Australia needs to play by the rules in the East Timor boundary dispute or risk losing credibility when it weighs into the South China Sea saga, federal Labor warns.

In the wake of a conciliation hearing between Australia and East Timor in The Hague this week, opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said bilateral relations had been strained and the time was right to reopen negotiations.

Senator Wong, in an opinion piece for the Lowy Interpreter on Thursday, said Australia always encouraged other countries to follow international rules such as in the whaling dispute with Japan, the fight to halt French nuclear testing in the Pacific, and Antarctic claims in the 1980s.

"Australia's unwillingness to commit to maritime border negotiations with (East Timor) also raises valid questions about our commitment to a rules-based international system and to being a good global citizen," she said.

"The Turnbull government is sending worrying, mixed signals about the dispute with (East Timor) which threatens to undermine our international standing."

At the heart of the boundary dispute are oil and gas reserves worth an estimated $53 million. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop insists Dili got a fair deal with sea border treaties of 2002 and 2006 and they are consistent with international law.

But East Timor is unhappy with the temporary sharing arrangements for the reserves because Australian spies allegedly bugged the East Timor negotiators in 2004.

Source: http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/09/01/09/49/aust-should-play-by-rules-on-timor-wong

East Timor challenges Australia over rights to oil-rich waters

Radio France International - August 29, 2016

Jan van der MadeIssued – East Timor is asking the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to help resolve a dispute with Australia over a maritime border that cuts through lucrative oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea. But Australia has rejected the claims, saying that existing agreements are good enough.

After East Timor, or Timor Leste, became independent in 1999, it made provisional maritime border agreements with Australia. The 2002 Timor Sea Treaty established the Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA), which would result in income from oil revenue being shared between both countries.

Exploitation was to continue for a period of 50 years after which a fixed boundary line was to be established.

But critics in East Timor were never happy with the arrangement, saying that they were compelled to accept deals that had been signed before independence. Moreover, they say that Australia has not abided by agreed levels of revenue generated by the oil exploration.

Some activists even say that the current treaty "makes the poorest nation in Asia the largest donor of foreign aid to the richest", in the words of the Australia East Timor Association Incorporated.

"What Timor Leste claims is very simple, very basic, it is nothing out of this world, and that is: soonest we should agree on maritime boundaries and follow the international practice and draw a median line," says former president Jose Ramos Horta, speaking at a forum of the International Peace Institute at the eve of the court case.

But there is not much faith in a positive outcome. "I'm not very optimistic about Australia," says former president and current minister for Planning and Strategic Investment Xanana Gusmao, who is leading the East Timorese delegation to The Hague.

"A former prime minister of the UK said 'no permanent allies, no permanent friends, but permanent interests'. This is the mindset of powerful nations when they deal with small countries like ours."

He is not alone in his opinion. "From the beginning, Australia always fought in favor of Indonesia, stood by [former ruler] Indonesia until the last day, until 1999, before it changed its policy," says Estevao Cabral a former East Timorese freedom fighter contacted by RFI.

"And on the day when Timor declared the restoration of independence, Australia pulled out from the International Court of Justice in order to avoid these kind of negotiations. I am very disappointed in Australia."

During their opening statements yesterday, the Australians were indeed defiant. "We contest the competence of the commission," says Gary Quinlan, who lead the Australian delegation to the court.

"Australia's view is that there is no proper basis on which Timor Leste is entitled to bring this claim. Doing so violates treaty commitments, specifically the 2006 treaty on certain maritime arrangements in the Timor Sea under which both countries have committed not to bring proceedings against each other on maritime boundaries."

Australian analysts say their country is willing to discuss. "I think Australia has been mindful of Timor Leste's needs to seek to bring about a permanent settlement of the maritime boundaries," says Donald Rothwell, a profess of of international law with Australia National University.

"It is respectful of its rights as a new independent state to seek to explore peaceful mechanisms for dispute settlement. I do not see this process in any way unsettling the otherwise good relations between the two countries."

Moreover, the existing treaty helped East Timor to reconstruct after decades of war, he says. "The treaty framework has provided a certainty and stability to enable the early exploitation of the resources, so revenue could start flowing immediately to Timor Leste," says Quinlan.

"The stable revenue provided by the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty was particulary important for supporting Timor Leste's recovery from conflict and economic development in the first years of its independence."

Source: http://en.rfi.fr/asia-pacific/20160829-east-timor-challenges-australia-over-rights-oil-rich-waters

East Timor says Australia took advantage of a vulnerable nation, demands Timor

ABC Radio Australia - August 30, 2016

Steve Cannane – The former president of East Timor has told a commission sitting at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that Australia exploited a vulnerable nation while negotiating treaties over oil and gas revenue in the disputed territory.

In the first case of its kind, East Timor has taken Australia to compulsory conciliation in The Hague in an attempt to resolve the bitter dispute over maritime boundaries in the Timor Sea.

The hearing was triggered under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in an attempt to get Australia to agree to a permanent maritime border.

But Australia has made the case that East Timor has benefited from the revenue-sharing treaties and that the hearing is beyond the jurisdiction of the commission.

East Timor's former president Xanana Gusmao accused Australia of first taking advantage of the country in 2002, while negotiating the Timor Sea treaty at a time when 70 per cent of East Timor's infrastructure had been burnt down by pro Indonesian militias, and while the country was still struggling to establish itself.

And secondly, he said, in the lead-up to the revenue-sharing agreement of 2006 when Australian foreign intelligence agents bugged the cabinet rooms in Dilli to get the upper hand in negotiations.

"We were not aware at the time, that under the cover of an Australian program renovating Timor-Leste government offices, Australia installed listening devices to spy on the Timorese officials," he said. "To maximise their advantage and commercial interest."

Minister of State Agio Pereira made it clear to the commission that they wanted the 2006 Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea Treaty (CMATS) to be torn up. "The current provisional regime is near its end. CMATS is going – that is the policy of Timor-Leste," Mr Pereira said.

Australia has claimed the dispute lands beyond the jurisdiction of the Commission, because the 2006 treaty included a clause that put on hold negotiations over a permanent maritime boundary for 50 years. East Timor benefitted from the treaties: DFAT

Gary Quinlan, from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), said their position was to urge the commission not to disregard their treaties, "simply because one party has changed its mind".

And Mr Quinlan told the commission that East Timor had benefited from the treaties. "In addition to providing a stable revenue stream to Timor-Leste, the Timor Sea Treaties have enabled that country to benefit from Australia's considerable expertise in offshore oil field regulation which has assisted to build its own capacity in oil and gas regulation," he said.

The commission has up to a year to makes its final recommendations, but does not have the power to force Australia to adopt new boundaries.

Australia removed itself from the binding dispute resolution mechanism under the UN convention on the law of the sea in 2002, just two months before East Timor gained independence. If East Timor wins it may be a case of a moral victory, rather than a legal one.

Source: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2016-08-30/east-timor-says-australia-took-advantage-of-a-vulnerable-nation-demands-timor-sea-treaty-torn-up/1612828

Timor-Leste urges Australia 'not to turn its back on law' over maritime boundary

The Guardian (Australia) - August 29, 2016

Ben Doherty – Timor-Leste has urged Australia not to "turn its back on the law" and to negotiate over the Timor Sea maritime boundary, but Australia has claimed the commission it has been brought before has no jurisdiction to hear the matter and said that any decision it makes will be not be binding on Australia.

Australia has been forced to appear before a commission of the permanent court of arbitration in The Hague – the first time any country has been brought before the court for "compulsory conciliation" – by Timor-Leste after its consistent refusal to negotiate a permanent maritime boundary, and revelations Australian agents spied on Timor-Leste's government during earlier treaty talks.

The long-running dispute centres upon the maritime boundary between Timor-Leste and Australia, most pointedly over control of the area where an estimated $40bn worth of oil and gas lies beneath the sea.

Timor-Leste argues the maritime boundary between it and Australia should be a median line equidistant between the two countries, putting the vast majority of the exploitable area in its territory. This position is supported by international law, the UN convention on the law of the sea, which Australia signed and ratified in 1994.

But Australia says a 2006 temporary revenue sharing agreement (known as CMats) that divides the revenues – significantly in Timor-Leste's favour, it argues – is valid, and should be honoured.

Timor-Leste argues that treaty should be scrapped because, six years after it was signed, it was revealed Australia had bugged the Timor-Leste government's cabinet room, with listening devices implanted by Australian Security Intelligence Service agents pretending to be aid workers renovating the office.

Xanana Gusmao, the freedom fighter who became Timor-Leste's first elected president and then its prime minister, led his country's delegation at The Hague overnight Australian time.

He said he had, in his various roles "tried to persuade consecutive Australian governments to sit down as friends and negotiate". "But Australia turns its back on the law," he told the court.

Gusmao said Timor-Leste's early years of independence were marked by vulnerability and poverty, and that this was exploited in negotiations. "Our land was scorched, our people were killed... we had no money, forcing us to beg."

"We were not aware at the time, that under the cover of an Australian aid program, Australia installed listening devices in the East Timorese cabinet offices. When this came to light, we were shocked and appalled."

Gusmao said Timor-Leste remained willing to negotiate and that he only wanted an arbitration in line with international law, which, he said, was clear.

"We have not come to The Hague to ask for favours or for special treatment. We have come to seek our rights under international law. The maritime law between two countries should stand at halfway between them."

Gusmao said Timor-Leste was a young country, and a developing nation, but that it understood, and would insist upon, recognition of its rights. "We will not rest until we have our sovereign rights over land and sea."

Australia's solicitor general, Justin Gleeson, told the commission that the current treaty – CMats – provide a stable platform for the development and exploitation of the area to the benefit of both nations. "The treaties are reasonable and they are right and they should be respected," he said.

"Australia would reject any assertion that the treaties were one-sided or conducted... under duress."

Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, and the attorney general, George Brandis, earlier issued a joint statement saying they did not believe the commission could adjudicate on the matter because the 2006 treaty was in effect.

"In line with our pre-existing, legally binding treaties, which are in full accordance with international law, we will argue that the commission does not have jurisdiction to conduct hearings on maritime boundaries," they said.

Brandis and Bishop said Australia would abide by the commission's finding as to whether it has jurisdiction to hear matters on maritime boundaries, but "if the commission ultimately finds that it does have jurisdiction to hear matters on maritime boundaries, then its final report on that matter is not binding".

