from the United Nations Development Program says both short and long-term issues need to be considered. "There will be a need to address the social jealousy due to IDPs returning with their recovery packages, and to address broader issues," he said.

East Timor's government hopes to close all the internal refugee camps by February 2009.

Youth meet in East Timor to grapple with violence in society

Deutsche Presse Agentur - November 14, 2008

Dili – Young people from around the world gathered this week in East Timor to participate in a conference to share ideas on identity, conflict and peace as the country, one of the most at- risk nations in Asia, tries to come to terms with long-standing violence in its society.

Talks at the Youth, Identity and Nation-Building conference began Thursday with its launch by the president of the parliament, followed by a traditional war dance.

As cameras across the auditorium flashed, a dozen young, muscled, bare-chested men in sarongs locked arms, brandished steel blades and stomped to a furious drum beat before the international audience. An hour later, that same audience broke into groups and set to brainstorming ways to prevent violence.

If anyone found the juxtaposition ironic, no one mentioned it. But violence and those who practice it have always had a place in Timor, and few people are ever shunned for their violent acts.

Take, for example, Osorio Lequi. These days, Lequi, 28, is an advocate for youth peace, but he is also the spokesman for a youth gang, Kolimo 2000, with which he has a long, violent history.

In 2002, Lequi was imprisoned for eight months for his part in the fatal beating of a man during a gang attack, and on April 28, 2006, Lequi led vicious verbal attacks against the government. That morning, Lequi predicted a war against the state, and later that afternoon, an angry young mob attacked the Government Palace, burning cars and smashing windows.

It was the flashpoint for a wave of arson and murder across the nation that left dozens dead and more than 100,000 homeless and from which the nation still has not fully recovered. Timorese who fled their homes two years ago still live in tents, and foreign troops patrol the South-East Asian nation.

But Lequi was calm Thursday as he led a presentation about youth identity in East Timor. In his presentation, Lequi argued a nation's past will influence its future and, unless past injustices are resolved, they will be repeated.

Yet even as East Timor looks for solutions to youth violence, it has done nothing to punish Lequi or his group.

"My name was given to various inquiry reports," he admitted. "They say I provoked the situation, that I was the leader of the demonstration, and as a civilian, I am ready to face the judicial process."

But Lequi admitted justice is hard to come by in East Timor, which saw a brutal, 24-year Indonesian occupation before three violence-plagued years leading to its independence in 2002. He said he expected his country, one of the poorest in Asia, to be wracked by violence again and again until there is more social equity.

Lequi might seem an odd choice to advocate peace, but he has intimate knowledge of youth violence. "What happened in 2006 was just a continuation of the youth's struggle for justice in Timor," he said. "It's not resolved. Not at all."

And Lequi was not alone Thursday in his gloomy predictions. Narges Nemat is a first-year university student from Afghanistan. She said she is majoring in science although the war in her country has made even the most basic science supplies scarce. She said she dreams of a country free of violence, kidnappings and war but is realistic.

"I don't know if it's possible if we will ever have a free country," she said. "Maybe after 50 or 60 years. It will take time."

Nemat said she is the only Afghan at the youth conference and she came because she wanted to compare East Timor to Afghanistan. She said the roads and the buildings in East Timor are untouched by war, but otherwise much is the same there as in her country.

"I talked with one student here, and he told me the one thing the students are really not happy with is the government right now," she said.

Whether a three-day youth conference would be enough to assuage doubts or inspire hope is up for debate, but Nemat said she was more hopeful than Lequi.

"There are so many other young people from all over the world, and everyone has different ideas," she said. "I want to see if I can find a good idea for my own country."

The conference brought together more than 300 Timorese youth and 43 youngsters from 26 other countries, including Sri Lanka, South American nations, the United States and Norway. It was sponsored by East Timor's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian embassy and organized by Timorese youth activists.

Arms control still haunting East Timor

ABC Radio Australia - November 17, 2008

A new report by the Small Arms Survey group says East Timor still has a serious problem with controlling weapons.

Weapons collections and an attempt to introduce gun control legislation to parliament are signs the government is aware there is a problem, the report's author says. However, it is the current and previous government's lack of small arms control within the security forces that poses the greatest danger.

In June, the government introduced a new gun law to parliament, but it was widely criticised for seeking to allow civilians to be armed, and because it put the power to issue gun licenses solely in the hands of the police commander. A revised version of the law is to be put before parliament in the coming weeks.

Author of the Small Arms Survey report on East Timor, Edward Rees, told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program these moves, along with an increasing public and political awareness about the number of weapons that are missing, is a sign the government has finally realized that arms control is a problem.

"I think it's pretty clear that this government, and the political leadership in general and the community have had enough of guns wandering around the community and villages, and would like them put back safely in the armories," he said.

"However, while they may be put back safely in the armories, they were safe in an armory before and then taken out and used. And historically guns in armories in East Timor have been badly managed."

The mismanagement of weapons by authorities is a common thread throughout East Timor's relationship with small arms over the past fifty years.

Most recently, soldier-turned-rebel Alfredo Reinado and his followers, who were in possession of police weapons, shot and seriously injured President Jose Ramos-Horta in February this year. Reinado was killed during the subsequent gunfight.

Independence struggle

Remembering East Timor's quiet heroes

Melbourne Age - November 1, 2008

Andra Jackson – Jill Jolliffe knows that often in wars it is the heroes who are remembered while the suffering of ordinary people goes unnoted. But the Australian journalist, who has spent more than 25 years reporting on the East Timorese independence struggle, has found a way of ensuring that the memory of these silent sacrifices will be preserved.

In 1983, Jolliffe landed an international scoop when a confidential Indonesian military manual made its way into her hands. It had been seized by Fretilin guerilla fighters during a raid on Indonesian military barracks, and smuggled out of East Timor.

It was a counter-insurgency manual with a section of advice on conduct to be followed when administering torture, to avoid later identification. It included admonishments such as: "Do not take pictures of people when they are naked, and make sure nobody sees you," she recounts.

Jolliffe, a longtime East Timor watcher, was working as a freelance journalist in Portugal, having been evacuated by the International Red Cross from East Timor in December 1975 shortly before Indonesia invaded in response to East Timor's declaration of independence from Portugal.

The manual was considered so significant that The Age, one of the newspapers Jolliffe was freelancing for, agreed to pay her to go to London and help Amnesty International translate the instructions from Indonesian Bahasa. It was assessed by an American Indonesian expert, after which Amnesty issued a statement condemning Indonesia's use of torture.

Now, 25 years later (and six years after East Timor finally became a sovereign state in 2002), Darwin-based Jolliffe is following up that story, working with the victims of Indonesian Government-sanctioned torture. She has established the Dili-based Living Memory Project, recording the experiences of East Timor's forgotten casualties of its long war of independence – its prisoners.

On return visits to East Timor in 1999 and 2001, she met many of the ex-prisoners whose names were so familiar from her own reports on their ordeals. Some had been imprisoned in the 1970s, others after the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in which Indonesian troops opened fire on pro-independence demonstrators in a cemetery.

The idea for the Living Memory Project took shape as she chatted with them. "One of the problems is that these people suffer from a lack of recognition, if nothing else," says Jolliffe, who speaks in measured terms. "Many suffer from broken bones and long-standing medical problems but psychologically also, they have felt very excluded from the independence process, and not recognised. They are mostly civilians, held by the Indonesians. One-third of them were women, some with children."

While many of the former independence fighters have been accorded hero status, she says, the abuse of countless civilian prisoners has gone unrecognised. "Some of these women have had children from rape and they are stigmatised in the community," Jolliffe says. They are even taunted as collaborators. The project aims to set the record straight and ensure "that people won't forget what happened, that their suffering would be remembered, and that it wouldn't be in vain".

Jolliffe suggested preserving their experiences on video, but unlike Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation's recordings with Holocaust victims, these are not "talking heads". Instead, the approach of the Living Memory Project – set up in 2005 – illustrates the testimony in a style closer to documentary.

Joao Da Costa is filmed outside the former prison, now a four- star hotel, where he was detained in the '70s. He tells of lying on the floor, handcuffed to a woman, both of them beaten and naked.

In compelling footage, he describes how he was burnt on the hands and face with clove cigarettes and how table legs would be placed on his toes, and four Indonesian interrogators would then lean on the chair. He recalls those beaten to death.

In Genoveva da Costa Martins' interview, the pain of loss is still evident as she describes how her husband, nationalist poet Francisco Borja da Costa, was thrown into the sea by the advancing Indonesian army in December 1975.

