The United Nations has been seeking to wind down its peacekeeping mission in East Timor, where international troops and police were sent after major unrest in 2006. It will help the government gear up for elections in 2012. UN special representative for East Timor, Ameerah Haq, on Tuesday praised the general stability in the southeast Asian state but raised concerns about policing and the commuting of prison terms for some involved in the unrest.

"Public confidence in the state's willingness to support the rule of law and human rights can be adversely affected if the public perceives that individuals in high profile cases are given favoured treatment," she told the Security Council.

Haq said she raised the "concern" with Ramos-Horta after he lifted jail terms against those convicted for February 11, 2008 attacks against him and the prime minister, and some soldiers convicted for killing eight police officers in the 2006 troubles.

She added that she was "troubled" that three soldiers involved in the 2006 killings "appear to have resumed work".

"I hope that future such decisions are guided by the need to bolster the public's confidence in a system that ensures accountability for criminal acts," she said.

France's representative, Martin Briens, said the pardons "did not send a good signal."

And US representative to the council, Brooke Anderson, raised concerns about the police. She said "the excessive use of force and lack of accountability" remain a concern.

The UN mission, UNMIT, has been slowly handing over security responsibilities to the local police and security forces. But Haq said there were still more than 200 police without proper certification in Timor, many of them in the capital Dili.

She said the "slow action" by the Timorese authorities was "detrimental to the overall integrity of the police service over the long term and requires expeditious remedy."

Haq said East Timor "is entering a crucial period, one which will help determine whether it has overcome in a sustainable manner the political and institutional weaknesses which contributed to the events of 2006."

Timor economy will weaken without UN

Australian Associated Press - October 14, 2010

Larine Statham – Fresh concerns have emerged that East Timor's economy will be dealt a savage blow, leaving hundreds of people without work, when United Nations forces withdraw from the country.

East Timor's President Jose Ramos Horta has a plan to keep the country's many taxi drivers, hospitality workers, landlords and moteliers in business.

The president's office, since last year, has been developing a range of tourism events, which aim to promote East Timor as a peaceful, adventure- sport destination.

The inaugural Tour de Timor international mountain bike race, in August 2009, attracted almost 300 competitors from 12 countries.

Within three weeks of the event, Australia's travel warning for East Timor, which had since April 2006 advised people to "reconsider their need to travel" there, was reduced to a level three warning.

"One effective means to promote peace is through sport and cultural events," Dr Ramos Horta told AAP. "These events have a double effect in that they bring in foreign participants and international media coverage."

In addition to running fishing competitions, marathons and yacht races in recent years, scuba divers from around the world have flocked to East Timor's capital, Dili, this week to compete in the country's first-ever underwater photography competition.

Dr Ramos Horta is hoping UN personnel in East Timor, and their spending habits, will be largely replaced by affluent event participants and their travelling companions.

"There will hundreds of highly paid UN personnel who have left, leaving behind apartments they rented, and no longer eating at restaurants," he said.

"So we have to create new demands and you do that by promoting tourism... but also by bringing new investors. "And hopefully there will be wealthier Timorese by then."

Gyorgy Kakuk, UN spokesman for the operation in East Timor, told AAP it was not yet possible to forecast the economic impact of the UN's proposed withdrawal and that any figures would only be theoretical in nature.

Mr Kakuk said the real drawdown would only begin after the successful completion of the general and presidential elections in 2012. Dr Ramos Horta said prices in Timor, where services are limited and the local currency is in US dollars, was proportionately high compared with other countries in the region, because of the UN presence.

"They create an artificial economy that inflates prices," he said. "We know from the past when the UN left in 2003 prices started going down, so hopefully in another two years prices will start to go down, quality will improve and we will have more money spenders coming from Australia."

He said Timor could not compete with other Asian countries on cost or "Asia-ness", but that it had a lot of unique features.

"It is very unexplored," he said. "It can be a Mediterranean spot in South-East Asia because of its culture – it's mostly Catholic with Portuguese colonial architecture."

The UN began its peacekeeping operation in East Timor in 1999 as part of the country's transition to independence. East Timor is one of the poorest nations in the region.

Human rights & law

UN praises East Timor human rights progress

Agence France Presse - October 5, 2010

Dili – East Timor on Tuesday got a favourable write-up in a United Nations human rights report that pointed to progress four years after unrest that killed nearly 40 people, despite some continued problems.

The report, part of a UN mission to help stabilise the young country, highlighted increased accountability for national police officers, improvements to the justice system as a result of training and upgrades to facilities.

The UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) also said steps had been taken towards accountability for crimes committed during the 2006 internal unrest, which began with a conflict in the army and then spread.

About 37 people were killed and 150,000 displaced in the first several months, the report noted.

All cases recommended by a UN Commission of Inquiry have been taken up for investigation and as of June five trials were completed and two trials were underway, the report said.

"When we launched our annual human rights report last year, I stated that Timor-Leste was doing far better than average in a number of human rights areas and that continues to be the case," the UN mission's rights chief, Louis Gentile, said in a statement.

"For example, we recorded no cases of torture or enforced or involuntary disappearances during this reporting period."

East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, gained formal independence in 2002 after a 24-year Indonesian occupation estimated to have caused the deaths of as many as 200,000 people.

Despite the upbeat comments, some abuses persist, with regular reports of ill-treatment and excessive use of force by the security forces and only limited progress in criminal cases against security personnel.

Trial proceedings were consistently delayed and presidential commutations allowed the release of convicted members of security forces who then returned to service.

"The challenge remains of ensuring effective accountability for the small percentage of police officers and military personnel who continue to use excessive force against their fellow citizens," Gentile said.

Nearly all of UNMIT's more than 1,550 uniformed personnel are police, and one of the mission's major tasks is to conduct a comprehensive review of the security sector, training and strengthening the East Timor national police.

Justice & reconciliation

Critics say cost of forgiveness is too high in East Timor

New York Times - October 25, 2010

Aubrey Belford, Gleno, East Timor – Gastao Salsinha, retired rebel and failed assassin, says it is probably politics that explains why he is free to roam East Timor's cloud-covered hinterlands rather than languishing in jail.

Mr. Salsinha was the most senior of 24 rebels convicted earlier this year of attempting to murder the country's president and prime minister in twin attacks in 2008.

But even as the district court in Dili, the capital, handed down a sentence of more than 10 years in jail, Mr. Salsinha, a former army lieutenant, could look forward to certain release. President Jose Ramos-Horta – who was left bleeding and near death with gunshot wounds in one of the attacks -- had promised forgiveness.

In late August, he delivered, granting full sentence commutations to all 23 rebels in custody. The opposition, rights groups and the United Nations reacted with dismay, saying the decision undermined the rule of law.

Even Mr. Salsinha, sitting outside a relative's home in the hilly western district of Ermera, said that the president probably had overstepped his constitutional power to grant commutations. "But because there's been political intervention, anything can happen," he said, smiling shyly.