"Our statement reaffirms our principled commitment to upholding existing treaty obligations with Timor-Leste. These have benefited both our countries, and enabled Timor-Leste to accumulate a Petroleum Fund worth more than $16bn, more than eight times its annual GDP."

The dispute over the Timor Sea – more specifically the wealth that lies under it – has pre-empted and then shadowed all of the short and chequered history between the independent Timor-Leste and Australia.

In 1975, Portugal, as part of a broader global movement towards decolonisation, granted independence to Timor-Leste. Nine days later, the newly free nation was invaded by Indonesia's military in breach of international law, and to widespread international condemnation.

In 1979 Australia became the only western nation to offer de jure recognition of Indonesia's forced annexation, so the two countries could begin negotiations over the Timor Sea's resources.

The Timor Gap treaty was signed – the then foreign ministers Gareth Evans and Ali Alatas famously clinking champagne glasses in a plane above the Timor Sea – between Australia and Indonesia in 1989. That treaty did not establish a maritime boundary but provided for shared exploitation of petroleum resources in the part of the seabed claimed jointly by both countries.

Australia was Timor-Leste's saviour in 1999, leading the Interfet force which restored order in the country after the vote for independence and retribution by pro-Indonesia militias.

But in 2002, just two months before Timor-Leste became independent, Australia secretly withdrew from the maritime boundary dispute resolution procedures of the UN convention on the law of the sea, and the equivalent jurisdiction of the international court of justice, so that it could not be compelled into legally binding international arbitration. (Parliament was only told after the withdrawal had occurred.)

Timor-Leste's first treaty – the Timor Sea treaty – signed in 2002, gave a 90-10 split, in Timor-Leste's favour, of revenues from a joint development zone in the Timor Sea.

The second, CMats treaty – certain maritime arrangements in the Timor Sea – was signed in 2006, with both sides agreeing to impose a 50-year moratorium on negotiating a permanent maritime border. CMats gives Timor-Leste 90% of the current oil revenues from the joint petroleum development area, and Australia 10%, but a further treaty (Sunrise IUA) gives Timor-Leste only limited claim over future exploitation of the larger Greater Sunrise field.

It was during the negotiations over CMats that Australia bugged Timor-Leste's cabinet room. Australia has not admitted to the espionage, though it did raid the Canberra offices of Timor-Leste's lawyer Bernard Collaery, and seized the passport of the intelligence agent who blew the whistle on the spying operation.

Timor-Leste say the spying voids the treaty, which, it argues, was not negotiated in good faith.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/timor-leste-urges-australia-not-to-turn-its-back-on-law-over-maritime-boundary?CMP=share_btn_fb

East Timor-Australia maritime border dispute set to be negotiated at The Hague

ABC Radio Australia - August 28, 2016

Steve Cannane – The ongoing dispute between Australia and East Timor over maritime boundaries could be resolved in a landmark case that begins in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on Monday.

In April, East Timor triggered compulsory conciliation under the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) over the disputed territory that contains large oil and gas deposits worth an estimated $40 billion. Australia has refused to negotiate a permanent boundary with East Timor.

Temporary revenue sharing arrangements have been agreed to in treaties signed in 2002 and 2006. As part of the 2006 Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) treaty, East Timor agreed to a clause that put a 50-year hold on negotiating a permanent maritime border.

However, East Timor believes the 2006 treaty should be torn up due to an Australian bugging operation it considers to be illegal.

In 2012, then prime minister Xanana Gusmao discovered that Australian intelligence agents had bugged East Timor's cabinet rooms during negotiations.

Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) agents had placed listening devices in the walls of the cabinet office, while pretending to be aid workers involved in a renovation project.

The operation saw transcripts of top-secret conversations conducted by East Timor's negotiating team hand-delivered to the Australian negotiating team, giving them an advantage during treaty talks.

The senior intelligence agent who ran the operation, known as Witness K, was due to give evidence in another international case at The Hague relating to the bugging operation, until Australia seized his passport to prevent him from travelling.

In the compulsory conciliation due to start Monday, the court does not have the ability to compel Australia to agree to any maritime boundaries that may be prescribed by the court's panel of commissioners.

Australia withdrew from the compulsory dispute settlement procedures under UNCLOS in 2002, just two months before East Timor became independent.

While this means any decision in the upcoming conciliation is not binding, the Australian Government is making noises that it wants a resolution to the dispute in the wake of the court's decision.

A statement issued by the Australian embassy in Dilli last Thursday said: "Australia's statement [before the court] will outline Australia's view of the Timor Sea dispute and how it might be resolved."

In a statement to the ABC, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said: "As with the ruling in the Philippines arbitration case, we consider the decision of the upcoming compulsory conciliation binding on both sides."

This comment could be seen as the Australian Government softening its position on the proceedings, or it could be a sign that it is extremely confident its position will prevail in the court.

The Australian Government believes the treaties negotiated with East Timor in 2002 and 2006 are consistent with international law.

It is possible the Australian team could argue the court does not have the jurisdiction to conciliate over the maritime boundaries when only two of the parties are present.

The third party to share a boundary in the Timor Sea is Indonesia, who has already agreed to negotiate maritime boundaries bilaterally with East Timor.

Any decision made by the Permanent Court of Arbitration over maritime boundaries between Australia and East Timor could have repercussions for the ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

East Timor is the first country to trigger compulsory conciliation under UNCLOS, and the case could set a precedent that could be applied elsewhere.

Source: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2016-08-28/east-timoraustralia-maritime-border-dispute-set-to-be-negotiated-at-the-hague/1612254

East Timor claims a win on boundary dispute with Australia

The Australian - August 27, 2016

Amanda Hodge, Jakarta – Australia and East Timor will face off in The Hague on Monday in their territorial dispute over maritime boundaries in the Timor Sea - the first nations to use a last-chance international conciliation process under the UN Law of the Sea.

East Timor government adviser and former Victorian premier Steve Bracks yesterday claimed Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had made a key concession.

Former Timorese president Xanana Gusmao will lead his country's delegation, which will argue the two countries should agree to maritime borders, and the Timor Sea treaties are unfair and contravene international law because the Australia allegedly spied on the Timorese cabinet during negotiations. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea dictates all negotiations must be made in good faith.

Under current arrangements between the two neighbours, oil and gas revenues from the Timor Sea's Greater Sunrise gas field are split evenly, while 90 per cent of revenues from the Joint Petroleum Development Area go to East Timor.

Australia's position is that Timor's push for maritime boundaries and compulsory conciliation contravenes existing Timor treaties negotiated in good faith, including a 2007 treaty under which both sides agreed to defer the question of maritime borders for 50 years in exchange for granting Timor 50 per cent of the royalties from the still-undeveloped Greater Sunrise field.

It argues reopening the Timor Sea treaties would not only undermine investment certainty and delay revenue flows to both countries but result in fewer royalties for Timor, which has accrued a Petroleum Fund worth $16 billion - more than eight times its annual GDP.

Dili argues its maritime border with Australia should be drawn along the median line between the two nations, the method by which Australia has settled its borders with all other nations - Vanuatu, New Caledonia, PNG, French Antarctica and New Zealand - except Indonesia.

A median-point boundary would see a far greater percentage of resources fall into Timor's exclusive economic zone.

In Indonesia's case, Canberra successfully argued in 1972 the boundary should be drawn along Australia's continental shelf. But Portugal - then still the colonial power in Timor disputed that, thus creating the Timor Gap in the border over which the current territorial dispute now simmers.

In 2002, as Canberra and East Timor began negotiating maritime treaties, Australia withdrew itself from the UNCLOS maritime dispute settlement jurisdiction, thus avoiding the sort of binding ruling from the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration that China most recently refused to recognise in its South China Sea dispute with The Philippines.

That move, two months before Timor's declaration of independence, deprived the new, impoverished nation of international arbitration to negotiate its maritime boundaries.

Mr Bishop insisted yesterday that Australia's position on the Timor Gap was fully consistent with its position on The Philippinesarbitration case.

"In both situations we emphasise the importance of the rule of law and the willingness to resolve disputes peacefully," she said, adding Australia considered the "decision of the upcoming compulsory conciliation binding on both sides".

Mr Bracks described Ms Bishop's statement as a "breakthrough for Timor", after Australia had to be "dragged kicking and screaming" to the international forum. "This is the first time the Australian government has said it will abide by the UNCLOS decision," he said. "This is a sensible way to resolve this dispute."

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/east-timor-claims-a-win-on-boundary-dispute-with-australia/news-story/9ae7a662edd980170e1ded5a0e6aab88

Church lends support for Timor-Leste over maritime dispute

UCA News - August 9, 2016

Thomas Ora, Dili, Timor Leste – The Catholic Church has moved to support the people of Timor-Leste in their dispute with Australia over maritime boundaries involving billions of dollars in oil and gas reserves.

It demonstrated this support in a march on the Australian embassy in Dili at the close of the ASEAN People's Forum (APF) on Aug 5. The maritime dispute was discussed at the annual meeting.

Early this year, after Australia rejected a request to renegotiate maritime boundaries, the Timor-Leste government brought the dispute to the United Nations. The tiny nation argued that the lack of a fixed, mutually respected border with Australia has cost it billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues.

Timor Leste depends on oil to support its development, using it to fund infrastructure, education, health and other services.

Father Mario de Calvalho Soares, Director of Caritas in Baucau Diocese was a participant of the APF conference. He said that the church and the people appreciated the support of the forum.

"The church supports this plight, because it is for the greater benefit of Timor-Leste people," Father Soares told ucanews.com.

"It is part of the church's mission to serve the people, who are 97 percent Catholics," he said. Timor-Leste has a population of 1.2 million living in 13 districts across the dioceses of Dili, Baucau and Maliana.

"People have sacrificed many resources for hundreds of years. They gained independence fourteen years ago and don't want it to lose their resources again," he added.

The church, he said, would support and work with any civil society groups, such as APF, to improve the people's situation, from the remotest village to national level.

Fernando da Costa, a member of the steering committee member for the recent event, explained that, "Conference members agreed that Australia should dialogue with Timor-Leste, and [Australia should] stop taking from this poor country." He said he is happy with APF's decision to support Timor-Leste in the boundary dispute.

