The prime minister of Timor-Leste, Xanana Gusmao, plans to step down in September so a younger generation can lead the tiny nation, his deputy has said.
The vice-prime minister, Fernando La Samma De Araujo, said the resistance leader just wants to be the father of the nation, to oversee the administration as an observer.
De Araujo said on Thursday that Gusmao, 67, had expressed his intention formally to his cabinet ministers and the people. He did not explain why Gusmao had not spoken about his decision publicly.
"The decision is based on deep thought and reflection, and Xanana has been steady with his decision," De Araujo said. "He just wants to be a father of the nation like Nelson Mandela and Lee Kuan Yew."
A former resistance leader, Gusmao became the first post-independence president of East Timor and its fourth prime minister since August 2007.
"There are pros and cons among the people over his resignation, but I believe East Timorese people will understand and be able to get through the transitional period peacefully," De Araujo said, noting that the country is presently stable.
Gusmao was elected to lead the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor in 1981 when the former Portuguese colony was under Indonesian occupation. He was arrested by Indonesian troops in 1992 but continued the independence struggle from prison in Jakarta.
He was then released following East Timor's vote for independence in 1999. The half island nation of 1.1 million people voted overwhelmingly to end 24 years of brutal Indonesia occupation that had left more than 170,000 dead.
Some 1,500 other people were killed when withdrawing Indonesian soldiers and proxy militias went on a rampage and destroyed much of the infrastructure before the international community deployed United Nations peacekeepers and poured in billions of dollars.
Mong Palatino East Timor journalists and human rights groups are opposing a government-proposed media law which they believe would lead to possible media censorship and repression in the country. The draft legislation was approved by the Council of Ministers last August, but was introduced in the Parliament just two weeks ago.
The Council of Ministers claims that the law is necessary since it seeks to guarantee the rights of media practitioners as well as encourage the media to do its job "objectively and impartially":
"The Press Law aims to ensure the freedom of the press while at the same time promoting the necessary balance between the exercise of that freedom and other fundamental rights and values contained in the Constitution. Its purpose is primarily to regulate the activity of professionals adequately prepared and ethically responsible, so that they can inform the public objectively and impartially and encourage active and enlightened citizenship by the population, thus contributing to a democratic society."
But several media groups have pointed out that the proposed law contains several provisions that directly undermine free speech. They highlighted Article 7 of the measure which mandates the registration of journalists to be supervised by a Press Council. Activist group La'o Hamutuk argued that the creation of a press council is unnecessary:
"As freedom of expression is already guaranteed by the Constitution, no Press Council is needed to regulate it. A Council of commercial media organizations and paid journalists can self-regulate their business, including with their Code of Ethics, but their processes cannot be imposed on everyone and should not involve the state, either through financial support or legal enforcement. Furthermore, no journalist should be required to join an organization in order to practice his or her Constitutional rights."
The group also questioned a provision which would narrow the definition of journalists to those working for corporate media. It insisted that the media landscape has changed and that citizen journalists must also be recognized by the government:
"This law should respect every person's right to free expression, including students, bloggers, web-posters, civil society organizations, free-lancers, part-time reporters, discussion groups, churches, political parties, columnists, researchers, community groups and ordinary people. It should not be monopolized or controlled by for-profit media."
La'o Hamutuk concluded by asserting that the proposed law is not crucial in promoting the right to information, and worse, that it violates the constitution:
"Timor-Leste has already gone for more than a decade without a Media Law, and we have not had problems with media and information. During this time, Timorese people enjoyed their right to information and freedom of expression through various media, after nearly five hundred years of repression and censorship.
Therefore, we conclude that this Media Law violates Timor-Leste Constitution Articles 40 and 41 about people's rights and freedom to seek, collect, choose, analyze and disseminate information, as words and/or images, to everyone."
Meanwhile, the Journalists Association of Timor-Leste thinks that the bill, if passed into law, would mean more regulation and not protection of the media:
"We want the law to reflect the realities of the modern media and to obey international standards. What we see in these laws is gives an impression that they intend to regulate the press rather than protect the rights of East Timorese journalists."
Blogger David Robie concerns about transparency around the act, asking why the content of the document was only made public a few weeks ago:
"The proposed Timor-Leste media law is a draconian mixed bag. And it is ironical that such a document with lofty claims of protecting the freedom of the press should be shrouded in secrecy for the past six months.
Alarming is the attempt to lock in the status and definition of journalists, effectively barring independent and freelance journalism and leaving the registration of journalists entirely to the whim of commercial media organisations.
It would not have worked in any kind of democracy in the days of low-tech newspapers and media publishing. But in these days of digital media, citizen journalism and diversity of critical information online it is tantamount to censorship the very thing the draft law states opposition to."
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) supports East Timor journalists in calling for the review and even overhaul of the proposed legislation:
"Any legislation that would limit the capacity of local and international journalists reporting on East Timor, also limits the public's right to know and is of great concern to the IFJ. We urge the government to ensure those reservations and perspectives are taken seriously and incorporated into the draft media law."
In response, the government vowed to consider all comments of media organizations before further deliberating on the draft proposal.
Simon Roughneen A proposed new media code in Timor-Leste is raising hackles among the country's press, who see an attempt to impose curbs on journalists and criminalise transgressions in what has been one of the freer press environments in southeast Asia.
The draft law, if passed, would require new journalists to go through a six month internship prior to accreditation and would bar public relations workers, political party leaders and civil servants from working as journalists with a necessary exception made for those working in public service media.
According to Jose Belo, editor of Dili newspaper Tempo Semanal, whose exposes landed former Justice Minister Lucia Lobato a five year jail term for corruption, the proposed restrictions are out of place.
"The government is trying to limit who can become a journalist or practice journalism, despite it being the era of Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on," Mr Belo, who was jailed and tortured by Indonesia during that county's quarter century occupation of Timor-Leste, told The Edge Review.
The law, which was subject of parliament hearings in early February, outlines a list of po-faced duties that lawmakers feel that journalists must perform, such as contributing "to a free and democratic society," something legislators feel that reporters can do "by informing citizens in an educational, honest and responsible manner in order to promote the creation of enlightened public opinion."
The clauses above are taken from a translation of the Portuguese draft law made by La'o Hamutuk, a well-regarded Dili think-tank, and such overbearing guidance is prompting journalist groups to think that the Government trying to impose rather than help expose.
The notion that Timorese journalism is subordinate to the exigencies of "nation-building" has long been impressed upon the country's media by politicians, many of whom, like Jose Belo, are legends of the country's resistance to Indonesia's savage 24 year occupation, which ended in 1999.
For example, In March 2012, police commissioner Longinhos Monteiro warned that journalists responsible for "inaccurate" news stories would be liable for arrest.
"What we see in these laws gives an impression that they intend to regulate the press rather than protect the rights of East Timorese journalists." said Timor Lorosa'e Journalists' Association (TLJA) President Tito Filipe.
The draft calls for journalists to combat "any restriction on freedom of expression, freedom of the press or any other form of restriction of the right to information for citizens," an irony given that the draft law could see journalists accused of wrongdoing subsequently facing civil or criminal charges.
Timor-Leste's 2009 penal code decriminalized defamation, but the offence remains part of the civil code, and in a country where journalists sometimes self-censor or are induced by per diems or backhanders, such leverage could weigh against poorly-paid reporters, many of whom earn less than US$200 a month.
However Timor Leste's legal system is slow, and there is a backlog of cases, so there is a chance, of course, that even if a restrictive media law is passed, journalists might be slow to feel the full force.
"There's plenty of laws on the books in Timor-Leste that are not always enforced exactly to the letter," reminded Gordon Peake, author of Beloved Land, a new book about Timor Leste.
The proposed law would provide for "the right of access to all sources of information, except as provided for by law," and says that accredited journalists are entitled to "access to official sources of information, taking into account administrative procedures."
Both of those rights sound good on paper, but in practice? That's a different story in a country known for bureaucratic tardiness.
A July 2013 editorial in The Dili Weekly, a small English-language newspaper in the capital, lamented that "our newspaper has approached the relevant sections of the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce to access such documents, but has been refused at a number of levels. We have put such requests formally in writing, as requested by various public servants. We've waited for hours in queues and been told the documents are being copied, but these documents never come."
And the code seems to borrow from neighbours such as Malaysia where annual licensing and permit provisions have hindered the rise of an aggressive print media, though online outlets have filled that nnche in recent years. The state funded Press Council proposed under the proposed law and could have the right to rescind media permits or licences, contends Jose Belo.
With only around one per cent of Timorese online regularly, compared with more than half of all Malaysians, it could be a long time before any would-be Timorkini could have the heft and readership to make up for a tamed print media.
Jose Ramos-Horta, a former President and Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, and now the head of the United Nations mission in Guinea-Bissau, said that it would be better if the mooted press law be binned.
"Let a thousand flowers blossom, let a million criticisms of political elites and businesses fly around then have a single journalist be harassed or imprisoned because of a tendentious law aiming at curbing freedom of press," Dr. Ramos-Horta told The Edge Review.
Requests for comment from a Timorese Government spokesman had gone unanswered at time of writing.
David Robie, Auckland (Cafe Pacific/Pacific Media Watch): Timor-Leste Press Club has this week transformed itself into the fledgling Timor-Leste Press Union and now seeks to become affiliated to the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists.
It is also seeking collaboration with the National University of Timor- Leste (UNTL) to establish a training programme for journalists in the industry.
These are just two of the current moves by journalists in response to mounting concern over a proposed media law that some fear may curb a free press in the country. While journalists are worried about the legislation, some are reluctant to openly condemn it.
Timor-Leste Press Union president Jose Belo, the country's best known investigative journalist and publisher of the independent Tempo Semanal, has confirmed the new status of his journalists advocacy group and says he is concerned over "government control" of media.
"What I understand from the draft media law is that government will control journalists and media," he says. However, media sources say that parliamentary consultation this week has led to some "softening" of the draft law.
It is understood the parliamentary committee overseeing review of the bill has agreed to some changes, including "redefining" who will be recognised as journalists.
It was also agreed that a political party could have its own media providing it "follows the laws and rules" applying to media operations This provision has great significance for Radio Maubere, a long-established radio station run by the opposition Fretilin party.
According to one Timorese media commentator, who declined to be named, among concerns in particular are "avenues for control of media reporting through the proposed Press Council, which will license journalists". Journalists would also be required to have "academic qualifications determined by the Press Council".
International media outlets and their correspondents intending to report from Timor would in future as well as needing to meet migration requirements would also require "authorisation" from the government.
"Interestingly it allows for foreign investment in media what some are calling the 'Indonesian Xanana-supporter friends' clause," says the commentator, in an apparent reference to a prominent businessman with television interests in Timor-Leste.
According to Belo, the government designed the law with three main objectives in mind: certification of journalists; approval of who can be journalists; and licensing of the news media.
"The draft media law gives excessive power to the proposed Press Council to remove media access to any journalist," says Belo.
"The Press Council is empowered to punish journalists or media organisations, forcing them to pay fines to the government if they violated any articles in the media law. It seems to me the Press Council is likely to be police or prosecutor even judge for journalists and media."
The international news service Al Jazeera reported recently after a conference of journalists to discuss proposed government changes to media policy that sanctions would be taken against journalists "without credentials".
Timor-Leste's State Secretary for Communications, Nelio Isaac Sarmento was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying: "Almost all journalists are young and many [started their jobs] after high school. They directly entered professional journalism with only one or two weeks' training. That's not enough."