Critics cite the release of Mr. Salsinha and his men as the latest example of crime and no punishment in East Timor, where a series of government interventions have stifled efforts to punish those deemed responsible for crimes during Indonesia's bloody 24-year occupation and during instability since independence in 2002.

But for the government, and Mr. Ramos-Horta, a Nobel Peace laureate, the moves are about mercy and reconciliation in Asia's newest and poorest country. And with giant Indonesia just across the border, and local divisions still strong at home, there is one other calculation: that a blank slate can buy peace and stability.

Despite having a limited day-to-day role in government, Mr. Ramos-Horta has taken the lead in pushing for what he sees as forgiveness, seizing on a provision in the Constitution allowing him to issue pardons and commutations "after consultation with the Government."

East Timor's list of suffering is a long one. As many as 180,000 people died following Indonesia's 1975 invasion of the former Portuguese colony, including about 1,400 in militia violence surrounding UN-backed independence referendum in 1999.

A violent political crisis set off by the firing of 600 soldiers in 2006 killed at least 37 people and drove 150,000 from their homes in fighting between ethnic groups and security forces – and spawned the rebel movement, led by the late army deserter Alfredo Reinado, that shot Mr. Ramos-Horta.

In an interview outside his office building in Dili, Mr. Ramos-Horta said that, in the case of Mr. Salsinha's men, forgiveness, and preventing a return to instability, trumped the desires of justice advocates in the United Nations and international rights groups.

"You can say that when you put up that question to me, I laugh, because I am already used to the UN, academic jargon that if you forgive people who have been tried, who have faced the whole justice process, and who faced two, three years in prison, you foster a kind of impunity," Mr. Ramos-Horta said.

Not surprisingly, the United Nations – which maintains a foreign troop- backed mission in the country – sees it differently. Since his election in 2007, Mr. Ramos-Horta has dramatically increased the number of commutations and pardons handed out, prompting criticism that his actions are weakening accountability in the justice system.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, in his report on East Timor to the Security Council this month, said the rebels' commutations could endanger future investigations over war crimes and undermine "efforts to combat impunity."

Particularly egregious, in the United Nations' opinion, was the arrest and release in 2009 of Maternus Bere, a pro-Indonesian militia leader indicted by the UN-backed Serious Crimes Unit in the 1999 massacre of more than 30 people at a church in the town of Suai.

Captured by the police after crossing over from Indonesia, Mr. Bere – a leader in the militia accused of carrying out the attack – was let go by government order, succumbing to Indonesian pressure and violating East Timor's own criminal code, said Louis Gentile, the local representative of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights. The decision led to a no- confidence motion in the government, which was defeated on party lines.

Mr. Ramos-Horta said the decision was made because East Timor had decided "to close a chapter" on the 1999 violence by signing off with Indonesia on a Commission of Truth and Friendship report in 2008.

That report acknowledged Indonesian blame for much of the violence but has been criticized for doing nothing to revive moribund calls for an international tribunal, or bring to justice the more than 300 war crimes suspects living freely in Indonesia.

But for Mr. Gentile, trading justice for stability may mean East Timor could get neither. "If you look at examples from around the world, a lot of people would argue that forgiveness and reconciliation with no element of justice will leave, certainly a large number of victims – if not the leadership – feeling that they need to take revenge or that their call for justice was not heard, and they will bide their time to take justice into their own hands," he said.

The release of Mr. Salsinha and his men means no one is now in jail over the 2006 crisis and its aftermath. Although these commutations were not illegal, as critics believe Mr. Bere's release was, Mr. Ramos-Horta clearly undermined the country's justice system by broadly interpreting his constitutional power to pardon and commute sentences, including by basing his decision on his personal preference for "forgiveness," said Luis de Oliveira Sampaio, the director of the Judicial System Monitoring Program, a nongovernmental organization in Dili.

"For us this is a direct effort to minimize the meaning and essence of national law in Timor-Leste," he said, referring to the country by its official name.

Up in the hills of Ermera, Mr. Salsinha said he thought being freed was a step to helping heal the wounds of the 2006 crisis. If anyone was to be punished, he said, it should be members of the political elite, whose squabbling set off the 2006 crisis. "The officials are like Pilate. They've all washed their hands," he said. "It was only the little people, the followers, that went to jail."

East Timor leader defends pardon of rebels

Agence France Presse - October 24, 2010

Dili – East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta has defended his decision to pardon rebels in the tiny nation following criticism by a UN envoy.

The UN special representative for East Timor, Ameerah Haq, raised concerns earlier this week about policing and the commuting of prison terms for some involved in unrest.

Haq expressed her concern to Ramos-Horta after he freed those jailed for attacks against him and the prime minister in February 2008 as well as soldiers convicted for killing eight police officers in 2006.

"I pardoned them based on humanitarian grounds. After assessing the circumstances that occurred in 2006, this young nation has many victims and they (those being pardoned) are also victims," Ramos-Horta said.

"It was not their wish to do such thing. They had protested and we had no chance for a solution at the time," he said of the assassination attempt against him.

Ramos-Horta said since he made the decision to pardon them, there had been peace and order in the country. "Our constitution says that we have to consider circumstances, so we want to give justice to our specific situation," he added.

Haq previously told the Security Council that public confidence in the state's willingness to support the rule of law and human rights could be "adversely affected" if the public perceived that individuals in high profile cases received favourable treatment.

Despite her praise for East Timor's general stability, she said she was "troubled" that three soldiers involved in the 2006 killings appeared to have resumed work.

The UN has been seeking to wind down its peacekeeping mission in East Timor, where international troops and police were sent after major unrest in 2006.

East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, gained formal independence in 2002 after a brutal 24-year occupation by Indonesia.

Scars and hope after conflict

Philippine Daily Inquirer - October 22, 2010

Rina Jimenez-David, Bangkok – From 1975 to 1999, East Timor (or Timor- Leste as the people call their country) was subjected to a harsh and brutal conflict between the Indonesian occupying forces and a rebel force fighting for independence.

As with any armed conflict, it was the civilians who paid the highest price, with women paying an especially high price by way of rape, including forced servitude and sexual slavery.

When Timor Leste became an independent state in 2002, one of its first acts was to create bodies to investigate human rights abuses committed during the Indonesian occupation and the war for independence. The government created the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (known by its Portuguese acronym CAVR), but so far the results have been disappointing.

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and its local partners released last February a report whose title says everything about what transpired: "Unfulfilled Expectations: Victims' perception of justice and reparations in Timor-Leste." The report states: "Victims generally believe that their suffering and strength during the 1975 to 1999 conflict was instrumental in Timor gaining independence, and therefore the state of Timor-Leste should recognize their contribution in a meaningful way.