According to reports, Timor-Leste and Australia have formed a council to discuss the maritime boundary in light of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The five-member team including two Timorese, two Australians and a UN representative began its work in April and is expected to conclude its task in July 2017.

Former prime minister, Jose Ramos-Horta, recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, also commended the APF position.

Their decision, he said, reminded him of the support given to him during the 24 years of Indonesian occupation, from friends in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Europe, the United States, and Australia.

"On behalf of the people of Timor-Leste, I thank everyone for the solidarity from overseas friends," he said.

Source: http://www.ucanews.com/news/church-lends-support-for-timor-leste-over-maritime-dispute/76795

Political parties & elections

180 women receive training ahead of suku elections

Dili Weekly - August 9, 2016

Paulina Quintao – The Caucus organization has provided training to 180 potential female candidates in rural areas to help prepare them for the suku (village) elections to be held in October.

Program Coordinator for Capacity Building Pascoal da Cruz Gomes said the training was important to encourage women to participate in the development process by taking on a leadership role.

The training topics covered transformative leadership, public speaking, management administration, advocacy and fundraising. Women were also encouraged to be more creative in their initiatives for earning money and developing their sukus.

"When they become xefe sukus (village chiefs) they have skills in management administration and can develop their sukus," said Gomes at his office in Kaikoli, Dili.

Participants were from Ermera, Liquisa, Ainaro, Aileu, Lautem, Manatuto and Dili municipality, with every municipality sending 25 representatives each. He said the program would be extended to other sukus, which had not yet had access to training.

However, political observer Camilio Ximenes Almeida said he was concerned that the existing patriarchal system in Timor-Leste continued to limit women's participation in public life and also meant that men had all the power in society.

"Our system condemns women's participation," he said. He urged women's organizations to ensure that women took part in the elections, especially those in remote areas.

Data from the last suku election for the 2009-2015 period showed that only 10 women or 2% were elected xefe sukus of 442 sukus, while just 1.8% were elected head of sub-village of the 2225 sub-villages in Timor-Leste.

Meanwhile, the Director of Patria Foundation, Laura Pina acknowledged that women faced many challenges in relation to tradition, but said they must be brave and move forward. She also called on men to support women's participation in politics.

She urged women's groups to collaborate with municipality authorities and xefe sukus to encourage women to run in elections. She said the new law provided opportunities for women to get involved in politics.

The Secretary of State for the Socio-Economic Support of Women (SEM), Veneranda Lemos, said the government had entrusted women's organizations Caucus and Patria to provide training to potential female candidates and encourage them to run in the suku elections.

She hoped that women's participation in politics at the local level would increase dramatically in comparison to the 2009-2015 elections.

Source: http://www.thediliweekly.com/en/news/gender/13959-180-women-receive-training-ahead-of-suku-elections

Caucus providing training to aspiring female politicians

Dili Weekly - August 2, 2016

Paulina Quintao – The Caucus organization is providing training to 30 potential female political candidates, which have been registered in the National Election Commission (NCE), in preparation for the 2017 general elections.

Program head Pascoal da Cruz Gomes said the training aimed to strengthen the capacity of participants, so that they could be a strong advocate for women if elected to parliament.

He said some MPs elected to represent their parties at parliament did not raise women's issues or concerns because they weren't properly prepared.

He said the program was an important initiative as most women did not receive any specific training from the political parties they represented. The training is focused on transformative leadership and public speaking skills.

He said the 30 participants were from both old and political parties that had already registered at National Election Commission. Training is currently offered to one representative per political party, but the program will be ongoing.

Member of the Timor-Leste Parliamentary Women's Group (GMPTL) MP Josefa Alvares Pereira Soares said female MPs could not talk very long during plenary sessions due to time limitations.

"There is a limitation in the plenary and sometimes only five to ten people get the chance to talk and not all people [can speak]," she said.

She said political parties had a responsibility to provide training for its members, particularly women. Caucus also had a role to play in strengthening women's involvement in politics, she added.

Soares urged the Caucus to involve women from all political parties in the program rather than simply choosing one or two parties to participate.

She said it was often the case that the Caucus only invited representatives that they supported to participate in training activities.

"There is discrimination because some parties are not invited," she said. "The donors give funding not for discrimination, but for all women to participate."

Source: http://www.thediliweekly.com/en/news/capital/13949-caucus-providing-training-to-aspiring-female-politicians

Sexual & domestic violence

National action plan on gender-based violence making good progress

Dili Weekly - August 2, 2016

Paulina Quintao – Increased reporting of domestic violence cases and the establishment of more shelters are the two major achievements during the implementation of the national action plan on gender-based violence (NPA-GBV) over the past three years.

The National Director for Gender Development Policy, Henrique da Silva, said the result was through the efforts of the government and women's organizations, with support from development partners.

Good progress has been made particularly in terms of prevention, which is largely due to increased awareness about the issue, he said.

"People mostly understand the law against domestic violence and they know how to report it when it happens," said da Silva at a national workshop in Dili to discuss revisions to the national action plan on gender-based violence.

"There is a change, we see many shelters, and more will be established in Bobonaro municipality," she said.

The Psychosocial Recovery and Development in East Timor (PRADET) organization has also been working with the Health Ministry to establish further services for victims and forensic examinations can now be performed at referral hospitals.

Although many domestic violence cases are now being reported and this is good progress, he said what people really wanted to see was a reduction in rates and combating violence in the family.

"It (the campaign) is not only telling the community how to report it (violence), but also telling the community how to avoid it," he said. However, he said access to formal justice remained problematic, with a high number of domestic violence cases still pending in the court.

"We need to improve the human resources because they are not adequate enough to handle the cases," he said. He said court decisions in domestic violence cases needed to be looked at as many perpetrators only received lenient suspended sentences.

The government is also prioritizing efforts to improve coordination between the ministries and civil society in order to create a proper mechanism for monitoring activities, he said.

The NPA-GBV was developed under domestic violence law No. 7/2010 as a guideline for the government and the non-government organizations to implement their programs for 2012-2014.

The implementation of the NPA was completed in 2014, but the Secretary of State for the Socio-Economic Support for Women (SEM) then revised the plan and developed a new plan with the same objectives to be implemented over a five-year period.

Meanwhile, Fatuhada village chief Marcelino Soares said domestic violence was a public crime and should be processed according to the formal justice system, depending on the victim's wishes.

"When the victim wants to process their case the village chief can help to refer the case, but if the victim doesn't want [to take further action], it is their right," he said.

"The village chief can help to resolve the problem when the suspect and victim agree." He said the two main functions of the village chief were to implement laws in the suku (village) and as a cultural representative to resolve community problems.

Source: http://www.thediliweekly.com/en/news/gender/13947-national-action-plan-on-gender-based-violence-making-good-progress

Population & migration

680 foreigners granted Timorese citizenship

Dili Weekly - August 9, 2016

Venidora Oliveira – The Civil registry has granted 680 foreigners Timorese citizenship, mostly from Indonesia.

Department head Manuel Gama said the applicants had fulfilled the criteria under citizenship laws N. 9/2012 and n. 1/2004. He said the majority were originally from Indonesia and were getting married to Timorese citizens.

To be eligible for Timorese citizenship applicants must have been married to a Timorese citizen and living together in Timor for more five years or been living in Timor for 10 years.

Of the 680 people granted citizenship, 640 were from Indonesia, two from Australia and one each from Bangladesh, Pakistan, 1 India, 1 Angola, the Philippines, Vietnam, 1 Mozambique, Cuba, England, Sri Lanka and Belgium.

Most of the applicants were married to Timorese citizens, while seven of them had been living in Timor-Leste for more 10 years. "The main thing is that they should be able to speak Tetun," he said.

National MP Francisco da Costa said although foreigners were allowed under law to apply for Timorese citizenship, the government needed to put in place adequate controls. He said in some cases, foreigners got married to a Timorese woman with a specific purpose rather than genuine reasons.

"After five or six years of marriage, they abandon our Timorese women then leave our country with all money that they have earned," he said. He said the government needed to implement stricter controls to prevent this from occurring.

Source: http://www.thediliweekly.com/en/news/capital/13965-680-foreigners-granted-timorese-citizenship

Border & security issues

Wiranto, Xanana Gusmao meet to discuss border

CNN Indonesia - August 22, 2016

Abi Sarwanto, Jakarta – Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Wiranto met with the Minister of Planning, Development and Investment of East Timor, Xanana Gusmao on Sunday (21/8) night.

Wiranto said in a closed meeting that lasted for more than two hours that they discussed many things, one of which is the border between Indonesia and Timor Leste.

"We discuss important issues between the two countries. one of them was yes border between Indonesia and Timor Leste," said Wiranto after the meeting in Menteng, Jakarta.

He said, the government hoped to resolve the issue in a short time. This settlement, he said, will be gradual. "Whereas with Indonesia had been there an in-depth understanding to solve it in a short time," said Wiranto.

Meanwhile, Xanana express his meeting with Wiranto not only talk about the boundary between the two countries, but a political problem and economy also discussed.

However, the former Prime Minister of East Timor was evasive when asked at the meeting to ask for support to Indonesia on conflicts sea border between East Timor and Australia.

It is known in advance, Timor Leste will discuss the maritime boundary with Australia next week in the Hague, Netherlands. "Australia did not care, we were forced a little, we will negotiate there. not (for support) with Indonesia yes. Australia other issues," Gusmao said.

The meeting was also attended by former Justice Minister in the Soeharto era, Muladi. Xanana call this meeting historical value because it brings old friends.

The issue of the border dispute, still haunt at least two regions between Indonesia and Timor Leste. Dispute first two points of land border between Indonesia and Timor Leste or disputed areas Un Resolved Segment, Noelbesi-Citrana and segment Bijael Sunan-Oben bordering the North Central Timor, East Nusa Tenggara.

In addition, there is also a land dispute in the area of Naktuka, District Amfoang East, Kupang between the people of Indonesia and Timor Leste.

Not only Naktuka, status of land conflict between the two countries are also potentially occur in a number of outer islands of Indonesia around Kupang, among others Batek Island, Island Salura, Dana Island Sabu and island Mengudu.

Before this, Indonesia and East Timor have actually agreed on granting the status of free zones on Naktuka. That is, the two countries should not undertake any activity at that location.

