East Timor News Digest 9 – September 1-31, 2012
- Timor Leste refugees return home - Jakarta Post. September 29, 2012
- Making inroads on birth certificates in East Timor - IRIN. September 27, 2012
- Language barrier to justice - Lawyers Weekly. September 14, 2012
- East Timor government announce programme to build and repair infrastructure - Macauhub. September 13, 2012
- Clinton in East Timor on democracy push - Associated Press. September 6, 2012
- Clinton seeks to boost democracy in Asia's newest country - Reuters. September 6, 2012
- Brazil set to represent East Timor's interests at IMF - Macauhub. September 20, 2012
Timor Leste refugees return home
Jakarta Post - September 29, 2012
Dozens of people from Timor Leste, who had taken refuge in the province for 13 years with minimum facilities from the Indonesian government, have left the Naibonat refugee camp to return home.
The repatriation was facilitated by the Center for Internally Displaced Persons (CIS), Grupu Fila Knua Timor Leste and the Forum of Care for Women and Children (FPPA) in Belu, an Indonesian regency bordering the tiny country which declared its independence on May 20, 2002.
"Those refugees who declined to take Indonesian citizenship are going back home to Baucau through Atambua and will enter Timor Leste through the joint gate in Motaain," CIS worker Merry Djami said on Friday.
The refugees said they voluntarily decided to go back home in the hope that they could meet their relatives and do something useful for their country. "I want to die in the land where I was born," said 70-year-old Norberta da Costa da Gama.
Faria, 34, expressed her thanks to the Indonesian government, which had supported Timor Leste refugees during their stay in the province. She also conveyed her thanks to locals who lent their land to farm.
Making inroads on birth certificates in East Timor
IRIN - September 27, 2012
Fatulmau, East Timor – Filomena Mendonca gave birth to all five of her children at home in the village of Fatulmau, high up in the mountains of East Timor, without registering their births.
"The hospital is very far away. I didn't feel there was a problem so I just stayed at home," said the 30-year-old mother.
With the closest town of Alieu a half hour drive down a sometimes impassable dirt road, Fatulmau is relatively isolated, and Mendonca did not understand the importance of birth certificates.
Seventy-eight percent of women in East Timor, a half-island nation of 1.1 million people, do not give birth in a health facility, and according to official 2010 figures, up to 70 percent of under-five children do not have a birth certificate.
However, things may be changing. Last year, Mendonca registered all her children, as did a number of other families in the village.
"The village chief came to explain why we should register our children, and that it's important for when the children need to register for school," she said.
Mendonca's children are part of a community-run playgroup supported by international NGO Plan International, where most of the 25 members now have birth certificates.
In 2011 Plan International and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) launched a campaign to achieve universal birth registration in two of the country's 13 districts, Alieu and Los Palos, working with the government to providing training at the village level and raising awareness in the community.
Plan International resources mobilization manager Gashaw Dagnew Kebede said birth registration is vital to provide children with basic, at times life- saving, services.
"The government has to provide health, education and other social services so if children are registered with a birth certificate it's easy to plan for the future," Kebede said.
Birth certificates and protection
Birth certificates were also important to protect children in the courts from being mistreated, especially in cases of sexual abuse, child labor and trafficking.
"If children are mistreated or abused it's sometimes very difficult to prove whether they are really children or adults because they don't have birth certificates," Kebede said.
But despite government and NGO efforts to boost birth registrations in rural areas, many people still don't understand their importance.
"We've only been an independent country for 10 years and we've been working on child rights for five years, so we still need to bring more awareness to the community in this area," National Child Rights Commissioner Adalgisa Ximenes told IRIN.
East Timor voted for independence in a UN sponsored referendum in 1999 following a protracted bloody separatist struggle with neighboring Indonesia, officially becoming independent in 2002. The government started registering births in 2004.
In 2011 a change in the registration process made it possible for people to register births through the village chief, at a hospital or church. Previously, people could only register at district offices or in the capital, Dili.
"I hope that as people become more aware, they won't need NGOs to come to them to register their children. They will have the awareness to go and register their children on their own," said Ximenes.
The government's national director of birth registration Victor da Costa Neto said the registration process initially faced problems.
"At that time the number of people registered was very low; we had a lack of staff and all documents needed to be signed by the national director."
Considerable progress has been made since then, with an additional 216,000 birth certificates for both children and adults issued in 2011, said Neto, explaining that everything is done manually as the government does not yet have a computerized database.
According to the 2011 State of the World's Midwifery report, there are an estimated 43,000 births per year in East Timor.
Criminal justice & prison system
Language barrier to justice
Lawyers Weekly - September 14, 2012
Stephanie Quine – The access-to-justice system in East Timor is in "crisis", an Australian lawyer working there has said.