However, the long official silence and policy stagnation on victim issues has led to victims of the past conflict feeling forgotten and marginalized. The provision of government assistance to other groups such as victims of the 2006 crisis (when government troops launched an attempted coup-RJD) has exacerbated these feelings of marginalization."

Even worse, after a decade of independence, scars from the conflict remain, inflicting pain on survivors and even on the next generation.

Manuela Pereira, a project associate of the ICTJ, told participants in the training in which I am taking part that children born as a result of rape have to go through life undocumented. This is because for many of these "children of rape," some of whom are now teenagers and young adults, getting a baptismal certificate (majority of the East Timorese are Catholic) is impossible because the Church requires their mothers to list down the names of the father. Note that in Timor-Leste a baptismal document often serves as an alternative to a birth certificate, since public records were lost or burned during the conflict.

SO far, says Pereira, there has been only the conviction for the rape of a woman named Angela Lolotoe, "but even Angela herself does not know what has happened to her case, and if the perpetrators have been punished," Pereira adds.

"Victims and their families feel that justice has not yet been done for crimes committed during the 1975-1999 conflict and that justice is a prerequisite to peace and stability," the

ICTJ reports says. "Although people have many different ideas about what constitutes 'justice,' common themes include a desire to confront perpetrators, learn the truth about crimes committed, receive an apology and (a) show (of) remorse from perpetrators, be granted material assistance and official recognition, and see perpetrators punished."

In an effort to gather evidence regarding human rights violations during the years of conflict, researchers went around Timor-Leste interviewing women, gathering statements from 8,000 of them.

I am in this city as a resource person (on advocacy and the media) in the "People's Diplomacy Training on Women's Engagement in Peace and Decision- Making Processes," sponsored by the Initiatives for International Dialogue and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict-Southeast Asia.

Anchoring the sessions is the 10th anniversary of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which aims to put a stop to sexual violence against women and girls in armed conflict and to encourage greater participation by women in peace-building initiatives.

Women from countries which experienced or are still experiencing conflict are taking part in this training, including: Timor-Leste, West Papua and Aceh in Indonesia, Burma (women working in the Thai border areas with Burmese refugees and immigrants), South Thailand, Cambodia, and Mindanao in the Philippines.

Also part of the 10th anniversary observance is the use of UNSCR 1325 as the theme of this year's "State of the World Population" Report, issued annually by the UN Population Fund. As Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA executive director, states: "When women and girls suffer deep discrimination, they are more vulnerable to the worst effects of disaster or war, including rape, and less likely to contribute to peace-building, which threatens long-term recovery."

"Governments need to seize opportunities arising out of post-conflict recovery or emerging from natural disasters to increase the chances that countries are not just rebuilt, but built back better and renewed, with women and men on equal footing, with rights and opportunities for all and a foundation for development and security in the long run," the report argues.

Among the most moving moments of this training was when a young Burmese woman despaired-after a presentation by Cambodian women involved in national reconciliation efforts-that "everyone wants peace, but in our country the people cannot even negotiate with the government (the military junta)."

In response, Vannath Chea of the Cambodia Center for Social Development, reminded her that "if there is a problem, that means there is a solution. Situations evolve, they never stand still. We never dreamed we would ever emerge from the Khmer Rouge, but the Khmer Rouge collapsed overnight, literally. So keep hoping, and prepare yourselves for the post-conflict situation and for building peace."

Health & education

East Timor last frontier for war on leprosy

Associated Press - October 10, 2010

Margie Mason, Oe-cusse enclave, East Timor – If there really was a place so remote it could be called the end of the earth, Adelino Quelo's shabby little hut would be prime real estate.

His thatch teepee-shaped home is the last stop in tiny East Timor. It is perched on the side of a rugged emerald mountain with a million-dollar view of neighboring Indonesia, so close you can almost touch it.

As rare visitors holler his name, a slow shuffling comes from the dirt floor inside. A minute passes and Quelo, 68, appears at the small opening carved out near the ground. He scoots on his rear and grunts while laboriously dragging one leg, then one arm on each side, using a torn pair of mismatched flip flops as his only aid.

His fingers, toes and parts of his hands and feet are missing. Only stubby knobs remain, keeping him from standing, gripping or even bathing himself. But Quelo smiles a toothless grin and motions for his guests to come closer, apologizing for having nothing to offer but his story.

He is just one face of leprosy in a country that has declared war on the age-old scourge. East Timor is one of two places worldwide – the other is Brazil – where the disease is still widespread enough to be considered a public health threat.

But for Quelo, the fight comes far too late. "I, myself, already suffer from this, and it's enough," he says, a dirty sarong hiked up on his right thigh, exposing a large open sore. "I hope no one else will suffer this."

Oe-cusse Enclave, a lush secluded area cut off from the rest of East Timor by the Savu Sea, is thought to have been a leprosy colony during Portuguese and later Indonesian rule.

Roughly the size of New York City, it was positioned on the front lines during the brutal fight for independence from Indonesia 11 years ago and was nearly destroyed. Monuments now mark the sites of bloody massacres.

Its 60,000 people are survivors, but they are dangerously poor. Living conditions worsen as the roads narrow and grow steeper, exposing naked children with bulging bellies and blond-streaked hair – signs of malnutrition.

Time seems to have stopped here, and the disease believed long gone in many parts of the world continues to nibble away at lives, despite a three-pill cure recommended for the past three decades. But the number of new infections in East Timor, home to about 1 million people, has dwindled to 160 last year. It is nearly within the World Health Organization's target for elimination, or less than one case per 10,000 people.

Now leprosy specialists like Dr. Rosmini Day, who's battled the disease for 20 years across Asia, are scouring this secluded pocket for new cases to determine if East Timor will meet the mark by year's end. Since the campaign began in 1991, the number of new leprosy patients worldwide has plummeted from about 10 million to 250,000. Leprosy is virtually nonexistent in the West, with only about 150 cases reported in the US annually.

Some experts argue the WHO target makes people wrongly believe that an already neglected disease has been wiped out entirely. And some question the authenticity of the count in countries driven to meet world goals.

But Day, a 62-year-old Indonesian grandmother, has come out of retirement to help East Timor with its last fight. She is a master at identifying the disease and believes no one should be overlooked, no matter how remote.

She hikes up a muddy mountain road too treacherous for even a 4X4 and examines a patient in the rain outside his hut. She interrupts a cock fight in another village to pinch and pull at the skin of a second patient's elbow to see how fast it snaps back. She stops at a third man's house and calls him out onto the road from a funeral to have a look beneath his shirt.

Leprosy is difficult to identify in the early stages, but Day says it's important for a new generation of health workers to learn the traits to stop the spread and cure patients before damage is done. It's the only way to truly get rid of the disease.

