Democratic struggle

Bali Police attack Trisakti protesters

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Denpasar -- A violent clash erupted here on Monday afternoon after police officers attacked 60 student protesters from Udayana University who were staging a peaceful protest to commemorate the Trisakti shooting incident in 1998.

The clash took place at 1:15 p.m. local time at the square in front of the provincial legislative building.

The students were just about to lower the Indonesian flag from the square's flag pole and put it at half-staff -- to honor the fallen Trisakti students -- when dozens of police officers appeared and began beating the students with batons and rattansticks. "If they want to be reform heroes too, let's give them a chance," one police officer yelled angrily.

Overpowered and outnumbered, the students scattered. At least three students fell to the ground after being repeatedly struck and kicked by the officers.

One student, field coordinator Visa Ramadhani, fell to the ground after an officer struck him in the stomach with a stick. Visa slumped into a fetal position and lay motionless for quite some time. Yet he refused to be moved, saying he had to remain with his fellow protesters.

Despite their field coordinator being incapacitated, other student leaders managed to gather the protesters back. And when the protesters attempted to take revenge against the officers, the student leaders calmed them down.

"Let's not forget that we are here for a peaceful and nonviolent gathering. And let's not forget those students, the Trisakti students, our fallen comrades, who gave their lives for the noble cause of freedom, democracy and a nonviolent struggle," one student leader said.

After presenting their demands that the government seriously investigate the Trisakti incident and take the necessary legal steps to bring those responsible for the shootings to court, the protesters peacefully left the square.

The police's reaction was ironic since some 30 minutes earlier, when the same group of students peacefully demonstrated in front of the Bali Police Headquarters, a high-ranking police officer praised the students for their peaceful conduct. "It is their right to express their opinion through a demonstration, and I am glad that they can do that in a peaceful way," Sr. Comr. Chamgani said.

Previously, the students also protested in front of the Udayana Military Command.

Activists stage anti-violence protest

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Jakarta -- In a move to commemorate the bloody May riot in 1998, about 200 activists and students staged an anti-violence demonstration in Blok M, South Jakarta on Sunday.

The group staged street theater performances and orations, waved banners and posters and sung songs that urged people not to resort to violence in dealing with various matters.

The activists also asked for a transparent investigation into human rights violations allegedly committed during the bloody Semanggi incidents on November 13, 1998 and September 23-24, 1999.

The first Semanggi incident broke out during a mass protest on November 13, 1998 demanding former president B.J. Habibie resign during the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Special Session.Soldiers opened fire on protesters and journalists in front of Atmajaya Catholic University on Jl. Jend. Sudirman in Central Jakarta. At least 16 people were killed and hundreds were injured.

The second Semanggi incident broke out in front of MPRbuilding on September 23-24, 1999, when students once again hit the street and staged a mass protest rejecting the deliberation of the State Security bill. Nine people were killed and dozens of others injured in the melee.

East Timor

A president and his 'Ruby Blade'

New Zealand Herald - May 18, 2002

Audrey Young -- At midnight on Sunday in East Timor, a greying former fighter with the rhythmic name of the newest sovereign nation of the century, East Timor.

In the shadows, sharing his emotional moment, will be his younger Australian wife, 36-year-old Kirsty Sword, pregnant with their second child.

Their union in some respects is a fairytale ending to what has been a deadly journey to independence. More than 200,000 are estimated to have been killed in the strife since Indonesia invaded the Catholic territory in 1975. Back then, it was largely seen as just another worthy cause of the rowdy left and do-gooder church groups.

But by the Apec Auckland conference in 1999, the tiny country had captured the conscience and hearts of the world as murdering militia let rip after the overwhelming independence vote run by the United Nations.

Xanana (the X is pronounced as a soft J) Gusmao was not a widely known figure outside East Timor until 1992. That was when he was captured in Dili as the leader of the guerilla army Falintil that he had led for five years.

His legendary status soon emerged to the outside world: a poet, artist, thinker and military strategist whose charisma, according to New Zealand friend Dr Andrew Ladley, still causes people to melt into tears when they meet him.

Another friend, Corrections Minister Matt Robson, recalls meeting elderly women in the mountain villages of East Timor on independence referendum day and saying his name over and over, like an incantation, stroking his jacket with a picture of him while they did so.

Gusmao, now aged 55, and Sword met and fell in love while he was imprisoned in Jakarta.

She had been a fresh-faced former ballet student from Melbourne whose studies of Indonesian language took her to East Timor in 1991 as an interpreter and researcher for a Yorkshire Television documentary.

She had been in East Timor shortly before the bloody Santa Cruz cemetery massacre which claimed more than 200 victims. News coverage of the massacre by Indonesian soldiers, secretly captured on film, and a new documentary by campaigning journalist John Pilger thrust the sleeping issue of East Timor back into the light where it remained through the 90s.

The killings particularly shocked Kirsty Sword as she had just been there. It jolted her into action.

She went to Jakarta ostensibly to teach English but became an undercover runner of information and communications equipment in Jakarta for the East Timor resistance movement.

Speaking on the ABC's documentary series Australian Story screened last February, Nobel peace laureate and East Timor's Foreign Minister in waiting, Jose Ramos Horta, described Sword as "a fantastic undercover agent".

"She did what was a dangerous job, smuggling information to Xanana in Cipinang in prison, smuggling out information, passing on information to me, passing on money to Xanana or money to the students ... She was indispensable, reliable, discreet, humble. That woman is perfect ... she would have been murdered if she had been caught."

He had trusted her to raise the plan of a commando raid to spring Gusmao -- a plan vetoed by the prisoner himself.

Clandestine operators gave themselves codenames. Sword's was "Ruby Blade" -- Blade for Sword and Ruby because "it sounded kind of Agatha Christie".

Pat Walsh of the East Timor Reconciliation Commission knew her well. "She sort of had a Mona Lisa deceptive thing about her," he told the ABC.

"She looked completely innocent, but she was the sort of person who could do that in her own time and then go for a swim in the pool at the Australian Embassy on the weekend. They had no inkling that she was a priceless repository of intelligence that any government would give their eye-tooth for, because she was working on the issue that was of most concern to Australia."

Sword taught Gusmao English by letter. Then she gave him a cellphone. "My hunch is that it's the mobile phone that actually led to the blossoming romance," said Walsh.

Sword worked in Jakarta for four years. After Gusmao was moved from prison to house arrest she became his assistant until his release in October 1999, shortly after the August 30 referendum for independence.

Gusmao divorced his first wife, Emilia Baptista, who had lived in Melbourne since 1990 with their two children, Nito and Zeni.

He married Kirsty Sword in July 2000, and their first baby boy, Alexandre, was born in late August.

Three days after marrying, the pair travelled to New Zealand on an official visit. The closest they got to a honeymoon, apparently, was a relaxing dip in hot pools at Rotorua.

Gusmao used the visit to renew friendships with New Zealanders who had kept the faith when most of the world had forgotten East timor.

Among them was associate foreign minister Matt Robson who, like Foreign Minister Phil Goff, became independence activists after Indonesia's invasion.

Robson had met Gusmao earlier but recalls with a smile meeting Sword for the first time when she was working for Gusmao under house arrest. He had no inkling of romance.

But back in New Zealand, showing two women colleagues a photograph of the trio, they instantly picked a sparkle in their eyes and what it meant.

But his first meeting with Gusmao, in Cipinang prison in 1997, was the more memorable for Robson. "I would say it is probably the most moving experience I've had in terms of meeting a leader."

He realised that Gusmao's stature had endured in prison when the prison governor offered up his grand office for the pair to meet in private and would respectfully check every so often to see that Gusmao was okay.

Gusmao had no airs and graces. "That's his character. He took my hand and held it and he said, 'I am very humbled that you have come to see me'. "I said to him, 'you're humbled that I've come to see you?"'

Robson describes Gusmao as "truly great". "He doesn't have to prove his selflessness. He doesn't have to prove his devotion to his people. He doesn't have to prove that he puts his country above himself. And he didn't need a PR machine to manufacture that."

Robson saw the invasion of East Timor after the Portuguese colonialists left as manifestation of American foreign policy which "was to allow friendly regimes to either suppress their own labour movements and people's movements and/or take other territory".

"It's a dreadful and shameful period of history. It was really the United States and Britain, the big two, saying to Indonesia, 'We will give you the green light'."

Robson acknowledged the role of people like Auckland activist Maire Leadbetter in trying to keep the East Timor issue alive.

But he said the 1984-1990 Labour Government "went soft". New Zealand went out of its way in the 1980s and 1990s to keep East Timor off the international agenda. "They wanted a better relationship with Indonesia so they just turned a blind eye to it."

Robson left Labour in 1988 and is now associate foreign affairs minister, responsible for aid in countries like East Timor.

Goff was an active member of the Committee for an Independent East Timor. "It seemed not only an horrendous injustice, but it seemed that Western countries were bereft of any principle in terms of criticising the Indonesian actions and standing up for the rights of a small nation," he said.

As the chairman of Labour Youth, he took the issue to party conferences and got resolutions passed supporting the East Timorese.

In Opposition in the 1990s, Goff became active again after the Santa Cruz cemetery massacre -- in which New Zealander Kamal Bamadajh was killed -- and promoted a majority parliamentary petition. By 1996 attitudes were changing in Government echelons. The National Government had dropped its position that the Indonesian control of East Timor was "irreversible".

Both Goff and Robson went to East Timor as United Nations' observers for the August 1999 referendum along with Act's Ken Shirley, independent Rana Waitai and National's Roger Maxwell.

Shirley describes voting day as "one of the most stunning, moving days of my life".

The MPs had taken eight hours the day before to drive 100km on rough mountainous roads to a place called Ainaro. There they were told local militia had just acquired a truck of M16 automatic guns and planned to make an example of them.

Shirley spent a nervous night in a rundown abandoned hotel, rooming with Robson, who had smashed an empty beer bottle to keep by his bedside as a weapon.

They were up at 5am and were greeted with a stunning sight. "There was just a seething mass of humanity, said Shirley. "You'd look up the mountains and every mountain track was just full of streams of people.

"It was like a flock of sheep coming off the high country. They were all dressed up in their best clothes. The men wore Portuguese hats.

"The old folks and young kids were sitting on donkeys, just an endless stream as far as the eye could see in every direction. They were determined to come out and vote."

The violence in the days after the vote sickened Shirley. "I felt that we let them down. They were promised they were going to be safe by the United Nations. But there was no way they could be safe."

Goff said: "We talked [before the vote] to one of the Indonesians heading up an unlikely group called the reconciliation and friendship groups, and I remember his words.

"He said, 'If these ungrateful people decide to vote for independence, we will take everything we can carry, and what we cannot carry we will destroy'.

"We thought 'what an arsehole'. But he was probably the only Indonesian who told us the truth because that's precisely what happened."

A quarter of the estimated 850,000 population fled across the border to Indonesian-controlled West Timor and 50,000 are still there. Gusmao, who was visited by Nelson Mandela in prison, has espoused the South African's philosophy of forgiveness and reconciliation. Some want to concentrate on the now, not the past.

The problems ahead for East Timor are daunting, everyone acknowledges. The United Nations by most accounts has acquitted itself well in guiding the territory from ruin to the edge of statehood. The East Timorese are grateful, but not grovellingly so.

Gusmao tried to explain his thinking in a "honeymoon" speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. After thanking New Zealand for its role in independence, he said in his heavy Portuguese accent:

"The people of East Timor are determined to take an active part in this process instead of mere bystanders and recipients of international solidarity and assistance.

"The August 30, 1999 final act of self-determination in East Timor was a magnificent display of democratic consciousness.

"It was a long and difficult struggle for independence and democracy with dreams the people knew could only be realised through independence: to freely live and express our identity and culture, to be active participants in the process of our development as a nation and as human beings, to guarantee our rights as citizens and our collective rights as a society."

Annan urges Jakarta to press ahead with Timor rights trial

Agence France Presse - May 18, 2002

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called on Indonesia to pursue the trials of officers accused of gross human rights abuses in East Timor effectively and credibly.

"I think Indonesia should press ahead with the trial of the accused in an effective and credible manner and we're prepared to work with them," Annan told a press conference after meeting Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda.

"We have also discussed to what extent we can cooperate together to ensure that justice is done," Annan said during a stop in Jakarta on his way to East Timor's independence celebrations Sunday.

Jakarta has set up a human rights court to try 18 people accused of involvement in the violence that swept East Timor when it voted in 1999 to separate from Indonesia.

But human rights groups have slammed the court procedures as ineffective.

Five middle-ranking officers, a police general and a former East Timor governor are currently on trial under the ad hoc human rights court.

Annan, who last visited Indonesia in 2000, has in the past said the UN Security Council might decide to sanction its own inquiry into East Timor's rights abuses if the Indonesian response is unsatisfactory.

Annan said he and Wirayuda did not discuss a possible international tribunal. "I discussed what assistance we could bring and we intend to follow up this discussion in concrete and practical terms," the UN chief said.

Wirayuda on Friday said Annan, in a meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, had discussed possible UN technical assistance to help train judges and prosecutors to "strengthen" the human rights court.

The foreign minister also said the UN planned to send observers to monitor the trials.

Indonesia, which invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975, consented to a UN-organised ballot in August 1999 in which almost 80 percent of East Timorese voted for independence.

The vote sparked an orgy of violence and destruction by pro- Jakarta militias and some elements of the Indonesian army. The UN took over government of the territory in October 1999.

On Sunday evening Annan will hand over the UN's authority to East Timor's parliament speaker and lower the world body's flag after its unique 32-month exercise in nation-building.

Human Rights Watch, in a statement Friday, said there was "widespread scepticism that trials underway in Jakarta before the Indonesian ad hoc tribunals will bring accountability".

The New York-based group called on the UN and donor governments to increase pressure on Indonesia either to effectively prosecute all those responsible, "or turn them over to bodies that will, beginning with those already indicted in Dili".

Jakarta is refusing to extradite suspects to face trial at a special court in the East Timorese capital.

Annan downplays international tribunal

Associated Press - May 18, 2002

Jakarta -- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Saturday downplayed the likelihood that an international tribunal would be established to try those responsible for violence that swept East Timor after it voted for independence in 1999.

"At this stage we have not discussed an international tribunal [for those responsible]," said Annan, who is on a two-day stopover to Indonesia en route to independence celebrations in East Timor on Sunday night.

Up to 1,000 people were killed in a rampage by sections of the Indonesian military and their militia proxies after East Timor voted overwhelmingly to end 24 years of Jakarta rule in a UN- sponsored ballot.

Local and foreign rights groups have demanded an international war crimes court similar to those for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia be established to try the suspects.

However, Annan said the Indonesian government should proceed with its own trial of 18 suspects -- among them several high-ranking military and government officials -- in a specially convened human rights court in Jakarta.

Critics have doubted the defendants -- many of whom have influential civilian and military backers -- will face justice in Indonesia's notoriously corrupt legal system.

"There is widespread skepticism that trials underway in Jakarta before Indonesian ad hoc tribunals will bring accountability," said New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

The United Nations ) has been administering East Timor since shortly after 1999's independence vote. The world body will officially hand over its authority to an East Timorese government on midnight Sunday.

East Timor's independence brings bitter pain for veterans

Jakarta Post - May 18, 2002

Muhammad Nafik, Jakarta -- East Timor's secession in 1999 has still left bitter pains for many Indonesians, particularly veterans who fought for its integration with Indonesia 27 years ago.

They lashed out at President Megawati Soekarnoputri's decision to visit East Timor to attend the former Indonesian province's independence declaration at midnight on Sunday.