Commander Lantamal VII Kupang, Brigadier General Siswoyo Hari Santoso, said the agency is currently record the small islands bordering Timor Leste. He said the move was the start to the naming of the island. "By giving a name, of course it will help us to stay can claim our islands," he said.

On the other hand, on a state visit to East Timor last January, President Joko Widodo claims to have discussed the issue of the border with the President and Prime Minister of East Timor, namely Taur Matan Ruak and Rui Maria de Araujo.

In a written statement, Jokowi mention two colleagues were giving good faith in resolving the border dispute between the two countries, both on land and sea. (overdrive)

Source: http://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20160822000802-20-152849/wiranto-bertemu-xanana-gusmao-bahas-perbatasan/

Foreign affairs & trade

Timor Leste seeks entry into ASEAN market

The Brunei Times/ANN - August 3, 2016

Quratul-Ain Bandial, Bandar Seri Begawan – Timor Leste is keen to reap the potential benefits of tariff-free trade once it joins the ASEAN bloc, said the country's commerce, industry and environment minister on Tuesday.

Constancio Pinto told reporters that joining the ASEAN free trade area is a key reason the country is eager for the regional group to approve its membership application as soon as possible.

ASEAN has a free trade zone among its 10 members, as well as FTAs with six other countries including China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

"One of the economic benefits of joining ASEAN is that we can engage in trade and enjoy the open market and some of the trade facilities... We will also be open to ASEAN countries as a new market," said the minister, who is in the sultanate to attend the Second Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit.

ASEAN is currently conducting a final review of Timor Leste's application to join the organization.

"I was happy to read in the newspaper a statement from the Indonesia Foreign Ministry spokesperson that there is a good prospect for Timor Leste to join ASEAN. If it's tomorrow or next year we are ready to join," he said. "But we have already been actively participating in the technical meetings."

Pinto said the country has not forged any free trade agreements (FTAs) since its independence from Indonesian occupation in 2002 and is keen to explore bilateral FTAs with regional neighbors.

"We have bilateral agreements with Indonesia but not with other countries, it is something we would like to explore. At the moment there is a very small amount of trade between Timor Leste and Brunei."

The country's only major export is coffee, which it exports to Singapore, the United States and Australia. "I see a lot of coffee shops and it seems like Bruneians are drinking a lot of coffee so we can explore that and export directly to Brunei."

Pinto said the two nations could also look into forging cooperation in halal food manufacturing. "We have a lot of land that can be developed and we welcome any company that is interested in developing it for food production... Perhaps Bruneian companies can go to Timor Leste and invest in such a project."

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/seasia/2016/08/03/timor-leste-seeks-entry-into-asean-market.html

People

Guerrilla fighter turns top businessman in Timor-Leste

Nikkei Asia Review - August 23, 2016

Hamish McDonald, Dili – The biggest private sector employer in Timor-Leste has two names on his business card. One is Eduardo Belo Saores, his legal name, and the other is a more enigmatic one, Gattot.

He explains that the latter name was his nom de guerre, a sarcastic reference to the name of an Indonesian general, when Soares was a member of the Falantil resistance movement against Indonesia's occupation of his country between 1975 and 1999 after Portugal withdrew from its colony.

The resistance name still has a lot of clout in Timor-Leste. That was evident on a recent Saturday morning when Soares persuaded the nation's President Taur Matan Ruak, a former guerrilla army resistance leader, to formally open his group's new floating fish farm, which is inside a coral reef just east of the capital.

After adroitly balancing on the wobbly planks around the netted fish enclosures, Taur came back onshore, sampled some barbecued fish, and filled a chiller box with garoupa and barramundi fish to take back to the presidential palace, publically paying $15 per kilo to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

Soares is something of a phenomenon in Timor-Leste: an ethnic Timorese who has established a major business, the Baniuaga group. Until now, the private sector in the tiny country has been dominated by descendants of Portuguese colonial families or by ethnic Chinese traders.

His story is one of narrow escapes. Born in 1965, he was 10 years old when Indonesian marines and paratroopers stormed into Portuguese Timor's main towns. His family fled their home near Baucau, taking refuge in the mountains.

"There were thousands of people like us," he said. "We reached the south coast and could go no further. Then we were surrounded by the army in 1978 and captured, about 50 families, and brought down to Dili." Soares returned to school the next year.

Five years later, a cousin emerged from the bush and Soares fabricated a travel pass for him, but the authorities soon discovered it was a fake. Soares was identified by his cousin and was arrested, interrogated at the Indonesian district command in Baucau, and held in a cell for two months.

Political prisoner

In 1989, Soares was preparing to join demonstrations during the visit by Pope John Paul II to what was then known as East Timor. Then Indonesian special forces officer Prabowo Subianto, who was a presidential candidate in 2014, conducted preemptive arrests of dissidents. His soldiers abducted Soares, hiding him from inquiring Red Cross officials in a cell dug into the ground.

Prabowo's intelligence officers saw a useful role for the smart young Timorese. "They said: If you show us where Falantil is we will send you to Jakarta, you can go by plane, you can study," Soares told the Nikkei Asian Review in his Dili office. "I pretended to agree."

While feeding his captors bogus information for propaganda videos, Soares was kept under close watch at Baucau's Flamboyan Hotel, a notorious center for Indonesian intelligence operations during the occupation.

"One Sunday I asked to go to church and talked to Father Orlando Fernandes in the confessional to discuss escape," Soares recalled. With a refuge arranged in Dili, the young man then blocked up the shower pipe in the bathroom used by him and his guard, so they were obliged to take their bath from a tub in the hotel yard.

When his captor had soaped up his hair and face, Soares grabbed his clothes and bolted. Hiking overland, hitching rides from friendly truck drivers and walking around checkpoints, he reached Dili two days later and found a hiding place in the residence of Bishop Carlos Belo.

Thus began a clandestine life in the small capital city. Soares eventually owned a total of 13 different identity cards from different districts in East Timor, plus four from Jakarta and other parts of Indonesia, and two different Indonesian passports under the common names of Rodrigues and Pereira. "I combed my hair differently for the pictures," he said.

He made contact with Falantil's two main commanders in the mountains, Taur and David Alex near Baucau. Soares relayed information from them in conversations using code words with exiled resistance figures in Sydney and Lisbon from the public call center in Dili.

Tech talent

As the telecoms revolution took hold, his technical school education proved valuable. Soares went to Jakarta and bought a satellite phone, which he dismantled, brought back to Dili mixed up in a consignment of television parts, and then reassembled. In 1997, he went up into the mountains to work as Taur's communications officer and run a clandestine radio station.

After the Suharto regime collapsed and successor President B.J. Habibie called a United Nations-run referendum on East Timor's future in 1999, Soares was able to place calls between Falantil and outside leaders, and even to Xanana Gusmao, another prominent resistance leader. Gusmao was being held inside Jakarta's Cipinang jail, where he had been smuggled a mobile phone. One cheeky call went to the mobile phone of the Indonesian armed forces chief, General Wiranto, after the number was supplied by an Indonesian supporter.

When the guerrillas came down from the hills in 2000, Soares opted for a civilian life instead of joining the new military. "I wanted to try something different," he said. He was among the demobilized fighters who were given $100 a month for four months, plus small cash grants for seed capital.

Most bought pigs or buffaloes, or set up kiosks. But Soares used all the money to pay $500 for a wood lathe, then borrowed money to buy other tools and lumber to set up a joinery on the verandah of his family's home. The bishop of Baucau ordered a new set of pillars for his residence and paid $2,000 to Soares. It enabled him to pay off his loans and order more timber.

The reconstruction of what was now Timor-Leste was under way. Many buildings in Dili and other towns had been torched by Indonesian forces as they left ahead of an international peacekeeping force in 1999. Walls were still standing, but there was a need for doors and windows. A big order for school furniture came in. By 2004, Soares was able to open a large new workshop on the main road in Dili.

Then came a security crisis in 2006 when fighting erupted between undisciplined police and army personnel. "My workshop was looted and everything stolen," Soares said. "I had to start again from zero."

Expanding empire

With finance from the Portuguese bank BNU, which had returned to the former colony, and orders from his contacts, the joinery business rose again. Meanwhile the trashing of his premises gave Soares an idea for diversifying his business. He started a security guard service, GardaMor Security, which now employs 2,000 people all over the country.

Recently, he gained a license as a television and radio broadcaster, joining three other private TV stations and one government channel. He has started radio broadcasts in Dili and conducting TV transmission trials. The aim is to take the network nationwide, providing entertainment and educational content.

In April, Singapore-based Kacific Broadband Satellites announced a $21 million agreement with GardaMor Security to provide broadband internet services across Timor-Leste using its satellite, which has a footprint across eastern Indonesia and the southwest Pacific. GardaMor's customers will be able to use cheap dish antennas at their homes to receive a low-cost, reliable connection, Soares said.

Soares now employs 3,000 people. He does not want to discuss his group's financial results, but does say, "We are working for the bank." It seem his bankers are still willing to finance him. As well as the satellite internet contract and the broadcast network, Soares has just moved into a brand new three-storey head office in Dili.

He quietly contrasts his progress with the instant fortunes made by others who gained import contracts and other business benefits from relatives in the government. "I was working very hard," he said. "For the others: it was falling down from the sky. It lands big already."

Source: http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Guerrilla-fighter-turns-top-businessman-in-Timor-Leste

Invasion & occupation

Governments fail to reunite Timorese families

UCA News - September 1, 2016

Ryan Dagur and Siktus Harson, Jakarta – Rights groups have said the governments of Indonesia and Timor-Leste have failed to find, document and reunite Timorese separated from their families when they were children during the Indonesian occupation (1975-1999) as recommended by an official commission in 2008.

Even though people were taken as children and are now adults, uprooting them from their families remains a violation of their human rights, said activists from six rights groups, on Aug. 30, the International Day of the Disappeared, which is also the Referendum Day of Timor-Leste.

Many families in Timor-Leste are still awaiting the return of their relatives from Indonesia where they were taken to, the activists said in a joint statement read out at a press conference in Jakarta.

"We appeal for both states to make a serious effort to reunite the children who were taken from their families in Timor-Leste," the groups said.

Selviana Yolanda, of Asia Justice and Rights, said that an estimated 4,000 children were separated from their families and taken to Indonesia during the occupation. "The government should have helped finding those people," Yolanda said, as recommended by the Commission on Truth and Friendship eight years ago.