The project employs professional international freelance film- makers but plans to train locals. Sydney-sider Nicola Daley was chosen because "she had a soft touch and could film women in a sensitive way". An all-female crew is used for filming women survivors of torture, with an assistant on hand to offer counselling if needed.

The five-person project team, some of them ex-prisoners, work from a small overcrowded office in Dili on a shoestring budget. So far they have conducted 50 interviews and assembled an archive of 200 photographs, some taken clandestinely in prison.

Backers include the New Zealand Government and the Northern Illinois University. Recently Melbourne's Moreland Community Health Service pledged money for follow-up medical help for ex- prisoners. Jolliffe hopes to raise sufficient funds for a full- time archive where the public can come in at any time to view the films, and where ex-prisoners can meet socially.

The project has also attracted some World Bank funding to stage exhibitions to help bridge the political and ethnic divisions that erupted between the eastern and western regions of East Timor in 2006 amid rising unemployment, and disaffection among the armed forces. Recently, a former prisoner from the western region of East Timor gave a talk to a youth group in East Timor. The World Bank wants similar encounters extended into schools as part of East Timor's healing process.

Meanwhile, the indefatigable Jolliffe has five books behind her and is in the midst of a PhD in creative writing at Flinders University. She is revising her fifth book, Cover-up, about the deaths of the five Australian journalists – the Balibo Five – killed by Indonesian troops two months before the December 1975 invasion. The update will include a report by Deputy NSW Coroner Dorelle Pinch recommending the indictment of General Yunus Yosfiah and Cristoforus da Silva for complicity in the killings.

Jolliffe has also enlarged the depiction of journalist Roger East, who died later, in keeping with his central role in a film version of her book, which stars Anthony La Paglia as East. The film script was written by David Williamson and Robert Connolly. It premiers at the Melbourne International Film Festival next July.

Jolliffe is also writing a book, Finding Santana, about her solo journey to the East Timorese mountains in 1994 to interview the East Timorese commander, Konis Santana. She travelled down the Indonesian archipelago by bus and boat to avoid the Indonesian authorities – another front-page story. She has received an Eric Dark Fellowship to stay at the Varuna writers centre, in the Blue Mountains of NSW, to work on it.

Reflecting on the four decades she has devoted to covering East Timor, she says: "I think there was a lot of unfinished business there from my first period as a novelist- journalist. My translator was executed on Dili wharf also (in 1975) and I haven't forgotten that.

"The story of East Timor is one that finds its way into people's psyches and it doesn't go way altogether."

[Andra Jackson is a staff writer.]

Howard pushed me on East Timor referendum: Habibie

ABC News Online - November 16, 2008

Former Indonesian president BJ Habibie says a letter from then- Australian prime minister John Howard pushed him into acting quickly on independence for East Timor.

In 1998 Mr Howard wrote a letter to Mr Habibie supporting a move towards East Timorese independence within a decade.

Mr Habibie has told ABC 1's The Howard Years that the letter pushed him into a snap decision which led to the independence referendum being held six months later.

"In this letter he suggests that I have to solve [East Timor] as how the French have solved their colonies in the Pacific New Caledonia – he suggests it," he said.

"That means prepare them for 10 years or whatever and then after that give them their independence. So as I read that I was upset."

Mr Howard has admitted that no one thought he would move that quickly. "The direction in which he travelled was the same direction that was requested in the letter," he said. "It's just that he went much further. He was 20 miles instead of five."

Mr Habibie would not agree to peacekeepers being deployed to East Timor before the referendum and describes the suggestion from Mr Howard as an "insult".

In August 1999 the East Timorese people voted for independence but pro-Indonesian militia killed hundreds of people not long after.

Eventually Mr Howard secured Mr Habibie's agreement to let a peacekeeping force into the country, but he had concerns there could be a clash with Indonesian troops.

"I had in the back of my mind they might have an encounter with the Indonesians, there might be a firefight right at the beginning, you could lose 20 or 30 troops in a clash, and it was tough," he said.

Then-foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer says the government arranged to have US troops on standby in case the conflict over East Timor's independence ended up in war with Australia.

"We had American forces that could've been deployed pretty quickly as well from the Pacific, so we did have contingency plans," he said.

Howard fear for diggers in Timor

The Australian - November 3, 2008

John Lyons – John Howard braced himself for the possibility of up to 30 Australian soldiers being killed by the Indonesian military when he made his decision to send troops to intervene in East Timor.

The former prime minister said he considered this outcome was possible in a firefight soon after the arrival of Australian troops in 1999 as part of the International Force for East Timor.

"I had at the back of my mind they might have an encounter with the Indonesians, there might be a firefight right at the beginning," he says. "You could lose 20 or 30 troops in a clash and it was tough. I mean, it was tough for them and you know, it certainly preoccupied me."

Mr Howard makes the revelation during one of his interviews in The Howard Years, a four-part series to be screened on ABC television from November 17. The ABC conducted 180 hours of interviews, including 20 hours with Mr Howard, in an examination of him and his administration.

The Interfet intervention followed a dramatic change of policy by the Australian government. Mr Howard wrote to then Indonesian president BJ Habibie on December 19, 1998, telling him Australia was for the first time backing self-determination for East Timor.

Mr Howard reveals that not only did Dr Habibie agree to that, but went much further and voiced support for independence. "It is true that none of us had envisaged that's what Dr Habibie would've done," Mr Howard says.

"Dr Habibie went further, but the direction in which he travelled was the same direction that was requested in the letter. It's just that he went much further. He was 20 miles instead of five."

Admiral Chris Barrie, then chief of the Defence Force, tells The Howard Years that war with Indonesia could have resulted from the intervention. "These were uncertain grounds, uncertain areas for us," he says.

One of the key decision makers involved in the East Timor operation, Hugh White, said yesterday that casualties could have been "much bigger".

Mr White, at the time deputy secretary (strategy and intelligence) in the Defence Department, told The Australian: "In retrospect we look back at East Timor through the lens of an operation that went very well, and achieved its objective with little difficulty and very little loss of life.

"At the time the decision was made, we did not know that was going to be the case, and did not assume that was the case."

Mr White said the US and Australian forces had contingency plans in case the conflict escalated.

He said the US had a large amphibious unit of "a couple of thousand" troops positioned off the East Timor capital of Dili as a signal to the Indonesians that any escalation of the conflict on the island would be matched. And the Australian military had ships and aircraft ready to reinforce the ground troops, he said.

Mr White said there were several scenarios under which escalation could have occurred. One was that of some elements of the Indonesian military, the TNI, deciding to resist Interfet.

Another was that of the government of Dr Habibie changing its position to one of hostility towards the Interfet intervention in East Timor. "Interfet succeeded as well as it did largely because Habibie and the TNI allowed it to succeed," Mr White said.

Government/civil service

East Timor court rules against PM

BBC News - November 13, 2008

Lucy Williamson, Jakarta – The Constitutional Court in East Timor has ruled against the government in a key political battle.

The government, led by former independence fighter Xanana Gusmao, got parliament's approval earlier this year for a vastly increased national budget. It planned to dip into East Timor's oil savings by more than double the usual amount to pay for it.

But the court ruling now means this plan is in jeopardy, and the government faces growing opposition pressure.

The plan was always controversial – double the budget to pay for higher food and fuel costs. At the centre was a so-called stabilisation fund, which was due to suck up $240m (#160m) of extra oil money.

But the Constitutional Court ruled that the fund itself was not transparent enough, and that doubling the budget this year was illegal because the government had not given parliament a good enough reason for doing so.

Political battleground

East Timor's annual budget is carefully calculated each year to cream off from its oil money only what can be sustainably spent. To spend more than that, the government needs to show this is in the country's long-term interest, not just for immediate relief.

The government had argued this year's increase was partly to build infrastructure, and partly to guarantee East Timor's stability in a time of high global prices.

Xanana Gusmao has been pushing hard to get money spent and projects implemented, and it is now unclear how many of those commitments will be honoured under the new ruling.

The case was brought to the Constitutional Court by a group of parliamentarians, led by the main opposition party Fretilin.

This year's budget has become a major political battleground, with Fretilin members saying it highlights the lack of democracy in the country.

They're now waiting to see how the government responds. But neither side at the moment appears to be backing down, and if this row escalates, East Timor could face another political crisis.

Court rules against East Timor mid-year budget

Radio Australia - November 14, 2008

East Timor's Court of Appeal has ruled that the $400 million mid-year budget is illegal. The government had sought to take an extra $290 million from the nation's petroleum fund than its own finance ministry had deemed sustainable. The budget had been appealed against by the main opposition Fretilin party; the court of appeal has now ruled in Fretilin's favour, and the party is now calling on the government to reassess spending for the rest of the year.