In the eastern suburb of Jakarta, veterans began hoisting Indonesian flags to half-mast in front of their modest homes on Friday to mourn soldiers killed in the military exchanges over East Timor's integration in 1975.

The red-and-white flags would only be taken down when Megawati flew home from the world's newest nation, they said.

The protesting veterans comprised 400 families housed in the Seroja (lotus) military residential complex in Bekasi, some 30 kilometers east of Jakarta.

Seroja was the codename for Indonesia's 1975 military operation to take over East Timor after it had been abandoned by its former colony, Portugal. The operation resulted in the death of thousands of Indonesian troops, most of whom were still young.

Most residents in the low-cost housing complex still bore the scars from gunshot wounds and surgery. Some could be seen with amputated limbs, and several others had lost one or two eyes, or their hearing.

To step up pressure on Megawati to cancel the trip, more than 200 war widows and veterans from the complex, including those rendered handicapped after the occupation, staged a peaceful, but noisy rally outside Merdeka Palace in Central Jakarta on Friday.

Megawati's visit coincides with the country's National Awakening Day celebration, which falls on Monday, and the veterans said Megawati should lead the commemorations at home instead of celebrating with East Timorese on Sunday.

"We feel betrayed and forgotten by the government," retired Sgt. Maj. Soekoro, who chairs a veterans' association based in the Seroja housing complex and who also led Friday's rally, told The Jakarta Post.

The 45-year-old Soekoro lost one of his lungs after having been shot in the right side of his chest during a guerrilla ambush in East Timor in 1978, three years after his arrival there.

He demanded that the government move the graves of Indonesian troops killed in East Timor to their respective hometowns, so their families could more conveniently visit them regularly.

The veterans also asked the government to pay serious attention to the improvement of their welfare.

"Megawati should see us first before she visits East Timor," former Chief Corp. I Made Nirsan, who was among soldiers deployed to East Timor in 1976, said. His left leg was amputated after nine months of service and he was sent home.

In an apparent attempt to calm hostility at her trip, Megawati will lay a wreath at the National Heroes' cemetery in Dili, capital of East Timor. In response, Soekoro said: "It will be merely a token visit by Megawati. If she really cares about us, she should cancel the trip".

Anger is still strong against then president B.J. Habibie, who decided to allow East Timorese to vote for independence on August 30, 1999, in a UN-brokered ballot.

As a result of the vote, vengeful troops and pro-Jakarta militias went on the rampage, killing hundreds and destroying much of the territory, before retreating to the Indonesian western half of the island, East Nusa Tenggara.

Asmuransyah, a former chief corporal, said he and other veterans were still unable to accept East Timor's breakaway from Indonesia. "The state has contributed a lot to East Timor. We should have defended it anyhow," he said.

Another victim, Ellen Rantung, a widow whose husband was killed on November 19, 1977 but did not know where his corpse was buried, claimed that she and other members of veteran's families had received no compensation after the campaign that killed more than 3,000 soldiers.

Australia, East Timor reach agreement on oil and gas fields

Melbourne Age - May 18, 2002

Mark Forbes -- Australia and East Timor have reached agreement over exploiting the rich oil and gas fields in the Timor Gap, with Prime Minister John Howard to sign a treaty at independence celebrations in Dili next week.

The deal should allow to proceed projects worth billions of dollars, including gas processing in Darwin, and give East Timor its only substantial revenue source to rebuild the world's youngest nation.

Attempts to guarantee more revenue for East Timor had threatened to scuttle the treaty and led Australia to withdraw recognition of international seabed law.

The final deal grants East Timor 90 per cent of revenues from a joint development zone between Australia and East Timor.

Mr Howard said the treaty was "an important demonstration of the good faith between Australia and the newly emerging country of East Timor". "We have been very fair, extremely fair. We have made concessions," he said.

East Timor wins immediate access to a desperately needed income stream of $7 billion to $9 billion over 20 years. If all the gas and oil is piped into Darwin, Australia stands to gain industrial spin-offs worth $50 billion over the same period.

Recent East Timorese legal advice claimed that if seabed boundaries were drawn according to accepted international maritime law, East Timor should own outright most of the known natural gas and oil deposits within the joint development zone and much of the large neighbouring deposits in Australia's exclusive zone. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he was delighted with deal.

26 years on, old flag rises to meet Timor's new dawn

Sydney Morning Herald - May 18, 2002

Jill Jolliffe -- When Fretilin leaders first declared East Timor independent in Dili in 1975 few took much notice of Jose Alexandre Gusmao. But at midnight tomorrow the man who is now known simply as Xanana to many will become president of the new nation.

East Timor's first cabinet was sworn in on December 1, 1975, just six days before Indonesia invaded.

At the time Xanana Gusmao was a local soccer champion and a little-known member of the central committee of the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, Fretilin. Within days he would join the front-line fighters facing advancing Indonesian troops.

When the flag of the Democratic Republic of East Timor is raised in Dili at midnight tomorrow some of us will remember November 28, 1975, when it was hoisted for the first time.

Back then we were a tiny crowd. The world seemed to be against the East Timorese dream of independence, and the United Nations did not want to hear.

Dili was a charming, Portuguese colonial backwater. Today it is a chaotic Asian city bloated with refugees, prone to urban violence and teeming with fast-talking UN officials.

Then only three foreign journalists were present: me, a novice freelancer for Reuters; Michael Richardson, South-East Asian correspondent for The Age, and Roger East, a newly arrived freelancer in Dili to follow up the story of the Balibo five, the television newsmen killed during an Indonesian border attack in October that year.

The circumstances of the 1975 declaration were unexpected. The civil war that had erupted with a coup against Portuguese power by the UDT party (Timorese Democratic Union) in August, 1975, had ended with a Fretilin victory in late September. Crossing into Indonesian West Timor, defeated UDT troops became hostages of the Indonesians. The Portuguese fled.

In this power vacuum, Fretilin became an unwilling de facto administration -- one of the few anti-colonial movements in history to entreat the former colonial power to return.

The first Indonesian troops came over the border in September, then in ever increasing numbers. In early November Michael Richardson and I observed the Indonesian onslaught on the mountain garrison of Atabae, where Fretilin troops were holding out against terrible odds.

On the morning of November 28 we went to Dili's town square, where we saw several familiar faces. Among them was Mari Alkatiri, today chief minister in the UNTAET government, and Rogerio Lobato, then Fretilin defence commander. They said they were going to declare independence because Atabae, just 40 kilometres away, had fallen to the Indonesian Army that morning.

By declaring independence, Fretilin naively hoped to win recognition and force the UN to act. The flag that will be hoisted tomorrow night had been hastily designed by Natalino Leitao, a Fretilin militant soon to die while resisting the full-scale Indonesian invasion 10 days later.

When that flag is raised again tomorrow I will be thinking of Goinxet Bernadino Bonaparte Soares, my interpreter who became a friend. He was a passionate young nationalist with a radical afro hairstyle. He was with me at the border during my baptism of fire in September. From that time he was always by my side, talking excitedly about the new Timor and asking what I thought of its prospects of freedom.

When Natalino's flag unfurled, he embraced me excitedly, shouting: "We're independent." Richardson's camera recorded my last glimpse of Goinxet, at Dili airport, as we evacuated five days before the Indonesian paratroopers landed. His face is that of a kid with ideas.

Roger East, the other journalist to witness that first brave little independence ceremony, opted to stay with the Timorese. Witnesses to his death days later testified that he had been dragged resisting to a firing squad on Dili wharf. Goinxet suffered the same fate, for the crime of being a journalist's translator.

Tomorrow many East Timorese will be thinking of their own Goinxets, and of how much suffering had to occur before someone finally listened to their story.

[Jill Jolliffe is the author of Cover-Up: the inside story of the Balibo Five.]

Brave new nation

Sydney Morning Herald - May 18, 2002

An air of optimism buoys East Timor as it prepares to celebrate nationhood. But there are dark clouds on the horizon, Tom Hyland and Lindsay Murdoch report.

The stage is set on the vast dusty plain at Tacitolu, a natural amphitheatre bounded by dry scrub-covered hills just west of Dili. Water pipes have been laid, power cables snake through the sand. Workers sweat in the sun building towers for speakers and lights. In the hills, charges are being set for a massive fireworks display.

Dili harbour is cluttered with supply ships. The Thais have provided their royal yacht to accommodate VIPs. Dignitaries from 80 countries are coming, among them Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan and John Howard. Megawati Sukarnoputri will have a special place of honour.

Our Lady of Fatima, or at least a statue of the Virgin Mary, has already arrived from Portugal and drawn thousands while carried in procession through villages and towns across the tiny territory. "From the North Pole to the South Pole, they are coming to see Our Lady of Fatima," one local said.

History will be made at Tacitolu at midnight on Sunday when Annan, the UN Secretary-General, hands government to President- elect Xanana Gusmao and declares East Timor independent. Five minutes later the UN flag will be lowered and the red, black, white and yellow flag of East Timor raised on a 20-tonne cement pole. After three centuries of Portuguese colonial neglect, 24 years of Indonesian occupation and 2 years of UN administration, a new nation will be born.

Up to 200,000 people -- perhaps a quarter of the population -- are expected to pack the site. There's a symmetry in the numbers: 200,000 people are believed to have died during Indonesian rule and about the same number were forced from their homes when the Indonesian army launched its scorched earth policy to punish the people for voting for independence on August 30, 1999. The setting is also apt: like so many places here, Tacitolu was once a killing field and a burial ground for the army's unknown victims.

There's an unreal atmosphere in Dili. The bars and cafes are packed with foreign activists, consultants, contractors and journalists. In the beer garden of the Turismo Hotel, where Indonesian intelligence agents once loitered, the foreigners sip imported beers while the Corrs play on the sound system.

But in the mountains west of Dili, there is hunger in the village of Pukelete where the only sign of the impending celebration is a tiny flag flying in the doorway of the village chief, Vasco Carvalho. His wife and eight children haven't eaten meat in a long time.

In a country where almost half the people survive on less than $A1 a day, Carvalho is often lucky to earn that much in a week from the beans and bananas he grows on the one-hectare farm he shares with an uncle. He would have to save every cent he earns for four years to spend one night in the floating hotel on Dili's foreshore where American GIs, who will not talk about their mission, munch on steaks and spare ribs and barramundi.

There is no health service in Pukelete. The nearest medical aid post is an eight-kilometre walk away, but there is no point in seeking help there. There is no doctor, no nurse, no medicine. A neighbour, just returned from more than two years in a West Timor refugee camp, lies at home, too sick to move. "He can't go to town to the hospital," says Carvalho, "so we're just waiting for him to die."

Carvalho's three-year-old son, Salvador dos Santos, clings to his side, crying, dirty, half-naked, and coughing constantly. Carvalho's house is only partly rebuilt after much of the village was destroyed by militia early in 1999. Some walls are made of palm and plastic sheeting. One side has no walls at all. His eight children share two cane beds in a dirt floor shack. There is no electricity or running water. "We poor people live like that," he says.

But Carvalho, 33, displays no self-pity. He speaks with dignity, pride and a restrained optimism. Maybe in the future he'll earn one or two dollars a week more. Materially, he says, he was better off in the Indonesian times, before 1999 when Jakarta's army withdrew, leaving death and ashes in its wake. Even so, he says, "now things are better, because we live by ourselves".

Villages like Pukelete and people like Carvalho have the most at stake as East Timor steps into the unknown. Three-quarters of the people live in rural areas and are the poorest in one of the world's poorest nations.

"Poverty is the biggest threat for creating internal dissent," warns a departing UN official. "The biggest issue for the new government has to be the economy and keeping the majority satisfied that their lives are going in the right direction. They have to see improvements in the way they live, after all they've gone through."

UNTAET, the UN administration here, is being hailed as an international model for similar operations. When the UN administrator, Sergio Vieira de Mello, arrived in November 1999 the country was in ruins, its people scattered in the mountains and refugee camps of West Timor. East Timor is being rebuilt from the ground up.

In a farewell address to the local Parliament, he spoke of the administration's achievements: an end to militia incursions along the West Timor border, new defence and police forces, massive reconstruction, functioning schools, improved farm production, new political institutions with newly elected leaders.

The dissident voices in the noisy democracy that is emerging here will have none of the UN's self-adulation. The veteran politician Mario Viegas Carrascalao, former governor under the Indonesians, leader of the Social Democratic Party and head of the unofficial opposition, snorts derisively at the UN, "a sacred cow, which no-one will criticise".

"Independence represents a victory for everybody, but it's a very dependent independence," he says. "It's been done too quickly and we're not ready for the day after. We are becoming a nation with our hand held out." His views may represent only a section of the old urban elite, but they resonate with voices from the other end of the political spectrum.

Avelino Coelho da Silva, founder of the far-left Socialist Party of Timor, affects the air of a latter-day Che Guevara. Texts by Marx and Lenin line the shelves of his Dili office. But he taps into rural discontent and the frustrated aspirations of urban youth.

The UN, he says, has done nothing but promote itself while "living off the misery of the East Timorese people". While farmers can't get rice to market, Dili eats imported Indonesian rice. "In UNTAET's economic order, foreigners consume and East Timorese are at the bottom of the heap."

While the dissidents long for the UN to go, the fear held by many, including the incoming foreign minister, Jose Ramos Horta, is that a self-satisfied world will do just that, thinking its work is done. His fear is that donor governments feel overstretched with new crises in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. Ramos Horta hopes the world's self-congratulations about its efforts here will force international donors to stay engaged.

"They know that while East Timor is labelled as a success story for everyone -- the UN, the East Timorese, the donors -- you can't rush to leave with so many matters unresolved." Those unresolved matters were spelt out in a national development plan released this week. "Currently East Timor needs virtually everything -- infrastructure, technology, training, capital and access to markets," it said.

Most public servants don't have the experience or training needed for their jobs; skilled workers and professionals are "lacking in every sector of the economy"; education standards are among the poorest in the world; half the people can't read or write; 135 out of every 1000 babies die at birth; life expectancy is just 57 years. The list goes on. So far, the donors are staying engaged. This week they pledged $US360 million in new aid, on top of $US81 million available through an international trust fund.

In the long term, as donor generosity dries up, East Timor's economic hope lies in the oil and gas deposits of the Timor Sea. So far it has received $US20 million from the Elang Kakatua fields. Much more will come when full production starts from the Bayu-Undan field in 2004, with East Timor expected to receive $US3.2 billion over the 17-year life of the field.

The World Bank believes that, with oil and gas profits, East Timor will be self-sufficient by 2006. But long before the money starts flowing in, urban areas are expected to be hit hard as the UN gradually withdraws, even though about 150 civilian UN staff will stay on as advisers. Other foreigners will help maintain the infrastructure.

Negative economic growth is expected for the next two years before a recovery starts in 2004. Workers in hotels, restaurants and on construction sites will lose their jobs as the UN consumption bubble bursts. All this is a recipe for dissatisfaction and tension.

Politically, East Timor will be led by people with no experience of government, working in a vague and untested constitutional framework. President-elect Gusmao's experience is as a guerilla leader and political prisoner. He has immense moral authority and mass support that transcends political factions. But he has no experience as a manager or administrator.

The smooth running of government will hinge on his relationship with the Chief Minister, Mari Alkatiri, who is responsible for the day-to-day political administration. A bitter political rift between the two, stemming from the late 1980s, has only just been resolved. Between August 2000 and April 18 this year, the pair didn't hold a single formal meeting. Only this week Gusmao agreed to move in to an office in the colonial-era governor's office where Alkatiri and the rest of the cabinet will be based. "For Alkatiri and Xanana to get together is a real tangible sign of progress," says an UN official.