As of now, only 65 people have been documented and only 30 have been reunited with their families. Former Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issued an instruction in 2011 providing guidelines to follow the commission's recommendations. But it has not been implemented, according to Yolanda.

"Unfortunately, as of today, the government ignores all the recommendations related to missing people and separated children," she said. "The government should help to find these people."

She also urged the government of Indonesia to take steps to heal the trauma and further protect victims. The Indonesian government must admit that taking children from their families for whatever reason is severe violation of human rights and also provide a victim protection service.

"The Indonesian government must help them obtain their citizenship documents, provide them with scholarships and other financial aid," she added.

Sandra Moniagar from the National Human Rights Commission said the government has not made a serious effort to document the number of Timor-Leste children who were separated from their families during 24 years of Indonesian occupation. "There has not been any concrete measures taken by Indonesian government," Moniagar said.

Isabelinha Pinto, one of the Timorese who was separated from her family and adopted by a member of Indonesian military, said that there must be a serious effort to find people who were taken from their families.

"I have experienced what it feels like to be separated from family members," said Pinto. She was separated from her family in 1979 and met her parents accidentally in 2009 when they travelled to Yogyakarta. She believed that there are still many people like her who want to reunite with their family members in Timor-Leste.

Meanwhile, Sisto dos Santos, coordinator of the Timor-Leste National Alliance for International Tribunal (known as ANTI), said that the government of Timor-Leste has been too busy building infrastructure to pay attention to the pleas of broken families. Santos also slammed the Indonesian government for protecting the perpetrators of the crimes.

"Unfortunately, after independence the state of Timor-Leste decided to focus more on physical development and... [has not sought] credible justice for the serious crimes committed against the Timorese people," he said in a statement sent to ucanews.com.

Source: http://www.ucanews.com/news/governments-fail-to-reunite-timorese-families/77010

'Stolen children' need govt's full attention

Jakarta Post - August 31, 2016

Jakarta – "I had mixed feelings of sadness and anger when I learned that I already had my own grave in Timor Leste," Victor da Costa, 41, said on Tuesday.

He is one of Timor Leste's generation of "stolen children", who were forcibly taken away from their families during the Indonesian occupation of what was then the province of East Timor.

Victor found out about his parents' death only years later, in 2004. That was when he first touched down in his homeland in Baucau district, after he had been brought to Indonesia in the early 1980s by an Indonesian Military (TNI) soldier. He was 4 years old back then.

He also learned in 2004 that people in his hometown thought he had already passed away, because there was a piece of black cloth in between his parents' graves.

In Timor Leste tradition, Victor explained, a piece of black cloth symbolized the death of a missing person. "If a person has been gone for a long time, they will be considered dead," he said.

Victor was speaking at a press briefing to commemorate the International Day of the Disappeared, which falls on Aug. 30. The press briefing was jointly held by the Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR) NGO, the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), the Indonesian Association of Families of the Disappeared (Ikohi) and the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).

Victor's case is only one among many similar ones affecting hundreds or even thousands of Timor Leste's "stolen children". Victor is fortunate to have finally discovered where his hometown is and to have revealed almost everything about his past.

Victor also considers himself lucky that the family of the soldier that took him to Indonesia treated him well. They sent him to school, while many of the "stolen children" were not sent to school by their foster families.

According to AJAR, some 4,000 East Timorese children were forcibly moved to Indonesia between 1975 and 1999, most of them were brought into the country by soldiers. Only about 30 of the children had met with their families in Timor Leste through family reunions held twice since 2015 by AJAR, Kontras, Ikohi and Komnas HAM.

Selviana Yolanda, a program officer for AJAR, told a press briefing on Tuesday that her organization had been painstakingly tracking down the "children" in many parts of the country since 2013.

"Many of them were found in West Java, South Sulawesi and Kalimantan," Yolanda said. "The government's initiative to find the children is decreasing. Besides, public awareness about this issue is very limited. Meanwhile, both government and public support are much needed in this case."

Sandra Moniaga, a commissioner with Komnas HAM, echoed the need for support. She said the government had yet to take concrete measures to find the "stolen children" and to reintroduce them to their relatives in their homeland.

"The least the government can do is to collect the children's data, cooperate with the Timor Leste government to find their families there [...] and facilitate their visit to Timor Leste to meet their families," Sandra said, adding that the Timor Leste government had allocated funds to accommodate such family visits.

The next family reunion would be conducted in November this year, Yolanda said. "We are hoping for the government's support with the next family reunion," she added. (vny)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/08/31/stolen-children-need-govt-s-full-attention.html

Analysis & opinion

Australia should commit to dispute resolution with Timor-Leste

The Interpreter - September 1, 2016

Penny Wong – The Turnbull's government rejection of an international commission's jurisdiction over the maritime boundary dispute with Timor-Leste is a deeply disappointing development.

Timor-Leste suffered decades of conflict and suffering before gaining independence. The key role played by Australia in securing that independence and protecting Timor-Leste's fragile security and democracy is a very proud moment for our nation.

But it's now undeniable that the maritime boundary dispute has strained our bilateral relations.

Australia's unwillingness to commit to maritime border negotiations with Timor-Leste also raises valid questions about our commitment to a rules-based international system and to being a good global citizen.

Whether it be our whaling disputes with Japan, international trade disputes with the US and EU, our fight to halt French nuclear testing in the Pacific, or Antarctic claims in the 1980s, Australia encourages others to play by the rules, and we benefit from the rules-based system that incentivises them to do so.

This is the position we are now taking on the overlapping maritime claims in the South China Sea, where we have urged all parties to abide by both the terms and the spirit of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

There is bipartisan agreement that it is in Australia's national interest to uphold the international system of laws and accepted behaviours when it comes to the South China Sea, just as it is in every other aspect of international law.

Labor is committed to multilateralism and a rules-based international system. We believe all nations benefit from abiding by international norms. If we want to insist that other nations play by the rules, we would adhere to them.

That's why Labor committed in February this year to reaching a binding international resolution with Timor-Leste, whether it be through bilateral negotiation or international arbitration.

Unfortunately, the Turnbull government is sending worrying, mixed signals about the dispute with Timor-Leste which threatens to undermine our international standing.

Last week, in a statement to the ABC, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said: 'As with the ruling in the Philippines arbitration case, we consider the decision of the upcoming compulsory conciliation binding on both sides.'

But more recently, in a joint media release the Foreign Minister and the Attorney-General declared that while 'Australia will abide by the Commission's finding as to whether it has jurisdiction to hear matters on maritime boundaries', if the commission finds that it does have jurisdiction 'then its final report on that matter is not binding.'

The Turnbull government's equivocation on this issue does not strengthen Australia's ability to advocate for a rules-based system or our reputation in the region.

The Turnbull government should stop delaying and commit to an international process of dispute resolution. There has now been more than 40 years of uncertainty over this maritime border. The settlement of this dispute in fair and permanent terms is long overdue.

[Senator Penny Wong is the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Labor Senator for South Australia.]

Source: http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2016/09/01/Australia-should-commit-to-dispute-resolution-with-Timor-Leste.aspx

Right but wrong: Australia is using a legalism to delay resolution of the Timor

WA Today - August 31, 2016

Donald K. Anton – It is reasonable to suppose that for much of the time between 2007 and 2013, those responsible for managing Australia's diplomatic relationship with Timor-Leste rested easy about the potential irritant represented by the unresolved dispute involving the delimitation of the Timor Sea maritime boundary that divides the opposite coastlines of both countries.

In large measure, the Australian sense of ease on this issue was attributable to the treaty between Australia and Timor-Leste on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS), which entered into force in February 2007. Article 4 of CMATS provides notable calm by establishing a 50-year moratorium on Australia's otherwise immediate and ongoing obligation to negotiate a permanent maritime boundary with Timor-Leste.

This sheltered sense of rule-bound tranquillity was first upset in April 2013 when Timor-Leste began binding arbitral proceedings under the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty. However, it was difficult to see how a successful challenge to the TST – a different treaty – could end the CMATS' moratorium.

Inextricable synergistic links between the two treaties provide some plausible arguments that it could happen, but they are still difficult arguments to make. Linking the TST and CMATS in the arbitration, however, is essential for Timor-Leste if it wants to reopen negotiations on the maritime boundary before 2057. This is because CMATS itself excludes all forms of compulsory dispute settlement.

The TST arbitration remains pending, but the legal manoeuvres have continued. Most recently, in April this year, Timor-Leste initiated compulsory conciliation proceedings against Australia under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Using this approach, Timor-Leste must surmount Australian arguments about jurisdiction and admissibility. If this can be accomplished, then the use of the UNCLOS seems a more promising route for Timor-Leste to reopen negotiations and bring them to fruition without waiting a half-century. Compulsory conciliation concerning a dispute about a maritime boundary under UNCLOS arises when one party has objected to having such a dispute resolved by other available compulsory procedures entailing binding decisions. In March 2002, two months before Timor-Leste's independence, Australia declared that it would not consent to any compulsory procedure in any dispute relating to the delimitation of maritime zones, or to the exploitation of any disputed area of any such maritime zone. This means, amongst other things, that Timor-Leste cannot petition the International Court of Justice or International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for a conclusive resolution of the dispute.

This is not the end of the matter, however. The law of the sea gives priority to the settlement of boundary disputes. Where a maritime boundary dispute exists, UNCLOS requires a party that has objected to having the dispute settled by compulsory, binding procedures, to accept the submission of the matter to compulsory conciliation. The conciliation commission's report that will be the result of the conciliation process is not binding, but the parties are required to use it for the basis of negotiated settlement.

If a negotiated settlement continues to prove impossible, then UNCLOS requires the parties to submit the question to one of the other available compulsory procedures (by mutual consent) for a binding decision. If things reached this stage, it would be incumbent on the parties to strive in good faith to agree on one of the procedures. This would require Australia to seriously consider, in good faith, resolving the dispute by way of a compulsory procedure, instead of steadfastly insisting on a policy it put in place in 2002 – that maritime boundaries disputes are best resolved by negotiation instead of litigation.

The compulsory conciliation process initiated by Timor-Leste, however, is more complicated than this brief description. In part this is because, as mentioned, Australia has jurisdiction and admissibility arguments to make.