Presenter: Stephanie March

Speaker: Fretilin MP Jose Teixeira

March: According to East Timor's constitution, revenue from the nation's natural resources should be "used in a fair and equitable manner in accordance with national interests." In August this year the government drew wide criticism when it increased the budget by 126% to $788 million – based on funds derived from the nation's petroleum fund.

The opposition said the budget plan to allocate $240 million for an Economic Stabilisation Fund to subsidise rice, fuel and construction materials was excessive, and could lead the country down the same path as resource-cursed Nauru.

The Fretilin opposition party lodged a petition in the court of appeal, saying the budget was unconstitutional. Civil society and transparency groups agreed with the opposition. President Jose Ramos-Horta said he too was concerned that only 15 percent of the budget was allocated for capital development, and the rest was for day-to-day expenditure.

Jose Teixeira is a Fretilin MP and the party's spokesman.

Teixeira: We saw a government that was spending an unprecedented amount of money, withdrawing a dangerously unprecedented amount of money from the petroleum fund which is really there not just for this generation but for future generations and for us that was just unacceptable

March: The budget asked to take $291 million out of the petroleum fund beyond what the Ministry of Finance says is a sustainable amount. Now, the court of appeal has deemed that action illegal. It also says there was not adequate time given to the parliament to debate the budget and various amendments. Jose Teixeira says the government should now adjust its commitments so it has enough money to pay for essentials like wages, and community services for the rest of the financial year.

Teixeira: Because there is still lots of money – in excess of $300 million – that they have just committed to. That means they have no obligation to pay yet. They can review some of those and revisit some of those.

March: Jose Teixeira says there are areas where Fretilin would like to see the government cut back on spending.

Teixeira: They should stop spending ludicrous amounts of money of foreign travel for members of government, which has been outrageous. They should stop spending ludicrous amounts of money on needless purchases of rice at very very high prices.

March: The court of appeal says the Economic Stabalisation Fund is illegal, because it's purpose was not properly justified. Jose Teixeira says the fund's justification for a $240 million dollar fund to subsidise rice and oil is no longer valid.

Teixeira: They should not spend anymore money on the ESF which was done on the premise of high rice prices and high fuel prices, well we both know that fuel prices have now fallen dramatically.

March: A government spokesman said the president of parliament has received the court's decision and is now seeking legal advice. The ABC was unable to contact the parliamentary president Fernando Lasama de Aroujo for comment. But Jose Teixeira from Fretilin says the parliamentary president should act quickly as the parliament's reputation is at stake.

Teixeira: What we want them is to take stock of the situation. We want the national parliament – more than the government – to take stock of the fact that this is an indictment against the national parliament, and we want them to provide an appropriate and responsible response to what has been an unprecedented criticism of the executive and legislature of this country.

Human rights/law

Belo: Santa Cruz massacre yet to make the accounting of the dead

Lusa - November 13, 2008

D. Aveiro – Ximenes Belo, former archbishop in Dili and Nobel peace laureate, said Wednesday that, 17 years after the massacre at the cemetery of Santa Cruz, is yet to make the accounting of the dead.

Invited to talk about the massacre of Santa Cruz Municipal Library in Estarreja, D. Ximenes Belo, bishop of Dili at the time, said we do not know for sure how many people died in the incidents and reported the moments then lived.

"I repeat here what I said in Dili in 1991: it is better to ask why the Indonesians killed and that they were that they collected the bodies. So far, we do not know exactly how many were dead, the wounded and missing, because in months following families did not report that the children were missing for fear of reprisals from the Indonesian authorities," he said.

For Ximenes Belo, the massacre of Santa Cruz was crucial for East Timor to achieve independence.

"Respecting the families who lost their children, we can say that the lives of young people massacred on 12 November 1991 served as a springboard for the continuation of East Timor's struggle and independence in law and in fact.

"In memory of those young Timorese martyrs, raise to God my humble prayers for the living and the dead and presto my tribute to those who fell in Santa Cruz," recalled.

Ximenes Belo realized that, days earlier, there was the great influx of young people into confessions, filling the churches, a spiritual preparation for that heroic act.

"Many young people took Communion. Two or three days before the massacre the churches were full of young people and many were up and admit we are surprised with such turnout. We came to learn later that they had agreed among themselves because they knew they were going die and add value to be ready to die defending the homeland, than die in mortal sin," reported.

Ximenes Belo admitted that he initially closed the door to young people who had escaped from Santa Cruz but, before the supplicates them, they open the door.

"I saw groups of young people coming toward my house and told the principle close the door but shouted that they were wounded and dying. I said open the door and were 150 boys and girls who had come from Santa Cruz.

I myself saw that other young people were intercepted by Indonesian troops who had surrounded my house and were killed and arrested there on the road.

The Indonesians tried to immediately collect the bodies. "Manuel Carrascalao saw them to load 50 bodies," he said.

The former Archbishop of Dili explained that after it sent the cemetery and saw "a large group of young, naked from the belt up and with hands on their heads, ready to be put in military trucks." "I came to learn later that some were bound upside down and punched as if they were bags of boxing and some not resisted," he said.

Ximenes Belo, the city was without lights and he charged there were more murders in the hospital: "There were serious injuries that have been taken to the mortuary where, with their large boulder crushed his head."

That night, a nurse's hospital that was coined by a seminary student called and gave account of which he had already washed 70 bodies of young people killed.

On the day of the 14th, he made a visit to the hospital, found that the wards were all full of youth and adolescents, many were completely unrecognizable due to torture. Some of them were those who had received in her house and finds that many have been killed since returned to the hospital the next day and the number was reduced.

Indonesia had appointed a commission of inquiry whose results were not credible and that pointed to a total of only 19 dead and 90 wounded, concluding that it was not a massacre but an incident.

Despite international pressure for the committee to disclose the number right, corrected to 50 dead and 90 wounded.

The process of decolonization of East Timor, according to the Nobel Peace Prize, was all wrong: "Wrong Portugal abandoned because, since Indonesia invaded the wrong and wrong because the Timorese did not have been able unite," he concluded.

[Unofficial translation via Google from Portuguese original. Posted by ETAN.]

Bones are key to truth behind notorious Timorese massacre

Deutsche Presse Agentur - November 11, 2008

Jesse Wright, Dili – As the official photographer for the thousands of civilians walking to a cemetery for a burial, Simplisio de Deus watched through a camera lens as the Indonesian military slaughtered hundreds at the Santa Cruz Cemetery November 12, 1991. It was the last time he would see some of his friends.

The procession had been organized as a memorial for a young man who had been gunned down two weeks before in a church raid by the Indonesian military. The mourners had hoped for a peaceful march, but De Deus was on hand with a camera just in case anything happened.

Something did happen – a massacre – and it became one of the most important and debated events in Timorese history.

The 1990s were turbulent years in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, but unlike earlier massacres, the Santa Cruz Massacre was the first covered by foreign journalists and it forced upon the world the sights and sounds of an illegal occupation. What the world saw and heard in video footage spurred calls for a referendum vote and, eight years later, Timor finally got that vote for independence.

Today in East Timor November 12 is a national holiday and families spend the day together. In the evening candles line the dark, rain-slicked streets across the young nation. The candles burn in memory of the Santa Cruz dead, their link to independence not forgotten.

Yet, 17 years later, a question lingers: Where are all the bodies? De Deus and other witnesses watched as friends were shot and beaten that morning in the cemetery. Then, later in the afternoon, as the victims lay dead and dying, the Indonesians placed them all in trucks. When the trucks came back, they were empty.

Some in Timor claim that up to 400 people died during or after the massacre, but according to official Indonesian reports at the time, only 19 people were killed. If East Timor can produce the remains of hundreds of victims, there is a possibility of setting the record straight and possibly even prosecution.

The families and friends of the dead just want to know what happened to their loved ones. For years families have been tracking down leads and digging holes in the mountains around Dili, but with little luck.

"The problem is, it's hard to find the bones of our friends," said De Deus. "We have a lot of information, but much of it isn't true."

Then earlier this year forensic anthropologists from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine in Australia and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team agreed to lend a hand. So far they have found nothing though their digs have put to rest one longstanding assumption. Sometimes the graves are empty.

A parched and desolate creek far from any paved road about a half hour west of Dili has long been thought to be the site of a mass grave. So, beneath a simple metal cross memorial erected in 2000, the anthropological team began its dig in July, but after five weeks they found nothing. A failing, perhaps, of poor eyewitness accounts.