"I use a sarong to protect my toes, but the rats still come in the nighttime and eat at my toes," says Luis Siqueira Afoan, 65, a patient who walked more than 2 miles (1 kilometer) on dry blackened nubs to see the doctor who can do nothing to help. "When I'm sleeping, I put my fingers under my head, but the rats still come and eat at my fingers."

Quelo lives a 30-minute hike down a steep hill and across three fences from Malelat village, home to the enclave's worst cases. Of the 300 families living here, nearly everyone has a relative or neighbor suffering from the lasting effects of leprosy.

Like most of them, he was infected decades ago as a farmer before medicine was available. By the time he finally received the antibiotics, the disease was already advanced, forcing him to slowly watch his limbs die.

"I use my hand with a rubber band and a spoon because I don't have fingers anymore," he says, sitting crumpled up on the ground outside his hut as two brown puppies dance around him. "I lost the ability to walk more than 20 years ago."

Leprosy is not a killer, but a chronic bacterial infection that seriously disables those not quick enough to identify and treat it. Like tuberculosis, it can stay dormant for years before attacking and slowly shutting down the nerves that allow a hand to make a fist or a foot to flex.

It typically starts as a light-colored patch on the skin and then spreads, stopping hair from growing on affected areas and short-circuiting sweat and oil glands. Eventually, hands and feet go numb and begin to claw inward, leading to injuries that go unnoticed and become infected because no pain is felt. Sometimes, in the worst cases, fingers and toes are lost or blindness occurs.

"It maims people, it cripples them and it makes their lives shorter because they cannot work and therefore they cannot eat," says Dr. Denis Daumerie, project manager of Neglected Tropical Diseases at the WHO in Geneva, who's been working with leprosy for nearly three decades. "It kills slowly. It leads to discrimination and social exclusion, which in many societies is worse than death."

Leprosy, or Hansen's disease, is arguably one of the most feared maladies ever. It was discovered in a 4,000-year-old skeleton from India, and has continued to disfigure and ostracize those afflicted throughout the ages.

Refugees & asylum seekers

Dili still cool as asylum seeker plan is put on the table

Sydney Morning Herald - October 23, 2010

Bernard Lagan in New York and Yuko Narushima – East Timor has declared it does not want to become a mere transit point for boat people picked up in Australian waters.

After Australia for the first time formally put its East Timor processing centre plan to the Timorese and Indonesian governments at a meeting of foreign ministers in New York on Thursday, the Timorese Foreign Minster, Zacarias da Costa said: "We cannot be in the middle as a transit point for these people."

He said that while East Timor remained open to hosting the processing centre, once Australia firmed up its plans, there were serious issues with the proposal in East Timor. These included opposition to the idea already expressed by the Timorese parliament and by Catholic leaders.

Mr da Costa acknowledged that in the meeting with Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, and Kevin Rudd, Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister had conveyed a sense of urgency surrounding Australia's proposal that the centre be built in East Timor.

Australia's immigration detention centres are almost filled to capacity, holding close to 5000 people, following the arrival of record numbers of boat people over the past year.

Mr da Costa said: "I think Mr Rudd said that Julia Gillard wants to find a solution to this problem. I have to say that this presents us with a regional concern. This is why we have agreed it needs to be discussed within a regional framework."

He revealed that in July, during the Australian election campaign, Australian immigration and foreign affairs officials travelled unannounced to East Timor and put what he termed a general concept for the centre.

"That was at the beginning of the Australian election campaign, so we didn't say anything," Mr da Costa said.

He said that on Wednesday Ms Gillard had briefed the Timorese Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, on the plan.

The foreign ministers agreed that a meeting of the Bali process on people smuggling – involving up to 50 Asian and Pacific nations – would need to be called to consider the proposal. East Timor had asked for the meeting. However, Mr da Costa said Indonesia, which must call the meeting, was hesitant.

"It had been agreed that the ministerial meeting must be called by Indonesia before the end of the year, but I believe that the Indonesians are a bit, ah, I wouldn't say reluctant, but they want to know exactly what kind of vision we have [for the centre] before calling a meeting."

The Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, has revealed troubled detainees at Villawood detention centre were able to continue climbing onto a roof – where a man fell to his death on Monday – using a window and a hole in the ceiling.

Mr Bowen acknowledged yesterday that infrastructure at the centre was inadequate after days of rolling protests were sparked by the Fijian man's death on Monday.

"The first group of people, as I understand it, went out a window and climbed up the roof. Those windows were then secured, locked tight," Mr Bowen said. "The next group... cut a hole in the ceiling."

A memorial service for the Fijian, Josefa Rauluni, was held on the footpath outside the centre yesterday after more than 30 mourners were refused permission to conduct the service inside. (With Aaron Cook)

Timor Leste refugees return home

Jakarta Post - October 20, 2010

Kupang – After taking refuge for 11 years at Belu regency, East Nusa Tenggara, following the 1999 referendum, 24 people returned to Timor Leste, facilitated by CIS Timor and the Care for Women and Children Forum (FPPA).

"They have been returned home through Mota'ain border in the north of Belu on Monday afternoon," CIS coordinator Deonato Moreira said Tuesday.

The transportation of 24 refugees, comprising six families, was the third time this year with another 25 people joining the previous two batches in July.

The 1999 referendum triggered the detachment of Timor Leste, then East Timor, as an independent state, separate from Indonesia.

"Many refugees want to return and we have built a network to facilitate them," Deonato said. He added their wish for a home had stemmed from the fact that local people were beginning to claim back the land they were living on.

Australia to foot bill for processing centre

Australian Associated Press - October 18, 2010

Julian Drape – Australia will pay a "significant proportion" of the cost of building a refugee processing centre in East Timor, a senior government official says.

Labor is currently in talks with East Timor about opening a centre in the fledgling nation to house potentially thousands of asylum seekers.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) on Monday revealed Australia would foot the lion's share of the bill even if other countries contribute.

"We accept that Australia is likely to bear a significant proportion of the cost of a centre," DFAT's ambassador for people smuggling issues, James Larsen, told a budget estimates hearing in Canberra.

"It has been made clear to the East Timor government that we would not be expecting the East Timor government to fund the cost of that centre. But the possibility of other contributors, depending on the shape of the regional approach that's adopted, remains to be determined."

Mr Larsen also revealed Australia had suggested what size the centre should be while East Timor had flagged possible locations. But he wouldn't reveal details.

"Some possible numbers (regarding capacity) have been put on the table," Mr Larsen said. "We have put some possibilities to the East Timorese side, the East Timorese side has said that they'll reflect further on that, but there's no agreement about precise numbers."

As to where the processing centre might be built, the ambassador said: "The East Timorese at this stage have indicated possible locations of interest to them, but there's no agreement on a specific site."

Mr Larsen is set to return to Dili in four weeks with the secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to continue talks.