They will have to operate within a unique Constitution with elements of a presidential and a parliamentary system, where the lines of authority are blurred. "Basically, there isn't actually a system, but a few broad outlines in the Constitution. No-one has figured out how it's actually going to work as far as day-to-day procedures," the official says. "I think they'll muddle through, I don't think they'll fall apart."

While the immediate focus is internal, the new state's crucial relationship with Indonesia remains uncertain. Gusmao and Ramos Horta have shown magnanimity towards President Megawati, a sign of their determination to look to the future. They know their nation's future depends to a large degree on Jakarta's goodwill and co-operation. While the border has been peaceful, with no militia actions since late 2000, the UN is committed to keeping troops here for at least another two years, although the numbers will drop from the 6200 to 3800 by November.

Australia's military commitment seems open-ended. Last month the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said an Australian withdrawal was not imminent. In the past he has promised that Australia will never abandon East Timor. Armed troops remain part of the everyday scene here, even in Dili and on the coast roads where civilian traffic is forced to give way to Australian army truck convoys and patrolling Portuguese Humvee jeeps. Renewed trouble is one of the nightmare scenarios confronting international security officials.

"There hasn't been trouble on the border because Indonesia doesn't want trouble," says a UN official. "The trouble could start up again at any time if people in Jakarta want it to, and the word is that some people -- not Megawati -- want to start it up after the UN goes."

But in Pukelete village, Vasco Carvalho can only see reasons to hope. "Xanana has become president. Now we are independent. Maybe I will earn a dollar or two." He can't afford to make the journey to the celebrations near Dili. But tomorrow he will walk the narrow mountain road that winds down to the town of Maubara. There will be Mass, sports and a veterans' parade. The flag will be raised.

Asked if East Timor has paid too high a price for its freedom, Carvalho pauses before replying. "If we had 1999 all over again, the choice would be the same today," he says. "If I had to go through 1999 again, I would still choose independence." - With Jill Jolliffe

Bristling warship ordered out of Dili

Sydney Morning Herald - May 18, 2002

Tom Hyland and Lindsay Murdoch, Dili -- A fully armed Indonesian warship was last night ordered out of Dili Harbour by East Timor and the United Nations after it arrived unannounced and in violation of an agreement covering tomorrow's independence celebrations.

Steaming into port about 5pm, Sydney time, the landing ship Teluk Sampit had trained all its guns forward and broken protocol by not flying the flag of the UN, which is administrator of the territory until midnight tomorrow.

Late last night the ship was still in port and 50 young Timorese on the wharf were yelling abuse at men in plain clothes on deck. Others were waving Timorese flags in protest.

A UN spokeswoman had said earlier that the ship would leave the dock as soon as possible and anchor offshore.

East Timor's Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, said after talks with the outgoing UN administrator, Sergio Vieira de Mello, that the arrival of a ship armed with cannons and machine-guns was "totally unnecessary".

The docking of the Teluk Sampit within sight of the charred ruins left by the Indonesian army in September 1999 caused chaos on the esplanade as hundreds of locals gathered.

UN and East Timorese leaders had agreed to the arrival of an unarmed Indonesian ship carrying limousines and support staff for a scheduled three-hour visit tomorrow night by the Indonesian President, Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Mr Ramos Horta revealed that officials in his administration had contacted Jakarta last night after the ship docked.

"We are not protesting," he said. "We are just advising them there is no need for such a visible security presence. It's totally unnecessary. I would not say provocative. Like most security people everywhere, they overdo the measures. And we are telling them don't do it."

Mr Ramos Horta said he was confident of reaching an agreement with Jakarta on the level of security for Mrs Megawati, "commensurate with the security requirements of a president".

The confrontation has cast a shadow over Mrs Megawati's already controversial participation in the celebrations that culminate at midnight tomorrow when the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, declares East Timor independent.

Authorities in East Timor had also agreed to an Indonesian request to bring four Navy ships, one of them a frigate, into its territorial waters during Mrs Megawati's visit.

But officials in Dili said the unexpected arrival of the Teluk Sampit had caught the administration off-guard and thrown preparations for the celebrations into confusion. The ship had also taken a berth reserved for a cruise liner where most of the VIPs would be staying.

Mr Ramos Horta said that in earlier talks with Indonesian officials it was agreed that Mrs Megawati could bring 10 to 15 armed security officers to ensure that the Indonesian side was "totally comfortable".

"But we have explained to them even ex-presidents as visible as [Bill] Clinton is bringing only six armed security and no other head of state is bringing armed security," he said.

Catholic church still a power to be reckoned with

Lusa - May 17, 2002

Conservative and isolated for decades, East Timor`s Catholic Church is the most powerful institution in the soon-to-be nation, with many Timorese saying its charismatic leader, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, commands more respect than Xanana Gusamo.

The Catholic Church gained in stature during the resistance to Indonesian occupation, taking on the role as one of few refugees from persecution and intimidation.

After many years of isolation, Timor`s Catholic church is now potentially the country`s main moving force with its capacity to mobilize the masses and relay messages.

Timor`s patriarchal and paternalist traditions mean that the church ministers to a devout community that pays serious attention to the comments of religious leaders.

A Timorese leader told Lusa recently that the church`s beneficial role should not be underestimated.

"Timorese society is still very fragile, political institutions are practically non-existent and the only solid body that can guarantee stability is the church. It would be an error to write off the church too soon", said the leader.

The Timorese church`s power began to build up during the Portuguese dictatorship when it became apparent that religious power was equally as important as the secular and political.

Indonesian occupation was another catalyst as the occupying administration forced Timorese to profess a religious faith. As most Timorese are essentially animist, they embraced Catholicism.

Figures obtained by Lusa show that at the time of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, about 264,000 people had been baptized in Timor, compared to about 460,000 who considered themselves animists.

During Portuguese rule, Catholicism and animism co-existed in relative harmony, particularly as Catholicism still had less influence and was only practiced by a quarter of Timorese.

Some Timorese say the Catholic Church became more conservative with the appointment of Bishop Belo in 1983, who replaced the charismatic and admired Bishop Martinho da Costa Lopes.

Belo`s term of office started badly and he was not supported by most of the Timorese priesthood. However, church resistance to the Indonesian occupation made it stronger and Belo`s stature and influence was enhanced.

"It was the fault of the war which brought much change. The people began to focus on the Catholic religion", explained a traditional leader.

Bishop Belo`s conservatism contrast with that of his fellow prelate, Basilio do Nascimento, in the second city of Bacau. The Bishop of Bacau is more open to animism and traditional practices, although clearly has less clout than his colleague in Dili.

Some Timorese point to the different backgrounds of the two bishops. Do Nascimento spent more time in Europe and "understands more about reforms and church positions", said one Timorese observer of church matters.

Newest nation needs to shed mind-set of dependence

Japan Times - May 17, 2002

Alexander Weissink, Jakarta -- The world's youngest democracy will have to stand on its own feet from Sunday. On this day East Timor will become the first newly independent nation of the 21st century. After more than 400 years of colonial rule by Portugal, 25 years of Indonesian occupation and over two years under UN administration, the wish of its people is being fulfilled.

This is cause for celebration, but not an occasion to ignore some real worries.

The sun burns relentless over the field of Taci Tolo just outside the country's capital, Dili. This was where the Indonesian Army usually buried its East-Timorese victims. Now locals are building a platform under supervision of Japanese members of the UN- forces. At midnight on Sunday, it is on this stage that the secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan, will declare the sovereignty of East Timor and hand over power to the recently elected president, former freedom fighter Xanana Gusmao.

Organizers are frantically preparing for 200,000 local and foreign visitors. Estimates vary but the ceremony could cost about $1.4 million.

"Some say it's a waste of money, but this is not a ordinary party," says Margherita Tracanelli, project manager responsible for attracting money from sponsors. "This is a celebration of the courage of the East Timorese people and a token of appreciation for the international community. It is to show how far East Timor has come."

Indeed East Timor has come a long way. After the fall of Indonesian President Suharto, Indonesia decided to allow its 27th province to hold a referendum on the question of integration or independence. In August 1999 the population overwhelmingly voted for independence.

Immediately, East Timor was laid to waste by pro-Indonesian militias. When the orgy of violence ended, hundreds of people had been killed and some 250,000 were displaced or on the run. The United Nations Transitional Administration East Timor (UNTAET) took over with the mandate to prepare it for self-rule.

Today East Timor is a UN success story. There is peace, and a transitional government -- which operates under supervision of UNTAET -- is in place. Laws have been accepted, houses and schools rebuilt, hospitals reopened and roads repaired. Gradually refugees are returning home. And the people have shown up in large numbers to vote for their Parliament as well as their president.

All seems well. Then why worry about the future?

"I can't tell you the truth, because I am under strict orders to say how wonderful things are," was the telling remark of a high UN-official who would only talk on condition of anonymity. Apparently the UN has forbidden its personnel to tell outsiders something different than the official story.

"East Timor has been cuddled to death even before it sees the light of day," the official said. "Until now, everything has been done for them, but now they have to take over. And they are not prepared for the coming shock."

Over 75 percent of the UN staff will have left East Timor by Sunday, independence day. And with them leaving, the Italian restaurants with their espresso-machines, the hotels and the taxi drivers are in for a hard time.

But it is not just the loss of the spending power of the so- called "internationals" that will come as a sobering shock. More important is the disappearance of knowhow.

"They have no idea how they are going to run the power company," says an UN-official currently responsible for the financial management of the utility. The same goes for other vital administrative sectors. He admits it is the UN's fault that it had not spent enough time to transfer knowledge. "After some months East Timor will be forced to hire expensive experts from abroad to solve all kinds of operating problems," he says.

East Timor is bound to fall back from the current placid situation. The government of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri will take over from Sunday with high expectations that it will raise this country out of its hole of extreme poverty. But behind the scenes there are growing doubts about his priorities. He plans to disband the coalition government. Only members of his Fretelin Party will be allowed to serve in the Cabinet as far as he is concerned.

There are some other disturbing signs. On April 22, the designated minister of finance, Fernanda Borges, resigned. In a written statement, she explained why she no longer wanted to be part of the government.

"My decision to resign is predicated solely on the failure of the government to implement principles for good governance, lack of transparency in the development of policy and on the personalized decision-making process in government," she wrote.

"That's code for corruption," according to a friend. "She couldn't accept the fact that donor money was disappearing before it even arrived at the Ministry of Finance."

"Fernanda Borges is a liar," said Jose Ramos Horta, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and designated minister of foreign affairs. He showed an e-mail message that Borges sent him shortly before resigning. In the message she asks for Horta's support in her bid to have donor money transferred directly to the Ministry of Finance instead of a development fund of the World Bank.

"She was convinced that we were becoming too dependent on the World Bank," said Horta. "Her plan would introduce a great risk for corruption. Donors would never agree to that."

Whatever was the real story, important questions remain with regards to the management of the future revenues of the gas fields in the Timor Gap, south of East Timor. According to estimates of the UN, the exploitation of the Bayu Undan oil field will deliver $3.2 billion in revenues over 17 years starting in 2006. Apart from that there is the much bigger field, called Greater Sunrise, which should raise revenue even more once drilling gets under way.

"We will not waste the money on all kinds of infrastructure projects. It will help us to climb up from an extremely poor country to become a relatively wealthy nation," says Ramos Horta.

The country won't stay poor, but it won't be extremely rich either. "East Timor is no Nigeria, but East Timor will never become a Brunei or Kuwait," he said.

[Alexander Weissink is a freelance journalist based in Jakarta.]

East Timor man who torched town seeks forgiveness

Reuters - May 17, 2002

Joanne Collins, Manatuto -- Fidgeting in his chair and staring at the ground, Matias Soares recalls the night he and other pro- Jakarta militiamen went on a rampage, torching houses one by one, after East Timor voted to break from Indonesian rule in 1999.

Soares and his mates in this seaside town of Manatuto had just looted beer from a kiosk and were roaring drunk.

"It was 9 o'clock. We armed ourselves with petrol, jumped in a car then drove by houses setting them alight one by one," said the slightly-built Soares, talking in his junk-laden backyard.

"I did not kill anybody and had no choice but to join the militia group, the [Indonesian] police enlisted me and threatened to kill me and my family if I did not."

Now, the 32-year-old father of three is full of remorse and wants to be accepted back into his community -- which he fled because of fear of reprisal -- and celebrate East Timor's landmark transition to full independence on Sunday.

The trauma of what happened when marauding militias laid waste to East Timor in response to the 1999 independence vote, and trying to re-integrate those who want forgiveness, is one of the biggest challenges facing the world's newest nation.

"Without reconciliation, there will be no future for this country," said Dili-based Catholic priest Father Jovito Araujo.

Jovito is vice chair of East Timor's truth and reconciliation commission -- which aims to seek the truth regarding human rights violations covering the period almost a year before Indonesia's 1975 invasion until late 1999.

"We need to bring back the past, identify it and then bury it with dignity," he said.

The pro-Jakarta militia fury was triggered by East Timor's landslide vote to break from 24 years of brutal Indonesian rule. Brandishing machetes, sometimes delirious from drugs, the Indonesian-military-backed militias went on a killing spree and herded more than a quarter of the population across the border into Indonesian West Timor.

The United Nations, which has run East Timor ever since, estimates more than 1,000 people were killed before and after the ballot. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will hand over the reins of power at midnight on Sunday to East Timor's leaders.

East Timor's spiritual leader Bishop Belo said on Friday he was not entirely happy with the reconciliation process, adding the fate of ex-militia members among refugees still in neighbouring Indonesian West Timor was a big problem.

"We hope the remaining 50,000 [refugees] will come back but I also hear the voice of widows complaining of rape ... they do not want to meet in the street the perpetrators," he told a news conference. "How do we solve this?"

Scared to return

Timorese generally seem willing to forgive those who only torched property or looted, but many want justice for those who murdered or raped.

Nevertheless, Soares only returned to Manatuto last week after almost three years in West Timor. "I heard many stories about militia members being badly beaten up when they returned so I was scared. But I was born here and I wanted to return for independence," he said.

Manatuto is a winding two-hour car drive from the capital Dili and also the birth place of President-elect Xanana Gusmao. Charred buildings still bear testament to the handiwork of Soares and his comrades but people appear to be moving on.

"Take the example of Matias, he has not been beaten up since he returned even though people recognise him," said Canossian Sister Esmiralda, herself a target of militia violence.

The truth commission has no judicial function, but has the power to investigate reports of abuse, and any evidence of serious crimes will be referred to Timorese courts. Jovito hailed the example of Gusmao, once jailed by Jakarta for leading the resistance movement.

"There is a long, long way to go here in the reconciliation process but our political leaders, especially Xanana Gusmao, are very committed to the process," he said.

But he said the commission did not agree with Gusmao on all fronts, such as his wish to seek amnesty for some perpetrators of violence. "The capacity Xanana has shown to forgive is a good example but we don't want to ignore the suffering of the people."

Uphill struggle ahead on women`s rights

Lusa - May 15, 2002

East Timor has traditionally been a patriarchal society with limited opportunities for women, but Maria Domingas, an ex- guerilla, says that it is now necessary to "start from scratch" in the struggle for equality between the sexes.

Domingas fought in Timor`s mountains against the Indonesian army, later working for the occupying administration in the territory and sending food to her Fretilin guerilla comrades via a "cover" organization.

Nowadays, she acts as a government adviser on the promotion of equality and also heads Fokupers, a women`s rights group and the organization she secretely used to channel supplies to independence fighters from 1997 onwards.

"In the bush, I learnt to have consciousness and my own identity as a Timorese woman. It was there I realized we are all equal and that there are no differences between the children of "liurais" [powerful families] and others", Domingas told Lusa this week.