"We saw the Indonesians come with trucks and the bodies at around six o'clock in the evening," said Joao Balabo, who, as a boy lived in the area. "But we don't know where anyone was buried because if we had gotten too close to the Indonesians we would have been killed."

Luis Fondebrider, from the Argentinian team, said he doesn't doubt bodies were taken to the area, but he said that once the bodies got there, anything could have happened. "Every possibility is open from dumping the bodies in the sea or removing and reburying the bodies," Fondebrider said.

In February, he and his partner Soren Blau will try again in Hera, a town 20 minutes east of Dili. Already in Hera civilians have turned up bones believed to be victims of Santa Cruz, though with no forensic expertise their claim is unsubstantiated. Still, De Deus is hopeful.

"We think that they'll find stuff in Hera because stuff's been found there already," said De Deus. Still, after one empty site the pressure is on Fondebrider and Blau to find something. "The mothers are worried," said De Deus. "The mothers have experienced some frustration that they've not found the bodies sooner."

Fondebrider and Blau say they understand what's at stake. Fondebrider was a member of the team which discovered Che Guevara's grave in South America and Blau has been in and out of Timor for years. "The families are all the same, they all say they want the truth," Blau said. "It doesn't matter the language." (dpa)

Health & education

East Timor president praises Cuban medical cooperation

Cuban News Agency (ACN) - November 25, 2008

Havana – East Timor's President, Jose Ramos-Horta, today highlighted Cuba's medical collaboration with his country, which has nearly one million inhabitants.

During a ceremony to reopen the Guido Valadares National Hospital in Dili, the capital city of East Timor, Ramos-Horta thanked "the great assistance given by the Cuban people and government." He said the Cuban doctors are working in areas where local physicians would not go.

The Timorese president added that Cuba is always the first country to send aid to other nations that are affected by natural disasters, such as the cases of Pakistan and China, according to a report sent by the Cuban embassy in Dili to the Cuban News Agency.

Ramos-Horta said he was proud of having over 700 Timorese youths studying Medicine in Cuba for free and recalled that this small state could not afford to send these youngsters to study in other nations like Indonesia, the Philippines or Australia.

He pointed out that a medicine course would cost in those nations some 3,000 USD per student each semester. The president of the South Asian nation also referred to the expenses they would have face in order to pay for the services of the 200 health professionals currently working for free in his country.

Besides, the Timorese leader reiterated his rejection of the economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the United States against the Caribbean nation for 50 years now, and he demanded its immediate lifting.

Meanwhile Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, praised the work of the Cuban doctors in East Timor and in many other nations as he spoke during the ceremony to reopen the Dili hospital, which was rehabilitated with funds from the European Union.

Art & popular culture

Drawing on tolerance

Canberra Times - November 22, 2008

Angie Bexley - "Gembel" is an Indonesian word meaning homeless person, bum or vagrant. A group of Timorese youth in Dili, Timor Leste, co-opted this derogatory term to use as their collective name for creative projects which include visual art, music and theatre. Gembel have no studio, no government support, no official structure and little by way of equipment and materials.

Their projects are managed autonomously, and decisions are made while hanging out in Borja de Costa Memorial Park in the middle of Dili. In early October 2008, artists from the Culture Kitchen, a collaborative art group based in Canberra, travelled to Dili to work with Gembel. The Culture Kitchen, established in 2007, consists of practising artists Bernie Slater, Julian Laffan, Jon Priadi (originally from Indonesia) and anthropologist and art worker, Angie Bexley.

They were joined in Dili by Indonesian artist Bayu Widodo who, along with Priadi, is a member of Yogyakarta-based art collective Taring Padi, which was established in Yogyakarta during the downfall of President Suharto in 1998.

These artists share a common interest in addressing social and political themes in their societies, as well as a history of working on cross-cultural art projects together. This was their third collaborative project and it was the first time the groups had met in Timor. The first project was a travelling collaboration (the work was variously completed in Canberra, Dili and Yogyakarta) and the second was a Canberra-based project.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, Taring Padi and Culture Kitchen worked with Gembel to discuss common issues to the neighbouring nations and produced a series of large collaborative relief prints that present Gembel's take on contemporary Timor titled, Let's Work Together, or in the Timorese lingua franca of Tetum, Mai Ita Servisu Hamutuk.

With exhibitions planned in Australia and Indonesia, the artists fully embraced this project as a rare opportunity to express their concerns to an outside audience. The visiting artists stimulated discussion among the Gembel artists about the issues that concerned them in contemporary Timor Leste and how these issues could be expressed through artwork.

All too often, young Timorese are labelled as trouble-makers. They are thought and spoken about (by international development organisations, the international media and the Timorese government itself) in terms of conflict and urban-centred lives.

The issues that the young Timorese expressed through the print work demonstrate that young Timorese can act and think for themselves in productive and socially connected ways. The themes of the artworks illustrate the ways in which youth are re- interpreting indigenous concepts such as"helping one another" (ajuda malu). Rather than focusing on conflict, the themes of discussions, expressed in the artworks, show how young Timorese can relate to each other, as youth, as easterners, as westerners, and as Timorese citizens prioritising people-to-people relationships with Australians and Indonesians.

The visual representations in the artwork illustrate how young Timorese are connected to both "traditional" cultural knowledge and the contemporary "modern" context of the nation- state. One of the four lino prints, titled Tebe-Tebe illustrates the traditional Timorese dance tebe- tebe of crushing rice, in which the dancers step in and out, encircling a mound of harvested rice plant. As the dancers sing and dance together, the constant stamping de-husks the rice.

This is still a common way for farmers to turn rice into food and an important cultural practice that reaffirms a Timorese identity of self-sufficiency (ukun rasik aan). The Gembel artists are critical of Timorese government priorities, pointing out that when the country was in the middle of a crucial rice shortage, the government was buying 60 luxury Toyota Prados for cabinet ministers and installing outdoor cinema screens on the government palace building.

The artists also expressed frustrated by the internal tensions within the nation such as regional and ethnic disputes, internally displaced people, widespread corruption and tokenistic government attempts to provide employment for the nation's youth. Printmaking is a relatively new art form in Timor Leste, and the power of the communicative possibilities of print definitely struck a chord with Gembel artists. Given the lack of resources available to the members of this group, they have a natural inclination for DIY a do-it-yourself philosophy that requires young Timorese to think creatively to meet their needs.

This way of life provides a firm base for printmaking which requires manual manipulation of materials using hand-held tools. The bold, graphic nature of relief prints perfectly suits the sense of urgency that the Gembel artists have in communicating their concerns, and of course the possibilities of multiplicity and widespread dissemination have always appealed to artists with a message.

Much of the contemporary art produced in Timor is only hung in a gallery space or behind the closed doors of embassies or non- governmental organisation offices, where only certain people have access. Print, however, can be produced with only minimal materials and can reach a wide audience including ordinary people. One message can be disseminated not only on paper, but on a dozen T-shirts, postcards and bags; the possibilities are endless. Many Gembel artists took the T-shirts off their backs to print their own images onto. It is not constrained to a gallery context but can be exhibited on the street and in other public places thus accessible to the general public. In the middle of the workshop, Gembel hosted an exhibition of their artwork and the work of the visiting artists at the KBH-APHEDA (Australian Union Aid Abroad) workshop space.

The Gembel band played their reggae-inspired beats, they served traditional Timorese snacks of cassava and yams, and the artworks provoked many discussions between viewers, many of whom left with a printed poster, postcard or patch. The Let's Work Together series of lino print works produced during the workshop will be exhibited at the International Human Rights Art and Film festival in Melbourne throughout November 2008, as well as at Megalo Print Studio, Canberra, in 2009 before returning to be exhibited in Timor Leste and Indonesia during 2009.

Angie Bexley is completing a PhD on histories of Timorese youth at the Department of Anthropology, Australian National University and is a co-ordinator for the cross-cultural printmaking exchanges. Contact her at Angie.Bexley@anu.edu.au for more information about the collectives and their project.

When words are not enough

Sydney Morning Herald - November 10, 2008

Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin – Trouble appears to be brewing in East Timor again as security forces step up roadblocks and increase security around government buildings.

Fretilin, the largest political party, is organising an anti- Government protest march across the country, prompting threats by the Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, to jail participants.

But on the streets of Dili, the capital, children do not know or care about the bickering and plotting by the country's political elite who have been antagonists for decades.

Twenty-one vulnerable teenagers and young people were given disposable cameras to capture their lives. Their images are remarkable.

A girl cuddles her toy bear; three naked children sit above a waterhole; a bride adjusts her husband's tie; a cockatoo rests on a perch; children play beachfront soccer; youths tender goats; children frolic in the surf.