Liberal senator Russell Trood accused Mr Larsen of being "evasive" with his answers. But DFAT secretary Dennis Richardson insisted it wasn't possible to speculate on specific details "when discussion are still going on with the East Timorese government".

Senator Trood also quizzed the department secretary about Australia's travel advisory for East Timor. It warns the country is an "uncertain security situation" and there's "the possibility of civil unrest".

"It seems to me highly ill-advised to be putting a facility of this kind in this environment particularly... when it might well be a place that provokes violence and insecurity," the Queensland senator said. But Mr Richardson replied: "I don't see the problem."

The department was certain about one issue regarding the potential processing centre in East Timor – it won't be paid for out of DFAT's budget.

"It's certainly not DFAT," Mr Richardson told the hearing. "We don't carry principal responsibility for this issue. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship does. In terms of where the monies would come from, we're unable to help you on that."

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen last week admitted building a detention centre on East Timor would cost more than the $60 million as estimated by the nation's President Jose Ramos Horta.

East Timor to help develop refugee centre proposal

Sydney Morning Herald - October 13, 2010

Kirsty Needham – East Timorese and Australian officials will develop jointly a proposal for a refugee processing centre to be put to both governments by early 2011, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says.

After talks with President Jose Ramos-Horta and key cabinet ministers in Dili, Mr Bowen said yesterday a working group would meet next month to develop a plan that could be put to the Bali Process, the regional group of nations formed to combat people smuggling.

Any centre, if approved, would be there for a "substantial" amount of time, Mr Bowen said.

Mr Ramos-Horta said he had been referring to the asylum seekers as "temporary", and not the processing centre, in his comments a day earlier.

Mr Bowen said Mr Ramos-Horta had assured him in the meeting he was "an advocate", and there was interest in the centre at senior levels of government. "There was a concern to make sure it was a genuine regional approach, and not just an agreement between Australia and Timor-Leste."

Mr Ramos-Horta said he would need to take a proposal to the Prime Minister and key parliamentary committees, and explain it to the East Timorese people. "If we are to agree with it, we would want our people to embrace it and not [be] something that they would feel that was imposed on them ... The people who come to Timor-Leste would have to feel welcome," he said.

A partial vote by the East Timor Parliament had earlier knocked back accepting a refugee centre.

Mr Bowen met opposition leader Mari Alkatiri and a Fretilin delegation. "Dr Alkatiri made it clear that his organisation had the view that there would be considerable issues to work through if this were to proceed. But he also made the point very strongly that he thought the dialogue should continue," Mr Bowen said.

He had not discussed a price but had told the East Timorese "there would need to be clear benefits for Timor Leste in terms of economic development and capacity development".

This could include East Timorese staff being trained to work in any centre, and educational or medical facilities being made available to the broader population, he said.

Mr Bowen said it was "open for discussion as to whether [a centre] would be indefinite or open for a substantial period, be that 10, 15, 20, 30 years".

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said there was still no timetable or proposal for a regional centre and "the government has just agreed to talk more".

Mr Bowen travelled to Indonesia last night. He said he wanted a deal to be finalised within this term of government.

East Timor not ready for refugee centre: Lawmaker

Agence France Presse - October 13, 2010

Dili – East Timor has many problems of its own and is not ready to accept thousands of asylum seekers under an Australian plan to build a refugee hub in the tiny country, a lawmaker said Wednesday.

Natalino dos Santos of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's CNRT party said there was strong opposition to the centre among parliamentarians, who voted recently to reject the proposal.

"When we first heard about this proposal from Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard the lawmakers in parliament totally rejected it," he told AFP at Government House in Dili.

"We cannot give land to people from another country while at the same time our people are homeless. Our priority is to create social and political stability in East Timor and only then can we consider such a refugee centre."

Australia's immigration minister held talks on Tuesday with East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta, who says his country is ready to host a processing facility on humanitarian grounds.

Gillard first made the proposal to Ramos-Horta in a phone call in July, amid a raging political debate in Australia over how to deal with a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australian waters.

The conservative opposition promised to turn the boats around but Gillard has said it is a regional problem and needs a regional solution, with cooperation from transit countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.

"There's a big conversation to pursue and so I'll have to let that conversation work through and for East Timor to talk to us about the proposition," she said Tuesday.

Ramos-Horta has dismissed reports of widespread domestic opposition to the proposals, saying people will agree once he explains the humanitarian imperatives.

But the former exile during much of Indonesia's brutal 24-year occupation said the government would have to consult the East Timorese people.

"If we are doing it we would want our people to embrace it and not... feel (it) was imposed on them, because the people who would come to Timor-Leste would have to feel they were welcome," he said Tuesday.

East Timor centre only temporary, says Jose Ramos Horta

Australian Associated Press - October 11, 2010

Karlis Salna – Prime Minister Julia Gillard's vision for a regional refugee processing hub has been dealt a blow with East Timor's President insisting it will only be considered as a temporary solution.

On the eve of formal discussions with Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, President Jose Ramos Horta outlined a set of strict conditions that would be imposed on any deal on a processing centre being built in East Timor.

Dr Ramos Horta has also put a price tag on establishing such a facility of at least $60 million in the first year alone.

The development came as the Australian Greens announced plans to try to amend the Migration Act so that more than 700 children in immigration facilities could be housed in the community. Both the Government and the Opposition are unlikely to support the amendment, to be moved when the Senate next sits in two weeks.

While Dr Ramos Horta today voiced support for Ms Gillard's plan, saying East Timor had a humanitarian obligation to accept the proposal, he also insisted Dili would only consider it as a temporary solution to the region's asylum seeker problem.

The East Timorese President added that the cost of setting up a processing hub in what is one of the region's poorest nations would have to be met by others.

"Any asylum seeker centre has to be a regional mechanism, it has to be led by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), it has to be financed by others... and it has to be temporary, not permanent," he said.

"It could be something like $US30 million ($30.39 million) just for the infrastructure." Dr Ramos Horta also said East Timor would insist that asylum seekers be processed in a timely manner and be held at the facility for a maximum of three years only.

"They cannot be waiting like they do in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand for up to 20 years in camps."

Dr Ramos Horta will outline his concerns about the plan, which has little support among MPs in East Timor, when he meets Mr Bowen tomorrow.

The Immigration Minister said before leaving for Dili this morning he would persevere with the plan and was looking forward to an open dialogue with Dr Ramos Horta.

"I won't be laying down a non-negotiable framework, of course not, I'll be discussing the issues with them and seeing if there's a common way forward," Mr Bowen told ABC Radio.

Mr Bowen, who will also travel to Indonesia and Malaysia to discuss the plan, stressed that East Timor was not the only solution. "East Timor remains as our focus and obviously there are plenty of other nations in the region we could look at as well," he said.

But the Opposition seized on the comments from Dr Ramos Horta, with immigration spokesman Scott Morrison saying they proved Labor's plan would never come to fruition. "The President's comments just underscore again the fanciful nature of this proposal," Mr Morrison told AAP.