The Al Jazeera report also cited the dual problems of high illiteracy above 40 percent and multiple languages in Timor-Leste.
"Portuguese and Tetum are the country's official languages, but about two dozen other languages and dialects are also spoken," said Al Jazeera. "Press freedom has improved since the enactment of a penal code in 2009 that decriminalised defamation. Cases of reporters being harassed or attacked, once common, are now rare."
But leading media personalities fear the draft new law may provide an unscrupulous government with enough legal hurdles to intimidate the media.
David Robie The proposed Timor-Leste media law is a draconian mixed bag. And it is ironical that such a document with lofty claims of protecting the freedom of the press should be shrouded in secrecy for the past six months.
After being approved by the Council of Ministers last August 6, it has languished in the "don't touch" basket since then, apart from a critical airing at a conference on the state of the media last October.
And then suddenly, with few copies of the document being in circulation previously, a hurried "consultation" was held with journalist representatives this week. A journalists' submission is expected by Parliamentary Committee A by Monday.
But other people with a stake in the future of media regulation such as academics, bloggers, book publishers, non-government organisations, political commentators and media users themselves haven't yet had a chance to give any input.
While the document contains an interesting attempt to define "duties" of journalists in an evolving new democracy such as Timor-Leste and professes to support freedom of information and the right to be informed, in reality many clauses seek to effectively gag the press and debate.
These reflective comments are based on a "rough translation" of the draft media law from Portuguese and Tetum into English.
Alarming is the attempt to lock in the status and definition of journalists, effectively barring independent and freelance journalism and leaving the registration of journalists entirely to the whim of commercial media organisations.
It would not have worked in any kind of democracy in the days of low-tech newspapers and media publishing. But in these days of digital media, citizen journalism and diversity of critical information online it is tantamount to censorship the very thing the draft law states opposition to.
As a freelance journalist myself for a decade reporting in the Asia-Pacific region, I know that some of the best reporting I have ever done is without the constraints of a commercial imperative. Only the public right to know was the paramount goal.
For example, Article 6 apparently excludes non-Timorese citizens from practising journalism and only "education and qualifications" recognised by the proposed Press Council and employed with a media organisation would be acceptable.
Only journalists with a national certificate issued by the national media industry would be recognised. No mention of journalism "education" and professional qualifications that are now the norm in the region. What would happen to Timorese journalists who have been educated and had media experience abroad?
Also, it seems that under Article 13 a political party-run media organisation such as Fretilin's Radio Maubere would be banned under this draft law, and the role of NGO media one of the major sources of independent and informed debate on policies in Timor-Leste would be ambiguous to say the least.
In Section 8, the conflict of interest with other careers is clearly spelt out. For example, the draft law says the "profession of journalism cannot be performed concurrently" with being a:
Any journalist so engaged in jobs incompatible with their role as a journalist must return their media card to the Press Council. A breach of this article may render a journalist liable to pay a fine of up to US$1000 or more than a month's pay in some cases. It would be interesting to see how this might be policed in practice.
Under Article 3 in a section labelled "fundamental principles", the draft law declares "all citizens have the right to inform, and be informed, with the ultimate purpose of achieving a free, developed, just and democratic society". This is standard UN Article 19 stuff and essential.
The following Article 4 about the "freedom of the press" says the rights of journalists to report shall be exercised based on "press freedom and creation [of media]", which comprises the following privileges:
Article 17 provides for a compulsory public "right of reply" from media organisations. Failure to comply could lead to a fine of up to $10,000.
The most controversial provision (Article 21) of the draft law is to make an "assault on freedom of the press" by a public official or agent of the state illegal and punishable by "up to three years in prison or a fine". Would this be punished in practice? Unlikely.
Only Timorese businesses will be entitled to own a news media company (Article 13), and Article 11 spells out the duties of a journalist:
Another point: Composition of the proposed independent Press Council is unbalanced. Article 22 prescribes three journalists chosen by journalists' organisations legally established in Timor-Leste; two representatives of the owners of the media, chosen by them; and two public figures of "recognised merit" related to the development of the media, chosen by journalists and owners of media organisations.
This group of seven elects the council president, unlike many media councils in other countries that actually have an independent chair or president who is often a retired judge or lawyer.
But what about the ordinary public the media consumers themselves? They get no representation at all and yet public trust, integrity and ethics are at the core of global debates about the future of media these days.
Seriously, this draft law needs a lot more thought and open debate. It should not be rushed into law with only minimal consultation with selected stakeholders.
The independent La'o Hamutuk research and monitoring NGO yesterday published its own analysis about the draft law, concluding:
Articles 40 and 41 of Timor-Leste's Constitution guarantee freedom of expression, information and press for all people. Although these freedoms have been in effect (and well-used) since the restoration of independence in 2002, state authorities and international consultants have been working on drafts of laws to regulate the media for many years, often consulting with local and journalists and media organizations. The current draft was approved by the Council of Ministers on 6 August 2013 and sent to Parliament for enactment.
Parliamentary Committees A and C held hearings during the week of 3 February 2014 with journalists' associations, but others who will be affected by the law (academics, NGOs, bloggers, book publishers, users of information, etc) have not yet been consulted.
La'o Hamutuk has many concerns about the draft law, and welcomes advice from experts inside and outside Timor-Leste to help us understand it better and propose constructive revisions.
Paulina Quintao The majority of female workers in the private sector do not claim their full maternity leave entitlements due to a fear of losing out on wages, according to Alola Foundation advocacy program manager Maria Barreto.
Under the labor laws, workers are entitled to three months maternity leave. Barreto said survey results revealed most female workers take maternity leave for as few as four days to one month before returning to work. "The consequence for workers who take maternity leave is their salary is not received in full," Barreto said.
She said many employers speak negatively of mothers in the workforce and do not allow workers the flexibility to go home to breastfeed babies. Barreto said other concerns included the lack of security and hygienic facilities available in offices in which women work.
Secretary of State for the Promotion of Equality (SEPI) Idelta Maria Rodrigues said many female workers faced problems in the work force as they lacked knowledge of their rights under the labour laws and feared losing their jobs should they make a complaint.
She called on institutions to look into the problem. "We need to keep giving strength to women so they are aware of their rights, particularly in regard to maternity leave," SE Rodrigues said.
In response to this matter, Secretary of State for Vocational Training and Employment (SEPFOPE) Elidio da Costa Ximenes said awareness of the labor laws by both workers and employers needed to be improved. She said SEPFOPE will conduct rigorous inspection of workplaces to guarantee the implementation of labor law.
Paulina Quintao According to research by the Alola Foundation (FA), many female laborers in urban and rural areas are unaware of labor laws ratified in 2012.
FA Director, Alzira Reis said the objective of the research was to find out how the labor laws had been implemented and the conditions under which female laborers in the private sector. The research showed most female workers didn't know about the legislation designed to protect their rights.
"We will cooperate with the Secretary of State for Vocational Training Policy and Employment (SEPFOPE) to share more information, in particular, raising awareness of the labor lawsto the public," said Reis, at the research launch, at the FA's hall in Mascarenhas, Dili.
She said the research was conducted in Dili, Baucau and Bobonaro. The study compared how the labor laws had been implemented in urban and rural areas and evaluated the laborers' knowledge of the laws.
Secretary of State for Equality Promotion (SEPI), Idelta Maria Rodrigues said she appreciated the report and asked SEPFOPE to create a system to raise awareness of the legislation. She said both employers and employees were unaware of the laws, therefore an education campaign was very important.
"I think we must raise awareness of the labor laws and I also ask the organization that conducted the research to continue providing training for the laborers so they know their rights," Rodrigues said.
The Secretary of State, Elidio da Costa Ximenes, acknowledged an awareness campaign was needed. "The labor law was approved in 2012; in 2013 made the decision for us to raise awareness in every part of district and sub- district however some districts we have not achieved this," said Ximenes.
They passed on the information to people via SMS. He promised that by this year they would try harder to raise awareness of lawsrelevant to female laborers so they knew their rights under the law, such as maternity provisions and special protection for women.
Environment & natural disasters
Paulina Quintao Minister Isabel Amaral Guterres warned the MSS will halt natural disaster relieve assistance to victims because of cases where construction materials given by the government are re-sold.
Minister Guterres said the government's support is to assist victims of natural disasters repair their homes not for them to re-sell the materials provided.
"If their houses flood again, the same families will not qualify for additional assistance because rather than using the materials for themselves, they sold them," said Minister Guterres at the National Parliament, in Dili.
She added shortly MSS's technical team will monitor the use of the materials already distributed to victims to determine whether the materials were used to repair homes or re-sold. "Our team will go and monitoring and look at the houses of the beneficiaries," said Minister Guterres.
Meanwhile a resident of Uato-Carbau Sub-district, in Viqueque District, Marito Amaral, said he is aware of some recipients who re-sold the construction materials they received from MSS to public servants at market prices.
"In this particular case because the recipient lives very far, he sent his son to collect the materials and to sell them. For example he sold to public servants one sack of cement for $8."
He blames MSS and its team for not providing better information to the recipients of the assistance that materials could not be re-sold and what sanctions apply so they are afraid of re-selling the construction materials provided.
Paulina Quintao The recent spread of HIV/AIDS poses a big threat to the entire population of Timor-Leste. Member of National Parliament Ilda Maria da Conceicao called on the government to take serious action help prevent the spread of the violence.
De Conceicao said the number of patients registered as suffering from HIV/AIDS indicated there were many sufferers who have not received any treatment in health facilities.
"It's a serious problem because we are a small nation with populationof just more than a million. If we do not take a serious action, in 20 years, a generation of Timorese could die," said the MP in National Parliament.
The MP called upon the Ministry of Health to coordinate with civil societies to spread information about the prevention of the disease to communities.
The same concern was raised by MP Francisco Miranda Branco. "I think it needs to look into because the number of HIV/AIDS case in the country keeps increasing every year," said MP Branco.
Data gathered by the Ministry of Health shows that from 2003 to 2013, 355 suffered from HIV/AIDS. Of this number, 39 people died, 129 people are receiving treatment and the remainder are not receiving treatment.
Paulina Quintao The Monitoring and Advocacy Officer for Programs at the Timor-Leste Coalition for Education (TLCE), Joao Soares R. Pequinho, said language is a barrier to the quality of education in Timor-Leste and reality shows more children have greater command of the Indonesian language than of Portuguese.
TLCE Officer Joao Pequinho says language has become an obstacle for improving education in Timor-Leste and that children actually speak better Indonesian than Portuguese.
According Officer Pequinho this happens because the government has not invested enough to develop the two official languages of Timor-Leste, Tetun and Portuguese. "What's worse is teachers do not have a good understanding of the language [Portuguese] so students cannot understand them," he added.
He claims further the use of the Portuguese language in the teaching and learning process has become a national disaster, and if students cannot understand the teaching language the quality of education in the country will not improve.
Meanwhile Member of Parliament (MP) Ilda Maria da Conceicao, from Commission F (for Health, Culture, Education, Gender Equality and Veteran Affairs), said this happens because the national television broadcaster TVTL does not have suitable programming for children in the national languages. "They watch mostly Indonesian television so of course they understand Indonesian really well," said the MP.
She said also language is still an obstacle for improving the quality of education in Timor-Leste especially because schools do not force students to speak in Portuguese. "At homes also parents cannot teach them and practice is very important so children can master a language."