Danielle Winzenried said the problem is partly due to a failure to translate laws from Portuguese into common languages of the Timorese people.
Winzenried works as a program officer with local legal aid NGO Fundasaun ECM, based in Baucau. The organisation provides legal representation, advocacy on human rights issues and community education crucial to combating the language barrier to understanding local legislation.
"Portuguese being the official language and the language that law is first promulgated in does come with difficulties because a lot of the population doesn't speak Portuguese," said Winzenried.
Less than 10 per cent of the population can speak, read or write in Portuguese, yet it's the language the constitution was drafted in and it's what judges speak in court. Tetum is the second official language of the country, which some of the legislation has been translated into, but not all people in Timor speak Tetum either.
"It absolutely brings up access-to-justice issues... there are 35 languages, some obviously more widely spoken than others, but it certainly adds another hurdle to access to justice, particularly for rural communities," she said.
Lasting legacy
The country is one of the world's poorest, a major after effect of the 24- year occupation by Indonesia during which more than 180,000 people are thought to have died from fighting, disease and starvation.
There is no legislation governing property and land disputes are a major issue stemming from the historical situation. High rates of domestic violence are another major issue in East Timor.
"Recently, there was a domestic law that's been promulgated [but] the community in general isn't aware of the extent of it or what it means," said Winzenried.
The new law stipulates that domestic violence must be prosecuted. Once local authorities are aware of an incident it must be reported to the police and investigated within five days.
"Traditionally people may have gone to their local authorities [and had] mediation or some kind of traditional resolution, which raised questions about women's representation and likelihood of some kind of fair remedy, so it's important that people are aware of this," said Winzenried.
Fundasaun ECM is educating people on types of domestic violence and what constitutes it, and looking at family, social and economic issues permeating the situation.
No fund
Given there are very few lawyers in the country, especially outside of Dili, NGOs are critically important for educating people about their rights under the law. However, since 31 August Fundasaun ECM has been without funding. It could soon be forced to close.
"Our organisation is trying desperately to find funders... staff are here as volunteers but we don't have funds to be able to get transport to be able to get out to the rural areas," she said, adding that this is a main focus for the NGO, which sends paralegals to 22 sub-districts, which are four to five hours out from main areas in Timor.
The USAID-funded Access to Justice Program run by the Asia Foundation has supported five legal aid organisations, including Fundasaun ECM, for almost ten years. But that funding, which helps the organisations operate throughout Dili, Baucau, Suai and Oecusse, recently came to an end.
Winzenried is concerned there is now no funding for legal aid programs to assist vulnerable poor people with land disputes, veterans or "anyone who's not aware of their rights who needs access to justice".
Practising lawyers need to be able to speak Portuguese and this presents a hurdle for the majority of local lawyers, who have attended university in Indonesia and learnt in Indonesian or Tetum, explained Winzenried.
Under a new legal qualification process, lawyers must complete nine months' legal training, part of it being in Portuguese, to be properly qualified, she said.
"The period to be qualified has been extended to the end of 2015 so hopefully most lawyers will be able to get through that period, but after that time anyone who hasn't been through that training won't be able to practise," said Winzenried.
East Timor government announce programme to build and repair infrastructure
Macauhub - September 13, 2012
A programme to build and repair infrastructure, including roads, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals and power and communication networks, will be carried out over the next five year, according to East Timor's Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao.
During the presentation in parliament of the Government Programme for his second term, the Prime minister said that the large-scale programme, "aims to repair, improve or build a number of facilities that are fundamental to allow access to health, to schools, to markets, to industries, and to businesses."
According to Portuguese news agency Lusa, Gusmao announced the, "reconstruction of all national, district and rural roads."
The "design of a national motorway ring road system," and the start of rebuilding and maintenance of over 450 bridges are also part of the programme, which also intends to install 400 drinking water systems in around 25,000 rural homes, to restore water and sanitation infrastructure and implement a General Sanitation and Sewer Plan in Dili, in order drastically to reduce drainage and flooding problems.
Gusmao also said he planned to expand President Nicolau Lobato International Airport in Dili and rebuild several runways. Baucau airport would be reserved for cargo, he said, as well as being the location of a military airbase. (macauhub)
Clinton in East Timor on democracy push
Associated Press - September 6, 2012
Matthew Lee, Dili, East Timor – US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton praised East Timor on Thursday for holding fair elections this year, and said it was up to the government of Asia's newest and poorest nation to decide when and how to seek accountability for past violence during its struggle for independence.
Clinton said her visit, the first by a US secretary of state to East Timor, was "a visible sign of our support for all that has been accomplished by the people of this nation." She and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao enjoyed coffee produced by a cooperative that helps supply the Starbucks chain.