Looking at jurisdiction first. The dispute settlement procedures provided for in UNCLOS, including compulsory conciliation, apply only where they are not excluded by an agreement between the parties. The moratorium established by CMATS is still in place and would appear to exclude all UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures, including compulsory conciliation. This is a significant problem for Timor-Leste in invoking the jurisdiction of the commission, but it may not be insurmountable.

In this proceeding, unlike the TST arbitration, CMATS can be attacked directly in defending the jurisdiction of the conciliation commission. Presumably, that is why, on the first day of hearings, it was reported that Timor-Leste castigated the alleged Australian espionage associated with the negotiation of CMATS. If Timor-Leste can prove these allegations, then reasonable arguments can be made that the commission must reject Australia's jurisdictional objection because CMATS is invalid or otherwise void at international law. If accepted, no agreement of the parties would bar the commission's jurisdiction.

Turning to the admissibility problem (a reason why the commission might not hear the claim even if it has jurisdiction), the press has reported that Australia maintains that no negotiations have preceded the initiation of these proceedings as required by UNCLOS. This is factually inaccurate. A press release by former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer established that as at May 2005 at least six rounds of inconclusive negotiations had taken place. Whether this is sufficient remains for the commission, but it is clear that since 2007 CMATS has made negotiation impossible.

If Timor-Leste were to clear the jurisdiction and admissibility hurdles, Australia will have to face up to the fact the equidistance principle guides delimitation in the modern law of the sea. It is no longer the days before UNCLOS. The application of this principle could easily mean that Australia's current 10 per cent cut of the resources (and revenues driven by exploitation) in the Joint Petroleum Development Area would be reduced to nil. And it would be reduced much sooner than 2057.

All of this, though, is possibility and detail. It is legally important, but it obscures bigger, fundamental questions about our character as a country, that are raised by Australia's dogged resistance to a compelling claim by a small, impoverished neighbour.

Do we want Australia, a big country already blessed with a rich abundance of terrestrial and marine natural resources of a magnitude most countries can only dream of, to be so selfish; to shake down a small, developing neighbour that can ill afford a dubious split in revenue; to stand on narrow legalism to delay the inevitable; to resist diplomatic goodwill, and the myriad benefits (well beyond the small, non-renewable revenues under current treaty arrangements) that will flow from a quick negotiated settlement. I know how I answer.

[Donald K. Anton is professor of international law at Griffith Law School.]

Source: http://www.watoday.com.au/comment/right-but-wrong-australia-is-using-a-legalism-to-delay-resolution-of-the-timor-sea-boundary-dispute-20160831-gr5c4g.html

On Timor, Australia looks like it's denying an impoverished neighbour its

The Guardian (Australia) - August 29, 2016

This week's conciliation talks in The Hague give Australia a new chance to do the right thing by East Timor to help it secure its future

Ben Saul – Australia and East Timor start conciliation talks in The Hague on Monday in an effort to resolve their bitter legal dispute over maritime boundaries – and $40bn of petroleum rights. Timor argues that Australia refuses to recognise Timor's rights under international law.

The conciliation is compulsory under the UN law of the sea convention, but it will not produce a binding decision. The independent conciliators may nonetheless help both countries to clarify the legal issues and reflect on their claims – and adjust them to reach a fair solution.

Lately Australia has been on the nose in Timor. Anti-Australia graffiti is sprinkled around the capital, Dili. Thousands of Timorese protested outside the Australian embassy earlier this year. The dispute threatens the goodwill from Australia's support for Timor's independence since 1999. Things are not helped by espionage claims that paint Australia as the neighbourhood cheat and bully.

Australia denies breaching international law. The legal issues are not clear cut. Timor and Australia agreed on three treaties from 2002 and 2006 to share resources in adjacent maritime areas and to suspend maritime boundary claims for 50 years. Timor has amassed a $16bn Petroleum Fund as a result.

Australia may be right to argue that it is lawful to manage disputes in this way. In practice, however, Timor had little choice but to cut a deal. In 2002, Australia cunningly withdrew its consent to the compulsory settlement of maritime boundary disputes at the international court of justice and under the UN law of the sea convention.

This was technically legal. Countries may give or withhold their consent in advance to international adjudication. Timor was thus prevented from suing Australia in an independent court – even if its substantive legal claims to maritime boundaries were correct.

Australia prefers negotiation on boundary disputes to adjudication. Negotiation has some advantages. But it also often benefits a country with more bargaining power, as in the huge imbalance between Australia and Timor. China similarly prefers negotiation over courts in the South China Sea because it has more leverage over its neighbours.

When negotiation breaks down, there is then no independent court to apply international law, which provides the underlying rules on where boundaries should be drawn. An obstructive country can simply refuse to reach agreement or to recognise another country's rights.

Timor now argues that the 2006 treaty is invalid because Australia spied on its treaty negotiators, thus gaining an unfair advantage. While spying alone does not invalidate a treaty, fraud can. It is untested whether espionage constitutes fraud.

That claim is being tested in another case, a binding arbitration between Australia and Timor – itself tarnished by Australia's seizure of documents from Timor's lawyer in Canberra, Bernard Collaery. In 2014, the international court of justice ordered Australia not to interfere with Timor's legal communications, since doing so may undermine the equality of parties to a dispute under the United Nations Charter.

If the treaty is invalid it would reopen the boundary and resource issues. Timor claims that determining the maritime boundary in accordance with international law would give it exclusive ownership over certain resources currently shared with Australia.

Experts differ on where the boundary might actually be drawn, including if Indonesia could extend its boundary at Timor's expense. There are practical concerns too about the economic and environmental feasibility of Timor's ambitious development plans.

Timor's boundary claims are nonetheless strong. Australia's last minute, peremptory removal of international judicial oversight in 2002 may well indicate that it privately agrees.

Ultimately, what is technically legal may not necessarily be wise, just, or ethical foreign policy. There is an inescapable perception that Australia is denying its tiny, impoverished neighbour its sovereign birthright to determine its boundaries, control its own resources, and shape its own destiny.

This dynamic contaminates the wider bilateral relationship. The dispute cannot be viewed in isolation but is part of a long history of bad faith by Australia that continues to poison relations and corrode trust.

From the late 1970s, successive Australian governments illegally recognised Indonesian sovereignty over Timor. Timor's resistance museum displays an infamous photo of the then foreign ministers, Gareth Evans and Ali Alatas, toasting champagne in flight above the Timor Sea, after carving up the resource spoils far below in 1988.

Australia also did little to protest Indonesian atrocities, which left up to 183,000 dead, including six Australian journalists murdered at Balibo and Dili in 1975.

This legacy and the present dispute overshadow Australia's positive contributions. Australian military forces resisted the Japanese invasion of Timor in 1942 and led the UN intervention in 1999. Ever since, Australia has stabilised Timor by supporting democracy, development, nutrition, public health and security.

Australia should be faithful to the spirit as well as the letter of the law – and be more generous. The modest benefits to Australia of the current arrangements are far outweighed by the diplomatic damage they inflict.

For Timor, determining its boundaries is about completing its sovereignty and ensuring its economic future. That has been a long, painful journey over 450 years, outlasting Portuguese colonialism and Indonesian occupation.

Australia should stop obstructing Timor and help it to secure its borders and its future. This week's conciliation gives Australia a new chance to do the right thing.

[Ben Saul is Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney. He recently visited Timor and was a barrister in the Balibo Five inquest in 2007.]

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/29/on-timor-australia-looks-like-its-denying-an-impoverished-neighbour-its-birthright

East Timor, 17 years on: a troubled past, a fragile future

Crikey.com - August 30, 2016

Although East Timor is doing much better than it was, it is still very fragile. And the Timor Sea dispute could undo much of the progress that has been made.

Damien Kingsbury – On this day, 17 years ago, in the small town of Balibo, as elsewhere in East Timor, voters queued from before dawn to vote on whether their country would become independent. Afterwards they fled into the hills to await the coming storm. Pro-Indonesian militias already ruled the town, directed by the Indonesian army.

In following days, women who had not escaped were lined up in what is known as the "kissing house" and systematically raped. Local residents and others were murdered. As elsewhere, the town was razed.

Seventeen years later, Balibo is a very different place, doing well by East Timorese standards. The town has just celebrated a religious festival, and its streets are still garlanded with decorative bamboo arches and flowers. Children flow to and from its schools, and its recently rebuilt kindergarten is inundated with toddlers.

In 1975, Australian-based journalists - the "Balibo Five" - filmed invading Indonesian warships off the coast a few kilometres from an old Portuguese fort. It is now restored and turned into a small hotel, restaurant and gallery, providing employment and putting money into the local community.

The "Flag House", at the junction, is where in 1975 journalist Greg Shackleton daubed the word "Australia" and a makeshift Australian flag in the vain hope of saving the lives of himself and four colleagues from the Indonesian invaders. This building has been refurbished as a working memorial to these journalists. It now houses a women's craft shop and learning centre and a new dental clinic one of the very few in the country equipped and staffed by Australian volunteers.

While the rest of the town has been rebuilt, the "kissing house" and the house were the Balibo Five were murdered remain abandoned. Locals believe one is a place of unresolvable evil and the other where ghosts should be respected.

Like Balibo, East Timor is now a different place it was in the period immediately after the vote for independence. Despite unmet expectations, inept government and elite tensions spilling over into violence and destruction in 2006, the country has rebuilt and stabilised.

Infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy and so on, once among the worst in the world, have been halved. For much of East Timor, its painful past is increasingly behind it. The country is the best it has ever been.

Yet that simple claim belies many avoidable problems. For many East Timorese, change has been uneven, especially outside Dili, where most East Timorese still live.

The earlier improvement to local lives stalled years ago at still globally poor levels. Starvation is less common, but malnutrition is not. Access to drinkable water remains scarce. Government priorities overwhelmingly favor expensive and often poorly conceived and executed infrastructure projects over education and healthcare.

East Timor set up one of the world's best sovereign wealth funds to ensure that its economic future could be sustained by income from money invested from oil and gas reserves. Yet government spending vastly exceeds sustainable withdrawals, and the Timor Sea oil fields are running out. At current rates of spending, East Timor will be bankrupt within a decade.

East Timor claims that Australia has robbed it of resources in an area of the sea that should rightfully belong to it. This dispute returned to arbitration in The Hague yesterday.