"The Government clearly cannot take a hint when it comes to this idea and rather than wasting further time with endless talk they should address their own policies that are at the heart of our very Australian problem."

Mr Bowen's three-stop tour comes as the Government continues to face pressure on the asylum seeker issue due to overcrowding and its inability to stop the flow of boats.

There are now more than 5000 people in immigration detention in Australia with another boat – the seventh in just over a week – intercepted this morning near Christmas Island carrying 10 asylum seekers.

Timor meeting won't deliver deal: Bowen

Australian Associated Press - October 10, 2010

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says he won't return from East Timor this week with a final deal to address people smuggling and the offshore processing of asylum seekers.

Mr Bowen will travel to East Timor for talks with President Jose Ramos- Horta and other senior Timorese officials in Dili on Tuesday, before flying to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Mr Bowen said Mr Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao were still "very interested" in talking through the idea.

"Certainly that's what I'll be doing when I leave tomorrow," he told the Nine Network. "We've had some encouraging feedback, obviously it's a big issue for East Timor."

Although Mr Bowen did not expect a deal to emerge from the meetings, he said the visit would provide an important opportunity to discuss the development of a sustainable regional protection framework.

"A framework involving our regional partners is the most effective way to holistically address irregular migration in the region and to remove the incentive for people to undertake the dangerous sea voyages that put lives at risk," he said in a statement.

"(Labor) recognise that the challenges we face are regional and global in their scope."

During the federal election Prime Minister Julia Gillard proposed building an offshore asylum-seeker processing centre in East Timor. East Timor's Council of Ministers has reportedly since decided it will not consider the plan outside a 50-nation meeting, called the Bali Process.

The process was established in 2002 to counter a surge in people smuggling in Asia and the Pacific. Mr Bowen said the Australian government was committed to strong co-operation with its regional neighbours.

Graft & corruption

East Timor to suspend two top ministers

Radio Australia - October 4, 2010

East Timor's deputy prime minister and foreign minister have been indicted over corruption allegations and may be suspended from parliament to face charges in court.

Both men have been in New York, representing East Timor at the United Nations General Assembly. But in their absence, East Timor's council of ministers has decided to suspend them from office, and parliament will now consider when the suspensions should take effect.

Analysts say that if the suspensions go ahead, they could destabilise East Timor's coalition government and disrupt negotiations with Australia over an asylum seeker processing centre.

Presenter: Liam Cochrane

Speaker: Michael Leach, lecturer, Swinburne University, Melbourne; statements from East Timor's council of ministers and Zacarias de Costa, East Timorese foreign minister

Liam Cochrane: East Timor's council of ministers has indicated it will suspend two of its top government officials which will remove their parliamentary immunity and leave them open to prosecution in court.

Observers say the move has the potential to test the government's coalition alliance and destabilise negotiations with Australia over a regional asylum seeker processing centre.

It all goes back to 2006 when Jose Luis Guterres appointed his wife as counsel to East Timor's UN ambassador in New York and significantly raised her salary. An investigation by East Timor's ombudsman last year found Mr Guterres had engaged in maladministration, including indications of collusion and nepotism and broke a number of anti-corruption laws. The foreign minister, Zacarias da Costa, is accused of signing off on the arrangement.

East Timor's council of ministers issued this statement on Thursday, indicating the two ministers will be suspended.

Excerpt from statement: The council of ministers discussed the issue in order to understand, based on the documents sent by the public prosecutor's office, on the republic's constitution and on the penal code, from what date should the suspensions have become effective.

Liam Cochrane: The spokesman of East Timor's government, Agio Pereira, has also confirmed that the two ministers will definitely be suspended.

The foreign minister Zacarias da Costa issued this statement from New York.

Excerpt from Zacarias da Costa statement: It was with interest that I learned about this latest development. However, I will await with serenity the progress of the judicial process. It is my intention to fully cooperate with the competent judicial authority in order to clarify the issue.

I hope that this judicial process is allowed to take its course and not become an issue for political speculation.

Liam Cochrane: Mr da Costa is due back in East Timor on October 9. Jose Luis Guterres was not available for comment but has previously denied any wrongdoing in the matter.

Michael Leach, a lecturer at Melbourne's Swinburne University, says the two suspensions could have wider implications for East Timor's coalition government.

Michael Leach: It has potential implications of instability for the balance of power in the parliament. The alliance with the parliamentary majority relies on all four major parties for its majority.

PSD (Social Democratic Party), which has already lost the deputy prime minister a couple of weeks ago, is the party that Zacarias da Costa belong to. So they will have lost two of their three ministerial positions if he is indeed suspended as is being reported.

Presumably that would only make more likely the risk, increase the risk that they might leave the AMP.

Liam Cochrane: The AMP is the parliamentary majority alliance of East Timor's parliament. It holds its majority by six seats, the same number of seats held by Mr da Costa's PSD party.

Michael Leach says suspension of the foreign minister could also disrupt negotiations with Australia's Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, about setting up a regional asylum seeker processing centre in East Timor.

Michael Leach: Whatever relationship has been established at this point between, say, Chris Bowen on the Australian side and Zacarias da Costa will have to be restarted with the new foreign minister if indeed Zacarias da Costa is suspended.

And the second implication really goes to the issue of who would replace Zacarias da Costa.

You know, these do have some important implications depending on which player ends up in that role and that could in fact be a signal from the Timorese government about how they're treating the negotiation.

Liam Cochrane: Australia wants to set up a facility in East Timor, where asylum seekers will be detained while their applications are processed. The proposal initially received a lukewarm reception in Dili but discussions have been continuing on the issue.

East Timor ministers indicted over corruption claims

ABC News - October 1, 2010

Liam Cochrane – The indictment of two senior ministers in the East Timor government over corruption allegations could disrupt negotiations with Australia over a regional asylum seeker centre, according to observers.

Foreign minister Zacarias da Costa and deputy prime minister Jose Luis Guterres have been indicted over the appointment of Mr Guterres's wife to a well-paid diplomatic post. Parliament will soon vote on when to suspend them from their roles as MPs, which will remove their parliamentary immunity.

Swinburne University's Michael Leach says the indictments could have an impact on talks between Australia and East Timor. "Whatever relationship has been established at this point between Chris Bowen on the Australia side and Zacarias da Costa will have to be restarted with the new foreign minister," he said.

"These do have some important implications depending on which player ends up in that role and that could in fact be a signal from the Timorese government about how they are treating the negotiation."

Mining & energy

East Timor contracts Gulf of mexico disaster rig

The Australian - October 25, 2010

Paul Cleary – East Timor is continuing to entertain plans to drill for oil in waters as deep as 1900m. In one instance, it is using the contractor that was operating the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in May.