MP Conceicao urged the Ministry of Education to create education programs on TVTL so the children can increase their learning and to not just broadcast soap operas (telenovelas) that are not suitable for children.
Housewife, Agustina Fernandes, notes her children are more fluent in Indonesian than Portuguese and that is because they watch Indonesian television every day.
"We speak Tetun to them but they just reply in Indonesian. Even when they are out playing with their friends, they only speak Indonesian to one other."
Ezequiel Freitas The Timor-Leste Parliamentary Women's Group (GMPTL) intends to propose legislation to regulate pornography in the country.
GMPTL member MP Brigida Correia said the group held consultations with representatives from other nations about the implementation of similar legislation in their countries.
"We went to Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia to research and collect information about pornography legislation," said MP Correia, at the National Parliament, in Dili.
She said she feels encouraged because in the countries visited the implementation of pornography legislation has been successful. "Our legal adviser is preparing the draft legislation for our consideration," said the MP.
She added the draft legislation will be debated in parliament in 2014 to find out what the advantages and disadvantages are to the country if such legislation is passed and implemented.
"We cannot copy 100 per cent what other nations are doing. We have to be analytical and take into account various opinions."
She believes such legislation is important to regulate pornography in Timor-Leste. "We, Commission F, will analyse it in the first instance but it then also needs to go to Commission A and to the Council of Ministers for approval."
Meanwhile MP Arao Noe said it will be difficult to regulate online pornography. "What we need is to change mentalities and families need to morally educate their own. Parents need to educate their children," said MP Noe.
He added the National Parliament can create 10 different laws and still not able to control the actions of immoral people. He added that the Internet, especially sites like Facebook, are private, but if they invade other people's privacy this is a crime.
The Executive Director of the Judicial System Monitoring Program (JSMP) NGO, Jose Luis Oliveira Sampaio, said the country lacks a specific law on pornography.
"However we have a piece of legislation entitled Dewasa, Article 183 which states that even if someone knows about someone else's private sexual life, he or she cannot divulge such information freely. This is punishable with one year in prison or a fine," said Director Sampaio.
He added it is a public crime that can be investigated by the police. "The State should think about introducing pornography legislation so pornographic content can be regulated," said also Director Sampaio. "Otherwise people just do whatever they want at great cost to someone else's dignity."
David Robie A year after Indonesian troops killed more than 270 peaceful demonstrators at the cemetery of Santa Cruz in the Timor-Leste capital of Dili in 1991, news footage secretly shot by a cameraman surfaced in a powerful new film.
The Yorkshire Television documentary, In Cold Blood: The Massacre of East Timor, screened in six countries and later broadcast in other nations, helped change the course of history.
Until then, countries such as Australia and New Zealand in spite of a New Zealander being killed in the massacre had been content to close a blind eye to the illegal Indonesian invasion in 1975 and the atrocities committed for a quarter century.
The cameraman, Max Stahl, who risked his own life to film the massacre and bury the footage cassette in a freshly dug grave before he was arrested, knew this evidence of the massacre would be devastating.
In a documentary made a decade later by Yorkshire Television's Peter Gordon, Bloodshot: The Dreams and Nightmares of East Timor, that interviewed key players including Stahl himself in the transition to restored independence in 2002, Timorese leaders reveal just how critical this footage was in telling their story of repression to the world.
"When we knew that [the film crew] were safe with all the cameras, and all the cassettes were safe, we knew it would be a bomb," recalls Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, a former Timorese resistance leader imprisoned by the Indonesians for life (although he was freed after six years). "And it was!"
"That's what changed everything. We are not going to allow Santa Cruz to be forgotten," says former President Jose Ramos-Horta, who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize with Bishop Ximenes Belo in 1996. "So Santa Cruz massacre was the turning point."
Two years after In Cold Blood, investigative journalist John Pilger produced the documentary Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy, which also used Max Stahl's massacre footage. The savage scenes dramatically changed world opinion over Indonesia's illegal occupation.
Fifty nine-year-old Stahl his name is actually an alias for British journalist and television presenter Christopher Wenner, a moniker that he adopted to protect his Timorese colleagues is today a hero in this Asia-Pacific nation.
But he is also one of a small group of expatriates who have committed their life to this emerging new state. He has established the Max Stahl Audiovisual Archive Centre of Timor-Leste (CAMSTL), recording a national digital history and training a new generation of young Timorese filmmakers.
He returned to East Timor in 1999 and filmed further atrocities by the Indonesians as troops and right-wing Timorese militia laid waste to towns and communities and murdered countless Timorese who had voted for independence in a United Nations-supervised referendum.
This coverage won him the 2000 Rory Peck Award for hard news in television one of many awards his work has won in conflict zones, including in the Balkans and El Salvador. He has also been awarded the Medal of Freedom from Portugal and a presidential medal from Timor-Leste.
I caught up with him and his CAMSTL colleagues, Eddy Pinto and Cristina Prata, in the town of Bacau on the way to the remote "village of widows", Kraras, where more than 300 people were massacred in 1983.
This infamous massacre, not so well known internationally as Santa Cruz, but actually worse, has been portrayed in Timor-Leste's first feature film, Beatriz's War.
About 2000 people were gathering in a makeshift township built around the village to mark the 38th anniversary of the unilateral declaration of independence in 1975 and the 30th anniversary of the massacre.
Stahl journeyed to the village to record oral histories with survivors of the massacre and the historic celebrations. He told me how vital it was for a country as traumatised by its past as Timor-Leste to not only record its history but to also document its evolving national development.
The United Nations has recently recognised the CAMSTL archives as a Memory of the World collection, and the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA) regarded as the world's best digital library has made available about 1000 hours of Stahl footage in its public online archives.
"This is very significant for Timor-Leste," says Stahl. "It recognises the importance of this CAMSTL collection. It takes a few steps to opening up other partnerships.
"We have very good relations with the French audiovisual library but we're very small, it is a bit like a partnership between an elephant and a flea.
"Maybe this will open up other opportunities over project funding and collaborations. It is only in the past two years out of the past decade that the Timor-Leste government has actually started to financially support us."
But delays in the funding have caused problems such as only receiving the 2012 grant a few weeks before the end of the year and hardly enough time to spend it.
"It is important to have an international dimension to our work recording of the birth of this nation, one that has had such a traumatic struggle for independence and to exist, and how the struggle for justice evolves over time," Stahl says.
"Local perspectives and information are so important. It is so important to record on film the landmark decisions and events in the country and how key issues are resolved."
The centre is now looking forward to a permanent home after three temporary set-ups, including in the Independence Memorial Hall near the Dili lighthouse.
Currently it shares accommodation with a local sports institute, but hopes to be shifting across the street to a planned new wing next to the Resistance Museum dedicated to the guerrilla force Falintil that fought against Indonesian rule.
This museum, and the Chega! museum dedicated to the truth and reconciliation process and the Arte Moris (Living Art) centre, which has been dedicated to free expression through the arts, has contributed to developing Timor-Leste's cultural and human rights identity.
In the UNESCO nomination, the CAMSTL archives were described as "very precious" for the East Timorese people.
"They gave voice to the resistance and constitute an important part of national memory. This filmed memory takes on an even greater significance because the country has been repeatedly devastated (1942-1945 by the Japanese, and 1975-79 and 1999 by the Indonesians) and populations fled or were displaced, resulting in the destruction and loss of many cultural and historical documents."
Max Stahl explains about his centre's work: "We try to do what we can with the kinds of political and social struggles and development challenges."
CAMSTL seek to film and record, for example, international interventions; health issues, such as problems and solutions and support from other countries, including Cuban doctors; cultural developments music, traditional culture, and martial arts groups ; and also sport "the Timorese are passionate about football and development of a national league will go a long way towards uniting the country".
"We tell the stories of the contribution of the people to their nation- building their sacrifices.
"The anger, frustration of people who fought in the resistance, who struggled against the Indonesians. We have made a number of films about that."
Max Stahl is also critical about the role of the media both the international parachute journalists, and many local journalists who lack training, education and an awareness of history.
While he singles out a handful of journalists for praise, such as investigative journalist and former independence activist Jose Belo who helped him set up CAMSTL and carried vital underground reporting during the restoration of independence years, he is scathing about some elements of international coverage.
"The international media chase the soap operas, without really understanding the real and deeper issues, and the complexities," Stahl says when reflecting on how the story of popular renegade soldier Major Alfredo Reinado was covered. Reinado and his rebel force hid in the Timorese jungles for two years until he was finally killed in an attempted assassination on the President Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Gusmao in February 2008 in controversial circumstances that are still unclear today.
"The media pursue the incidents without really looking at the wider issues of development and national decision-making, and the challenges which are the really fascinating angles," Stahl says. "Why are they so indifferent to the real issues? No one began to ever really understand what this was really about.
In his own film about the Reinado affair, Stahl got somebody to follow the rebel group around. "He was not a main guy, just a follower brave enough to hang around, but just keeping in the shadows."
One of the most challenging documentaries Stahl has made in recent years was a two-part programme called The Woman's War, which investigated the maternity health sector and the high infant and childbirth mortality rate. This is one of the crises confronting the country, yet politicians have brushed it under the carpet.
And the future? "Timor-Leste is the first country to have gained independence through an audiovisual war, not just through armed struggle alone," Stahl says.
"It has been a landmark in the development relationship. Now we have the fresh challenges of employing social media, digital media and other media advances to help develop this nation.
"It is also important for the Timorese to see that they are not alone in this world, that their struggles can have parallels and to see other opportunities."
Jakarta The Indonesian and Timor Leste governments have agreed to boost security and defense ties during a meeting between Defense Minister Poernomo Yusgiantoro and visiting Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, which was a follow-up to a memorandum of understanding signed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and then Timor Leste president Jose Ramos Horta in Dili in 2012.
"This will include military cooperation, education and training," Poernomo said. He said that under the agreement, the Timor Leste government would purchase weapons made by the Indonesian defense industry. "Currently, Timor Leste is building its defense capabilities, especially with regard to border patrols," Poernomo said.
Xanana, who also serves as Timor Leste's defense minister confirmed the weapons purchase. "We will possibly buy weapons or ammunition. We need to develop our army capability, to be ready to face challenges in the future," he said. "As long as we don't use them to attack any country."
Xanana said that during the meeting, the two sides also discussed border protection. "Indonesia and Timor Leste are neighbors, we share a common border and have related issues," Xanana said. He said that cooperation with Indonesia would be of great significance.
Last year, Yudhoyono and visiting Timor Leste President Jose Maria Vasconcelos, popularly known as Taur Matan Ruak, agreed to enhance what they deemed "good relations", as well as shoring up support for Timor Leste's ASEAN membership bid.
The high-level meeting also highlighted disputed sections of the border that had been left unresolved for years and resolved one of the disputed sections, the Dilumi/Memo section.
The other two disputed sections (Bijael Sunan Oben and Noel Besi/Citrana), however, were left unresolved. The two countries have managed to demarcate around 97 percent of the total land border, which spans 268.8 kilometers.
Indonesia annexed Timor Leste (at that time East Timor) in 1975, but lost control of it after a referendum in 1999. Timor Leste formally declared independence in May 2002.
Trade between Indonesia and Timor Leste has increased over the last few years. Last year, the trade value reached US$258.8 million, compared with $221.52 in 2011.