What prompted the current Timor Sea dispute was East Timor's insistence that liquid natural gas (LNG) from the still untapped Greater Sunrise field be processed in East Timor. When that claim was rejected by project partner Woodside Petroleum, the Timor Sea dispute took on its current form.

There is now little international interest in the Greater Sunrise LNG field, given the fall in LNG prices, East Timor's on-shore processing demands and perceptions that the East Timorese government could be an unreliable investment partner. Along with production lead times of several years, the doubtful Greater Sunrise option does not look like the answer to the country's looming economic problems.

Slashing government spending on infrastructure projects appears to be the only way for East Timor to avoid economic collapse. Such decisions will cut into many of the improvements that at least some East Timorese have enjoyed. And, as the country goes to elections next year, it is unlikely that major parties will promise less rather than more.

East Timor has never looked better, and many of its improvements have been real and important. But this small and fragile country has only just begun to emerge, and its future is again uncertain.

[Damien Kingsbury is a Professor of International Politics at Deakin University, board member of the Balibo House Trust, and was in Balibo as a UN-accredited observer to the 1999 referendum on independence. He has just returned from East Timor.]

Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/08/30/timor-sea-oil-dispute-could-jeopardise-east-timors-future/

How Australia and Timor-Leste ended up at The Hague in arbitration

The Diplomat - August 30, 2016

Timor-Leste once agreed to let the maritime boundary question rest for 50 years. What changed?

Grant Wyeth – This week will see a dispute between Australia and Timor-Leste over maritime boundaries begin in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. At the center of the disputed territory lie the Greater Sunrise oil and gas fields. These fields are estimated to contain around US$40 billion worth of oil and gas deposits.

The conciliation proceedings fall under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This is a convention that Australia has signed, and Canberra has urged China adhere to UNCLOS with regard to Beijing's claims in the South China Sea. However, Australia has a preference for bilateral negotiations for maritime boundaries, rather than international conventions. This is an acceptable practice within international law, but in this case remains a process between two vastly unequal partners.

Australia's claim is based on its continental shelf extending into the Timor Sea, and not the conventional median line. The median line would place the Greater Sunrise fields within Timor-Leste's maritime territory. Yet the dispute over the boundary is tied up in the complicated history of the region.

In 1972 Indonesia imprudently signed away rights to areas above the median line to Australia in the Australia – Indonesia Maritime Delimitation Treaty. However Portugal, then still the sovereign power over the eastern section of Timor, did not agree to the boundary assessment. This left a gap as to where the international boundary between Australia and the then-Portuguese Timor lay. Portugal believed that boundary should be based on the median line between Australia and its territory on Timor, in accordance with international conventions.

When Indonesia invaded Timor-Leste in late 1975, part of Australia's acquiescence to the invasion was the hope that this gap in the maritime boundary would become consistent with the treaty of 1972.

In early 1978, Australia became the first Western government to recognize Timor-Leste as part of Indonesia, and a few months later the two countries began negotiations to settle the maritime boundary. Negotiations continued into the late-1980s, as Indonesia became unhappy with the 1972 treaty, and sought to make the median line the maritime boundary. These negotiations concluded with a treaty for Australia and Indonesia to share the proceeds of the Greater Sunrise deposits in a zone of cooperation.

However, this treaty became void in 2002 upon the creation of the new independent country of Timor-Leste, which gained the right to renegotiate the boundary as the new sovereign.

In 2006 negotiations between Australia and Timor-Leste created the Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) treaty. Within this treaty Timor-Leste agreed to a clause that put a 50 year hold on negotiating a permanent maritime border, and to maintain the equal share of the revenues from the Greater Sunrise oil and gas deposits that was established between Australia and Indonesia.

The reason that the issue is now before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague is that Timor-Leste asserts that the CMATS treaty should be deemed invalid due to an Australian bugging operation on the Timor-Leste cabinet. In 2004, while pretending to be aid workers conducting renovations, Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) agents placed listening devices into the walls of a government office where the cabinet met. The information gathered from this operation gave the Australian government a significant upper hand in the negotiations that created the treaty.

Alongside this, Timor-Leste's challenge to the treaty is also driven by economic concerns. According to the IMF's calculations, Timor-Leste has a GDP per capita of just $5,628 at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). It is an underdeveloped country, with 41 percent of its population below the poverty line, and only half of the country's houses having electricity.

The country remains highly oil dependent, with present oil revenues providing approximately 95 percent of the state budget. While the country's Petroleum Fund has been used responsibly in being directed toward essential capacity building blocks, halving the infant and child mortality rates, and making significant gains in educational outcomes, based on current estimates it will be depleted by 2025. This makes obtaining new sources of revenue essential for the state's survival.

It is here the Australian government seems to be acting in a narrowly self-interested manner, not considering how a more economically sustainable Timor-Leste would be helpful to regional stability.

Although Canberra was instrumental in its creation in 2002, the new Timor-Leste state seems to have created a headache for the Australian government. A brutally realist foreign policy toward a large state like Indonesia doesn't carry the same unsavory public perception as it does when directed toward a small impoverished state like Timor-Leste. Australia's actions toward the country look and feel nasty to the general public.

Potentially Australia may not see oil and gas revenues as being a solution to Timor-Leste's economic and social problems, yet at present there seems to be little other source of revenue for the state. A "tough love" approach to weaning the country off resource dependency may just be a little too tough.

Source: http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/how-australia-and-timor-leste-ended-up-at-the-hague-in-arbitration/

Has Australia really changed its stance on a maritime border with Timor-Leste?

Mark Skulley - August 28, 2016

Australia has injected last-minute intrigue into the opening of compulsory conciliation proceedings over the unsettled maritime border with Timor-Leste.

The utterances came – more or less out of the blue – ahead of hearings which are due to start in The Hague on Monday evening (AEST).

To recap, Timor has triggered compulsory conciliation under the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in an attempt to settle the maritime boundary between the two countries and claim a bigger share the large oil and gas deposits.

The process is the first such conciliation commission. The result is not binding but the recommendations carry moral force in being made in a report to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Timor can't take its case to the International Court of Justice under because, in 2002, Australia withdrew from the treaty clause that provides for compulsory dispute resolution shortly before Timor-Leste's independence. It argues that international law supports the maritime boundary being on the median line between Timor and Australia.

Australia has argued that the 2006 Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea Treaty (CMATS) put a 50-year hold on negotiating a permanent maritime border. But Timor has argued that Australia did not negotiate CMATS in good faith because our spooks allegedly bugged the Timorese government offices in 2004.

Until this weekend, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop has argued that Australia negotiated CMATS in good faith and remains committed to it.

Bishop has argued that the Timor Sea treaties, including CMATS, have allowed oil and gas reserves to be developed for the benefit of Timor and Australia and are "entirely consistent with international law."

That's the summary. But Australia has been a strong supporter of arguments mounted by the US and others that China should respect the ruling in favour of The Philippines on the South China Sea.

This has raised the question of why – if Australia is such a strong supporter of the international law of the sea – why not submit to arbitration on the maritime boundary with Timor-Leste?

This weekend, The Australian's Southeast Asia correspondent, Amanda Hodge, quoted Bishop as insisting that Australia's position was full consent with its position in The Philippines arbitration case.

"In both situations we emphasise the importance of the rule of law and the willingness resolve disputes peacefully," Bishop said, adding that Australia considered "the decision of the upcoming conciliation binding on both sides."

A story about the Hague hearing for the ABC Online by Europe correspondent Steve Cannane included the following statement by Bishop: "As with the ruling in the Philippines arbitration case, we consider the decision of the upcoming compulsory conciliation binding on both sides."

Meanwhile, the Australian Embassy in Dili issued a statement last week about the Hague proceedings. "In this opening session, both Australia and Timor-Leste will present a statement," the Embassy said. "Australia's statement will outline Australia's view of the Timor Sea dispute and how it might be resolved."

These comments have brought speculation per whether Timor is close to a "win" on the maritime boundary, but it that true?

I interviewed the Prime Minster of Timor-Leste, Dr Rui Maria de Araujo, in Dili in April. Prime Minister Araujo said Timor-Leste was "very appreciative" of Australia participating in the conciliation, even though the "first point of disagreement" was that Australia had indicated it would be challenging the jurisdiction of the conciliation commission.

He said Australia had already indicated it would argue the 2006 Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea Treaty (CMATS) deferred establishment of a permanent maritime boundary for 50 years.

"The way it is framed is that Australia is claiming that because of the agreement that we had, CMATS, the compulsory conciliation doesn't have jurisdiction on that," Araujo said.

"So the commission of conciliators will have to go through the arguments from Australia, and also the arguments for Timor-Leste, and make a decision."

But has the position of the Turnbull government really changed between April and August? The Timorese are skeptical, given their experience of the last 40 years or so.

They are wondering why Bishop refers to the outcome of the conciliation commission being binding from Australia's point of view? Is Australia confident of winning the jurisdictional argument and then running the line that settles things for 50 years?

The opening arguments to the conciliation commission will be broadcast live on the Permanent Court of Arbitration website https://pca-cpa.org/en/news/timor-leste-australia/

Source: https://markskulley.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/has-australia-really-changed-its-stance-on-a-maritime-border-with-timor-leste/

East Timor: turning a blind eye to inconvenient truth

Sydney Morning Herald - August 11, 2016

Lindsay Murdoch – Try to picture this: almost every man, women and child forced from their homes, often at gunpoint, usually because of the sheer terror of staying.

Entire towns and villages turned into wastelands. Everything of value stolen and loaded onto trucks by the military, police or their anointed thugs.

The destruction of East Timor and the brutality inflicted on its people in 1999 after they dared reject Indonesia's rule was far greater than anybody could imagine.

"We drive in silence through the mass destruction, past street after street of smouldering ruin," I wrote with tears in my eyes on September 10 that year, after I had scrambled onto a RAAF Hercules aircraft, the last evacuation from the capital Dili.

"There are a few looters and thugs carrying pistols who walk with the arrogant swagger of the victor," I wrote.

"But basically, Dili is empty. In five days, 70,000 people have gone. The barefooted teenagers with fresh fish tied to their poles are gone. The clapped-out taxis, the naked children playing on the debris-strewn beachfront, the old people hawking Portuguese coins who used to bother us at the hotel, the people who used to sit in the gutter each morning reading the newspaper... they are all gone."