The similarities between proposals before the East Timor government and the circumstances surrounding the Gulf of Mexico explosion and oil spill are striking.

Sources in East Timor say the government's environment directorate has approved plans for a well to be drilled by Transocean and is awaiting approval from the petroleum authority.

Transocean is contracted by Indian oil company Reliance, which has a permit near Woodside's Greater Sunrise field. Even the drilling vessel's name, Deepwater Expedition, is similar to the Deepwater Horizon that blew up in 1500m of water and caused the biggest oil spill in US history.

Another well to a depth of 1900m has been proposed by Italy's ENI. The company, while awaiting approval from two government agencies, plans to hold an information session next Wednesday for interest groups in East Timor.

Environment groups in East Timor are concerned that the government has little capacity to oversee safety standards in the Timor Sea.

Asked yesterday if Australia was providing technical support to regulate these activities, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said officials from his department met regularly through the Timor Sea Treaty Joint Commission to establish policies and regulations in the area covered by the Timor Sea Treaty.

The Reliance and ENI fields are in East Timor's exclusive area, north of the treaty area.

Last year's Montara oil spill in the Timor Sea also showed that Australia's state-based regulatory regime was clearly wanting.

The development monitoring group La'o Hamutuk confirmed the Reliance well would be drilled by Transocean's Deepwater Frontier drilling ship It said this was the first time East Timor's government had had to decide on approval of an oil well in its exclusive maritime area.

"It is a critical test which will set the precedent for future oil and gas projects," the group said. "We hope that environmental professionals... will make their decisions based on technical realities to protect Timor- Leste's interests and not on... loyalties."

The capacity of East Timor to supervise these activities appears to be negligible. The environment department said yesterday it did not have a public affairs officer to handle inquiries.

East Timor forges ahead on deepwater oil drilling

New York Times - October 21, 2010

Aubrey Belford, Dili, East Timor – To Demetrio do Amaral de Carvalho, the explosion last spring on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico – and the oil that then gushed for months into the surrounding waters – held alarming portents for his young, fragile nation.

The disaster in the gulf spilled an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil, prompting the United States to impose a moratorium on deepwater drilling that was provisionally lifted only last week.

But while much of the world, including the European Union, is rethinking the risks and benefits of drilling at ever greater ocean depths for oil and natural gas, East Timor, among the poorest nations in Asia, is just beginning to authorize it – and Mr. de Carvalho, director of the local environmental organization Haburas, worries that a reckless rush is on.

"If a country like America, with all its technical ability, financial resources and expertise," felt obliged to suspend the practice, he said recently, "then I think Timor-Leste's government should reflect on that."

Mr. de Carvalho used the official name of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony in the Indonesian archipelago that gained formal independence only in 2002, after a bloody 24-year occupation by forces of the government in Jakarta.

At issue in East Timor are two separate plans for exploratory drilling more than a kilometer, or 0.6 mile, deep in waters south of its territory, the first projects of their kind for the country. According to government officials, the plans received environmental approval last month.

One project, a joint venture led by India's largest private conglomerate, Reliance, will create a test well about 1,200 meters, or 4,000 feet, below the surface in a nearby region known as Block K.

Of particular concern to environmentalists is that the project is to be carried out by the Deepwater Frontier, a ship belonging to Transocean, the same drilling contractor that owned the Deepwater Horizon. The April 20 explosion on that rig happened while it was drilling an exploratory well at about 1,500 meters.

The other project, a joint venture led by the Italian oil company Eni, will create an exploratory well in about 1,900 meters of water in the Cova-1 region in East Timorese waters north of Australia. Both projects are still awaiting the final green light from East Timor's National Petroleum Authority. Eni has also submitted an early proposal for up to three deepwater test wells near the Cova-1 site, which is yet to receive any government approval.

Backers of the plans say they are essential for overcoming poverty in this tiny country of about one million people. But Mr. de Carvalho and other opponents say that drilling at such depths is inherently risky and that, if an environmental disaster were to occur, the country would be unable to cope.

The East Timor minister for economy and development, Joao Goncalves, acknowledged in an interview that there were environmental dangers to the plans. But, he said, both outside companies had provided assurances that those would be at an "acceptable level." He said he had signed off on environmental approval for the projects on Sept. 20.

"We are well aware, and we are going to deal with all these environmental problems that we have to deal with," he said. "But we cannot stop the country from development, you know, from progress."

Much of East Timor lives off subsistence agriculture, and there is negligible industry nor many exports. Many roads outside Dili, the capital, are barely passable by most cars.

The one exception is billions of dollars earned from offshore oil and natural gas production – money that is being used to build infrastructure and subsidize basic food needs. East Timor's Petroleum Fund, which holds money in foreign investments, was worth $6.3 billion as of June 30, according to the latest quarterly report.

With an inducement like that, East Timor is under huge pressure to approve projects that are potentially hazardous but also potentially lucrative, despite the "wake-up call" of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, said Charles Scheiner, a member of a local development monitoring group, La'o Hamutuk.

"The oil companies are a thousand times bigger than the Timor-Leste government," Mr. Scheiner said. This is the first time the government has had to approve deepwater drilling in its territorial waters, he said. "This is a test for Timor-Leste's regulatory authorities."

For Mr. Scheiner, East Timor has also had a much more local warning. Late last year, the Montara well, run by a subsidiary of the Thai company PTT in relatively shallow Australian waters south of East Timor, leaked tens of thousands of barrels of oil for more than 10 weeks. After four failed attempts, a relief well was finally drilled.

In East Timor, the risks are amplified by the country's "weak emergency response capability, legal framework and oversight institutions," Mr. Scheiner said.

Of particular concern, he said, is an apparent failure by Reliance to take seriously the possibility of a spill or to plan for a cleanup in versions of its environmental impact assessment that have been seen by stakeholders.

"It's almost like a college term paper, right?" he said. "Somebody went out and looked at what's the usual way that deepwater drilling is done and they did some research on the Internet and so on and then they wrote it down."

He added, however, that he had not seen a final version of the document submitted to the National Directorate for the Environment. Reliance did not reply to requests for comment or to provide the latest copy of its environmental impact assessment.

Mr. Goncalves, the economy minister, said both companies had addressed any environmental concerns. He said environmental groups were criticizing the plans without adequate information.

A spokesman for Eni, Filippo Cotalini, said: "Eni would not enter into any activity where it believed the risks were not manageable." "Moreover, Eni in Australia has recently reviewed and updated its emergency response and incident management procedures as part of its additional preparation for the upcoming deepwater drilling program," he said.

Proponents of deepwater drilling say it is crucial to the world's energy future. Last week, the head of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, said that if there were any significant interruption in the practice, "the impact could be huge." About a third of the world's oil production occurs offshore, he said, and by 2015, that share could be half.

Augusto Pinto, the director of East Timor's environment directorate, said that as a consequence, the country would be prey to environmental danger no matter what.