One of the youths, Remegito da Costa, wants to become a full-time photographer. "The pictures are my eyes, mouth, ears and feelings," he says.

Rose Magno, a freelance photographer who supervised the project for the non-government organisation Ba Futuru ("For the Future") said it was often difficult and inadequate for young people to express their traumatic experiences through words.

"Giving them an opportunity for creative outlet through the camera lens and visual narrative enables them to transform their negative feelings into seeing positive changes in their personal development and environment," Ms Magno said.

"These children and youth, most of whom have never taken a picture before, ventured out and brought back compelling interpretations on themes such as love, identity, community, peace, conflict transformation and hopes and dreams for their futures."

The photographs are in a two-week exhibition called Through My Eyes.

Economy & investment

East Timor finds evidence to resist Woodside gas plan

Melbourne Age - November 24, 2008

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – A high-stakes battle taking place between East Timor and Woodside Petroleum over the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field is set to escalate after a US company's survey of 45,000 square kilometres of the Timor Sea.

The president of Houston-based DeepGulf, Mark Mozkowski, says the survey will provide evidence to back East Timor's demand that Woodside build a liquefied natural gas plant on the half-island country. "At the moment it looks pretty feasible," Mr Mozkowski said, referring to a pipeline from the field to East Timor.

Woodside has ruled out building a pipeline, partly because of a 3400-metre deep gash in the ocean floor, known as the Timor Trough. But Mr Mozkowski said his company's survey shows the trough's walls are not as steep as previously thought.

"There isn't much of a slope at all, contrary to what other people say," Mr Mozkowski told The Age in the East Timorese capital Dili. He said the only data previously made public about the trough was "soft and sloppy" material obtained from satellite images.

DeepGulf has had three survey boats operating in the waters off East Timor since June. Mr Mozkowski said the survey would be completed by January and then a report prepared on the results.

DeepGulf was commissioned to do the survey for the East Timorese Government and a consortium of South Korean companies.

East Timor's leaders have recently hardened their rhetoric over their demand for the plant on its shores, even threatening to block the $14 billion project rather than yield to Woodside's terms.

The country's President, Jose Ramos Horta, told the Northern Territory Parliament this month that he "would prefer to forgo Greater Sunrise than surrender to the dictates of a bunch of oil executive millionaires".

Woodside this year declared it was considering only two options for Greater Sunrise, which contains about 300 million barrels of light oil and 8.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – piping and processing the gas in Darwin where ConocoPhillips, one of Woodside's partners in the venture already, has a processing plant; or building a floating plant in the Timor Sea.

Tensions over the field rose when East Timor recently signed a memorandum of understanding that gives South Korea preferential access to the gas, the first time East Timor has made a gas supply contract with a foreign country since it became independent in 2002. But under the Greater Sunrise agreements, Woodside and its partners retain the right to market the gas.

A spokesman for Woodside said the company will "progress the concept which develops the Greater Sunrise reservoir to the best commercial advantage, consistent with good oilfield practice".

Under the agreements, East Timor will receive 50 per cent of government upstream revenues generated from Greater Sunrise. "This provides a long-term, stable and significant cash flow to Timor-Leste (East Timor)," the spokesman said.

Jose Teixeira, a former minister who played a key role in the Greater Sunrise negotiations, told The Age that the benefits for East Timor were too great for the field not to proceed. Unless a development plan is in place by 2013, the deal can lapse.

Mr Ramos Horta told the NT Parliament that his country would soon appoint a senior negotiator for Sunrise: "We are ready to study and analyse all options, to talk and explore ideas and arrangements that are mutually beneficial."

But he also signalled East Timor was ready to continue to resist Woodside. "My people are poor and have been victimised for too long. You are rich and powerful. So I have to side with my country and people who are weaker and poorer."

Woodside floats an idea of setting sail with Sunrise gas project

Melbourne Age - November 14, 2008

Barry FitzGerald, Resources Editor – Woodside chief executive Don Voelte has raised the prospect of Woodside sidestepping the Federal Government's planned carbon emissions trading scheme by "floating" its planned Sunrise liquefied natural gas project out of Australian waters into waters administered by East Timor.

The potential for the Sunrise project to proceed as the world's first floating LNG (FLNG) operation means Woodside would have the option of moving the floating production and offload facility about 15 kilometres to the north-west, taking it into East Timorese waters.

"I wonder if the ETS (emissions trading scheme) is applicable to a vessel sitting in Timor Leste waters," Mr Voelte mused at an investor briefing in Sydney.

At it is, a decision on just how Sunrise is developed is not due until the first half of 2009.

The FLNG option is up against a conventional offshore development, also in Australian waters, with the processing plant in Darwin. There is also a rearguard action by East Timor to have the project's processing plant built there.

Mr Voelte has been a strong critic of the ETS proposal since the Federal Government's green paper released earlier in the year envisaged that LNG (export) projects would not qualify for the same protection as coal through the issue of free carbon pollution permits.

He told investors that Sunrise might well be the first project that Australia loses as a result of the introduction of an ETS. He qualified that statement by saying it was a comment, not a threat.

The Government is due to issue its white paper on the proposed ETS early next month, with another Woodside executive, Rob Cole, saying the company had had a good hearing on its concerns in Canberra. "We believe our case is well understood," Mr Cole said.

Mr Voelte said Woodside had not had formal discussions with the Australian or East Timorese government about the potential location of the FLNG plant.

But the potential to shift the plant into East Timorese waters to avoid the Australian ETS had been mentioned to Australian officials.

Mr Voelte said the response was one of "surprise and kind of rolling the eyes". "I thought they took it very seriously," he said.

His comments came as Woodside was being hit hard on the sharemarket because of the slump in oil prices. The stock closed $3.09 lower at $36.90.

Part of the fall reflected disappointment that the North-West Shelf project was suffering teething problems at its new $2.6 billion fifth LNG processing "train". A problem with its heat exchanger means it will run at 80-90% capacity until it is fixed in a planned maintenance shutdown in September 2009.

The project will lose about one cargo a month of LNG. Customers have been notified and shipping schedules reshuffled. The good news was that the design fault that caused the problem has been remedied in the building of Woodside's $12 billion Pluto LNG project, now one-third complete.

Mr Voelte said Woodside would emerge stronger as a result of the current turmoil in global financial and equity markets, with the group's balance sheet strength allowing it to take up new opportunities. "Strong companies in recessions and downturns get stronger. Bad companies go away," he said.

"But bad companies sometimes have some very good assets that they weren't just lucky enough to bring on." The company has stuck to its earlier forecast that production of between 81 million and 84million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) would be achieved in (calendar) 2008. The forecast for 2009 was 81 million to 86 million boe, slightly lower than most in the market have been forecasting.

East Timor talks tough

Australian Financial Review - November 14, 2008

Angus Grigg, Jakarta – Woodside Petroleum's $14 billion Greater Sunrise project may be delayed indefinitely as relations between East Timor and the energy major turn openly hostile over the location of a downstream processing plant.

The East Timorese government has hardened its rhetoric in recent weeks and is now prepared to block the development rather than yield to Woodside's terms. "I, for one, [would] prefer to forgo Greater Sunrise than surrender to the dictates of a bunch of oil executive millionaires, "President Jose Ramos Horta said in a recent speech.

Woodside decided against piping the gas to a liquefied natural gas plant in East Timor earlier this year and favours processing the gas either in Darwin, via a pipeline, or by building a floating plant in the Timor Sea.

But neither plan is acceptable to East Timor, which wants the facility built on its southern coast to stimulate its fledgling economy and develop a skilled workforce.

Flushed with oil money the tiny nation can now afford to wait. For Woodside, however, the deadlock could delay one of its most promising projects for as long as a decade. "It has become very difficult for us to accept any other alternative than bringing the plant to East Timor, "Oil Minister and Natural Resources State Secretary Alfredo Pires told The Australian Financial Review. "We would like to see the field developed but we are not in a hurry. We have money and so we can wait."

Pires, an Australian-educated engineer, accused Woodside of failing to give due consideration to building the plant in East Timor and so has hired an American consulting firm to make the case.

"The East Timor option is much more viable than we have been led to believe," Pires says. From such entrenched positions compromise looks unlikely. Woodside, as the operator, will finance the project's development, which Goldman Sachs J.B. Were has estimated will cost $14 billion.

Sunrise is one of three major multi-billion dollar LNG developments that underpin the company's long-term growth. The company's other two major projects are not without their own problems.