At the age of 15, Domingas was studying in Dili when her father, a member of the UDT which supported gradual autonomy from Portugal following the 1974 overthrow of the Lisbon dictatorship, was arrested by Fretilin.

The subsequent Indonesian invasion forced her to flee to the mountains where she came into contact with the resistance for the first time. As Fretilin was severely short of recruits, Domingas was invited to join the guerrillas. She soon married a comrade and the couple were later captured and interrogated by Indonesian forces.

Domingas and her husband were released but obliged to present themselves to Dili authorities regularly. Her husband was given a ten-year prison sentence in the aftermath of the Santa Cruz cemetery massacre and Indonesian crackdown on the independence movement.

Domingas is bitter about Jakarta`s iron rule of Timor and says one of her five children was deliberately killed in hispital with an overdose of medication, as part of an Indonesian campaign to control the Timorese birth rate.

The Timorese women`s rights activist says the future, for her, "is a big problem" and a new struggle is only just beginning. "Changing mentalities is a very difficult process", said Domingas, who remains skeptical that oil and gas reserves will be a panacea for all Timor`s problems.

Dili spruces up for the night of its life

Agence France Presse - May 17, 2002

Bronwyn Curran, Dili -- The flags of the world are fluttering above a frenzy of roof-fixing, painting and construction as East Timor's waterfront capital spruces up to welcome VIPs from 92 countries, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and exUS president Bill Clinton, for its giant May 19 independence party.

The flags of the 189 member states of the United Nations have been hoisted in front of the white arched facade of Dili's seaside government headquarters.

Beneath, Portuguese peacekeepers part of the downsized UN force of 5,000 are erecting stages on which the nascent state's first government will be sworn in on May 20.

Next door, workmen clamber over the roofs of one of the dozens of newly revived buildings, putting the final tiles on what will be the first national cultural centre.

The city's neglected parks are also getting a manicure. Australian soldiers have been painting the walls of a park where Annan and other top VIPs will be hosted to a sunset dinner reception before the midnight independence declaration.

Frangipani trees have been planted around its perimeter, in front of the Dili bishop's residence where Annan will attend its dedication as the International People's Park.

Annan, Clinton, President Jorge Sampaio of former colonial ruler Portugal, President Megawati Sukarnoputri of former occupier Indonesia and Australian Prime Minister John Howard are the top names among delegates from 92 nations flying in for the Sunday night-into-Monday ceremonies.

Normally sleepy Dili is swelling with the influx of international dignitaries and 300 foreign journalists. Hotels and flights into the city have been booked out for weeks.

Children beating drums and boys in traditional feathered headdresses in rehearsal for the ceremonies roam the increasingly choked but freshly paved streets.

Teams of Australian police close protection specialists flown in to provide the VIP security have been surveying the city. Foreign intelligence services have been assisting in security preparations, Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta told AFP.

Ex-commanders of the former Falantil independence guerrillas have also been enlisted to ensure security, said the head of the embryonic East Timor Defense Force (ETDF), Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak. "The ETDF won't be involved in security, we'll be in the show," Ruak said.

The "show" is a gala sevenhour program of religious, cultural, and symbolic ceremonies that will take place around one of three saltwater lakes at Taci Tolu ("three seas") on the edge of Dili on the night of May 19.

Some 3,000 schoolchildren will perform traditional dances and music from each of the 13 districts in the leadup to the independence declaration.

Australian artistic director Ignatius Jones has been preparing the show for months. "It will be a very Timorese performance," Jones said. The only nonindigenous performer will be US soprano Barbara Hendricks, who will sing "O Freedom" as the United Nations flag is lowered in the final minutes before midnight.

Annan will hand over authority to parliament speaker Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres before the UN flag goes down. At midnight Guterres will declare East Timor independent and the new flag will be raised. Guterres will then swear in former rebel commander and independence hero Xanana Gusmao as the first elected president.

A 35 minute display of fireworks, donated by China and Thailand, will follow. Other countries and the UN are also helping foot the $US1.7 million bill for the independence celebrations.

Organisers are expecting 100,000 East Timorese to turn out for the ceremonies but are preparing for 200,000 nearly a third of the population. Simultaneous handover and flag-raising ceremonies will be held in each of the 13 district centres. "We never ever dreamed of independence like this," said former clandestine independence activist Antonio Araujo, surveying the preparations.

"We thought there would just be death, death and more death, that we would keep on dying for our freedom. Now it's like a huge brilliant sun has risen, after so long in the darkness."

Bishop unhappy about prostitution

Agence France Presse - May 17, 2002

East Timor Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo complained of the rise in foreign prostitutes in the staunchly Catholic territory, which becomes independent at midnight on Sunday. In a rare press conference, the Nobel peace prize-winner said that when he boarded a recent flight to Dili from the Indonesian resort island of Bali, he found the aircraft "filled with 15 or 18-year-old young ladies" coming from Thailand.

"I ask, 'Who imported them?"' Belo said, suggesting that prostitutes have been serving the thousands of United Nations peacekeepers, police and civilian staff who since late 1999 have been preparing the territory for independence.

"We know that there are houses of prostitution operating in Dili," said Belo, who co-won his Nobel prize for his work during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.

The foreign presence has been dramatically reduced as independence approaches but large numbers of overseas police and military personnel will remain in the new nation, which is also hoping to woo foreign tourists.

Prostitutes are believed to have operated quietly in Dili for some time. One local business is now openly advertising "traditional Thai massage service" and "full body oil massage." Belo said he understands East Timor cannot shut itself off from the outside world.

"We only ask, please take into consideration the local culture, local values. If you have positive culture from abroad, OK," he said.

During Indonesia's 24-year military occupation of East Timor, the Catholic church was the only independent voice speaking out on behalf of the oppressed.

Now, in a free East Timor, Belo acknowledged that the church has become one of many voices. "So we are among them and we will continue our work, mainly to be a moral voice: how to avoid corruption, how to appeal to the Timorese to work harder, how to maintain peace and tranquility in the country," he said.

NTT urged to protect Timorese

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

The United Nations Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) asked the East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) administration on Thursday to protect East Timorese students studying in Kupang from intimidation carried out by a group of Timorese refugees.

At least 16 East Timorese students in Kupang complained to UNTAET that they were often intimidated by pro-Indonesia East Timorese in West Timor.

UNTAET Ambassador to Indonesia Lakhan Mehrotta sent a letter to Indonesia's foreign affairs ministry, asking government authorities to take the concerns of East Timorese students seriously.

Florencio Mario Viera, spokesman of Uni Timor Aswain, or Untas, a pro-Indonesia East Timorese organization, denied allegations that his organization had intimidated Timorese students in Kupang.

"It is not true that Untas leaders intimidated the students. If it is true, prove it. Don't make wild accusations," he told The Jakarta Post.

Florencio assumed that the accusations came from Untaet and other bodies under the UN because they were afraid of Untas' influence and power.

"Untas represents a potential threat. UNTAET and the UN are afraid that East Timor will not be safe while prointegration East Timorese are still in West Timor," he said.

US seeks court immunity for East Timor peacekeepers

Washington Post - May 15, 2002

Colum Lynch, United Nations -- The United States is seeking assurances from the United Nations that all UN personnel serving in a peacekeeping mission in East Timor would be shielded from prosecution by a local court or international tribunal on war crimes charges, according to US and other Western officials.

The move, which is being resisted by leading US allies, is the first concrete effort by the Bush administration to protect American citizens serving in UN operations from prosecution by the International Criminal Court, which will convene in July.

The administration renounced its support for the court last week out of concern that the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal might prosecute US soldiers or other Americans serving overseas. It said it will seek agreements around the world barring US citizens from being extradited to the court, which has the support of many of the United States' closest allies, including nearly all NATO members.

But the US initiative at the United Nations would go further, extending broad criminal immunity to all international officials serving in the UN mission in East Timor. Responsibility for punishing wrongdoing would be left to the alleged offenders' governments.

The United States has no combat troops serving in UN missions. US officials acknowledge that there is little risk that American troops would be arrested on war crimes charges in East Timor, which hosts only three unarmed American military monitors and about 80 US police officers. The island nation's vote to secede from Indonesia in 1999 sparked a wave of violence that resulted in the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.

US officials said the effort is part of a broader strategy designed to lock in similar exemptions for Americans serving in more than a dozen other UN operations around the world. "The ICC is coming into being, this issue will come to a head and people will have to really decide what they believe and what they want to do here," said a senior US official. "While East Timor is the first in line, it's not where the battle lines will be drawn."

Britain and France have, for the moment, persuaded Washington to drop a proposal to insert a clause reflecting the US policy in a resolution extending the mandate of the UN mission in East Timor. The resolution is expected to be adopted as early as Friday. The amendment, according to a UN source, says that all UN personnel in East Timor "would not be transferred to any national jurisdiction in East Timor or any international jurisdiction."

"The Americans have been muttering about this in the corridors, but we've been trying to put them in a box," said one Western diplomat. "Nobody will agree to that because they feel that it would undermine the ICC."

The Bush administration is weighing whether to pursue other options, diplomats said. They include pressing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to include similar guarantees in the organization's Status of Forces Agreement, which governs its military presence in East Timor. The United States is also considering pressing for a comprehensive Security Council resolution that would ensure that no UN personnel serving in a UN mission can be arrested on the order of a foreign court.

US officials said they have avoided limiting the exemption to Americans to generate broader support for their policy. They noted that foreign military forces serving with the United Nations have long enjoyed diplomatic immunity from prosecution in the countries where they are deployed.

East Timor's independence won't mean self-sufficiency - yet

Bloomberg News - May 17, 2002

Adam Majendie. Dili -- At midnight on Sunday, the eastern part of the island of Timor, 500 kilometers north of Australia, ends four centuries of foreign rule to become the world's newest country. It gains independence only in name.

As former resistance leader Xanana Gusmao is sworn in as president of East Timor, he will lead the poorest country in Asia. Devastated by the retreating Indonesian army in 1999, it is almost entirely dependent on United Nations troops and international aid for funding, expertise and security.

The challenge is to prepare for a $7 billion windfall from oil and natural gas fields between East Timor and Australia that will begin to flow in the next five years. Used wisely, the money could boost education and services and develop agriculture and tourism to lift the country's 800,000 people from poverty before the wells run dry in two decades.

"We are lucky not to have the oil and gas revenue now," Gusmao said in an interview. "If we had it now, it might be a disaster."

The Timorese have waited a long time for the chance. When a new left-wing government in Portugal brought an end to four centuries of colonial rule in 1975, some Timorese declared a republic. Ten days later, the Indonesian army invaded, forcing most of the people to flee to the mountains and beginning a 24 year military occupation.

After 78 percent of East Timorese voted for independence in 1999, militias backed by the withdrawing Indonesian army carried out a campaign of death and destruction. A third of the people fled to the mountains. Another third ended up in refugee camps in the neighboring Indonesian province of West Timor.

Coffee

Other than international aid, East Timor has few ways to earn money to rebuild its shattered economy other than royalties and taxes from Phillips Petroleum Co., Royal Dutch Shell Group and other oil companies that are developing the Timor Sea fields.

East Timor's traditional export industry, coffee, was subsidized by Indonesia and needs investment in processing equipment, education and marketing to stem a decline in revenue. Two cargoes of East Timor coffee beans bought by private traders were rejected by US buyers last year because of poor quality.

Tourism, another government investment target, may take decades to develop. A rival to Bali in the early 1970s, the country has white sand beaches, spectacular mountain scenery and some of the region's best dive sites. Yet unsettled land rights, poor air and road links, lack of power and clean water and disease mean development may be slow.

Tourism fever

"To generate a lot of income and jobs from tourism, you need investors to come in with large sums of money and you need to make sure that tourists don't end up with dengue fever after seven days," said Finn Reske-Nielsen, the UN Development Programme's representative in East Timor. "It's going to take years."

The country also needs to show investors and potential visitors it's stable and safe after the destruction of 1999.

The militias burned four in every five schools and clinics. They killed or stole half the country's livestock, cut most of the 12,000 telephone lines and destroyed about half the electricity generators. They torched and looted almost all government buildings and shops, according to a UNDP report.

"They burned everything," said Tjong Hau Jang, who fled to Indonesia in 1999 and returned this year to the blackened shell of his television shop in Dili. "I'm rebuilding bit by bit."

Oil agreement

The destruction means East Timor will rely on international aid until oil and gas revenue begins to flow. Under an agreement between Australia and East Timor brokered last year by the UN that will be signed on Monday, the new state will get 90 percent of the royalties from the Bayu-Undan field being developed by Phillips and Shell.

Still, oil and gas will bring almost no jobs or businesses to East Timor, because the production is offshore and the gas will be piped south to a processing plant in Australia. Moreover, few developing countries have been able to absorb large injections of petroleum revenue, moreover, without fuelling corruption and inflation.

"We have to be careful we don't create a situation with no return," Chief Minister Mari Alkatiri said in an interview. "We need to avoid being a petroleum-dependent country."

To broaden the economy, the government is working on laws for foreign investment, property and tax it hopes will encourage money to flow into other parts of its nascent economy.

Foreign investors will be required to meet a minimum threshold for investment, but won't be forced to form joint ventures with local companies or the government, said Jose Teixeira, an adviser to the government.

"It will be transparent," he said. "If you meet the conditions, you'll get a license." Teixeira expects parliament to pass the law within a few weeks.

Still, impediments remain such as the problem of who owns land. Records were burned in 1999 and many properties have conflicting claims, including some abandoned by Indonesian owners in 1999. "I think most investors will say, `let's see how it goes,"' said the UNDP's Reske-Nielsen.

Little will dampen the spirits of East Timorese, however, as they celebrate their freedom. "We have nothing, but we're happy," said Donato Salsinita, an agricultural officer in Ermera District. "We have an opportunity for our children and our grandchildren."

Truth quest starts with families who killed their own

South China Morning Post - May 16, 2002

Chris McCall, Dili -- Nearly 20 years ago, the remote East Timor community of Muapitine was shaken by a string of killings. The victims were clandestine resistance workers and their own relatives joined in the killing.

Now this drama is about to be replayed. This case has been chosen as one of the first "truth-seeking" exercises for East Timor's new truth and reconciliation commission. Taking of statements could begin this month.

It is likely to be a painful exercise for the people of Muapitine, just a matter of days after East Timor becomes Asia's newest nation at the stroke of midnight on Monday.

Commission head Aniceto Guterres says the case was chosen because it is specific. The relatives who carried out these extra- judicial killings in 1982-3 worked in tandem with the Indonesian military [TNI]. But in fact, they were coerced. Had they not joined in the killings, they might themselves have been killed.

"The TNI killed with the family, but they were forced by the military to kill," said Mr Guterres.

Muapitine illustrates the kind of tangled problems the commission will try to resolve. The commission's task is not to act as a court, but to determine who was responsible and how and why an incident happened.

It can also issue recommendations to the government, such as recommending extradition. It has authority to examine all events from the Portuguese revolution in 1974 to the arrival of the international force after the bloodshed following 1999's independence vote. And although mentioned in the constitution, it is independent of the government.

According to Mr Guterres, the number of extra-judicial killings in this case is quite small, around "five or six". But people involved on both sides are still living there. Did the relatives commit any crime? That is clearly a hard thing to determine. If they truly were coerced, legally speaking the soldiers who coerced them should answer for it, Mr Guterres says.

The second case involves the mass deportations of thousands of people to the offshore island of Atauro in the 1980s. Atauro was used as a prison by both Portugal and Indonesia.

In the 1980s, between 3,000 and 4,000 opponents of the Indonesian regime were taken there and left with inadequate food.