"Even if East Timor doesn't do anything, if Indonesia and Australia are still destroying the environment, we'll get the effects," Mr. Pinto said. "You have to remember that we need to develop our country," he added. "Our people need to get prosperity."

East Timor says Woodside considers onshore LNG plant

Reuters - October 8, 2010

Dili – Australia's Woodside Petroleum has changed its position and will consider processing gas from East Timor's vast Greater Sunrise liquefied natural gas fields on East Timor shores, East Timor said on Friday.

Woodside and the East Timorese government have disagreed bitterly for years about the location of the LNG plant, and the Australian firm on Friday denied it had changed its position.

East Timor's State Secretary for Natural Resources Alfredo Pires said on Friday that during recent negotiations, Woodside had retreated from its previous position and had presented all three locations as possibilities. "The three options are, building the pipelines to Darwin or Timor-Leste, and the third is the floating plant," he said.

The East Timor government has said it wants the plant to be built in East Timor, where it can provide employment for the local population, and has resisted the possibility of building a plant on Australian shores.

Woodside has previously said a floating LNG plant will provide better economic returns for the Sunrise project, and the firm said on Friday their position on the location remains unchanged. "Floating LNG remains the preferred development concept for Sunrise," the company said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.

The Greater Sunrise fields, estimated to hold 5.13 trillion cubic feet of gas and 226 million barrels of condensate, straddle Australian and East Timorese waters but Australia has not declared a preference on the site of the processing plant.

Woodside's partners in the Sunrise project are ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and Osaka Gas.

[Reporting by Tito Belo in Dili and Rebekah Kebede in Perth; Writing by Sunanda Creagh; Editing by Clarence Fernandez.]

Economy & investment

China reaches out to tiny, resource-rich East Timor

Agence France Presse - October 27, 2010

Stephen Coates, Dili – A jade elephant rears majestically in the corner as patrons tuck into their burgers and fries at one of only three US-style fast-food joints in East Timor, all of which are Chinese owned and operated.

The currency might be the same – the greenback is the unit used in East Timor – and the food is generic, but Brothers Burger restaurant in the dusty capital Dili is not just a slavish copy of its US progenitors.

Part of it is set aside for a compact little toy store, stocked to the rafters with games, gadgets and stuffed animals imported, of course, from China. Against another wall is a selection of plastic, made-in-China jewellery.

And just in case diners need to leave the country after their meals, they can get their passport photos taken at a Chinese-made booth beside the back door.

Manager Priscilla Soh said the restaurant's owners, China-based Brothers Enterprises, specialised in "general supply" so it was only natural to combine the two-year-old eatery with some other sidelines.

"If you dare to come and dare to take the risk then you can earn a profit. I really encourage my Western friends who want to come and invest here," she said. As for her Chinese fiends, she said: "It's not easy because there are too many Chinese here already."

The burger joints form a meaty new middle layer of Chinese investment in East Timor, a resource-rich country of only around one million people which broke free of Indonesia in 1998 and remains dependent on foreign aid. At the bottom end of the scale are typical family-run, shophouse-style businesses. At the other is the munificent hand of the Chinese state.

Beijing has lavished millions of dollars on a new presidential palace, a cavernous foreign ministry worthy of a country twice East Timor's size, and a yet-to-be completed military headquarters.

The buildings are the most impressive new structures in Dili, and have raised more than a few eyebrows across the Timor Strait in Australia, which regards East Timor as part of its regional sphere of influence.

Professor Hugh White, of Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, told ABC radio last month that China's interest in East Timor is "something Australia needs to pay attention to".

"Australians have always, going right back into the 18th century, been very sensitive to the idea of major powers projecting force into our part of the world... " he said.

Sections of the Australian media have made much of East Timor's purchase in 2008 of two 1960s-vintage Shanghai Class patrol vessels for 25 million dollars, with dark mutterings about "growing military links between Beijing and Dili".

East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta is a friend of Australia's, but he openly scoffs at such fears. "I can assure Australians that the East Timorese and China are not going to set up a navy and airbase to invade Australia," he joked during a recent interview with AFP.

Mocking the "idiots who pass for strategic analysts in Canberra", he said: "Australia can continue to live in peace, they don't have to rush to learn Mandarin."

The Nobel laureate noted that his country's chief military relationship was with Australia, and complained of double standards from those Down Under who worry about China's influence in East Timor.

"Australians never worry too much when they sell everything to the Chinese... yet when we buy a few little things from China they get upset, like they're jealous," he said.

The president added that, if anything, the ledger was in China's favour, after East Timor awarded a large commercial contract to a Chinese company to build an electricity plant outside Dili.

"This is a 400-million-dollar project paid for exclusively by ourselves, so any aid that China has given us in the last 10 years you can multiply by 10 and it wont even reach the business deal that we signed with them," he said.

Balibo 5

Weak leaders and Balibo 5's eternal wait for justice

Daily Telegraph - October 15, 2010

Piers Akerman – Tomorrow marks the 35th anniversary of the killing of five Australian newsmen at Balibo in East Timor.

Their executions by Indonesian special force troops was the subject of an inquiry by NSW Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch in 2007, with Ms Pinch finding that the men were killed because they may have made public Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.

In her report, Ms Pinch said she found Mr Yosfiah, an Indonesian parliamentarian who once held the position of information minister, was involved in the killing and led the attack on the journalists.

There is strong circumstantial evidence that those orders emanated from the head of the Indonesian special forces Major General Benny Murdani to Colonel Dading Kalbuadi, special forces group commander in Timor, and then to Captain Yosfiah, she said.

In her inquest into the death of Brian Peters, Ms Pinch found the conduct of Indonesian military might have constituted a war crime and referred the matter to the federal attorney-general Philip Ruddock.

She also recommended that the Australian Government urgently liaise with the families to facilitate repatriation of the remains.

The bodies of the five men – Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Greg Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters – were dressed in Portuguese uniforms, photographed and then burnt, with their ashes mixed together and later buried in Jakarta.

Her findings were released a week before the 2007 election and then Opposition leader Kevin Rudd said: "This is a very disturbing conclusion by the coroner concerning the fate of the Balibo Five back in 1975. I believe this has to be taken through to its logical conclusion. I also believe those responsible should be held to account."

He also said: "My attitude to this is dead-set hardline. I've read a bit about what happened in Balibo, I've been to Balibo, walked up there, I've seen the fort, I've seen where these blokes lost their lives. You can't just sweep this to one side. I know it's a long time ago."

Rudd was prime minister for 2 1/2 years and there is no evidence that he did anything to ensure that the coroner's report was taken to its logical conclusion, nor that he did anything to bring those responsible to account.

He is now foreign minister and the likelihood that he, or the Gillard Government, will do anything to deliver justice to those who have campaigned for action for the past 35 years grows slimmer by the minute.