In 2012, the Timor Leste government's plan to purchase tanks and armored personnel carriers from an Indonesian defense company PT Pindad was criticized by local non-governmental organizations for lacking transparency. Civil groups had also criticized the plan because initial tests indicated that the military vehicles were substandard.
Jakarta Authorities of Silawan village in East Tasifeto, Belu regency, East Nusa Tenggara, which lies on the Indonesian border with Timor Leste, have started to identify and deport citizens of Timor Leste staying in the village ahead of the April 9 legislative election.
"We do not want any disruptions, especially before the election," Silawan village chief Ferdy Mones said as quoted by Antara news agency on Monday.
He said that the Indonesian Military (TNI)'s Border Security Task Force (Satgas Pamtas), village supervisory non-commissioned officers (Babinsa), sub-precinct police officers, and village authorities were involved in the operation. Religious and communal leaders are also getting involved.
Ferdy said that many Timorese that had entered the village using the cross-border pass (PLB) but did not report to the village authorities. He argued that this situation might have negative repercussions on the Silawan villagers.
While admitting that residents living on both sides of the border were still blood relatives, Ferdy said things changed when Timor Leste seceded from Indonesia.
"We need to record and deport the Timorese to prevent clashes with local villagers," he said. "If we find them, we will send them back to Timor Leste"
Ferdy said such measures were becoming more pressing ahead of the legislative election. "We need to identify villagers for the election, foreigners will be sent home," he said. (atw/nvn)
Kim Doyle In early 2013, the Australian Signals Directorate was spying on Indonesian officials involved in trade negotiations with the US. The private communications recorded were most likely relating to disputes over clove cigarettes and prawn exports.
It's hardly the stuff of international espionage. It wouldn't make the title of a John Grisham or Tom Clancy novel The Great Shrimp Conspiracy but it's an illustration of the link between the state and private capitalists.
Recent leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that the Australia government offered this information to the NSA, which passed it on to "interested US customers" who found it "highly useful".
On 16 February Tony Abbott, responding to the Snowden spying revelations, said "We certainly don't use it [surveillance] for commercial purposes." This is a bald-faced lie.
The Australian and Timor-Leste governments are currently in international arbitration at The Hague. The Timorese want a $40 billion oil and gas treaty ripped up, claiming that the Australian government illegally obtained intelligence to gain advantage during the negotiations.
A decade ago, government offices in Timor's capital Dili were given an expensive makeover under an Australian Foreign Aid program. What appeared to be a generous gift turned out to be a Trojan Horse.
According to a former spy turned whistleblower, in May 2004 Australian Secret Intelligence Service agents, disguised as site workers, planted listening devices in the walls of the Timorese cabinet room, just two offices away from the chamber occupied by the prime minister. After the treaty negotiations concluded, the agents returned to remove the evidence.
The treaty concerns a region in the Timor Sea known as Greater Sunrise. It's a $20 billion bonanza for resource company Woodside Petroleum, which has been acting in concert with the Australian government to screw over Timor.
Deakin University professor of Asian Studies Damien Kingsbury is an expert in the case. "If Australia had recognised the Convention of the Law of the Sea and drawn the boundary halfway between the two countries", he points out, "East Timor would get 100 percent of all of the reserves, as is its right under international law."
The accumulation of profits has always been a driver of Australian foreign policy.
In 1975, the government supported the invasion of Timor by the Indonesian military. Ambassador to Indonesia Richard Woolcott wrote in August of that year, "We are all aware of the Australian Defence interest in the Portuguese Timor situation, but I wonder whether the Department [of Foreign Affairs] has ascertained the interest of the Department of Minerals and Energy in the Timor situation.
"It would seem to me that this Department might well have an interest in closing the present gap in the agreed sea border and this could be more readily negotiated with Indonesia than with Portugal or independent East Timor. I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand, but that is what the national interest and foreign policy is all about."
"National interest" was code for profits for big business, which were considered more important than the lives of the Timorese people.
Today nothing has changed. Australian capitalists are still making a killing in the Asia Pacific with the help of the Australian government. Sometimes this involves espionage, sometimes it's driving a hard bargain at the negotiating table and other times it involves brutal violence.
The PNG mobile squads involved in the recent attacks on asylum seekers on Manus Island, for instance, are funded by the Australian government. These squads gained infamy in 1989 on the island of Bougainville where, at the behest of Bougainville Copper Limited, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, they were unleashed on local landowner activists who had shut down the Panguna copper mine. The squads tortured and executed people, raped women and torched houses.
They're not the only death squads Australia funds in the region. The Indonesian Detachment 88, formed in the wake of the 2002 Bali bombings, is funded and trained by the Australian Federal Police and the CIA in "counter-terrorism".
In reality, they are little more than skilled assassins. In 2012, they gunned down West Papuan popular independence leader Mako Tabuni. In 2010, they executed Kelly Kwalik, a leader from the Free Papua Movement. They are ruthless and above the law.
The West Papuans' struggle for self-determination and land rights threatens lucrative mining profits. West Papua contains the largest known deposit of gold in the world, the Grasberg complex, controlled by the Arizona mining company Freeport.
Rio Tinto has secured a 40 percent stake in all future production at the Grasberg complex from 2021, as well as 40 percent of all new excavations in West Papua.
Australian capitalism considers the Asia Pacific its business. With the help of the government, it will do almost anything to secure a profit from the region.
Hagar Cohen: Hello, and welcome to Background Briefing, I'm Hagar Cohen.
It was late morning, on the 3rd of December when ASIO launched a raid on the Canberra legal office of Bernard Collaery. His assistant, Chloe Preston, was there alone.
Chloe Preston: Between 15 and 20 officers around, coming in and out of the house all day. I haven't been in that situation before and it was intimidating to have so many people around the office, not knowing what they were there for, and not being told what they were there for.
Hagar Cohen: The agents took paper and digital documents, material that would be used as evidence in a sensational upcoming court case. It involves allegations that Australia spied on the tiny state of Timor-Leste, or East Timor. It came out after a former spy blew the whistle on the operation, as Lawyer Bernard Collaery told ABC radio's PM program.
Bernard Collaery: The director general of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and his deputy instructed a team of ASIS technicians to travel to East Timor in an elaborate plan, using Australian aid programs relating to the renovation and construction of the Cabinet offices in Dili, East Timor, to insert listening devices into the wall, of walls to be constructed under an Australian aid program. So this was a bugging operation on sovereign Timor territory.
Hagar Cohen: The alleged spying happened in 2004. Mari Alkatiri's government in Timor-Leste was negotiating a multi billion dollar oil and gas treaty with Australia. Alkatiri's communications officer at the time was Paul Cleary. He remembers the renovation works when the bugs were allegedly installed.
Paul Cleary: I remember seeing these Australian contractors, and they all looked like Paul Hogan with their sleeves chopped up and the stubby shorts, putting down carpet and things like that in a country that has the wet season and people walk in mud and there was no vacuum cleaner and all this kind of stuff. I never imagined that this would actually then be used to in fact physically bug the prime minister's office, that really did take my breath away.
Hagar Cohen: One room in particular, says Cleary, would be used by the negotiating team.
Paul Cleary: Immediately adjacent to the prime minister's office, it was probably about four by four metres, the prime minister's personal meeting room, that was where he would hold his own meetings with ministers, that's where the negotiating team met and that was where we briefed the prime minister on the negotiating strategy and what Timor was pressing for, and just essentially the position that we would be putting.
Hagar Cohen: The whistleblower's affidavit alleging the bugging and other evidence was seized when ASIO swooped last December. The next day, the Attorney General confirmed the raids in the Senate.
George Brandis: Yesterday, search warrants were executed at premises in Canberra by officers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. The premises were those of Mr Bernard Collaery and of a former ASIS officer.
Hagar Cohen: The former ASIS officer also had his passport seized. It stopped him from going to the international Court of Arbitration in The Hague to testify about the spying. That hearing was due to start two days later.
Lawyer Bernard Collaery questioned the timing of the ASIO raid and accused the Attorney General of sabotaging Timor-Leste's case. In the Senate, Mr Brandis said that wasn't true.
George Brandis: Last night rather wild and injudicious claims were made that the purpose for which the search warrants were issued was to somehow impede or subvert the arbitration. Those claims are wrong. The search warrants were issued, on the advice and at the request of ASIO, to protect Australia's national security.
Hagar Cohen: Timor-Leste's lawyers scoffed at this claim. So, they started a second action against Australia, this time at the International Court of Justice. In court for the East Timorese, international lawyer Sir Elihu Lauterpacht questioned the motive for the raid.
Sir Elihu Lauterpacht: Is it protecting itself from the likely revelation that Australia's security seriously and illegally entered Timor-Leste under false pretences? Then surreptitiously placed listening devices in the government offices of Timor-Leste, eavesdropped, and extracted information to which they were not entitled?
Hagar Cohen: Sir Elihu Lauterpacht argued that the raid was unlawful, and that Australia should return the seized material immediately. Australia disagreed.
Its lawyer, Justin Gleeson, said there's a danger that the whistleblower known here as Mr X would expose further details, including the identities of other Australian secret agents.
Justin Gleeson: Has Mr X disclosed or does he threaten to disclose names or identities of serving or former officers? If he does, will that endanger the lives and security of those persons?
Hagar Cohen: The judgement on the validity of the ASIO raids is due to be delivered by May. But the longer proceedings which involve the spying allegations themselves are expected to take many more months at the Court of Arbitration. There, a decision will be made about the future of the oil and gas treaty known as CMATS. This treaty divides royalty revenues from the Greater Sunrise field in the Timor Sea 50/50 between Australia and East Timor.
Timor now believes it was tricked into signing it, and it wants the treaty scrapped. If that happens, Australia would be the first country that's had a treaty ripped up because of fraud.
Don Anton: Allegations of fraud are very uncommon. Indeed, no treaty has ever been declared invalid on account of fraud.
Hagar Cohen: Associate professor of international law from the ANU, Don Anton.
Don Anton: In this case, if the allegations prove true, Australia is in an unenviable and dubious position of being the first state of having a treaty it negotiated declared invalid on account of its fraud.
Hagar Cohen: And how likely is that to happen, based on the information that we do know?
Don Anton: Well, if the allegations of the deceit, the bugging in order to gain advantage when Australia was already in a supremely superior negotiating position in terms of its knowledge of the law, the diplomacy, the science surrounding that seabed area, if those allegations prove true, and if and this is a big if if that deceit was a a cause of East Timor entering into the treaty, than it seems pretty clear that article 49 of the Vienna Convention will have the arbitral tribunal declare the treaty invalid.
Hagar Cohen: The final treaty, CMATS, signed in 2006, took years of negotiations. Both teams included hard-headed and seasoned negotiators. Australia's was headed by foreign minister Alexander Downer. He refuses to be drawn on Australia's spying operations.
Alexander Downer: Obviously I know what they do. There wouldn't be much point in spending any money on them if everything they did was open to public discussion and debate.
Hagar Cohen: However, he remembers the negotiations as challenging, particularly because talks started against the backdrop of violence in the lead-up to East Timor's independence.
Alexander Downer: A difficult issue because when we came to government, East Timor was part of Indonesia, if not legally, in practice. And there was a lot of violence there. People were dying. East Timor is on our doorstep. And there were human rights issues that arose repeatedly which became problems for Australia, broadly defined, in its relationship with Indonesia.