Construction of the $14 billion Pluto LNG project in Western Australia is underway, but the company is struggling to identify sufficient gas reserves to support the development of a second "train", or processing line, which would greatly enhance the project's economics. The huge $35 billion Browse project, meanwhile, appears to be vulnerable due not only to its mammoth financing requirements, but also because of its likely significant exposure to any emissions trading scheme. The gas at Browse has comparatively high carbon dioxide levels.

The company has said while the Sunrise field is closer to East Timor than Darwin the existence of a deep ocean trench between the field and the island nation makes running a pipeline more expensive and technically risky.

Some consultants have raised doubts about whether such a pipeline would techincally feasible. Analysts also say East Timor does not have the skills required to build or operate the plant and the country is more politically risky, despite the stability of recent months.

"We believe East Timor is the least desirable commercial option due to a huge submarine trench separating it from Greater Sunrise and a lack of infrastructure [and] workforce," UBS analyst Gordon Ramsay says.

But for East Timor it's about more than just hard numbers. The plant has become an issue of national pride and the first step in allowing it to develop a skilled oil and gas workforce.

There is also no hurry. The country's petroleum fund, established in 2005 to manage oil and gas revenue from the Bayu Undan field, is forecast to top $US5 billion ($7.5 billion) by the end of next year. Even with the oil price halving to about $US60 a barrel this still gives the government about $US200 million in earnings each year. At this stage it's more money than the country can spend.

Delays to Sunrise could be painful for the project's backers. Already, UBS's Ramsay believes his forecast 2015 starting date for first production out of Sunrise is likely to be pushed out.

At a time when an unprecedented rush of LNG projects are being studied and developed, delays to Sunrise's development could see Woodside and its partners beaten by rivals in the race to snare long-term customers.

Alan Dupont, director of the Centre for International Security Studies at Sydney University, says East Timor is in a strong negotiating position. "What does the country have to gain by going ahead with the development on unfavourable terms when they don't need the money," he says. "Global energy supply and demand favours East Timor in the long term."

And East Timor has the power to kill the deal, as the Greater Sunrise development plan must be approved by the island nation's parliament and its president. "Nationalists see it as an iconic issue for Timor and it has become very emotional," says Dupont.

Damien Kingsbury, from the school of International and Political Studies at Deakin University, says East Timor could delay the project indefinitely if it felt "bloody minded". "If it was East Timor or nothing I don't think Woodside would go ahead with it," he says. "There are three good arguments for not having the plant in Timor – lack of skills, political risk and cost- and no good arguments for having it there." Kingsbury says there is also an argument that the government would be better to wait than go ahead with Sunrise in the short term. "There reality is the government has more money than it has capacity to spend," he says.

Woodside declined to comment ahead of today's investor presentation. In a recent speech to the Northern Territory Parliament President Ramos Horta swung wildly between open hostility and conciliation. He accused Woodside of being "dogmatic" and "political" then said pure economics should determine where the processing plant is located. Crucially the President said such a decision should not be made "unilaterally" by Woodside but rather by an "independent credible" study.

"Timor-Leste cannot and will not bow to pressures from the Woodside CEO millionaires," he said. "We will not bow to unilateral decisions made by these infamous CEOs who mismanaged world multinationals. I, for one, prefer to forgo Greater Sunrise than surrender to the dictates of a bunch of oil executive millionaires."

Oil Minister Pires, while not using the same inflammatory language, endorsed the President's comments. He is a close allay of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, which indicates that both President and Prime Minister are in agreement on the issue.

The opposition Fretelin Party, the largest in parliament, also does not favour the deal if the processing plant is to be housed in Darwin. The President's "independent study" has already been commissioned and should be completed by year's end, according to Peres.

The government has commissioned US consulting firm DeepGulf Inc to study the economics of running a pipeline across the 3.3km deep Timor Trough. The company did not respond to calls and emails from the AFR but recently told the Associated Press the pipeline was "feasible".

Pires says DeepGulf's survey had shown it was "safer" to build the pipeline to Timor as there was a lower chance of seismic activity. "Woodside actually found the opposite," he says. "We wonder if Woodside is prudently looking at the East Timor option." Pires says the South Korean government and Malaysia's national energy company, Petronas, were interested in developing Timor's oil and gas assets. ''We are in a very different position from last time around," he says referring to the development of the Bayu Undan field, which was East Timor's first. "This money has given us time."

Charlie Scheiner from local think tank La'o Hamutuk has long argued that East Timor should delay development of the Sunrise field for at least a decade. He says East Timor needs time to develop its civil service and regulations and gain experience in managing petroleum revenues.

"After a few years the danger of corruption and miss-management will be significantly less," he says.

Scheiner says that technology would be better and therefore make extraction and processing cheaper, while political risk should also be lower.

"East Timor will have a generation long record of as a peaceful, stable, democratic nation," he says. "This will reduce perceptions of political risk by oil companies, removing the need for East Timor to make concessions in negotiations."

Australia may lose Sunrise LNG on carbon costs, Woodside says

Bloomberg - November 13, 2008

Angela Macdonald-Smith – Australia risks losing the Sunrise liquefied natural gas project to East Timor, where the venture could avoid the effects of the government's proposed carbon trading system, said operator Woodside Petroleum Ltd.

Should the venture partners decide to develop the Timor Sea gas field as a floating project, the ship could be located in an area jointly administered by the two countries, rather than Australian waters, Don Voelte, chief executive officer of Perth-based Woodside, said today. Sunrise could then avoid Australia's carbon constraints and pay lower royalties, he said.

Australia's proposed carbon trading system, to start up in 2010, doesn't award any free emission allowances to LNG producers under its current design. That increases their costs in comparison with rivals in countries with no charge on carbon. The Sunrise partners, which include Royal Dutch Shell Plc and ConocoPhillips, are due to decide in the first half of next year whether to use a floating plant or process the gas in Darwin, northern Australia.

Sunrise "may be the first project that Australia loses," Voelte told investors at a briefing in Sydney. "That's not a threat, it's a comment" on the emissions trading plan, he said.

The field, which holds about 5.4 trillion cubic feet of gas, overlaps a boundary between Australian waters and an area jointly managed by Australia and East Timor.

East Timor and Australia in February last year completed a treaty for the administration of the Sunrise field, under which they agreed to split royalties from the upstream part of the project equally. Royalties levied on the downstream, gas processing part of the project would depend on where the LNG production facility was located.

Lower royalties

In Australia, the downstream royalties would be about 40 percent, compared with 10 percent in East Timor, Voelte said today. Building a floating LNG plant, using Shell's technology, would limit the capacity to about 3.5 million metric tons a year, he said. An onshore plant built in Darwin next to ConocoPhillips' existing LNG plant would have a capacity of 4.8 million tons a year, he said.

The partners may approve the project for development by the end of 2010, Woodside said. The venture earlier this year ruled out a development option favored by East Timor of building an onshore plant in East Timor after finding that plan was riskier and more expensive than its two preferred options.

Woodside has about 33 percent of Sunrise and is the operator, while Houston-based ConocoPhillips owns 30 percent, Woodside's 34 percent-shareholder Shell owns 27 percent and Osaka Gas Co. 10 percent.

LNG is natural gas that has been chilled to liquid form, reducing it to one-six-hundredth of its original volume at minus 161 degrees Celsius (minus 259 Fahrenheit), for transportation by ship to destinations not connected by pipeline. On arrival, it's turned back into gas for distribution to power plants, factories and households.

Book/film reviews

East Timor - A fragile state

Dissent magazine - Spring, 2008

[Review essay by Dr Clinton Fernandes, UNSW@ADFA The UN in East Timor: Building Timor Leste, a Fragile State, by Dr Juan Federer, Charles Darwin University Press, 2004.]

There has been a plethora of commentary about East Timor. Unfortunately, much of it has been inadequately informed and sensationalist. However, there is a book that deals with the underlying forces affecting the country. It is well informed and clearly written, and its author is uniquely placed to offer penetrating insights about his subject. It is, unfortunately, not very well known. That book is "The UN in East Timor: building Timor Leste, a fragile state" by Dr Juan Federer. This essay will review Dr Federer's book and highlight some of its salient points.

Federer, who worked closely with the most prominent spokesman for East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta, was a Latin American diplomat who lived in Jakarta. He visited East Timor in Portuguese times and had planned to live there in due course. The Indonesian invasion changed all that. He married an East Timorese woman and became a crucial figure behind the scenes of that country's independence struggle for more than two decades. His fluency in Indonesian, Portuguese, Tetum, English, French and Spanish, combined with his ability for hard work and rational, unsentimental thinking has given him a superb command of his subject.