United Nations investigators eventually gathered evidence that 1400 people had been killed and 70 per cent of buildings destroyed across the half-island territory in what they declared were crimes against humanity.

And UN indictments and documents named the man ultimately responsible: General Wiranto, then commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces.

Under the international law doctrine of superior responsibility, commanders are obliged to take all reasonable measures to prevent crimes from occurring and/or to punish those who perpetrate such crimes.

Commanders who fail to take such measures are criminally responsible for those crimes. But Wiranto has never been brought to account.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo last month appointed him to the powerful position of Co-ordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs. This week, Justice Minister Michael Keenan and Attorney-General George Brandis caught up with him at a conference in Bali, as if none of the atrocities had occurred and there is no such thing as the UN indictment.

Mr Keenan said he was not going to run a commentary on his ministerial colleagues in other countries. "I don't think that's particularly helpful," he said.

The fledging government that was formed in East Timor after the Indonesians left the territory never forwarded Wiranto's indictment to Interpol, meaning he was never put at risk of arrest while travelling abroad.

East Timor's leaders, Xanana Gusmao and Jose Ramos-Horta, apparently took the realistic view that they couldn't risk antagonising their giant neighbour, where anger has simmered for years over losing the UN-sponsored independence vote.

Indonesia sent six warships uninvited to the waters off Dili when East Timor celebrated its independence on May 20, 2002, highlighting the potential fragility of the hard-won freedom of what was then the world's newest nation.

Successive governments in Canberra have largely remained silent on the atrocities committed just over an hour's flight from Australia's shores, despite a large volume of evidence against the Indonesian military and its proxy militia forces.

But if Australia wants to have a reasonably healthy relationship with Indonesia, unpleasant matters need to be dealt with.

In 2001, a UN report by former Australian diplomat James Dunn said a campaign of destruction, deportations and killings were planned by a group of Indonesian military officers two months before the independence vote.

The report said it was inconceivable that Wiranto was unaware of the campaign, which saw more than 250,000 East Timorese transported to West Timor within a fortnight of the vote, a move that required vast military resources.

Indonesia's Truth and Friendship Commission concluded after a two-year investigation that the Indonesian military, police and government must all share the blame for gross human rights violations carried out by militias and targeting East Timorese independence supporters.

In 2008, former foreign minister Alexander Downer admitted knowing the Indonesian army was behind outbreaks of violence in East Timor but said he and former prime minister John Howard tried their hardest to prevent it.

Wiranto has challenged his accusers to prove the allegations against him. "I'm hoping that the issues regarding my involvement in cases of human rights violations can be proven in detail," he said in an Antara report. "I will then offer my explanation to each accusation."

However if Wiranto was to travel to East Timor he would find people in every village and town who suffered because of the brutality of Indonesian forces under his command during those tumultuous months of 1999.

I would like to ask the co-ordinating minister about the Indonesian soldiers who murdered my Dutch colleague, Sander Thoenes, and cut off his ear as some sort of bizarre souvenir.

What about brave priests who were slain, the women who were raped and the families who were herded like cattle into concentration camps in West Timor, run by pro-Indonesian militia leaders making vile threats to kill anybody who challenged them.

Why have those with the ultimate responsibility for the slaying of 1400 Timorese never been brought to justice?

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/east-timor-turning-a-blind-eye-to-inconvenient-truth-20160811-gqpari.html

Australia's complicity in the East Timor atrocities is ongoing

Independent Australia - August 10, 2016

On the eve of Bali's terror summit, Justice Minister Michael Keenan said he'd "welcome" convicted war criminal Wiranto to Australia effectively closing the Turnbull Government's book on the East Timor genocide. Dr Adam Henry reports.

Let us imagine a scenario. A foreign occupying power wages an illegal war of aggression against Australia with the complicity of the UK and U.S. Over a period of 25 years of this occupation, the population of Geelong (187,000 approximately) dies because they were killed, starved, tortured, enslaved etc. This would be difficult for other Australians (at all levels of society) to ignore. It would surely be considered an outrage if the occupying power excused these excesses on the basis that Geelong was a "special case" and made up less than one per cent of the overall Australian population.

Let us imagine another scenario, what if the population of Brisbane (2,308,720 approximately) suffered this fate at the hands of our imaginary invaders – this would be just under 10 per cent of the entire Australian population. This would be viewed by other Australians (and many others internationally) as a grave crime against humanity, perhaps even genocide, and those responsible considered war criminals to be tried and sentenced for what they had done.

Now let us consider a scenario that actually occurred. With the diplomatic connivance of Australia, Britain and the U.S. (and others) they accept, and despite possessing the knowledge it will occur, do nothing to ever seriously discourage an illegal Indonesian invasion of East Timor. As the killings and atrocities begin they have already decided that their diplomatic relationship with the Suharto regime is far more important than the people of East Timor. These nations do more than "turn away" from events in East Timor, they in fact continue to support Suharto's regime diplomatically and economically as it blatantly violates international law.

By late 1976, there are even fears from certain U.S. quarters that the Indonesian invasion (in the face of nationalist resistance) is stalling, indeed it might even fail. The U.S. and UK re-supply the Indonesian army with vital military equipment which prevent this outcome and from 1977 the Indonesians renew its counter insurgency war of occupation with the greatest vigour.

The Australians continue to supply military equipment on the basis it should not be used in East Timor, but maintains the primacy of its relationship with Jakarta. By 1978, when the killing and famine are piling up the bodies in East Timor, Australia grants de facto recognition of the Indonesian occupation – the main attraction is the possibility to negotiate with Jakarta over rich oil and gas supplies, that is, East Timor's oil and gas. By 1979, Australia grants de jure recognition of the occupation, official negotiations over the Timor Gap can begin.

From a population that might have been between 600,000 to 800,000 at the time of the invasion, as many as 80,000 East Timorese (quite conceivably much higher) are dead as a direct or indirect result of the invasion and occupation by 1980. Estimates vary, but perhaps as many as 200,000 by the end of 1999.

There are many crimes to which we can turn our attention within the international system, in fact sad to say, we are truly spoilt for choices. But in my own view (and experiences) only some crimes illicit the types of "mainstream" outrage that ultimately lead to consequences for the guilty, moral condemnation and diplomatic action.

In the case of Timor Liste (formerly East Timor), there is no shortage of materials with which to examine the catastrophe of East Timor, and furthermore, the moral bankruptcy of Australian foreign policy. With the briefest intermission in 1999, the suffering of East Timorese has been little more than a hindrance to ongoing Australian adherence (at any cost) to the relationship with Jakarta.

Furthermore, we have seemingly learnt nothing from these experiences, not wisdom, not caution, not even the slightest official pangs of contrition. Some like Gareth Evans or Richard Woolcott happily (and without any sense of the obvious irony) give speeches discussing ethics, human rights and diplomacy. It is very difficult to see how such post career activities relate to their own involvement with Indonesia and East Timor though.

We can also gauge how little the human rights history of East Timor matters from the manner that successive Australian governments have clung with death like grip to the oil and gas concessions gained from the 1989 Timor Gap Treaty (memorably signed by Gareth Evans and Ali Alatas). We can also understand this by the fact that the suffering of West Papuans under corrupt Indonesian military rule makes not a ripple on the surface of Australian diplomacy or public human rights concerns.

Bluntly, if the Russians (or some other official enemy) had been responsible for what occurred in East Timor, or for that matter connected in any way for what is occurring in West Papua by supporting the parties responsible, or operating the massive Freeport mine, there would be (in my opinion) outrage, dare I say, concepts such as crimes against humanity, war criminality or even genocide might even cross the lips of some Australian, British or American politicians and diplomats.

Maybe even the notion of an international criminal court might be mooted to hold accountable all those directly and indirectly responsible for this human tragedy, perhaps even the much toted notion of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) might enter the debate, but this does not occur – it will never occur. We should pause to consider this, in both cases the power to do something about what was happening (and is happening) was (and is in) the tool box of Australian diplomacy, but for very base reasons we choose to do nothing.

The reality is that not only do we not wish to consider the implications of issues like East Timor, Australia (and others) are more than happy to have the entire episode forgotten. Despite archival evidence, despite the reams of information highlighting responsibility and complicity, despite the fact that without Australian, British and American support Indonesia could not have invaded (or maintained anything resembling a long term occupation), there is an air of irritable annoyance from many Australian elites (particularly those who were directly involved diplomatically or politically), that anyone should want to continue digging in this field.

In late 2015, I applied to the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Studies, University of London to become a Visiting Fellow in Human Rights. After a lengthy process, I was invited to take up the position in later 2016. My project is to systematically examine the British archival records on East Timor, what do the British records contain about Australian diplomacy, what do they reveal about contacts with the Australian Embassy, and what do they say about various atrocities?

This is a non-paid position, and of course it is never cheap to conduct overseas research. However, if you feel like me and believe that this is a topic worth researching, and the documentary record worth highlighting, please take a look at my modest crowd funding campaign to help me get there and do this archival work.

The evidence regarding the human rights abuses and atrocities in East Timor is clear, the names of perpetrators, their actions, and the foreign powers who enabled them, documented. Crimes against humanity in East Timor satisfy every criterion under international law for prosecution, but the likelihood of justice is distant. Not because of a lack of evidence, testimony, archival documents, witnesses, or that it is difficult to allocate the legalities of blame for what occurred.

The main reason is twofold. The first is because Australia, Britain and the United States are obviously complicit in the crime. They all chose the goal of diplomatic relations with the perpetrators (the Indonesian military and Suharto) over the East Timorese and international law.

The second is that to maintain their diplomatic relations with Indonesia in the present, there can be no mention of issues such as West Papua, or the unpunished crimes against humanity committed by the Indonesian security forces in East Timor. These facts alone terminally reduce the possibilities that any war criminals will ever be tried by an internationally sanctioned and supported court.

But this does not mean that crimes did not occur, or that researchers should cease compiling the archival records documenting these events and those involved. The wheels of justice can turn very slowly, but they do turn, therefore efforts at documenting such records can help push them just that little bit further.

[Dr Adam Hughes Henry is a visiting fellow at the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. You can read more from Adam Henry on his website. Help Dr Henry find the full truth about this dark chapter in history by contributing to his crowd funding campaign here.]

Source: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australias-complicity-in-the-east-timor-atrocities-is-ongoing,9337