Hagar Cohen: As East Timor was in a UN led transition period, the initial talks on their side were headed by the UN appointed American ambassador Peter Galbraith and Mari Alkatiri. Alkatiri would become independent East Timor's first prime minister. Both remained on the negotiating team right through to 2006 when the final treaty was signed.
Peter Galbraith says he always suspected there was spying, but didn't know the extent of it. He says it would have given Australia a huge advantage.
Peter Galbraith: These were in essence negotiations about money, money and the share of oil, and if you know what the Timorese are going to settle for, that's incredibly valuable. But also if you know in advance what negotiating tactics the East Timorese are going to take. Or we had been dealing with Australian negotiators now for a period of five years. I had judgements about how each one of them was going to react, I had judgements about who was more open to our arguments, who had influence with the key decision makers. So again, if the Australian side knows our perceptions of their negotiating team, that is helpful.
And finally, we ended up with quite a large negotiating team, and there were divisions amongst us, and so if the Australians know what those divisions are, they can tailor their positions to the divisions on our side. So in a negotiation to know what the other side is thinking, what its bottom line is, what its negotiating tactics are, what the divisions within its negotiating team are, what the divisions are among the political masters, what instructions are being given, all of that is incredibly useful.
Hagar Cohen: To understand the scale of the current dispute over the oil and gas fields, it's important to go back to the history. Australia first signed a treaty with Indonesia in 1989, the Timor Gap Treaty, which was favourable to Australia, but in return it recognised Indonesia's illegal occupation of East Timor.
Upon its independence in 2002, East Timor signed the Timor Sea Treaty and it gave the Timorese 90% of the potential oil and gas revenues. But that share was based on temporary maritime boundaries that keep most of the biggest oil and gas field, Greater Sunrise, on Australia's side. The East Timorese were never happy with this arrangement; they wanted permanent boundaries that more equitably shared the Greater Sunrise territory, which is much closer to the coast of East Timor. But Australia wouldn't budge on the maritime boundaries.
Alexander Downer: Look, I'm trying to help explain this to you as best I can. The East Timorese initial position and the UN negotiators on the part of the East Timorese argued that the boundary should be equidistant. We said to the East Timorese and to the UN, well, not only do we disagree with that in law, because we don't think that is a correct interpretation of the international...
Hagar Cohen: Then why not let the International Court of Justice resolve...?
Alexander Downer: Well, just let me continue... so we said to them, if we make a special dispensation for you in terms of where the maritime boundary is, well, then what are we going to say to other countries? And in particular of course, as I mentioned, Indonesia with whom we have a maritime boundary many thousands of kilometres long. So it had the potential to create a huge diplomatic problem for us.
Hagar Cohen: Australia withdrew from two conventions of the International Court of Justice so that it would not be bound by any court decision determining the placement of the maritime boundaries.
Under the current treaty, known as CMATS, Australia agreed to split the revenue share of oil and gas from the Greater Sunrise field 50/50. But they would not agree to a maritime boundary change. A clause in the CMATS Treaty says the current maritime boundaries cannot be renegotiated for 50 years.
Despite the CMATS Treaty being signed eight years ago, nobody has made any money yet from Greater Sunrise. Oil consultant Geoffrey McKee.
Geoffrey McKee: All the money people talk about it, it's all in the future. A lot of money has been spent on the field and drilling appraisal wells. And then $30 million has been spent on engineering studies in order to come up with a development plan, but that was rejected by the Timor-Leste government. So that rejection of the development plan is what ultimately has brought the CMATS treaty unstuck, it's as simple as that.
Hagar Cohen: The development plan the Timorese won't agree to involves the Woodside petroleum company installing a floating LNG processing plant. The Timorese insist on a pipeline to take the gas to a processing plant onshore in East Timor. Geoffrey McKee says he supported this idea for a long time because of the economic benefits for the Timorese, but he has now changed his mind.
Geoffrey McKee: Floating LNG, in my opinion as a facilities engineer, solves a lot of environmental problems, it solves decommissioning problems, it solves onshore environmental problems. I've changed my views. I've been a passionate supporter for a pipeline for years, but I have to reluctantly accept that floating LNG is the way of the future.
Hagar Cohen: But Geoffrey McKee says Timor-Leste won't budge.
Geoffrey McKee: In the minds of the Timor-Leste government, this vision of the pipeline and the desire for foreign direct investment in their country is something that they've set in concrete, they must have it. And I see that their strategy currently is linked to this strong desire for an onshore LNG plant which is linked to their national interest. You know what a country will do when they believe something is in their national interest; they will go to war, won't they. National interest is something that justifies anything.
Hagar Cohen: The government of Timor-Leste says it will not be lectured about its vision for an onshore LNG plant. The president of the Council of Ministers, Agio Pereira.
Agio Pereira: Timor-Leste is being lectured about the commercial viability, and all the arguments that oppose a pipeline to Timor-Leste have been invalidated. It is now a political decision. Timor-Leste has made it a priority of great importance to its strategic development.
Hagar Cohen: The role of Woodside is also central to the current dispute.
Background Briefing spoke to several members of the East Timorese negotiating team. They all said they believed Woodside and the Australian negotiators were working too closely. Their view was that Canberra was advancing Woodside's interests during the negotiations.
Peter Galbraith: Australia was working with the oil companies to promote the interests of the oil companies, and I suppose also getting some revenues for Australia, but it was a very cosy relationship.
Hagar Cohen: Australia's lead negotiator, Alexander Downer, says that kind of relationship is to be expected.
Alexander Downer: Look, Woodside is an Australian company, we are on Australia's side. In all negotiations we obviously had discussions with stakeholders. It would be absurd if we didn't have discussions with stakeholders. These are people who have paid good money for leases, they have an interest in the legal and regulatory regime, and obviously Australia would conduct negotiations cognisant of the implications of what they were doing. You'd just be derelict in your duty if you didn't do that.
Hagar Cohen: There would be negotiations that are confidential only to the Australian negotiating team and Timor-Leste's negotiating team. I'm asking you if...
Alexander Downer: Not necessarily.
Hagar Cohen: No?
Alexander Downer: Well, I have huge experience of negotiating treaties and agreements internationally. You will typically talk about... you might not talk about the details of the actual meetings you've been having, but it would be understood in such negotiations that both sides would be talking to relevant stakeholders.
Hagar Cohen: So you're saying that there were no discussions that were only kept between the Timorese negotiating team and Australia's negotiating team? All the information...
Alexander Downer: Ah, I didn't say that. I mean, we would act with discretion in life.
Hagar Cohen: The close relationship continues.
During the ongoing impasse with the Timorese, Woodside has hired a number of former Australian government officials. For example Woodside's two most recent representatives in Dili, Brendan Augustin and John Prowse, are formerly of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
In 2011, Woodside hired Alexander Downer for a short time. According to media reports, the former ASIS agent who blew the whistle about the spying operation did so when he learned about Mr Downer's work with Woodside.
Alexander Downer: I just think it's pathetic.
Hagar Cohen: Why is that?
Alexander Downer: Well, I became a lobbyist for Woodside. I did one job for Woodside over a period of... I've forgotten now, but three or four months, and that is all. Many years after I'd finished as the foreign minister, I finished as the foreign minister at the end of 2007, and I suppose this would have been around four years later. And I did one job for them, which was not to lobby anybody. I didn't lobby anyone, so to say I was a lobbyist is not right. But they asked for my advice, I was happy to give them my advice, and I did and I had some meetings with them and discussed the issues they wanted to discuss.
But I'm not entirely sure what it has to do in the sense with the negotiation of the CMATS treaty because this was years after those negotiations have been concluded and the treaty had been ratified.
Hagar Cohen: Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who was a lead negotiator on the East Timorese side, has been a vocal critic of Alexander Downer. But he doesn't see Downer's subsequent work with Woodside as a problem.
Peter Galbraith: Let me begin by saying that I'm no fan of Alexander Downer.
And in the first phase of these negotiations, which Mari Alkatiri and I led before East Timor became independent in 2000 and 2001, Woodside and Phillips Petroleum had enormous influence, I thought utterly inappropriate influence.
The oil companies, they weren't at the table but they were deeply involved in the process. But it has been many years since Alexander Downer was involved in that, so I'm not sure that I see a connection between his involvement as foreign minister and his service as a consultant to Woodside.
Hagar Cohen: He says the most obvious example of the oil companies' influence over negotiations that he can remember was in 2001.
Peter Galbraith: We had reached an agreement in principle which in fact was something that was basically very similar to what emerged in July 2001 as the Timor Sea agreement. And we had agreed to resume negotiations in January.
However, this agreement was then taken to the oil companies, the oil companies objected, Australia then did not resume the negotiations until April. It required East Timor and me as a cabinet minister going to Hobart and speaking to the Australian Petroleum Association and saying explicitly that the Timor Sea would be closed to business unless there was a treaty and that the investments were at risk. That finally got attention, and considering the choice between not being able to realise on their investments versus a treaty that they thought was less attractive, the oil companies backed down.
Hagar Cohen: The oil companies backed down, but not without a fight. Ambassador Peter Galbraith says Phillips Petroleum, now known as ConocoPhillips, tried to have him removed as a negotiator.
Peter Galbraith: So Phillips Petroleum realised its investment was at risk.
Its initial reaction was to try to get me removed. The Australians co- operated and they went to the UN, and they also went to the Bush administration, I think to Vice President Cheney, to try to get me removed on the American side.
And when that didn't work, then they realised they were probably better off with the treaty than with nothing at all.
Hagar Cohen: During the negotiations over the third and final CMATS treaty, Woodside was the main stakeholder. But while Woodside may have a good handle on Australia's politics, it hasn't got the politics right in East Timor, says oil consultant Geoff McKee.
Geoffrey McKee: Sunrise is a perfect example of that where they can get everything right except for the politics. They probably feel by having ex- DFAT people on their staff they can learn from DFAT how to do the politics. However, I think they would be smart to put somebody like Ramos-Horta on their board, and then they would get a different input on the politics. Anything is possible. Politics is the art of the possible.
Hagar Cohen: Someone like Ramos-Horta or anyone else from the Timorese negotiating team?
Geoffrey McKee: Yes. I mean, if it's good enough for Woodside to recruit DFAT people from Australia and put them on the staff, why don't they put a representative from Timor-Leste on their board?
Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing understands that the legal firm of a former cabinet minister in the Alkatiri government who was a senior negotiator, now has Woodside Petroleum as a client.
The law firm, Da Silva Teixeira Associates, wouldn't confirm whether Woodside is a client, and Jose Teixeira declined Background Briefing's requests for an interview.
The current government of East Timor says it has no concerns. President of the Council of Ministers, Agio Pereira.
Agio Pereira: He has a legal firm, it's obviously of a commercial nature. I guess he has the right to have his own choices as to who his clients should be, and we don't have any comment about that.
Hagar Cohen: Woodside Petroleum also declined Background Briefing's request for an interview.
The company's standoff with the current Timorese administration has been further complicated. Discussions over the development of Greater Sunrise have almost stopped as the country pursues the spying case in The Hague.
Timor-Leste believes its evidence is watertight. As lawyer Bernard Collaery told the Lateline program, their key witness was a senior figure in the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
Bernard Collaery: This witness was the director of all technical operations of ASIS. We're not talking about some disaffected spy, we're talking about a very senior, experienced, decorated officer who formed a proper view, as would any good person, that this was a wrong operation.