As the Director-General of International Relations for the National Council of Maubere Resistance (known by its Portuguese initials, CNRM), Federer dismisses the image of unity and organisational cohesion promoted to the world during the independence struggle. He writes that CNRM was never more than a concept whose real significance lay in its ability to satisfy the international community's expectations of a cohesive liberation movement. It served as a legitimate contact point with the promoters of self-determination in the UN and other international bodies. Federer shows that despite its international acceptability, the wider public inside East Timor never consistently accepted CNRM. It was never properly set up, nor did it have periodic meetings, nor adopt policy decisions. But it was "a necessary and useful symbol, which allowed us to fit into expected international moulds as a representative national liberation movement."

In order to unite all East Timorese in the diaspora, CNRM would be renamed CNRT (National Council of Timorese Resistance). It too was a poorly functioning outfit whose real value was the appearance it gave outsiders that a cohesive liberation movement was in existence. Federer notes that "much attention was given to devising pompous sounding titles and the creation of enough of them to co-opt all the vociferous East Timorese pro-independence activists. Little or nothing existed in terms of substantive constitutional documents, definitions of functions, work procedures, information and reporting mechanisms, or work programs and their implementation."

The point of such groupings was to "keep alive the fiction that the East Timorese resistance was a well-constituted pro- independence movement, and as such that the struggle fitted into moulds the world could understand." A crucial CNRM proposal was its peace plan, which argued for a three-phase process to end the conflict with Indonesia. In Phase One, which would last for one to two years, Indonesia-Portugal talks would be held under the auspices of the UN Secretary General, with East Timorese participation. Political prisoners would be released and Indonesian military personnel would be reduced. In Phase Two, there would be a period of autonomy lasting five years, with the possibility of extension for another five years by mutual agreement between Indonesia and the East Timorese population. This would be a transition stage in which East Timorese would govern themselves democratically through their own local institutions. Phase Two would prepare the East Timorese for any future decision on self-determination, ensuring that they would have the technical skills required to mange themselves, their society and their economy. In Phase Three, which would last for a year, preparations would be made for a referendum on self- determination with the population being allowed to choose between independence and integration with Indonesia. Unfortunately, the collapse of the Indonesian economy and the resignation of President Suharto led to a rapid decision by his successor, President Habibie, to give East Timor a "take it or leave it" offer of autonomy within Indonesia. Should they reject it, they would be granted independence. The CNRM peace plan, which had called for seven to twelve years of preparation prior to any such ballot, was shelved and East Timor broke free within nine months of Habibie's offer. Its exit was accompanied by an Indonesian military campaign of state-sponsored terror and crimes of universal jurisdiction including systematic and mass murder, destruction, rape, enslavement, forced deportations and other inhumane acts.

Federer writes that "while CNRM and its successor CNRT had been useful symbols to portray the East Timorese opposition to Indonesian occupation as being akin to a conventional pro- independence movement", they became dysfunctional "once the invader had been removed." CNRT "conveyed an illusory and misleading appearance of a modern organisational maturity of the East Timorese pro-independence population." After the departure of the Indonesian troops, Federer and Horta grew deeply concerned with the way the international community was fitting the East Timor situation into a conventional, post-colonial independence framework. As Federer points out, the situation there was actually quite unique: "there was little cohesive organisation and leadership available" there was a traumatised population whose values, especially its civic ones, had been severely damaged by a long, destructive occupation following a most rudimentary [Portuguese] colonial presence that had done virtually nothing to prepare the country to take its place as a viable member of the international system of sovereign states." Horta, he writes, was "quickly made to realise by some veto-holding UN Security Council members that an international tutelary presence to prepare the country for successful independence" would not be available for the ten or more years required at a minimum but only two or three years at the most.

The command of military operations was formally transferred from the peacekeeping force that liberated East Timor to the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). It is important to understand that UNTAET did not assist the administration of East Timor but was itself the administering authority. Composed of personnel from more than 100 countries (with the language and cultural problems this implied), UNTAET was immediately confronted with several major problems. Although East Timor had been promised approximately US$500 million in development aid, it had received only US$22 million by March 2000. The funding shortage exacerbated the difficulties caused by the Indonesian authorities' widespread destruction of the territory's infrastructure, their evacuation of staff who had previously provided essential services, and their deportation (ethnic cleansing) of 250,000 East Timorese across the border into West Timor. Furthermore, the Indonesian occupation had caused the deaths of nearly 200,000 people. Unsurprisingly, there was a humanitarian crisis.

Federer reminds us that "despite the efforts of their leaders to portray it otherwise, and the often-heroic performance of the resisting population, the East Timor armed resistance did not defeat the occupier and was an almost depleted force in the end." Indonesia's departure was the result of a complex international diplomatic and political campaign "in which the military resistance activity was a mere token component." Therefore, "unlike in decolonization cases where the resistance movements generally became the legitimate and uncontested recipients of sovereignty, the East Timor resistance was not the obvious recipient of sovereignty." Led by the Transitional Administrator, Sergio Vieira de Mello, UNTAET's military component was disproportionately large, with nearly 9,000 troops and 200 military observers. Rather than splitting the mission into an initial peacekeeping and humanitarian operation to be followed by a more important and long-term state-building mission, UNTAET's emphasis was on peacekeeping and reconstruction, with less emphasis regarding the preparation for independent statehood. Yet there was almost no military threat facing the new state. Only a fraction of the total of 10,000 troops was ever needed. With military expenses being easily the highest cost component, a stronger emphasis on state-building would have saved money and prepared East Timor for the challenges of nationhood.

The UN did not focus on state-building in part because funding for peacekeeping missions comes from non-voluntary member- assessed contributions, thus opening such missions to member pressure for a speedy end. UNTAET was therefore put together very quickly. International staff were recruited "from the four corners of the earth to a remote country they had previously never heard of, whose history they did not know, to difficult living conditions, in a mission that was still disorganized and confusing, often on short-term contracts of three to six months." Some staff were recruited "for their Portuguese language skills on the assumption that East Timor was basically a Portuguese- speaking land." It wasn't. Many staff spent the first months of their mission trying to acquaint themselves with East Timor and the last few months trying to either renew their contracts or find another job in some other post-conflict society. Also, as Federer reveals, many foreign personnel "had a strong incentive not to speed up local participation and thus do themselves out of a job, even though readiness to be replaced should have been the attitude of members of a transitional administration." Federer shows that there was a "total lack of functioning social organisations and governance institutions" in East Timor. The only relatively organized institution that had survived was the Catholic Church. "All the other social 'organisations' were basically labels for groupings lacking a proper structure." Federer cites the Portuguese expression pra o ingles ver (for the Englishman to see) in order to show how appearances were created in order to impress a critical, more powerful foreigner whose approval is sought.

UNTAET hired East Timorese civilians, but they were largely employed in low-level positions with little authority to make decisions. They received less than 1% of the total budget and were paid approximately 20-30 times less than the international staff, most of whom did not possess an adequate knowledge of East Timor's socio-economic conditions. This resulted in much hostility, much of which could have been avoided "if a sense of inclusion and ownership" had been "fostered from the beginning by involving the people to a greater extent in the design of the Mission".

More prominent, politically active East Timorese arriving from the diaspora, where they "had not achieved positions of much significance", saw in all this an opportunity to exploit the political situation. They "began to exhibit a vociferously hostile position towards UNTAET and, following their instincts as politicians, quickly sought to capitalize on the popular discontent developing toward the new authority in East Timor". They began to call for the termination of the mission and the transfer of its authority to themselves. They also presented themselves as "the local political counterparts that the UN was so keenly looking for to fit its existing operational models." UNTAET "readily and uncritically yielded to the local challengers that emerged, allowing them to influence the independence timetable." These individuals pushed for Portuguese to be adopted as the country's official language, thereby maximizing their own advantage. By "introducing a linguistic barrier, they could exclude the non-Portuguese speaking Indonesian-educated youth from access to the top." They also pushed for UNTAET to leave as soon as possible instead of calling for "greater resources and a longer-term international commitment to underwrite the essential, necessarily lengthy, institution and capacity building process." All this "was music to the ears of those in charge of finances in New York, who had been pressing for a quick end" to the mission. In order to exonerate the UN from blame, "an exit strategy was quickly defined" and responsibility for success after independence (or blame for failure, as it happened) was laid in the lap of the East Timorese people.

Federer's book may discomfit people who romanticize the East Timorese cause, but it is the most useful book I have ever read on East Timor. It is essential reading for those who wish to understand what happened as well as what can be done now.

Opinion & analysis

Our East Timor legacy

Sydney Morning Herald - November 23, 2008

Paul Daley – There has been a lot of disagreement recently about just who said what to whom in serious policy and political discussions over the course of the last government.