The commission will also be inviting people who have committed a crime to come forward. But unlike its South African predecessor, this commission is not offering amnesties for serious crimes. In fact, it has no power to give amnesties at all. Serious crimes will still have to go through the courts.

The commission has already come under fire for dragging its feet. Some people fear outbreaks of "mob justice" if it does not speed up its work and if the legal system fails to provide a modicum of justice.

Mr Guterres says its two-year mandate will not be long enough. Under current legislation that period can be extended by a further six months, but in reality at least three years will be needed, he said.

Rewriting Timor's past

The Australian - May 16, 2002

Eric Ellis, Dili -- A warrior of the East Timor Defence Force stands guard outside the offices of Aderito Hugo da Costa, editor-in-chief of Dili's Timor Post.

The soldier's teeth are stained with betel. He looks wild, as if he's just stepped away from a jungle guerilla campaign. Indeed, he may well have. East Timor's troops were mostly hard men from Falintil, the armed wing of the Marxist Frente Revolucionario de Timor L'Este Independente, or Fretilin, who fought the anti- Indonesian independence struggle for 24 years.

He's guarding his boss, who is briefing da Costa on security plans for this coming week -- East Timor's independence week.

Although only 30, da Costa's independence credentials are impeccable. His father was a Fretilin fighter who died when da Costa, a political science graduate from Dili university, was young. Too young to really remember a non-Indonesian East Timor, da Costa is no less a patriot.

That's why, he says, in August 1999 he and 12 staff walked away from East Timor's only other daily newspaper, Suara Timor Timur, (STT, or Sound of East Timor). The paper's title provides a clue as to why da Costa, then the managing editor, walked.

"The editor came into our office and said we weren't to publish anything but a pro-Indonesian line on the referendum," da Costa recalls, referring to the August 30, 1999 UN-sponsored poll that erupted into militia violence but which gave the East Timorese self-determination. A quiet and serious man, da Costa calls it a "dark experience".

The former STT has since been re-named Suara Timor Lorosae, acknowledging the official Tetum name of the new nation. But Salvador Ximenes Soares, 45, a one-time Indonesian parlimentarian representing disgraced President Suharto's Golkar party in East Timor and secretary-general of the biggest pro-integration group in Dili, remains as chief editor and publisher.

With his back-slapping ebullience, Soares is in sharp contrast to da Costa. Soares denies there was a split in his newsroom over policy in 1999. In fact, he says, he was going to fire the reporters because times were tough.

Soares has been a journalist since the 1970s, after the Indonesian invasion, starting as a stringer for various Jakarta dailies. His STT first published in 1993, with support from the respected Jakarta daily, Kompas. Never known to question Jakarta's activities in East Timor, it published until September 3, 1999, the height of the militia violence. Its pro-Jakarta stance didn't impress the militia, which trashed the newsroom.

The STT didn't publish again until July 31, 2000, when it was re-born as Suara Timor Lorosae. Soares is now busily de- emphasising his Indonesian past. Sometimes he goes too far, as on May 1, May Day, when the STL produced a rather bizarre sole page in English, a re-print of a Marxist text taken from the internet and plonked on the page.

Still, neither da Costa nor Soares have it easy as newspaper publishers in East Timor. At $US50c a copy, their papers' cover price is about half the average daily earnings of 70 per cent of East Timorese.

The Timor Post began publication on February 29, 2000. Da Costa says the paper has missed a few days and sometimes its 1500 circulation has been photocopied rather than printed. There are 25 staff including 12 journalists.

Both papers receive aid in the form of computers and office equipment from the US and Canadian governments. Australia's News Ltd, publisher of The Australian, has provided training and plans to send a $1 million printing press to the Timor Post. And then there's the cost of producing pages in four languages: the main Timorese Tetum dialect, Bahasa Indonesia, Portuguese and English. News judgment in both papers seems fairly robust, more so in the Post.

Despite their different journalistic backgrounds, Costa says the local media's challenge in an independent East Timor is to adopt a more professional position. Soares agrees. "The independence struggle has been won. Now we have to behave like an independent media."

East Timor gets early taste of diplomatic 'niceties'

Asia Times - May 17, 2002

Alan Boyd, Sydney -- Time is running out for a settlement of disputed oil and gas royalties in the Timor Gap, as Australia turns up the diplomatic heat on the fledgling Timorese republic just ahead of its independence celebrations.

While Dili and Canberra both remain confident that the May 20 deadline for signing a new agreement will be met, the complex issue of maritime boundaries is making negotiations difficult.

East Timor's incoming leadership has accused Australia of adopting bullying tactics by using its diplomatic clout to deny their demands for the common maritime border to be redrawn. Dili wants the border shifted closer to Timorese shores and has won support from much of the international community.

But Canberra wants to maintain the status quo and shows no signs of relenting. On the contrary, Australia announced in April that it was unilaterally withdrawing from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice at The Hague in respect of some maritime boundaries, evidently to avoid a potential legal challenge. At issue is an annex to the original treaty that was signed with Timor's colonial ruler Indonesia in December, 1989, with the objective of setting aside territorial disputes and enabling oil deposits to be exploited.

Conflict had arisen because East Timor, then under Portuguese administration, was not included in the first seabed agreement signed between Indonesia and Australia in 1972. When Canberra recognized Jakarta's de jure (full legal) incorporation of East Timor in 1978, specifically so that boundary negotiations could begin, the area was declared a "gap" in the established border. Neither country could declare a territorial economic zone under standard maritime conventions because the strip of sea dividing Timor and Australia is too narrow.

For the purposes of the oil treaty, Australia insisted that the boundary be fixed at the edge of the continental shelf, which would place it to the north of Timor. Indonesia initially insisted on using the median line between the two countries, as is normal international practice, but later backed down in return for Australian recognition of its annexation of East Timor. An eventual compromise saw the royalties being shared equally in three Zones of Cooperation (ZOC).

This arrangement continued to hold way when the treaty was endorsed by the UN transitional authority last year as a technical procedure marking the end of Indonesian sovereignty, despite demands by nationalists for Timor to get a greater share. Canberra sought to deflect criticism by boosting Timor's portion of the joint zone royalties from 50 percent to 90 percent, apparently in exchange for more downstream investment in refined natural gas. However, the offer was conditional on the boundaries being unchanged, an issue on which it appears unlikely to budge.

One reason is that the most important finds of oil and gas have been in ZOCA, the zone that would be most affected. In particular, there is strong drilling interest in the Greater Sunrise belt of ZOCA, about 80 percent of which now falls in Australia's share. Moving the boundary to the south would place two zones -- ZOCA and ZOCC -- completely within Timorese waters. The third, ZOCB, would be under Australian control.

Much of the seabed has not yet been explored, raising the possibility that Canberra might have to sign away future oil deposits. Among the nascent operations that has a partial overlap in the contested zone is North Australian Gas Venture, a consortium led by Woodside Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell with vast gas reserves.

Another disincentive for Canberra is that shifting the border might set an uneasy precedent for other maritime borders with Indonesia that have been the source of friction in the past.

In particular, Jakarta might be tempted to seek renegotiation of waters at the east end of the Timor Sea and in the Arafura Sea that are far more important to Australian interests. These waters are thought to contain about 15 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is far more than the known ZOCS reserves and double the capacity of Australia's leading gas field in the North West Shelf. Another 8 trillion cubic feet of oil has been found at Evans Shoal, slightly further to the east, which might also be dragged into negotiations.

The UN view, as outlined during the July 2001 talks, is that the median line should apply, especially as the 1989 treaty was never recognized in international law and contravenes the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. As stated in the convention, "the exclusive economic zone boundary between two states that are less than 400 nautical miles apart should be the midline between their coasts". Peter Galbraith, the chief UN negotiator, has said he is prepared to refer the issue to The Hague, a comment that was dismissed as "bluff" by Canberra.

Nevertheless, it took the precaution of disassociating itself from the court's jurisdiction, probably to avoid a repetition of the international condemnation that accompanied its last visit there, in 1995. As the former colonial power, Portugal had challenged the validity of the 1989 treaty on the grounds that Indonesia's occupation of Timor was illegitimate. The court sided with Australia, but the moral victory went to Portugal. If there is no agreement at the current talks, which appears increasingly likely, the existing treaty terms will continue, thus benefitting Canberra.

Time is on Australia's side, as Timor is wary of deterring potential investors or aid donors by locking itself into a drawn-out legal struggle.

And it doesn't want to upset Canberra, which is Timor's biggest source of foreign aid and provides the backbone of the UN security detail that is overseeing the transitional period.

Already, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has dropped veiled hints that his government's commitment to Timor might weaken if it brought international pressure to bear for a realignment of the boundaries. Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said in October that "the extent to which East Timor itself is able to get the royalties, or a share of the royalties, the size of its share, plays into the overall size of the Australian aid program in East Timor".

Offers to build up Timor's capacity to manage the petroleum program through training and technical advice have quietly stalled. Funded from industry fees, they are conditional on Dili backing down.

Identified by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as Asia's poorest nation, with an annual per capita gross domestic product of only US$478, East Timor is putting a lot of faith in the oil and gas revenues, even though some of the initial optimism has wilted. Based on the current treaty, the 470,000 Timorese would gain revenues of US$7 billion over 20 years, backdated to 1994. Extending the border would give Timor access to most of the $20 billion of proven oil and gas reserves.

Australia's position is complicated by the need to deal with commercial partners in the exploration, led by Phillips Petroleum, which have been left in an uncertain legal position by the political changes in Timor. Phillips, which took over the drilling fields of Australian firm BHP in 1999, announced in August that it was deferring plans for a proposed gas pipeline from Bayu-Undan to Darwin due to mooted changes in the tax and regulatory framework. The UN transitional authority had earlier said it planned to use its discretionary powers to claim an additional $274 million in tax from the exploration companies.

Backed by Australian, Japanese, US and British interests, the Phillips consortium had pledged to invest $1.4 billion in the first phase of the project, which was to become operational in 2004. Another $1 billion was to be injected into the pipeline infrastructure. Both investments are now contingent on the outcome of the talks, as Bayu-Udan, expected to contribute joint royalties of $5 billion over 24 years for Timor and Australia, is located right in the disputed zone.

Canberra needs the pipeline to underpin a downstream gas operation in Darwin and is anxous to keep faith with investors as it develops remaining offshore fields in Australian waters. Howard had planned to use the signing ceremony for a new treaty in Dili on May 20 as a showplace for investment in Australia's petroleum industry. He also wanted to highlight the leading role taken by Canberra in preparing East Timor for independence, including the dispatching of 15,000 troops since 1999.

Instead, say critics, the furore over the treaty has reinforced the widespread notion that a tiny nation is being held to ransom while prosperous Australia safeguards its oil investments.

ETAN urges history not be forgotten

ETAN Statement - May 16, 2002

As Bill Clinton leads the US delegation to East Timor's independence celebration, the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) urged that the history of US support for Indonesia's military occupation of East Timor not be forgotten. On May 20, East Timor will become the first new nation of the millennium.

"When former President Clinton, joined by his last ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, congratulates the East Timorese people on their hard-won victory, we must remember that as the most important supporter of Indonesia's illegal occupation, the US, owes the new country an enormous moral debt. We urge the Clinton delegation to acknowledge it," said John M. Miller, spokesperson for ETAN.

"If President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger had not given the go ahead for Indonesia's invasion in 1975, tremendous suffering could have been avoided," added Miller.

As detailed in declassified documents recently released by the National Security Archive, on December 6, 1975, then-US President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger gave Indonesian dictator Suharto a green light to invade East Timor, which his military did the next day.

The US supplied 90 percent of the weapons used during the invasion. For the next twenty-three years, from Ford to Clinton, successive US administrations consistently backed Indonesia's occupation, providing Jakarta diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in weaponry, military training, and economic assistance. More than 200,000 people -- one-third of the population -- were killed as a result.

When video footage and photographs of a November 1991 massacre in Dili, the capital, were smuggled to the outside world by reporters who survived the bloodbath, international support for East Timor's independence grew dramatically. Following the massacre, the newly-formed East Timor Action Network successfully worked with members of Congress to block some weapons sales and military training to Jakarta.

In the aftermath of East Timor's overwhelming vote for independence on August 30, 1999, the Indonesian military (TNI) and its militia proxies laid waste to the territory, killing at least 2,000 and forcibly displacing more than two-thirds of the population. Through intelligence intercepts and press reports, the Clinton administration was aware of Jakarta's plans to engage in such terror but failed to threaten a cut off of American economic and military aid as a preventative measure. It never issued a presidential statement warning of repercussions if Indonesia did not comply with obligations to ensure security for the UN ballot.

A week into the TNI's scorched-earth campaign, Clinton belatedly cut military assistance and other aid to Indonesia. The Indonesian military quickly agreed to withdraw and allow in international peacekeepers.

"Grassroots and congressional pressure did force the executive branch to make significant concessions on its Indonesia policy," said Miller. "The US supported the 1999 referendum and since September 1999 Washington has provided significant assistance to East Timor's reconstruction, but such aid does not begin to compensate the East Timorese people for the suffering wrought by 24 years of US support for Indonesian military occupation."

"The US government must declassify and release all relevant information needed to help the people of the US, Indonesia and East Timor understand what happened during the invasion and occupation," said Miller. "We urge Congress to investigate the US role, in order to avoid repeating policies like those which caused such suffering in East Timor."

For over a decade, the East Timor Action Network/US (ETAN) has supported self-determination and human rights for East Timor It now works to support human dignity for the people of East Timor by advocating for democracy, sustainable development, social, legal, and economic justice and human rights, including women's rights.

In East Timor, sale of national flag sparks anger

Reuters - May 16, 2002

Dean Yates, Dili -- Caitono Soares erupted in anger when he saw East Timor's national flag being peddled from the back of a car in the capital Dili.

"People died for this flag. We can't sell it for $2, we paid for it in blood," he gestured angrily at the nervous ethnic Chinese man selling the small flags in East Timor's capital Dili ahead of the territory's declaration of independence on May 20.

Within seconds, a crowd of youths and men gathered, outraged that one of East Timor's most potent symbols of freedom was being hawked from a car. Adding insult to injury, the car from which the flags were being sold was made in Indonesia, the country that brutally ruled this territory for 24 years until it voted to break loose in 1999.

The trader quickly packed up and drove off amid a hail of insults, but not before one youth, claiming the salesman was Indonesian, kicked his gleaming stationwagon.

While Timorese generally want to put behind them the memory of Indonesian rule -- when 200,000 people died from fighting, famine or disease -- a few things are too sacred for some.

One senior Timorese official said few issues had been as sensitive as possible commercialisation of the national flag, which was also the flag of the resistance movement.

"Commercialisation of a national symbol like this is very touchy. In other countries it's normal, not here," he said. "When the flag was decided as part of the constitution there was concern among some senior leaders when they thought about what would happen in the event of commercialisation, especially if the flags were made in Indonesia."

A lot of merchandise coming into East Timor is from its giant neighbour, a major textile producer. It was not clear if the flags being sold by the vendor on Wednesday were made in Indonesia.

Fighting for the flag

"It's terrible to sell this flag. Our guerrillas fought for that flag," said Amaro Guterres, 17, who said he was unemployed.

Soares, 24, added that three of his brothers disappeared around the time of the independence vote. He said he assumed they were kidnapped and killed by opponents of East Timor's freedom.

Appalled at seeing flags attached to a stick going for $2, and bigger ones for $15, Soares shook his head before getting back to selling phone cards on the streets of Dili on Wednesday.

The United Nations has run East Timor since the 1999 referendum, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will hand over power to the world's newest nation at a ceremony at midnight on Sunday in front of 1,000 VIPs and at least 100,000 Timorese.

Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri will be on hand in a gesture of reconciliation, though just as some East Timorese are resentful of Jakarta's rough rule many Indonesians are bitter the tiny territory was allowed to break free.

East Timor's striking flag combines yellow, black, red and white colours that in part symbolise the independence fight.

Indonesia's military was never able to snuff out East Timor's ragtag resistance guerrillas, once led by President-elect Xanana Gusmao, despite pouring men and weapons into the territory.

One youth urged this Reuters correspondent not to buy a flag, although there was no problem purchasing one of the more common T-shirts or baseball caps emblazoned with the flag. "If an East Timorese gives a flag to you, that's fine. But don't buy one," he said.

Timor independence angers veterans

Associated Press - May 16, 2002

Lely T. Djuhari, Jakarta -- Not everyone will be cheering Monday when East Timor declares its independence and becomes the world's newest nation two years after seceding from Indonesia.

In Jakarta, some 3,500 veterans who fought in the territory plan to lower Indonesian flags to half-staff when East Timor's yellow, black and red banner is raised at a ceremony outside the capital, Dili.

"I feel betrayed and abandoned," said former Sgt. Maj. Soekoro, who was shot in a guerrilla ambush during his service in East Timor.

He is still angry at then-President B.J. Habibie's decision to allow East Timor to vote on self-determination in a 1999 U.N- sponsored referendum. An overwhelming majority of the territory's 800,000 people chose to separate from Indonesia after 24 years of occupation.

After the vote, vengeful troops and their pro-Jakarta proxies killed hundreds and destroyed much of the territory before retreating to the western half of the island, which is held by Indonesia.

The violence only ended when international peacekeepers arrived. Since then, the territory has been run by the United Nations in preparation for full independence on Monday.

"We will never understand why the government let East Timor go because we defended it with our own blood and tears," said Soekoro, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. He now heads a veterans' association at a military housing complex called "Seroja," or "lotus," the code name for Jakarta's 1975 invasion of East Timor.

The government says more than 3,000 soldiers were killed during the occupation, while human rights groups put the East Timorese death toll from fighting, starvation and disease at 200,000.

Many veterans are angry that Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri plans to attend East Timor's independence celebrations. In an attempt to dilute hostility over her trip, Megawati will lay a wreath beforehand at the Indonesian soldiers cemetery in Dili.

The average Indonesian's feelings about East Timor's independence are hard to judge because news during the occupation was censored and most people knew nothing of what was happening there. Trials of several high-ranking Indonesian military officials charged with crimes against humanity in East Timor are attracting little interest.

Many soldiers sent to the 1975 invasion were young and poorly trained. Made Nirsan, 19 at the time, said troops were told to prepare for a "military exercise" and only learned on arrival that a war was going on.

"We cried every night because we were scared, but we did our duty," said Nirsan, who now lives off a $50 monthly state pension. "The president should come and see us before she goes to East Timor," he said. "We don't want to be forgotten."

Indonesia's fresh start with East Timor

Autralian Financial Review - May 17, 2002

Tim Dodd, Jakarta -- On the eve of East Timor's independence a majority of Indonesians, ranging from the influential political elite to ordinary people, appear ready to accept the new nation as a friendly neighbour.

The latest opinion poll of Jakarta residents published by the news magazine Tempo showed that 66 per cent of respondents were willing to accept East Timor as a good neighbour.

And among key political figures in Jakarta, opposition to President Megawati Soekarnoputri's attendance at the independence celebrations has sharply diminished, ensuring that relations between the two countries get off to a good start.

This week Indonesia's two parliamentary leaders reversed their opposition to Mrs Megawati's attendance at the independence ceremony in Dili at midnight this Sunday.

The speaker of the legislature, Akbar Tandjung, on Wednesday backed the visit and praised her decision to make her first stop in Dili at the Indonesian war cemetery to pay respect to fallen Indonesian soldiers.

And the chairman of the supreme parliament (which has the power to sack the president), Amien Rais, called on people to back Mrs Megawati's trip to Dili. "May it be a successful visit," he said, although he also made it clear he still held reservations about it.

Although the Government indicated last month that Mrs Megawati was likely to visit Dili, the President held her options open until Tuesday night, when the Foreign Ministry finally confirmed her attendance.

It came after the same poll in Tempo magazine this week found that 55 per cent of respondents backed her trip to the independence ceremony, which suggested at least 50 per cent public support, as the sampling error of the poll is estimated to be 5 percentage points.

Her decision to attend came after intense lobbying by East Timorese leaders who regarded it as a crucial step in ensuring smooth relations with the new nation's big neighbour and former ruler. Two weeks ago East Timor's president-elect, Xanana Gusmao, visited Jakarta and personally invited Mrs Megawati to go to Dili. In an effort to bury the hatchet, he also met privately with former army commander General Wiranto.

The sensitivity to the visit comes from within the armed forces and from politicians who are conscious of public opinion, rather than diplomats who appear committed to good relations with East Timor.

The Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirayuda, said three months ago, after East Timor issued a public invitation to Mrs Megawati, that he was urging Mrs Megawati to go to Dili.

Mrs Megawati will not see much during her visit because she will be there for only about three hours at night, arriving at about 10pm on Sunday and staying only long enough for the independence ceremony.

She is likely to miss seeing the indications of enduring Indonesian influence in East Timor.

Indonesian, spoken by 43 per cent of the population, is by far the most widely spoken "advanced" language. Only 5 per cent speak Portuguese, currently the official language, and only 2 per cent speak English. The dominant local language, Tetun, is not developed enough for use in government administration or business.

There are also good opportunities in East Timor for Indonesian businesses, as they can supply the cheap goods that East Timor can afford. Indonesia's state-owned oil company, Pertamina, says it currently has 70 per cent of the market share of fuel in East Timor.

There are few Indonesians in East Timor today -- only diplomats, journalists and the odd business person and aid worker. But the East Timorese show no signs of emnity toward them.

"There is no ill-feeling towards Indonesians. I found them very friendly to me, very warm," said an Indonesian journalist who had spent nearly a week in East Timor last month, talking to a range of people from market traders to politicians. "They said they only hated Soeharto and the TNI [the armed forces]," she said.

Economy hinges on oil and gas deal

Radio National - May 15, 2002

Asia's newest nation has been officially listed by the UN as the poorest country in the region. But many see East Timor's economic future as being dependent on the deal it strikes with Australia over oil and gas reserves in the East Timor Sea. East Timorese leaders have indicated they will sign a final agreement on Independence Day next Monday, but there is concern among civil groups and some MPs, that the deal has been pushed through too quickly and secretly.

Transcript:

Fitzgerald: East Timor's senior Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta says his country won't try to wriggle out of the interim deal it made with Australia last year on the valuable Timor Sea oil and gas reserves.

Ramos-Horta: "There is one principle, one rule in relations between states, you negotiate an agreement in good faith, we reached a deal July last year that was beneficial to East Timor. It is now incumbent upon the two sides to formalise this agreement into a treaty soon after independence, we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by then breaching this sacred rule of international relations, then [if] on day One of our independence we immediately reneg on an interim arrangement that we have reached with Australia, it would not be to the benefit of East Timor credibility with other countries and with potential investors."

Fitzgerald: And as far as Australia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer is concerned, a new treaty to cover the Timor Gap, will be signed next Monday.

Downer: "I can say with every confidence that we'll be able to sign the treaty on 20th May on the first day of the new, independent East Timor, and there is a good understanding now on how we can move forward to include any outstanding issues."

Fitzgerald: Although Mr Downer is confident the signing will be one of the new East Timorese Government's first major undertakings there is discontent inside East Timor on the way the deal is being negotiated and over what it contains.

A group of opposition parties have called on East Timor's Chief Minister Mari Alkatari, who heads the majority Fretilin Party, to front the parliament and explain what is contained in the interim Timor Sea Arrangement signed in July last year.

Democratic Party MP Eusebio Guterres says 26 MP's don't want the deal to be signed on Monday. He says they represent a handful of dissenting Fretilin Party members and the following parties.

Guterres: "Democratic Party. Second one is PSD -- Socialist Democratic Party and the third one is KOTA, fourth one is UDT, and fifth one is PPT and PDC."

Fitzgerald: The main bone of contention is over the demarkation of sea borders between East Timor and Australia, which affects who actually owns oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.

Mr Guterres says a decision to stick to an old Indonesian Australian agreement on sea borders, means East Timor could be robbed of control over valuable resources.

Guterres: "Boundaries have been decided by simply following negotiations with treaties signed by Indonesia and Australia."

Fitzgerald: MP's and civil groups are also unhappy that all processing of the oil and gas will be done in Darwin instead of East Timor, which they fear will rob East Timor of urgently needed employment opportunities. Chief Minister Mari Alkarai has told the MP's he won't disclose the contents of the treaty to be signed Monday, until after the signing.

He's also refused to discuss the details with a group of East Timorese civil groups who fronted him with their concerns about the deal.

Co-ordinator of the development group, Lao Hamutuk, Adrianao do Nascimiento, is criticial about the secrecy surrounding the deal, he says Mari Alkatari has kept East Timorese in the dark about the details.

Do Nasciemento: "We tried many times to approach them to get an explanation of the procss, but they said it was secret. Certain people can get the information."

Fitzgerald: Mr do Nascimento says if sea borders were re- negotiated East Timor would be in a stronger bargaining position on oil and gas exploration.

Do Nasciemento: "Talking about the Timor Gap, we have to talk about the border and secondly the status of the Timor Gap there. So the problem we are discussing here in East Timor is who is the owner of the Timor Gap."

Fitzgerald: Andrew McNaughton of the Australian East Timor Association believes if sea boundaries are not negotiated between East Timor and Australia, East Timor may receive only 40 per cent of its entitlements from exploration of oil and gas in the Timor Sea.

He says independent studies show if East Timor contested its sea boundary with Australia it is likely it would be deemed to have ownership over larger and richer oil fields than are to be covered in the Timor gap Treaty.

McNaughton: "The estimation that the Timorese would receive only about 40% of their potential entitlements if they sign the agreement, the MOU that is currently on the table, is arrived at by adding up all the key resources that they would be entitled to were they to claim their full maritime boundaries, which would include all of or most of greater Sunrise Fields, and all of Corralima field."

Fitzgerald: The current interim Timor Sea agreement does not rule out a final deliniation of the sea boundaries but Mr McNaughton says recent Australian attempts to put itself outside the jurisdiction of an international court on the issue is creating suspicion in East Timor.

Mcnaughton: "Australia has recently withdrawn or attempted to withdraw from the jurisidiction of the International Court over the determination of maritime boundaries. However, short of going to the International Court there is still a process of negotiations in which at least some moral weight would have to be accorded to the international norms.

I mean it's not clear if Australia can simply back out and adopt a totally intransigent position and say we're not going to take any account of international norms. I think there should be moral pressure if not legal pressure to take account of the international norms."

East Timor scrambles to prepare for independence bash

Reuters - May 15, 2002

Joanne Collins, Dili -- Paint is being slapped on fences, scaffolding is coming down from buildings, weeds are being ripped up and soccer fields are getting new goal posts.

Impoverished, battle-ravaged East Timor is coming of age and scrambling to get ready to declare independence at midnight on Sunday in front of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, 1,000 VIPs and an estimated 100,000 Timorese.

For many in the tiny territory the future holds great uncertainty, but they enter nationhood with the international community's blessing as they try to put centuries of Portuguese colonisation and 24 years of brutal Indonesian control behind.

Asia's poorest nation has much to do before its moment in the world spotlight after more than two years of UN rule.

"I am in a bit of a panicky mode because we are realising each hour, each minute that passes, all that still needs to be done for the independence celebrations," the outgoing UN chief in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, told Reuters.

"Where are we going to accommodate all these people? We have said 'Can you please cut down' because it is simply unrealistic. Some of them will have to sleep under the trees," he said.

Fully booked

Indeed, anyone who hasn't already booked can forget finding a room in this languid seaside capital, still being rebuilt from the ashes of the rampages by pro-Jakarta militias after 1999's pro-independence vote. All the space was reserved months ago.

"Some government delegations even asked for presidential suites," said one organiser. She said only 50 rooms -- some without windows or hot water -- were available in Dili when preparations began for accommodating international visitors.

Dili's airport has also presented challenges. It has no radar facilities and is operational for routine commercial flights during daylight hours only. Overnight parking is limited to two Boeing 737s and a small number of light aircraft.

Those visitors who come despite the problems will see Annan hand over power and charismatic ex-guerrilla leader Xanana Gusmao sworn in as president at a dusty field bordered by craggy mountains on the outskirts of Dili, the capital. The site was chosen mainly for its size.

The UN flag will come down, East Timor's yellow, black and red banner will go up and the boom of more than 25,000 firecrackers will usher in the world's newest country, surrounded by Indonesia's eastern islands and Australia to the south.

On Monday, the government, comprised of ministers who have already been working with the United Nations, will be sworn in and a parliament elected last year will hold its inaugural session.

Striking contrast

The peaceful ceremonies will mark a striking contrast to East Timor's fateful decision in a 1999 referendum to break from Indonesian control, sparking a killing spree by pro-Jakarta militias. With backing from Indonesian army elements they left much of the territory in ruins.

The United Nations estimates more than 1,000 people were killed before and after the vote. The UN has administered East Timor and its 740,000 people ever since.

Besides Annan, the guest list includes former US President Bill Clinton, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, several heads of state from smaller countries and assorted ministers.

Despite vocal opposition from some leading politicians, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri will drop by for several hours, even though she staunchly opposed letting East Timor vote to break away in the UN-sponsored ballot.

While brief, Megawati's presence will symbolise to many Timorese that some leaders from its giant Muslim neighbour have accepted the mainly Catholic minnow's decision to break free.

And showing his wish for reconciliation, former anti-Jakarta guerrilla Gusmao will accompany her when she pays homage at a cemetery of Indonesian soldiers who died in the occupation.

Jakarta invaded East Timor, half the size of Belgium, in 1975 after colonial ruler Portugal withdrew. More than 200,000 people were estimated killed by fighting, famine and disease that followed the invasion and during Jakarta's occupation.

Organisers expect around 100,000 Timorese to attend the Dili celebrations but said they have made preparations for double that. "The event will be broadcast live on radio across the territory and there will be a Mass and flag raising ceremony in every district so we are not expecting buses and buses of people to make the trip in," said key organiser Caroline O'Brien.

More than $1 million is being spent on the celebrations, which have pulled even UN peacekeepers from their daily duties to cut grass and paint fences.

Extra telecommunications infrastructure is being installed to help free up constantly congested phone lines and satellite dishes are being repaired and installed to help beam the event live to those in outer regions able to find a television set.

East Timor grapples with languages

Associated Press - May 15, 2002

Chris Brummitt, Dili -- Children in East Timor are having trouble getting their tongues around their new official language. After years of speaking Indonesian, they now are having to learn Portuguese, the language of the territory's former rulers.

"It is too difficult for me. There are so many new words to remember," 15-year-old Sonia da Costa said in fluent Indonesian, the language of the country's most recent occupying power.

After months of sometimes angry debate, the former Portuguese colony decided to make Portuguese one of its national languages -- to be used in Parliament, in the official media and in schools -- when it gains independence Monday after 24 years of often brutal Indonesian rule.

Also recognized as a national tongue will be the most widely spoken indigenous language, Tetum, which is related to native languages spoken on many islands in the Pacific, including Hawaii.

East Timor has always been a tower of Babel with about a dozen indigenous languages. But more than four centuries of foreign rule, and nearly three years of administration by the United Nations, have further complicated its linguistic landscape.

The country's fledgling newspapers use four languages -- English, Indonesian, Portuguese and Tetum -- often side-by-side on the same page.