Hagar Cohen: Ambassador Peter Galbraith says it's always necessary to take precautions about bugging, and at the time he warned his team of the risk.
Peter Galbraith: I assumed that all electronic communications were being monitored. After all, East Timor had no system for encrypting email. The cell phone system had been from Telstra, and even though it switched over to a Portuguese system, I assumed it was very easy to intercept cell phones, and I knew you could monitor cell phones even if you weren't speaking on them, they could be used as a device to pick up conversations. So whenever we discussed really sensitive matters, I would insist not only that all cell phones be turned off but that the cell phones not be in the room where the discussions took place.
Hagar Cohen: So to what was the threat of being spied on during that time played high in your mind?
Peter Galbraith: It really played high in terms of the discussions that I had as the chief negotiator for East Timor, in terms of determining what our bottom line is.
Hagar Cohen: But it was the way the bugging was set up that surprised Peter Galbraith.
Peter Galbraith: Well, I was surprised that Australia would bug the offices of the prime minister. It's a bit reminiscent of what went on in the Cold War period.
Hagar Cohen: Is there any doubt in your mind that this kind of information would have been used by Australia for commercial purposes rather than for national security purposes?
Peter Galbraith: There was no national security interest in these negotiations. It was strictly a commercial negotiation about how the oil in the Timor Sea would be shared, it is about who gets the resources. Nobody is erecting a fortification at the bottom of the Timor Sea.
Hagar Cohen: As an American diplomat, Galbraith says he knows he can't claim the moral high-ground.
Peter Galbraith: I think it's a little hard for me as an American diplomat knowing what has been very helpful in negotiations that I participate in to say that it is completely unethical. Countries that can spy, do spy. And one thing about spying that the United States has discovered in the Snowdon affair, which Australia is discovering in this affair, is that you really can't be caught doing it, because if you're caught doing it then your advantage disappears.
Hagar Cohen: Again, Australian governments past and present will not comment on spying activities. Have Australian agents installed bugs inside a Timorese Cabinet room in 2004?
Alexander Downer: Well, obviously you know we never answer questions like that.
Hagar Cohen: The current attorney general made a statement to Senate already confirming that indeed an ASIS agent is involved as a whistleblower, and that documents were seized during a raid and that they contained information about ASIS activity. So in a sense it has been confirmed. The question is...
Alexander Downer: Well, no, that's not true. But in any case obviously what the attorney general says is a matter for him. My point is an entirely different point but of course it hangs off all of this. The East Timorese signed this agreement and it was ratified by both sides, so we have an agreement, and now they've come along to us and said, well, you know, for whatever reason they can put forward any range of different proposals, they want to tear up that agreement. It creates a huge problem. It means in future if you negotiate an agreement with East Timor, are you sure, having signed that agreement, that that's the end of it?
Hagar Cohen: Is it appropriate, in your view, to bug confidential discussions of the other side during negotiations?
Alexander Downer: You're trying to be, if I may say so with the greatest of respect and I wouldn't have said this when I was the foreign minister, you're trying to be a smart arse. And you can ask the question 10,000 ways, but having been the foreign minister of Australia for 12 years I'm going to maintain the position that all former ministers involved in those sorts of areas have maintained and I'm not going to go any of these intelligence issues.
Hagar Cohen: I want to ask you about what is already public and whether you think that the allegations may affect your legacy as Australia's foreign minister during that time?
Alexander Downer: I don't think I mind about my legacy, I just mind about doing the right thing. We negotiated an agreement with that country, and we expect them to... I would expect them just to adhere to the terms of the treaty.
Hagar Cohen: Alexander Downer.
It wasn't only government officials who were suspicious about bugging. The Timor Sea Justice Campaign was set up in 2004 to protest against Australia's position on the maritime boundaries. To maximise media coverage of their campaign, they decided to hold a rally as CMATS treaty talks were held in Canberra. Tom Clark was the co-ordinator of the Timor Sea Justice Campaign.
Tom Clark: We were trying to decide on where that protest should take place.
DFAT weren't very forthcoming in informing us of where it would be held. So yes, I think I tried my luck with someone at the Timor Sea office. They felt they couldn't really provide us with any information, which I understand and appreciate. But I think during a particular phone call I said, look, this is what we're planning to do, we've looked on the internet as to what the various DFAT locations might be, we've taken a guess that it could be this particular one, so we'll hold a protest at that particular site.
Hagar Cohen: Tom Clark was talking to Paul Cleary from the Timor Sea office. Cleary was Mari Alkatiri's communications advisor, and he says the content of this phone conversation with Tom Clark was raised in a meeting with the Australian negotiators.
Paul Cleary: They seemed to have pretty good knowledge of what the Timor Sea office was saying to support groups in Australia. There was a group called the Timor Sea Justice Campaign, and they seemed to have a very good close understanding of just exactly the liaison that was going there. One time they got very concerned about the extent to which we were briefing them, and the Timor government was obviously entitled to do that, and that again seemed to me to be based on some sort of monitoring of telephones or internet.
Hagar Cohen: Tom Clark also became suspicious that his phone was bugged, particularly when it started playing up.
Tom Clark: In hindsight those three months where the campaign was very active, my phone did do a lot of very unusual things that it had never done before and never did again, making unusual noises. In particular there was this strange glitch. I would get a message on my mobile phone and when I'd access my message bank it would actually just play a recording of previous phone conversations I had had, which is very unusual, and it did make me think, oh, I wonder what's going on here.
Hagar Cohen: Did you ever manage to get to the bottom of it?
Tom Clark: No, it remains a mystery.
Hagar Cohen: In this murky environment, there was speculation over whether a member of the East Timorese negotiating team was compromised. Paul Cleary again.
Paul Cleary: There's very strong circumstantial evidence I think that one member of the team was compromised. He was a very strong outspoken advocate for the Timorese, suddenly began urging the government of Timor to capitulate and to accept this quite miserable offer that was being made by Australia to settle the dispute. And people in the room I remember were just flabbergasted by this, and they just thought something really strange is going on.
Hagar Cohen: But is that your view or other people's views as well...
Paul Cleary: Other people as well,yes.
Hagar Cohen: ...or do you actually have concrete eevidence to suggest that?
Paul Cleary: There is no concrete evidence. I haven't got the person's bank statement showing that the money was transferred into his account, but clearly I think it's the case that there is a pretty strong circumstantial evidence that one member of the team was compromised.
Hagar Cohen: And did you ever confront that person?
Paul Cleary: No, I didn't.
Hagar Cohen: Did anyone?
Paul Cleary: At the time, people were pretty gob-smacked by this person's behaviour, and I guess the strategy that was taken was... confrontiing them would have probably meant them no longer being on the negotiating team, and I remember the prime minister's view (and he knew about it) was that it's better to keep your enemies very close to you.
Hagar Cohen: Paul Cleary wouldn't name the person. And Background Briefing contacted several other former members of the Timor Sea office, who wouldn't talk about any aspect of the negotiations.
Peter Galbraith says it wasn't him, and it's not suggested otherwise. But he was the only other member of the team who was prepared to talk about the allegation, which he says he doesn't believe.
Peter Galbraith: There are two ways in which one could be compromised. One is that somebody could be relaying information to the Australians, and in a large delegation that frankly included a number of Australian nationals, that was always at risk. So the most sensitive part of the negotiations was not shared with all the 19 or so people who had participated at various times in the delegation. Some of it frankly was just between myself and the prime minister.
The second way in which they could be reached, and these are the rumours, is that somehow there could be agents promoting Australia's interests. I don't believe that happened, I didn't see anyone acting that way, and if somebody had acted that way or been promoting Australian interests, they would not have been somebody who would have had any influence on the decision.
Hagar Cohen: ASIS never approached you with a request?
Peter Galbraith: Nobody. Certainly not.
Hagar Cohen: Ambassador Peter Galbraith.
As the politics and the legal argy-bargy continue, the Timorese people have been left behind. Timor-Leste has one of the highest poverty rates in the world, and it's getting worse says Charles Scheiner from the Dili based NGO La'o Hamutuk.
Charles Scheiner: What you can see anecdotally just from walking around the country is that poverty has increased, both in the number and the percentage of people living in poverty, it's probably between 50% and 55% now but there is no official data to confirm that, and also the depth of poverty, how much worse they are in terms of being able to provide for their basic needs. So that on some international reports on things like malnutrition, there was a UNICEF report on stunting of five-year-olds, on how many five-year-old children are significantly below the height that they should be for their age, Timor-Leste is among the worst countries in the world. So poverty is not just about money, it's about people's lives.
Hagar Cohen: Given the poverty that is so evident in East Timor, the NGO community there has been dismayed at Australia's aggressive negotiating tactics over the share of oil and gas wealth. James Ensor was Oxfam's director in Dili throughout the years the negotiations were happening.
James Ensor: What development agencies were puzzled by at the time was the extent to which the aggressive approach taken by the Australian government seemed to be blind to the fact that unless the Timorese government had access to sufficient financial resources, the potential for Timor to descend into a failed state was very high. Timor was highly dependent on aid funding, its next largest export revenue source apart from oil and gas reserves was a very small coffee industry. So its ability to stand on its own two feet without permanent maritime boundaries that would enable the country to plan its economic base around its oil and gas reserves, the alternatives were almost non-existent. And the prospect of the country descending into a failed state status was a significant risk that development agencies saw over the coming period.
Hagar Cohen: Throughout this, Australia has faced a concerted campaign of opposition. Before the 2004 federal election there was even an advertising campaign to try and remove Alexander Downer from his seat of Mayo in South Australia. The sponsor of this advertising campaign, businessman Ian Melrose, told Background Briefing he is now considering a second advertising campaign because of the spying scandal.
But while many accuse Australia of not playing fair, Alexander Downer now raises the question of whether the Timorese also spied on Australia.
Alexander Downer: Australians aren't surprised that spying happens. People spy on Australia the whole time. Did the East Timorese try to spy on Australia? Well, who would know the answer to that question. Maybe we do know the answer to that question, but we wouldn't ever say.
Hagar Cohen: And what is the answer to this question?
Alexander Downer: We wouldn't ever say.
Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing put the suggestion of East Timor spying to Minister Agio Pereira.
Agio Pereira: I don't think Timor-Leste resorted to espionage because Timor-Leste endorsed the principle that both countries should work absolutely in good faith to reach an agreement.
Hagar Cohen: Can you tell me unequivocally that it did not happen, that Timor did not spy on Australia during that time?
Agio Pereira: I don't think I want to entertain Mr Downer's curiosity, to be honest.
Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing's coordinating producer is Linda McGinness, research by Anna Whitfeld, technical production this week by Louis Mitchell, the executive producer is Chris Bullock, and I'm Hagar Cohen.
Attorney-General George Brandis has again defended security service raids on Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaery who was helping East Timor in its case against Australia.
"As the minister who authorised the warrant on the basis of an intelligence case put before me by ASIO that it was a strong case," Senator Brandis told a Senate estimates committee hearing.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam had asked how raiding the office of a lawyer advising the East Timor government impacted on national security. ASIO director-general David Irvine said he could say nothing about the raids other than that they were approved by the Attorney-General.
Mr Irvine said the object of the warrant was to obtain certain material. "It didn't specify specific documentation relevant to the security matter being investigated," he said.
In December, ASIO executed search warrants on the Canberra homes of an unnamed former Australian Security and Intelligence Service (ASIS) officer and Mr Collaery who is representing East Timor in its spying case against Australia.