While we'll have to wait 30 years for the release of the cabinet papers to get to the bottom of some arguments, other matters that preoccupied the Howard government are not so subject to the vagaries of revisionism.

Take East Timor. In an interview for the ABC's The Howard Years, the former prime minister explains how he wrote to Indonesian president B.J. Habibie on December 19, 1998, to tell him Australia was backing self-determination for East Timor. Howard says what we already knew: not only did Habibie agree but he went further and voiced his support for an independent East Timor.

"It is true that none of us had envisaged that's what Dr Habibie would've done," Howard says. "Dr Habibie went further but the direction in which he travelled was the same direction that was requested in the letter. It's just that he went much further. He was 20 miles instead of five."

Habibie did catch Australia off-guard when, in January 1999, brandishing Howard's letter, he said East Timor would be given a choice between independence and autonomy. Before this, Habibie had been promoting "special status" for East Timor – code for autonomy within Indonesia.

What may not be entirely clear from the ABC interview with Howard is that East Timor remaining part of Indonesia was actually Australia's favoured position, too.

A recent paper by Dr Clinton Fernandes, published in the Kokoda Foundation's journal, Security Challenges, makes this plain. It quotes the government's then upper house leader, senator Robert Hill, telling a Senate committee hearing on February 11, 1999: "The prime minister has come to the conclusion that an autonomous East Timor within Indonesia, at least for the time being, would be the better option."

The timing of Hill's comment is important because he made it two months after Howard sent his letter to Habibie and a month after the Indonesian president stated his new position.

Fernandes is a senior lecturer in strategic studies at the Australian Defence Force Academy and the author of two books on Australian-Indonesian relations. At the time of the East Timor crisis, he was principal analyst for the Australian Intelligence Corps.

He is a controversial figure in the East Timor debate. In 2000 he was named on a search warrant along with journalists in relation to leaked intelligence information. But his academic work is forensic, tapping sources that provide insight into the internecine manoeuvrings preceding the deployment of the Australian-led INTERFET (International Force for East Timor) force.

Kevin Rudd doesn't escape Fernandes's pen either. In 1997, Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, Laurie Brereton, changed the party's platform from one of bipartisanship on East Timor to recognising the Indonesian colony's "right of self- determination".

Backbencher Rudd was, says Fernandes, one of the "defenders of the old policy" on Timor. He writes that Rudd tried to convince others in Labor that Brereton's approach was wrong – a fact that pleased the Indonesian government, which invited him to East Timor.

"Rudd co-ordinated his visit to East Timor with the Indonesian government, the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and [then foreign minister, Alexander] Downer's office. Just hours before getting on the plane, Rudd called Brereton to inform him of the trip. This call took place only after the Howard government had started briefing members of the press gallery, meaning that Rudd had manoeuvred with the government against his own party's spokesperson."

On leaving Federal Parliament recently, Downer said: "I spent nearly 12 years as the foreign minister of Australia and during that period I helped to free the people of East Timor and I would single that out as my greatest achievement."

Certainly Downer can take some credit. But the facts also remain that from early 1999, when it was clear East Timor was heading towards a self-determination that would displease the Indonesian military enormously, the US pushed and prodded Australia much of the way.

The pressure began official to official and ended, it is understood, with one of the most senior figures in the Clinton administration directly pressuring Howard.

The awakening for the US – whose Congress had always been much more active on East Timorese human rights than Australia's Parliament – was, as Fernandes points out, an article in the International Herald Tribune by Dr Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a senior adviser to former president Habibie.

"Indonesia's 500,000-strong military cannot be relied on to do the job [of securing the autonomy ballot] because it is not regarded as neutral," she wrote in February 1999.

Alarm bells rang in the US State Department. But unfortunately Howard and Downer were giving Jakarta the benefit of the doubt amid endless Australian intelligence reports showing the Indonesian military was orchestrating militia violence against ordinary East Timorese to discourage a vote for independence.

What happened next is not a matter for dispute because the records were leaked.

A US assistant secretary of state, Stanley Roth, met the then head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to say that a full-scale peacekeeping effort was inevitable and that Australia's position of keeping peace at arm's length was defeatist.

Australia eventually led the way in East Timor. But only after significant pressure to do so.

Struggle continues for Timor occupation survivors

Canberra Times - November 3, 2008

Susan Harris Rimmer – Will the date October 30 mark the last best chance for justice for survivors of occupation in East Timor?

In 1999, then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said of the violence in East Timor, "To end the century and the millennium tolerating impunity for those guilty of these shocking violations would be a betrayal of everything the United Nations stands for regarding the universal protection and promotion of human rights."

In 2008, the outcomes of the transitional justice processes set in place by the UN and Indonesia are cause for deep concern in terms of their inadequacy, and would confirm Robinson's worst fears.

Not one Indonesian perpetrator has been punished. The Timorese National Parliament held a plenary session to debate two important reports; the Final Report, Chega! ("No more, stop, enough!" in Portuguese), produced by the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in Dili in 2006 and the Bilateral Commission for Truth and Friendship report, a process comprising 10 Commissioners, five from Indonesia and five from Timor-Leste with a secretariat in Denpasar, Indonesia.

This commission was founded by then presidents Gusmao and Yudhoyono in 2004 but the report was delayed until recently. A Timorese Parliamentary Committee has presented two resolutions to the Parliament that according to the Committee's press release last week "recognise the achievements of both Commissions, acknowledge their findings, and propose implementation of their recommendations".

The proposed resolutions highlight the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation and Commission for Truth and Friendship recommendations in the areas of victim reparations, a commission for disappeared persons, justice, education and the establishment of an independent institution to oversee implementation efforts.

President Jose Ramos Horta told Televizaun Timor-Leste last month, "Recommendations are only recommendations and are not obligation for the Government and the Parliament to follow them." This negative response may be puzzling to an outsider why would the Timorese Parliament not embrace the recommendations of documents many years in the making in a bipartisan manner? Both reports are controversial.

The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation was established by the United Nations (with Timorese participation) as an independent body to inquire into human rights violations committed on all sides, between April 1974 and October 1999, and facilitate community reconciliation with justice for those who committed less serious offences. The commission could not grant amnesty and was meant to refer "serious crimes" to the court in Dili.

The commission delivered its final report to Parliament in November 2005, and to the UN Security Council in January 2006. Yet it was not publicly disseminated within Timor until June 2006, and has not been brought before Parliament until now.

This is because the report did not win full acceptance by the Timorese Government, mainly because of controversial recommendations about national and international reparations, including a demand that Australia pay reparations for its recognition of Indonesia in Timor's waters. However, it is generally considered by international observers to be a document of great worth and integrity in telling the truth about the period of occupation.

An example is the report's estimation of the number of people who died during the conflict, a figure that has never been known. The Chega! final report says an upper estimate of 183,000 died as a result of both killings and deaths due to privation. Even though the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation was designed to be a companion for justice, not a substitute for it, generally it has been the mechanism that offered the most benefit to ordinary Timorese citizens, in terms of recognition of suffering and a recommendation that victims be compensated by the new Timorese Government.

As one survivor told the commission, "I will not hold office like these important men who once fought together with us. All I ask for is my right to a decent life as the family member of a fighter. I got this way because my husband and children disappeared. The important men are not permitted to forget us [just because they] now have a strong chair stuck on the ground. In the past, when their positions were not yet certain, we fought together."

The Commission for Truth and Friendship did not enjoy the same kind of acceptance by civil society in Indonesia or Timor. At its inception, Indonesian non-Government organisations feared it would be a "whitewash machine", because it could recommend amnesty for those involved, and its findings would "not lead to prosecution". It was designed to "emphasise institutional responsibilities" rather than identifying and assigning blame. It had the power to recommend rehabilitation for those "wrongly accused" (but did not in the final report) but had no power to propose rehabilitation or reparations for victims.

The final Commission for Truth and Friendship report was delayed several years but turned out to slightly exceed expectations by admitting the Indonesian military was at fault in the 1999 violence. In terms of the relationship with Indonesia, the reaction of the Timorese Parliament to the report is extremely important. Justice issues are equally important in today's East Timor.

The opposition is planning a massive march on Dili and rumours of tension in the police force are raising concerns of a return to the instability of 2006 and February this year. East Timor remains one of the poorest countries in Asia. There are many political reasons why the Timorese Parliament may not respond with energy and commitment to the recommendations of the two reports. But for the long term human security of Timor, for the memory of the victims and the future of the survivors, the international community should hope they do.

[Susan Harris Rimmer is a researcher on the ARC project Building Democracy After Conflict at RegNet, College of the Asia- Pacific, ANU.]