Many people, especially younger ones who have had no exposure to Portuguese, are angry with the decision that they say isolates them. Only around 10 percent of the country's 800,000 people speak Portuguese. Almost all of these are over 40.

Experts have also questioned the policy, which they say is based more on political and sentimental considerations than pragmatic ones. East Timor's current leaders decided on Portuguese because of an emotional attachment to the language, which they used during the country's resistance to Indonesian rule.

The generation feels indebted to Portugal and Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola and Mozambique for supporting East Timor's independence struggle.

President-elect Xanana Gusmao has said that speaking Portuguese is essential for East Timor's national identity. Portugal has sent over 150 teachers to spread its mother tongue. Besides children, they are instructing teachers, hospital workers and members of the security forces.

"This for me is crazy," said legislator Jose Lobatto. "They [East Timor's leaders] are in a minority. They are trying to force education in Portuguese. It's too much for the children." Lobatto is concerned that Tetum, which as yet lacks a standardized written form, will lose out to Portuguese.

University students, worried that not speaking Portuguese will bar them from government jobs, say English would have been a more sensible choice for a national language. They point to Singapore, which became one of Asia's most prosperous nations after successfully adopting English as the national tongue.

"What good is Portuguese to anyone?" said Hipolita Da Costa. "No one speaks it." Tetum is already the most widely used language in the parliament, and some linguists say Tetum stands to benefit from the promotion of Portuguese because it shares some of its vocabulary and grammar.

East Timor's Prime Minister Mari Alkitiri said the government would continue to support Tetum. "For sure, Tetum is going to be promoted. There is no doubt," he said. In an acknowledgment of the complexity of the issue, English and Indonesian have been designated as "working languages" in the new constitution.

Many say Indonesian would have been a more practical choice for a national language, at least for the next 10 to 15 years. East Timor's current political leaders regard it as a symbol of Jakarta's unpopular rule.

However, around 60 percent of East Timorese, including almost all the younger generation, can speak, read and write it. There are plenty of school textbooks in Indonesian.

Lawyers, prosecutors and judges in East Timor have all studied in Indonesia and say they will be using the language for at least 15 years. The courts still use a modified version of Indonesian law.

"Why throw this all overboard?" said Dr. Ulrich Kratz from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. "Indonesian has shown its ability. It makes more sense to use it."

Problems loom for East Timor

Australian Financial Review - May 15, 2002

Tim Dodd -- Dili, which becomes the capital of the independent state of East Timor at midnight this Sunday, is a relatively prosperous town for a developing country.

And Dili is the only place in East Timor which most of the VIP visitors will see when they arrive for this weekend's independence celebrations.

But the capital city, boosted by expatriate spending from UN advisers and aid workers, gives a false picture of the real state of East Timor. What this weekend's influx of visitors is unlikely to see is the grinding poverty of the rural districts of East Timor where life is as bad as the worst places in Africa.

So, in spite of the subtitle of this column, its purpose is actually to examine the living conditions of East Timorese outside Dili where over three-quarters of East Timor's estimated population of 800,000 lives.

Of these rural dwellers, three-quarters are engaged in subsistence agriculture which is highly inefficient and produces very poor returns. Productivity is so low that East Timor has, for decades, imported large quantities of basic foodstuffs.

Poverty is concentrated in rural areas where 46 per cent of East Timorese earn less than the nominated poverty line income of US55cents a day. In urban areas, which essentially means Dili, the figure is 26 per cent. Only 37 per cent of people over 15 in rural areas can read and write (as opposed to 82 per cent of urban people).

These figures are from a United Nations Development Program report on East Timor issued this week. It contains the agency's assessment of conditions in East Timor which it measures against its human development index which takes into account standard of living as well as other indicators such as health and education.

Timor is the lowest in Asia, worse than such countries as Laos and Burma, and on a par with Rwanda. (The ranking is based on conditions country-wide and includes the better-off people in Dili.) The ranking was done for 1999, the latest year for which full international comparisons are available. Since then East Timor's HDI has risen a little but not by much.

Country-wide, life expectancy is only 57 years with large numbers of deaths from preventable diseases such as malaria, respiratory tract infections and diarrhoea. Maternal mortality is also high with 420 women dying for every 100,000 live births.

Speaking of births, East Timor has a high birth rate and an estimated annual population growth rate of 2.5 per cent. What will be the effect of independence euphoria and hopefully, better health care, on this figure? This is my interpretation, not the UNDP's, but it seems likely that in a Catholic culture averse to birth control that there will be a population explosion which the country can ill-afford.

The UNDP also says that East Timor's women are particularly disadvantaged, largely because their incomes are far less than their male counterparts, and this difference is far greater than in neighbouring countries such as Indonesia and Cambodia.

Ordinary East Timorese also know there are big difficulties with independence because their worsening poverty tells them so.

Julio Soares, a coffee farmer and owner of a small shop in the remote mountainous outpost of Fatubesse, told The Australian Financial Review that life is now much tougher than it was under Indonesian rule when the local farmers received a fixed monthly wage equivalent to about $60 a month. Now the farmers are directly exposed to the world coffee market which has been hit by oversupply from Brazil and Vietnam.

A farmer with a typical half hectare plot is no longer an employee but a small business owner with a very seasonal cash flow of no more than $400 a year. "Living is more difficult than before but we chose to live separately from Indonesia and that is the consequence," he says. But he still notes with satisfaction that the people are no longer plagued by "mean and evil" Indonesian troops.

For Mr Soares, independence certainly has its own rewards but it is obvious that it also contains the seeds of a multitude of new problems.

Fear traps thousands in West Timor camps

New Zealand Herald - May 15, 2002

John Martinkus, Kupang -- On the outskirts of the West Timorese capital, Kupang, a dusty former bus terminal still serves as the home for some of the estimated 60,000 East Timorese refugees who have not returned home.

In Noelbaki camp the people wear threadbare clothes and talk of a shortage of food since Indonesian Government assistance was cut last December in an effort to force them to accept repatriation to East Timor.

Markus Constancio still wears his Aitarak militia ID and insists there are still 5000 people in the half-empty camp. He complains that they have not seen their leaders for two years and talks fondly of how things were pretty good in East Timor. But he won't go back because he is scared.

Across town in the luxury Sasando Hotel, ex-militia leader Cancio Lopes de Carvalho is meeting his English lawyer, who stresses that there are no charges against him, despite his having been leader of one of East Timor's largest militia groups, Mahidi ("live or die for integration with Indonesia").

Cancio was linked to several highly public and gruesome murders, particularly in Galitas village near Suai. On that occasion, Cancio was reported to have held aloft the dead foetus removed from a pregnant woman who had just been shot by his men and publicly declared the authority of his militia in the area.

That incident, on January 24, 1999, sparked the arrival of 6000 locals in the Suai Catholic church, where some of them remained until they were massacred by militia and Indonesian military after the United Nations pullout from the town in September, an act in which Cancio's men also took part.

Cancio and his men eventually destroyed the town of Cassa and forced the population to flee to West Timor before the UN peacekeepers arrived in the area in early October 1999.

Cancio still refers to those who fled with him and remain in the camps opposite the area since controlled by New Zealand peacekeepers as "my people", and says at least 6000 will come back if he returns and is not arrested. Cancio has not yet returned to East Timor because he says there are accusations against him.

He has not been called to appear at the Indonesian ad hoc human rights tribunal in Jakarta where 18 Indonesian military and police staff and East Timorese civilians are being investigated.

He says that if the UN would charge him through the courts in East Timor he would return to face the charges tomorrow. At the same time he derides the work of the UN serious crimes unit that has been tasked with investigating the crimes of 99.

Cancio says he is alone now and has no contact with other former militia leaders. He suspects other former leaders such as Eurico Guterres do not talk to him because they will not discuss the role of the Indonesian military in the violence in East Timor, which Cancio says he is prepared to discuss in an East Timorese court.

Eurico's new position as leader of the youth wing of Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri's political party PDIP keeps him in Jakarta. The members of his former militia group, the Dili- based Aitarak, still wear their trademark black T-shirts and attempt to exercise a degree of intimidation among the dwindling number of refugees in the camps.

Yusuf Edi Mulyono, Indonesian director of the Jesuit refugee service, says the lack of prosecutions for crimes in 1999 hampers the return of the remaining refugees.

The fear is real. Even those who did nothing may be part of a big family. A reconciliation commission is still an embryo and people are afraid of those taking the law into their own hands, he says.

Mulyono says there are still problems in the camps. There has been a riot in Noelbaki. He believes that up to 30,000 people will eventually return as the work of the reconciliation commission and serious crimes becomes more transparent in East Timor.

Mario Viera, spokesman for Untas, the East Timorese pro- integration organisation and political descendant of the militia leadership based in Kupang, believes resettlement in Indonesia is the only solution for former militia.

"These people who work with the military have been indoctrinated," he says. "It is not easy for them to change."

Viera says the trial in Jakarta of Untas board member Abilio Soares, a former East Timor governor under the Indonesians, is a signal of how weak the Indonesian Government has become.

"The murders during and after the popular consultation were done by the pro-independence people and we will try and use the tribunal in Jakarta to educate people on what happened."

Viera says the people who are the losers are always those on trial. He refers to the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague to make his point.

Viera, like 9000 other former East Timorese military, police and civil servants now in West Timor, receives a wage from the Indonesian Government and now works in the local office for foreign investment in West Timor. But he believes his people have been betrayed by Indonesia.

Untas still officially rejects the result of the UN ballot. It says Indonesia has been manipulated by the international community to accept the result. Untas claims to represent all those in the camps and has urged people to stay in West Timor.

Viera admits the cancellation of food aid last December is achieving the goal of slowly forcing people to return. "If we had billions of rupiah to feed the people, of course we would refuse [to go back]," he says. "They are using this to achieve their political goals of forcing our return."

With the return of the last of the refugees, the claims of the former pro-integration leaders to represent them will cease and any remaining bargaining power they have with the UN or the Indonesian Government will end.

Dirty deals in the Timor Sea

Green Left Weekly - May 15, 2002

Jon Land -- On the eve of East Timor's independence on May 20, the crucial issue of the Timor Gap has still to be fully resolved. East Timor may lose billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties if the Australian government and the large petrochemical companies get their way.

The Australian government is pressuring East Timor to sign the terms of the Timor Sea Arrangement, which was established last July. This memorandum replaced the Timor Gap Treaty (signed between Australia and Indonesia in 1989) and will form the basis for a new treaty on the disputed maritime boundary between East Timor and Australia.

According to the Timor Sea Arrangement, East Timor will receive a 90% cut of the royalties in the Joint Petroleum Development Area. East Timorese political leaders, non-government organisations and solidarity groups have expressed concerns that a treaty based on this memorandum will still prevent East Timor from receiving its fair share of royalties.

In April, East Timor's chief minister Mari Alkatiri stated that East Timor would like to sign a new treaty on May 20, but that "the agreement should not compromise East Timor's position and that we will approve legislation on the basis that our maritime frontiers are very clear". Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer stated there might be delays with the signing of the treaty due to "technical differences".

Prior to the signing of the memorandum, Australian representatives, such as Downer, tried to intimidate East Timor into accepting a much lower share (initially 50-60%), hinting that aid to East Timor would be reduced if this did not happen.

The giant US petrochemical company Phillips Petroleum also accused the East Timor government of derailing development in the Timor Sea because it has proposed changes to the taxation regime for companies operating there.

The Australian government's decision to back down and agree that East Timor take a 90% share of the royalties was a significant victory, because it had repeatedly argued during negotiations in 2000 and 2001 that the terms of the original treaty with Indonesia were fair and should not change. In doing so, Canberra was attempting to deny East Timor the right to control the biggest and most lucrative oil and gas fields in the area.

The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor and East Timorese representatives were able to force this retreat from the Australian government because of two factors: first, because of the still strong domestic and international support for East Timor's right to independence meant that many understood the importance of oil and gas reserves to East Timor's future development; and second, because of East Timor's legal rights under international law.

Under the statutes of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), East Timor has a rightful claim over all the sea-bed resources on its side of the mid-point between Australia and East Timor. This would give East Timor full control over the large Bayu Undan gas reserve, currently being developed by a joint venture headed by Phillips. Bayu Undan will generate around $2 billion for East Timor.

According to some legal experts, changes to the maritime boundary in line with UNCLOS would also take in most, if not all, of the Greater Sunrise field as well as the Corallina/Laminaria fields.

All these fields have significant known and potential oil and gas reserves. The Corallina/Laminaria fields are already operational and provide the Australian government with $200-300 million in royalties annually. Greater Sunrise is just over twice the size of Bayu Undan.

Because Greater Sunrise overlaps the border, a special annex in the Timor Sea Agreement proposes that East Timor receive just 18% of the royalties derived from the field.

However, a workshop on legal and development issues in the Timor Gap, held in East Timor on March 23 24, concluded that East Timor had a case in pushing for all or most of the royalties from the Greater Sunrise field. A new treaty signed on the basis of last year's memorandum would result in East Timor missing out on at least $55.8 billion in royalties from Greater Sunrise and other potential fields.

"What we are seeing is more lies and hypocrisy from the Australian government", Max Lane, chairperson for Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific, told Green Left Weekly. "It likes to claim it has done so much for the East Timor, yet all along it has sought to steal as much of the Timorese people's oil and gas wealth as possible", he added.

On March 26, the Australian government announced that it would no longer accept decisions handed down by the International Court of Justice, the international body that arbitrates on maritime boundary disputes. In response, Alkatiri said that "the withdrawal of Australia from the ICJ is in our opinion a sign of a lack of confidence in us, and an unfriendly act".

"The Australian government has, yet again, shown its total disregard for international law and conventions, as it is doing with its treatment of refugees", Lane added. "It is another example of the Australian government's bullying of small countries in the region, aimed primarily at increasing the ability of big multi-national and Australian-based companies to extract super-profits without constraints".

Report rubbishes Timor trials

Radio Australia - May 14, 2002

Former Indonesian militia leader Eurico Guterres is being questioned in Jakarta today at the trials of 18-military, police and civilian officials accused of human rights abuses in East Timor. But a new report released by the International Crisis Group has described the trials as a farce. It says the limited mandate of the court, the weak indictments against the 18-accused and the inexperience of the prosecution and judiciary, raise serious doubts as to whether the trials will ever reveal the true extent of the military's responsibility.

Transcript:

Jones: "There's been too much focus on whether or not these trials will lead to convictions of the military and police officers and some of the militia people who have been charged. And the point that this paper makes, is that it doesn't matter whether people are convicted or acquitted.

"The important point is that the mandate of the court and the way the indictments have been drafted are such that the truth of military institutional involvement in the violence that took place in 1999 will never come out.

"There are two reasons for that. One is that the court itself which is called an ad hoc human rights court was set up not to look at everything that happened in 1999 which would allow the prosecutors to actually get at the role of the state in the violence that took place, but only on five specific cases, and if you only look at five specific cases, you can't really at crimes against humanity which is what these people are being charged with.

"The second problem is that the prosecutors themselves, whether out of inexperience or out of a deliberate effort to weaken the nature of the evidence have not even charged the most senior army and police officers with actually direct, personal involvement in what took place.

"Instead, they've been charged with basically failing to prevent violence that took place between two equally matched sides, the pro-independent side and the pro-Indonesia side, and that's not an accurate description of what took place in Timor."

Lopresti: So you have a sloppy prosecution and your report also suggests inexperienced judges in trying human rights crimes and a lack of interest from both the government and the media. Were these trials set up to fail from the word go?