East Timor has accused the ASIS of covertly recording East Timorese ministers and officials during delicate oil-and-gas negotiations in Dili in 2004 for the Timor Sea resources treaty.
The country is pursuing international arbitration in The Hague to have the 2006 treaty overturned.
Claims that Australia spied on East Timorese negotiators during oil and gas treaty talks in 2004 are at the centre of a legal row that could throw the treaty into doubt. Did Australia seek and gain an unfair advantage for itself and the petroleum company Woodside? Hagar Cohen investigates.
As Australia and East Timor lock horns over claims that Australia bugged sensitive treaty talks, one of the lead negotiators for East Timor has spoken out.
American diplomat Peter Galbraith negotiated a multi-billion dollar oil and gas treaty that divides resources in the Timor Sea between the two countries. He says the alleged spying would have given Australia a huge advantage during the negotiations.
These were in essence negotiations about money. So money or share of oil, and if you know what the Timorese are going to settle for that is incredibly valuable.
John Galbraith, US diplomat on the East Timorese negotiation team
The allegation, instigated by a decorated former Australian spy, is now at the centre of a legal row that's thrown the treaty into doubt. The Timorese say the former spy became outraged about a secret operation to bug East Timor's negotiators in 2004 and decided to blow the whistle.
East Timor's lawyer Bernard Collaery has told the ABC's PM program that a team of Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) technicians travelled to East Timor under the cover of an Australian aid program to renovate the cabinet room in Dili. He alleges the ASIS technicians then installed listening devices into the walls.
Australian journalist Paul Cleary was a communications advisor in Dili for the East Timor government. He says the newly renovated room was used extensively by the negotiating team.
'It was the PM's private meeting room. That's where he held his own meetings with ministers and that's where the negotiating team met and that was where we briefed the PM on the negotiating strategy and what Timor was pressing for, and the position that we'd be putting,' says Cleary.
The alleged spying operation was a shock to Galbraith: 'I was surprised that Australia would bug the offices of the prime minister. It's a bit reminiscent of what went on in the Cold War period,' he says.
Over several years, Galbraith led the Timorese negotiating team in their talks with Australia over the carve-up of the resources in the Timor Sea.
'These were in essence negotiations about money. So money or share of oil, and if you know what the Timorese are going to settle for that is incredibly valuable,' he says.
'But also if you know in advance what negotiating tactics the East Timorese are going to take. We have been dealing with Australian negotiators for five years... I had judgements about how each one of them was going to react, who was more open to our arguments, who had influence with the key decision makers, so again if the Australians saw it as our perceptions of their negotiating team, that is helpful.'
'Finally, we ended up with quite a large negotiating team, and there were divisions amongst us, so if the Australians know what those divisions are, they can tell the divisions on our side.'
The current East Timorese government, led by Xanana Gusmau, now says the country was tricked into signing the oil and gas treaty known as CMATS. It wants the deal scrapped.
The case will be decided in the Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The East Timorese will need to prove the bugging happened and that they were deceived into signing the treaty.
However, spying allegations are hard to prove, particularly as no-one from the Australian government-past or present-is prepared to acknowledge them.
As foreign minister at the time, Alexander Downer led the Australian negotiating team. He says the Timorese should keep their word on the treaty.
'The East Timorese ratified the agreement and it was ratified by both sides, so we have an agreement, and now they've come to us and said for whatever reasons, they can put forward a range of different reasons, they want to tear up that agreement,' says Downer.
'It creates a huge problem. It means in future, if you negotiate an agreement with East Timor, are you sure having signed an agreement that that's the end of it?'
Downer refuses to be drawn into discussions about the bugging, and he declined to respond to Background Briefing's questions about the appropriateness of spying on a country during sensitive talks over the oil and gas treaty.
'Having been the foreign minister of Australia for 12 years I'm going to maintain the position that all former ministers have maintained and I'm not going to go into those intelligence issues,' he says.
Downer says he is not concerned about any suggestions that this scandal may have an effect on his legacy. 'I don't think I mind about my legacy. I just mind about doing the right thing,' he says.
Daniel Flitton Vandals have targeted the Australian embassy in East Timor, spray painting a blood-stained parody of the Australian coat of arms with a kangaroo and emu sucking a barrel of "Timor oil".
Anti-Australian graffiti is increasingly common on Dili's streets as the dispute over the Timor gap oil and gas treaty and spying allegations simmer in the international court.
The image painted on a concrete wall adjacent the embassy is the latest sign of local anger with Australia, a marked contrast from 15 years ago when Australian troops led an international mission to secure the fledgling nation.
The graffiti also depicts a pair of crocodiles the national symbol of East Timor holding spears and attempting to drive away kangaroos.
Charlie Scheiner, a researcher from La'o Hamutuk in East Timor, said graffiti was common in Dili but only a small manifestation of local concern. Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao decision to cancel a planned trip to Australia last month was far more significant, he said.
It is not the first time the embassy has been targeted in recent weeks. Protesters hurled rocks at the embassy in December soon after security agency ASIO raided the Canberra office of a lawyer representing East Timor in court proceedings at The Hague.
A spokeswoman said the Foreign Affairs department put the highest priority on the safety and security of staff, their families and clients overseas and closely monitored all developments affecting the security arrangements.
Asked what steps to had been taken to address any damage to Australia's reputation in East Timor as a result of recent history in this dispute, the spokewoman said: "Australia continues to be a strong source of support for Timor-Leste, including through our substantial aid program, assistance to Timor-Leste's defence and security sectors and our co-operation in the development of the oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea."
Australia's Defence department celebrated local graffiti during the 1999 intervention in East Timor, known as INTERFET, publishing a photograph of a boy shaking hands with an Australian soldier in front of a wall daubed "I love you military Interfeet forever".
Swinburne University's Michael Leach said Australians living in East Timor were unlikely to be affected by recent tensions, but there was no question official ties are at a low point.
"Oil revenue sharing, the allegations of espionage, and the issue of unsettled maritime boundaries has triggered nationalist sentiment, and united all East Timorese political parties," Dr Leach said.
"This is a country that fought for 24 years for independence. It's not going to give up easily, especially when their economic future is so dependent on oil and gas revenues."
Philip Dorling Australia's chief intelligence watchdog has been drawn into a legal battle over government claims that Australia's relations with Indonesia are too fragile to allow the release of secret archives about military operations and war crimes in East Timor.
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Vivienne Thom, will testify before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on whether Australia's relations with Jakarta will be harmed by the release of 120 pages of intelligence assessments relating to East Timor in the early 1980s.
Dr Thom's appearance on Monday will be the first time the inspector-general has been required to appear in a case about declassification of secret intelligence or security archives.
Attorney-General George Brandis has prevented Associate Professor Clinton Fernandes, of the University of NSW, from seeing most of the government's arguments as to why he should be denied access to Australian intelligence reports about a major Indonesian military offensive across East Timor in late 1981 and early 1982.
Dr Fernandes has been engaged in a six-year legal struggle with the National Archives to secure declassification of Australian diplomatic and intelligence records.
David Winning, Sydney For nearly a decade, East Timor has relied on revenue from a huge natural-gas field to rebuild after the country's war of independence with Indonesia. Now, the tiny nation's outlook is becoming less certain as that gas field runs low on reserves.
Santos Ltd. said Friday that a new assessment of the Bayu-Undan field, in waters shared by East Timor and Australia, showed that the Australian energy company's share of remaining gas reserves were around a fifth smaller than earlier estimates.
For Santos and partners, such as Houston-based ConocoPhillips, lower reserves would be a small dent in cash flow. But for East Timor, it is a major problem. The country's petroleum revenue topped $3.5 billion in 2012, dwarfing the amount raised domestically from other sources, including taxes.
East Timor Finance Minister Emilia Pires has said that revenue from oil and gas supports 90% of the country's budget.
That ranks East Timor alongside South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea as the most oil-and-gas-dependent countries in the world, said Charles Scheiner, a researcher for the nonprofit La o Hamutuk in East Timor's capital, Dili.
Once a Portuguese colony, East Timor declared independence in the mid- 1970s, only to be invaded by Indonesia nine days later. Almost a quarter of East Timor's population died during 24 years of civil war, while Indonesian forces burned about 80% of the country's government buildings and infrastructure, leaving East Timor the poorest nation in Asia.
East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for freedom in a 1999 referendum supervised by the UN, but the vote set off a wave of violence by the Indonesian military and its supporters. East Timor achieved full independence in 2002, and relations with Indonesia are much improved.
Unlike many resource-rich developing countries, East Timor didn't squander the cash, instead setting up a sovereign-wealth fund to save revenue from Bayu-Undan.
Officials hoped that returns from the fund would help offset shrinking revenues from the Bayu-Undan field, which began piping gas to a processing plant in Darwin, Australia, in 2004 just as oil prices began a sharp rise that would take them to a peak above $147 a barrel in 2008. From an initial balance of $370 million in 2005, the fund's size increased to $11.78 billion at the end of 2012, according to the finance ministry.
On Friday, Santos said it had reduced its estimated share of the remaining reserves at Bayu-Undan by eight million barrels of oil equivalent. Santos, which has an 11.5% stake in the field, said the revision reflects "reservoir performance and updated modeling."
Bayu-Undan isn't the only active oil-and-gas field generating revenue for East Timor. The smaller Kitan oil field, operated by Italy's Eni SpA, started production in 2011. But East Timorese officials say output at both fields has peaked.
"The government will have to take a close look at what these revised reserves mean for the petroleum fund and what the impact is on what it has available," said Shane Rosenthal, the Asian Development Bank's representative in East Timor. East Timor's finance ministry wasn't available to comment.
Another big offshore gas project in waters shared by Australia and East Timor, Greater Sunrise, is stalled by a disagreement between the government in Dili and investors led by Woodside Petroleum Ltd. East Timor wants a gas-export plant for the project built on its coast to guarantee local jobs and form the centerpiece of a petrochemical hub. Woodside and partners, including Conoco and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, say that a facility that can process the gas at sea would be more profitable.
A lower estimate of reserves at Bayu-Undan and the possibility that the field could run out of gas within a few years troubles observers like Mr. Scheiner, because East Timor has begun raiding the sovereign-wealth fund to pay for infrastructure projects like roads. Withdrawals in 2012 came to $1.5 billion, about $830 million more than the fund's managers estimate is sustainable.
Mr. Scheiner said La o Hamutuk's modeling suggests that the petroleum fund will be able to finance state spending for only about five years after production ceases at Bayu-Undan. Other industries, such as coffee exports, are too small to take up the slack. "The problem for East Timor is that it's poor in everything other than oil" and gas, Mr. Scheiner said.
Sao Tome and Principe and Timor-Leste (East Timor) was due Friday to start a re-evaluation of the bilateral oil agreements and a study to set up a consortium for onshore exploration of the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP), the Sao Tome National Oil Agency (ANP) said Thursday.
According to a statement from the ANP sent to Macauhub, both for the evaluation of the studies and consideration of the agreement, East Timor is represented by a delegation of nine people including the president of the ANP, Gualdino da Silva and the chairman of the National Oil Company (CNP) of Timor-Leste, (Timor Gap, EP), Francisco Monteiro.
The statement noted that the Timorese authorities would present "a proposal to set up a CPLP consortium for onshore exploration in Timor-Leste" based on a strategic partnership between member-countries as well as "assessment of the level of implementation of activities set out in the memorandum of understanding," in the oil and gas sector signed by both countries in 2011.