At a press conference with Gusmao, Clinton congratulated East Timor on "three sets of free and fair elections this year, and a peaceful transfer of power to a new president, government and parliament."
There was some violence, including one death, following July's parliamentary polls. The top vote-getter, Gusmao's National Congress for the Reconstruction of East Timor, formed a coalition that excluded the runner-up Fretilin party, angering Fretilin supporters.
Clinton met Timorese officials as they prepared for the departure of the last of nearly 1,300 UN peacekeepers from the small, half-island nation by year's end.
A Portuguese colony for three centuries, East Timor voted in 1999 to end 24 years of Indonesian occupation that left more than 170,000 dead. Withdrawing Indonesian troops and proxy militias killed almost 1,500 people and destroyed much of the country's infrastructure.
Clinton said it is important for the people of East Timor to have accountability for abuses committed during the independence struggle, but added that the US would "take the lead from the Timorese government" on how to achieve that.
"It is difficult to talk about this," Gusmao said, "when we need to have good relations with our closest neighbor." About 70 percent of East Timor's trade is with Indonesia. "Democracy can only survive if we have development," he said.
Clinton announced new programs including $6.5 million to bring Timorese students to the United States to study. She is in the middle of an Asia trip with stops in the Cook Islands, Indonesia, China, Brunei and Russia's Far East.
Clinton seeks to boost democracy in Asia's newest country
Reuters - September 6, 2012
Andrew Quinn, Dili – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a short visit to East Timor on Thursday, throwing her considerable diplomatic weight behind a fledgling government trying to bring Asia's newest country closer to its booming Southeast Asian neighbors.
Clinton met President Taur Matan Ruak and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao during a brief visit to the capital, Dili, after a day of talks in China. She was due to leave for Brunei later on Thursday.
US officials said the visit – the first by a US secretary of state since East Timor won independence from Indonesia in 2002 – was an effort to help stability and growth.
"Strong democracies, we know from long practice, make more stable neighbors and capable partners," Clinton told a news conference with Gusmao.
Clinton did not bring much new financial assistance. She was set to announce just $6.5 million in funding for scholarships to help East Timorese students study in the United States.
US officials hope her visit will send a signal to East Timor's neighbors, some of which have resisted suggestions it join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) because it lags too far behind in political and economic development.
"Timor is still plagued with substantial violence... they have a long way to go," a senior US official told reporters.
US officials say East Timor is still weak after more than 400 years of Portuguese colonization and a 24-year fight against Indonesian occupation, and see closer ties with ASEAN as a way to bring stability.
Gusmao won parliamentary elections in April but fell short of a majority, forcing the formation of a coalition government.
Still lacking much basic infrastructure, East Timor began receiving oil and gas revenues from fields it shares with Australia in 2005 and boasts a special oil fund with assets of more than $10 billion.
Clinton toured a USAID-funded coffee finishing plant. Coffee is East Timor's second-largest export, with US giant Starbucks a major customer.
China looms large
She also took stock of growing Chinese aid and investment, part of Beijing's push to accelerate influence in the region.
"We are not here against any other country, we are here on behalf of our partnerships and relationships with countries in the region," Clinton said, when asked if US engagement in the region was aimed at China.
"...certainly I am not going to shy away from standing up for our strategic interests and expressing clearly where we differ," she said.
China has built a number of major government buildings in East Timor. It has also signaled it is willing to partner with the United States in development projects to help East Timorese, 40 percent of whom live on less than a dollar a day.
US officials said Washington hoped to step up cooperative development work with China, citing East Timor as one region in Asia where the two Pacific powers' interests could converge.
"The Chinese don't view the stakes as particularly high," the official said, although he noted that, even in cooperative ventures, China shields much of the details of development work.
Clinton said the United States would work with East Timor on concerns such as human trafficking and the victims of conflict.
The United States supported autocratic Indonesian ruler Suharto when Indonesia invaded East Timor, occupying half an island at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago in 1975. East Timor finally won independence after a UN-sponsored referendum.
Gusmao was conciliatory, noting 70 percent of East Timor's trade was with Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy.
[Additional reporting by Tito Belo in Dili.]
Brazil set to represent East Timor's interests at IMF
Macauhub - September 20, 2012
Brazil will represent Timor Leste's (East Timor) interests at the International Monetary fund (IMF) starting on 1 November, the Timorese government said in a statement issued Tuesday in Dili.
Under the terms of the statement, Timor-Leste will become part of the Brazilian board (constituency) at the executive council of the IMF, and will become the first Asian country to be represented by Brazil, which already represents nations from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Timor Leste will be represented by Brazil as of the next elections for the Fund's Executive Council.
According to the statement, the move will increase cooperation between the two countries, both on a bilateral and multilateral level, in both economic and financial terms. (macauhub)