As well as two-day technical working meetings followed by meetings with Sao Tome political leaders, the ANP's statement also announced a talk to be held in the capital of Sao Tome entitled "Timor-Leste's experience in managing oil funds and application of principles of transparency."
The agreement signed three years ago by Sao Tome and Principe and Timor- Leste established the provision of technical and institutional assistance to the Sao Tome Natural Resources Ministry, including the ANP. (macauhub)
Timor Leste's (East Timor's) Oil Fund ended 2013 with assets of US$14.9 billion, the Timor Leste Central Bank said in Dili Tuesday.
In a statement the Central Bank said that in the period from September to December 2013 US$694.7 million was added to the fund, of which US$234.7 million came from contributions and US$370 million from royalty payments from the National Oil Agency (ANP).
"Income from the Fund's investments totalled US$342.88 million, of which US $68.1 million were from coupon receipts and interest and US$274.77 million came from changes to the market value of the securities held," the statement said.
The Timor Oil Fund collects State revenues from exploration of oil resources in order to invest in foreign financial securities.
The overall all management of the Fund is carried out by the Timor government, via the Finance Ministry, and its operational management is conducted by the Central Bank. (macauhub)
Mario Filomeno da Costa Pinheiro The Government of Timor-Leste has indicated that it is committed to joining the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by 2015, but as the date for the planned accession draws near, questions regarding the benefits of membership, and the young country's readiness, remain unanswered.
While Timor-Leste has shown glimpses of its capacity for regional cooperation by hosting international diplomatic events (including the 2012 ASEAN Regional Forum Election Observer Mission and the ADB/OECD Anti- Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific in 2013), whether this has been enough to convince existing ASEAN member countries of Timor-Leste's preparedness remains to be seen. The willingness of these countries to induct Timor-Leste into the "regional family" will depend largely on Timor-Leste's own efforts in setting the course for its official induction, which includes building the capacity of government officials, amending legislation to comply with ASEAN requirements, and committing considerable human and financial resources to participating in ASEAN activities.
The government for its part has done much to convince ASEAN member states of Timor-Leste's readiness to join the region's largest economic and geo- political organization. Given the requirement for ASEAN member states to have embassies in all other member states, Timor-Leste's Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently announced this year that it will establish the four remaining new embassies in 2014 needed to fulfill this requirement.
While some have expressed doubts about whether Timor-Leste's government officials have the capacity to attend the vast number of the ASEAN meetings held annually, others argue that the country has in fact reached a suitable level of human resource capacity. The government has invested heavily in education over the last five to seven years, primarily by providing scholarships and sending thousands of students to study abroad. Indeed, the country is starting to see the dividends now as new graduates return and fill much-needed positions in government offices.
Accession, however, is not the sole responsibility of the country's newly established Secretary of State for ASEAN affairs, Roberto Soares, who has been traveling around the country raising awareness about the benefits of membership, or of the government alone. In addition to coordinated efforts from all relevant government agencies, ASEAN accession will depend on the civil society sector and the broader public, which for the most part, remain outside the fold of policy and decision-making. Given the expertise that civil society has in areas such as human rights, poverty alleviation, and rural development, these organizations could be instrumental in helping the government prepare for ASEAN membership, particularly as it works on addressing gaps in state-provided services.
In June 2013, The Asia Foundation co-hosted a roundtable discussion with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that brought together representatives from the government, civil society, and international experts on ASEAN affairs to identify strategies on how best to engage civil society in Timor-Leste's accession efforts.
One explanation that emerged from the discussion for the lack of civil society engagement was the widespread perception that the government is unwilling to work with or listen to civil society. As one participant from a leading Timorese NGO said: "Often, the government doesn't want to show that it listens to NGOs, simply so it can display to the public that it knows better." Conversely, others argued that civil society has, at times, been overly critical of the government's performance, a tendency that has led to government accusations that NGOs are promoting the opposition's agenda. These kinds of attitudes and behavior have created barriers between the state and civil society.
That being said, it is becoming increasingly difficult for governments to maneuver issues such as ASEAN preparation alone. In this regard, national CSOs (including the country's influential Catholic Church) can assist the government of Timor-Leste by building people-to-people linkages in the region and boosting people's confidence in ASEAN membership. As many national CSOs have shown that they are capable and willing to engage with the government on ASEAN, the government should be encouraged to reach out to them more often on this issue.
More effective involvement of wider society in Timor-Leste's ASEAN accession will lead to a greater sense of pride and ownership in its proposed membership, and broader understanding of the benefits of enhanced regional cooperation. As we begin to better comprehend the important role civil society can play in achieving Timor-Leste's ASEAN aspirations, the challenge now turns to breaking down the barriers between government and civil society, and creating synergies between state efforts and the important role that CSOs play in holding government accountable. Establishing regular communication lines between government agencies and civil society organizations with an interest in ASEAN would be a good place to start.
Loro Horta Contact between Chinese and Timorese dates back to the early 15th century when the ships of the legendary Chinese explorer Admiral Zheng He arrived on the island in search of the famed sandalwood highly valued in Ming China for incense and medicinal purposes.
The first ever known maps of the island are believed to be from 1412 by Ming dynasty cartographers. In the late 19th century several thousand Chinese began to settle in the then Portuguese-controlled Timor. By the early 1970s the Chinese population in Timor-Leste had reached 45,000, accounting for 2.5 percent of the population. The Chinese Timorese assumed a prominent role in the territory's economy, dominating the retail and agricultural trade.
The Chinese population was particularly targeted by the Indonesian military following Indonesia's invasion of Timor-Leste in December 1975. During the country's 24 years of struggle for independence, the Chinese Timorese, many of whom had become wealthy businessmen in Australia and Asia after fleeing their country, contributed generously to the cause of independence. After the 1999 United Nations intervention that led to the independence of Timor two years later, the Chinese community responded to the young state's appeal and returned in large numbers. Indeed, the largest private investor in Timor-Leste is the Chinese Timorese Gape family. They invested in construction, shopping centres and the retail sector, creating thousands of jobs.
The People's Republic of China was the first country to recognise the independence of the newly created Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste in May 2002. In the 1970s China was a strong supporter of Timorese independence, providing both diplomatic and financial support. Since 2002 China has given significant assistance to the new nation, donating badly needed infrastructure such as the buildings for the Presidential Palace, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Defence Force Headquarters, the Secretariat of Defence and 100 houses for military officers.
Chinese companies have also won some lucrative contracts in Timor, such as the US$430 million contract to build two power plants and a US$30 million contract to supply two naval patrol boats to the Timorese military. Several Timorese students have graduated from Chinese universities. As of November 2013, 32 Timorese students were attending Chinese universities, including PhD students.
The Chinese government has also organised short courses for public servants, ranging from two weeks to three months. In 2013 more than 600 Timorese public servants attended such courses. Since 2003 an estimated 1,236 Timorese have studied in China a significant number in light of Timor's small population of one million.
Bilateral trade reached US$43 million in 2013 and has been growing at an average rate of 30 percent for the past five years. China is currently Timor-Leste's fourth largest trading partner. In November 2013 the Chinese government announced an increase of 20 percent on its aid to Timor from 83 million yuan to 100 million yuan a year. Since Timor's independence, China has sent large medical teams and agricultural experts to assist the country's struggling health and agricultural sectors.
An estimated 2,000 Chinese citizens reside in Timor, although the number could be much higher. The Chinese are mainly small-scale businessmen, often finding themselves the only ones willing to go to the most remote villages on the mountainous island where the quality of the roads would challenge the most hardened explorers.
These Chinese traders bring consumer goods to populations settling in these areas and some even marry local women. The Chinese quickly learn the local lingua franca, Tetun, which facilitates their economic activities. Chinese traders have also forced the greedier and prouder of the local and foreign traders to reduce their prices, thereby benefitting the general population.
Affordable Chinese cars and motorcycles have enabled large numbers of Timorese to own their own mode of transportation. This is a particularly welcome development in a country where a significant proportion of people's income goes to pay for the micrulet the privately operated and packed minibuses that make up for the country's lack of public transport.
Timor remains highly dependent on imports from Indonesia, which supplies about 95 percent of the consumer goods sold locally. Indonesia traders benefit greatly from the commerce, as they buy from China and then sell to Timor at a profit that could be as much as ten times what they pay to Chinese exporters.
If Timor-Leste can strengthen ties between local businessmen and Chinese suppliers, the price of commodities to Timorese consumers will decrease significantly. Some Timorese companies have begun buying directly from China. In October 2013, a Timorese company purchased $300,000 worth of solar panels, after visiting factories producing such items in Hubei. More such sales are expected.
Some Chinese companies have expressed interest in investing in Timor. Timorese construction companies have also begun considering buying building materials and machinery from China. A Timorese businessman said during a visit to Beijing, "If I buy cob houses directly from China, it's eight times cheaper than buying them from Indonesia which is buying them from China anyway. We must stop being lazy and be more clever."
Closer links between private businesses from both sides maybe the solution for Timor to address the current sluggish Sino-Timorese ties.
In Timor more than 80 percent of the labour force involved in Chinese projects is made up of Timorese workers, making Chinese projects an important factor in tackling the high levels of unemployment on the island. The Chinese are usually found occupying the more technical and risky positions on such projects. During the erection of hundreds of electric towers for the national power grid, for example, three Chinese workers died from work-related accidents whilst not a single Timorese labourer suffered any serious injury.
China's presence in Timor-Leste remains rather small when compared to its presence in other Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia or Cambodia, and considerably smaller than China's presence in other Lusophone nations such as Angola and Mozambique. Indeed, with the exception of Guinea Bissau and Sao Tome and Principe, the Chinese presence in Timor is far less pronounced than in the remainder of the Lusophone countries.
As noted by Vicky Tchong, the Timorese Ambassador to Beijing: "We can get almost anything we want from China; all we need to do is to ask."
Timor-Leste has yet to fully reap the benefits from the incredible opportunities that China offers. In November 2010, for instance, during the Macao Forum meeting, former Timorese President Ramos Horta requested a $3 billion loan for Timor-Leste from Premier Wen Jabao for several projects, including infrastructure. A week after the meeting a delegation from China's Import Export Bank visited the island's capital, Dili, to negotiate the terms of the agreement. However, a deal has yet to be made.
Several Lusophone countries have received significant loans from China on very generous terms. Angola received $15 billion and Cape Verde a much smaller country than Timor received over $100 million. Even Portugal, a modern Western democracy, has received substantial Chinese investment. In Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde, Chinese loans have allowed for massive expansion of infrastructure, including the building of roads, railways, ports, dams, bridges, public housing, and numerous other projects. Thanks in large part to Chinese financial and technical assistance, in the past decade these countries have made great progress in improving their infrastructure a crucial prerequisite for future development.
Timor could benefit from Chinese help as well, to improve areas such as transport links. For instance, it takes two and half hours to drive from Dili to Baucau, a mere 122 kilometres away.
One area where bilateral cooperation could be improved is in the reciprocal granting of travel visas. For over a year Beijing has been awaiting a response from the Timorese side to sign a mutual visa exception agreement.
In late June, to his merit, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao recognised the management inefficiency in his government and promised serious reforms. Perhaps if these reforms are implemented Timor-Leste could finally begin to take full advantage of its ties with the rising dragon.