Jones: "It's difficult to say whether they were set up deliberately to fail, but the fact is they will fail. There's no way with these kinds of indictments and the limited mandate of the court that anything remotely resembling justice for what took place in East Timor will actually take place."

Lopresti: And if the trials as you say reinforce Indonesian public perception that the pro-independence victory in East Timor was the result of international ill will among other things. What future is there for the independence movements in Aceh and West Papua, given also that your reports suggest that even the UN is being portrayed as manipulative and biased?

Jones: "I think the important point is that there will be no pressure from within Indonesia to actually hold the military accountable for anything more than basically what amounts to negligence.

"And the fact that the word militia doesn't even appear in any of the indictments and there's no real effort to get at the role of the army in creating, equipping, funding and training the militias who were for most of the violence means that there will be no deterrent in the future to the military's using such militias in Papua or Aceh.

"That element of state policy is not going to come out in these trials and that has real implications for the way conflicts elsewhere in Indonesia merge, even has implications for the military's role in supporting Laskar Jihad the private radical Muslim militia that's been operating in both the Maluku's and in Central Sulawesi.

"The other implication of the failure to adequately address state policy is that indeed the United Nations is not going to be able to act as a mediator or facilitator for conflicts in Indonesia should there be a possibility of such a role in future conflicts, simply because the impression that one gets from these trials and from the prosection, not just the defence, not human sense is that indeed the problem if it didn't originate with the UN certainly had much to do with the UN's actions and the truth of what happened and what the UN did is not going to come out from the trials."

Lopresti: And also in your view no-one is going to be held accountable for the post-election violence in East Timor?

Jones: "Not only not for the post-election violence but no-one is going to be held accountable in a meaningful way for the violence that took place throughout 1999.

"That's why I say it doesn't really matter whether there will be convictions or not. I think there probably will be some convictions. But the convictions are going to be on the basis of evidence that suggest that these were basically ordinary clients. The whole notion of the enormity of what took place in East Timor and the notion of crimes against humanity is simply going to be trivialised."

East Timor could become economically independent

Melbourne Age - May 15 2002

Rod McGuirk -- East Timor has a good chance of becoming financially independent in a few years through Timor Sea energy royalties, the World Bank told donor nations yesterday.

Delegates from 27 countries, including Australia, met in Dili today to consider East Timor's extraordinary request for $US77 million in direct budgetary aid for its first year of independence.

They were also presented with the new nation's development strategy, predicting that after 18 per cent growth in GDP in the last year, the East Timorese economy will contract next year with the United Nations withdrawal to follow full independence next Monday.

World Bank director for East Timor Klaus Rohland said much had been achieved in reconstruction and sustainable development during more than two years of UN administration. "East Timor has a good chance of being economically independent in a few years with revenue from offshore," Rohland told delegates.

The development plan predicts annual resource revenue from the Timor Sea will average almost $US100 million within five years. Development in the short term was expected to remain fragile and uncertain.

The strategy paper said East Timor, which will emerge as one of the 20 poorest nations in the world, was suffering from its decision to adopt one of the world's strongest currencies. "An increase in wage levels under UNTAET (UN Transitional Administration in East Timor) along with a very strong US dollar has weakened international competitiveness," it said.

One of the most difficult tasks facing schools was the extension of Portuguese as the official language and the standardisation of the local language Tetun, which varies from district to district.

Outgoing UN administrator Sergio Vieira de Mello reminded donor nations that 41 per cent of East Timorese lived below the poverty line of $US55 cents a day.

Chief Minister Mari Alkatiri said the challenge ahead was to raise the quality of life in East Timor. "We know that we have set the right development goals for East Timor," Alkatiri said. "We also know that they are ambitious."

An Australian delegation source described the budget as sensible and responsible.

Gusmao visit ends refugee's fears

The Australian - May 15, 2002

Don Greenlees, Dili -- Francisco Alves voted in favour of East Timor remaining a part of Indonesia in the 1999 referendum on independence. When the vote went the other way, 10 families from the small coastal village of Ulmera, including his own, decided to flee across the border into West Timor.

Two days ago, the 30-year-old farmer returned home. Fears of retribution, kept alive by rumours that returnees were mistreated, kept Alves and his family in a camp near the border for 19 months. Alves dates his change of heart to an April 4 visit to West Timor by East Timor's president-elect Xanana Gusmao.

"In the visit Xanana said, 'Just come back to East Timor, I will receive you with open arms'," says Alves as he waits in a refugee transit camp outside the capital, Dili. "Xanana is a very good man for East Timor and we were impressed by what he said. We kept his message in our hearts, that is why we came back."

On Monday, the day Alves crossed the border with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 469 other exiled East Timorese joined him on the trip home -- one of the biggest single-day returns for some time.

In the first five months of this year, 14,000 people have come back from the West Timor camps, not far short of the total for 2001. Just days before East Timor formally gains its independence, the sudden upsurge in refugee returns has raised hopes among UNHCR officials and East Timorese leaders that an end to the refugee problem is in sight. "There is definitely a new dynamic on the other side of the border," says Dili-based UNHCR official Jake Moreland.

The pool of refugees has dwindled from 260,000 soon after the independence vote unleashed a wave of revenge killings and destruction in September 1999 to about 55,000 today. Nearly half of these people came back in the first three months.

But resolving the refugee problem has been one of the most intractable issues in relations between East Timor and its former occupier, Indonesia.

Although the Indonesian security forces have won recent praise for improving co-operation, Moreland says many refugees are still discouraged. "There are stories spread that couples will be separated and wives raped," he says.

Despite these hindrances, the UNHCR is banking on the May 20 declaration of independence and retreat of the UN drawing many of the undecided home. During Gusmao's April 4 visit, UNHCR distributed thousands of postcards printed with the phrase "come home before 20 May". It is hoped hundreds, possibly thousands, will accept the invitation.

Migi Barreto, 17, is one of those who decided he wanted to witness for himself the foundation of a new country. He too came home on Monday. Awaiting transport to his village of Holarua, Marreto says: "We heard in West Timor that East Timor would be independent on the 20th of May and we would have felt very bad if we didn't come back in time."

Nationhood near, hopes are rising in East Timor

International Herald Tribune - May 13, 2002

Michael Richardson, Bacau -- Marito Reis spent nearly 15 years in Indonesian prisons after he was arrested in 1980 for being a member of the clandestine underground movement supporting the small band of armed guerrillas fighting for the independence of East Timor.

With just a few days to go before the territory becomes a sovereign nation at midnight next Sunday after two and half years of transitional administration under the United Nations, Reis -- the local official in charge of Bacau town and the surrounding district -- reflects the sentiments of many other East Timorese when he says that he feels both elated and apprehensive about the future.

"I'm very, very proud," he said the other day on the balcony of his modest home perched on the side of a limestone cliff overlooking the town and the sea. "After 24 years of struggle, this is our prize."

But, Reis added, "I ask myself and our leaders what is going to be the content of this independence. We must now free the people from their poverty, illiteracy and many other problems."

When East Timor becomes the world's newest nation, it will also be one of the least developed and poorest -- a legacy of neglect during more than 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule until 1975 and oppression during the 24 years of occupation by Indonesia. Sixty-three percent of East Timor's 825,000 people live on less than $2 a day. Unemployment is rife and set to become worse as the UN presence winds down and many foreigners leave.

One in two East Timorese over the age of 15 cannot read or write. Public health is poor, particularly in the countryside where more than three quarters of the population lives and tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever and parasitic illnesses are common.

East Timor's average life expectancy is 57 years. Recent research by the World Health Organization shows that twice as many women die in childbirth in East Timor as anywhere else in the region. "Less than a quarter of East Timor's women have ready access to a health facility or a qualified midwife," said Teresa de Jesus Vas Cabral, an East Timorese midwife working with the WHO and the East Timor Health Ministry. "In part, this is because so much of East Timor's infrastructure, including roads, health clinics and hospitals, is still in a state of devastation following the violence of 1999, but it is also because there is a shortage of qualified midwives."

After the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly against a proposal for autonomy in Indonesia and thus for independence in a UN plebiscite in August 1999, the Indonesian military and the local militia groups they supported systematically looted and burned buildings and other property as they withdrew, taking tens of thousands of East Timorese with them into Indonesian-run western Timor. The scars of this violent departure are still visible in much of East Timor. But the United Nations has presided over a remarkable healing process, assisted by a coalition of international financial institutions, foreign governments, private aid agencies and the efforts of East Timorese themselves. The international community has invested $2 billion so far in restoring peace and starting to rebuild East Timor.

As a result, the towns and countryside have come back to life, although urban economic growth is heavily dependent on the diminishing UN presence and much farming remains barely enough for subsistence. Still, agricultural production has recovered to pre-1999 levels while the enrollment of 240,000 in schools exceeds the pre-1999 level of around 190,000 under Indonesia.

East Timor's council of ministers, working in close consultation with foreign aid donors, has agreed to allocate nearly half of the budget for the financial year to June 2003 to improving public health and education, while only 9 percent is being spent on defense.

"The ratio of spending on health and education is the highest for all countries -- developed and developing -- in the Asia-Pacific region," said Sarah Cliffe, the World Bank's chief of mission in East Timor. "The East Timorese have made huge efforts to put forward a sensible national development plan."

An international peacekeeping force has restored law and order throughout the territory. This has enabled the new institutions of East Timor to start functioning well ahead of independence. The nucleus of a public service department, judiciary, police force and army has been recruited and trained. A national public radio and television service are operating.

Contested elections with high turnouts were held peacefully for a constituent assembly in August and a president in April. The assembly, which produced a national constitution, is set to become East Timor's Parliament.

"Much remains to be done, but I believe the foundations are now solid for East Timor to grow and prosper," said the outgoing head of the UN transitional administration, Sergio Vieira de Mello, in a farewell address Friday.

East Timor: The way forward

Australian Financial Review - May 14, 2002

Tim Dodd -- The infant Government of East Timor is supposed to have a car registration system and, indeed, there are plenty of vehicles on the road sporting the new TLS plates standing for Timor Loro Sae, as the country is known in the local Tetum language.

But there is one car in Dili whose number plate says "OH SHIT!" and another which reads "I LOVE KOALAS" as well as plenty of vehicles with no plates at all.

The oddities of car registration are just some of the ways in which the Government of the Chief Minister, Mari Alkatiri, which takes full control from the United Nations when East Timor becomes independent at midnight on Sunday -- does not yet have a firm grip.

These and other shortcomings cost the Government money which it can ill afford to lose. For example, there is widespread smuggling of food, fuel and retail goods from Indonesia to avoid customs duty, as well as big holes in the levying of consumption taxes.

How much is being lost is anybody's guess, but Kirk McManus, the manager of the Dili supermarket Hello Mister, judges from the prices that goods are sold for in Dili that imposts are being widely evaded. McManus calculates that, including transport, duty and taxes, it would cost him $US10 ($18.30) to land each 24-can case of Indonesian-manufactured Coke even if imported by the container load. But down in Dili's market he sees a case being sold for $US8 to $US9.

The Government's electricity billing system is another expensive problem. Indonesian troops and local militia wrecked Dili's power station along with other key infrastructure when they pulled out in September 1999 and an early priority of the interim UN Government was to restore power which, in a city which lacked meters, was distributed for free.

Two-and-a-half years later the problem is to make people pay for it. Inevitably it is larger businesses, such as Hello Mister, which are asked to bear the brunt of the cost in a system where bill evasion is widespread. But the high cost, nearly US$25 per kilowatt hour, along with an unreliable supply is causing businesses to rely on generators which only compounds the cash flow problem for the government-run utility. The operating cost of his generator is 70 per cent of the price of city power, McManus says.

Increasing revenue is the key issue for the Alkatiri Government, which is already under heavy international pressure to become more financially self-reliant. East Timor faces a three-year revenue gap from independence until the expected arrival of substantial revenue from the Timor Sea gas deposits. The shortfall is the main issue at a meeting in Dili starting today at which donor nations and international organisations will commit money to bridge the gap.

After the last East Timor donor meeting in Oslo five months ago it was estimated that the new nation would need between $US154 million and $US184 million over the next three years to close the budget gap. Since then the international community has decided to accept higher estimates of East Timor's Government revenue which reduce that figure "substantially", according to the World Bank's East Timor country director, Sarah Cliff.

This optimistic view suits the world community which has Afghanistan, and other major nation building challenges, to find money for. But essentially it is a gamble that the new Government will succeed in improving tax collection, electricity billing, car registration and other revenue measures. But there is a risk that the reduced donations will leave East Timor struggling, forcing it to return asking for more.

There is no likelihood of an unexpected boost from economic growth. The country's economy is predicted to struggle for the next couple of years as high spending UN and foreign aid workers pull out.

The funding gap is not the only major challenge East Timor faces. The other major issue is land title which is a confusing amalgam of the pre-1975 Portuguese system and the 1976-1999 Indonesian one, now overlaid by land use permits and leases granted by the UN transitional Government.

Except for sovereign land -- once owned by the Portuguese Government, then inherited by the Indonesian Government and now passing to the new independent Government -- there is zero certainty in the system and, with many competing claims, the issue is a monster problem. The UN administration did not even attempt to defuse this powder keg and it is now the biggest barrier to investment in the new country.

The ANZ Bank, which with Portugal's Banco Nacional Ultramarino constitutes East Timor's banking system, has about $US30 million in deposits at its single branch in Dili, equivalent to more than 10 per cent of the country's $US290 million GDP (a figure which excludes UN-originated services which will soon be withdrawn). But none of the ANZ's deposits are invested in East Timor because, without a land title system local lending on any scale is impossible.

"There is no title, no land act, no such thing as a mortgage," says Gary Ayre, an ANZ manager who recently spent a month running the East Timor branch.

The problem is not limited to uncertain title. Under East Timor's new constitution (adopted last year) foreigners, including banks, are not permitted to own land.

As a consequence a foreign bank such as ANZ cannot take possession of land pledged as security in the event of a failed loan. Other countries get around this problem by allowing foreigners to take long-term leases on land but East Timor has yet to deal with the issue.

With commercial lending impractical, ANZ has plans only to make small personal loans of up $US1,000, but must first expand its facilities in Dili to cope with the expected rush of loan customers.

The lack of land security and the absence of a leasehold system is also a major barrier to foreign investment, particularly in tourism, where East Timor has prospects of developing a modestly profitable industry.

Will the new Government be able to cope with these hurdles? It is immediately handicapped by a desperate shortage of expertise. Few top-level bureaucrats from the Indonesian period remain and not many overseas East Timorese want to return and work for a local salary. Only about half the senior positions in the new civil service have been filled, says Colin Stewart, the UN transitional Government's main political adviser.

To cover the gap, the UN is funding 100 foreign expert advisers to continue working in the Government after independence and is asking donor countries to fund 200 more positions.

Then there is the question of whether newly independent East Timor has the ability to maintain the fiscal discipline necessary to avoid falling into debt and wasting the windfall it will receive from Timor Sea gas. Right now the Alkatiri Government is telling the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund the right things.

It intends to keep the energy revenue on budget, where it is open to public scrutiny, and put a portion of it into a trust fund or something similar, to ensure it is not recklessly spent.

But Alkatiri's Fretilin party, which holds a majority in the Parliament elected last August, is still untested and its economic instincts are "dirigiste", says a foreign official in Dili who has observed the progress of the country since the referendum in August 1999, which chose independence. Already, money is being spent on expensive symbols of nationhood which East Timor could do without for now. For example, the Indonesian state-owned airline Merpati Nusantara says it has been approached to co-operate in building a national airline for East Timor, the sort of ambitious venture which has sunk many small South Pacific countries.

"In a technical sense they are not ready [for independence]," the official says. "But you can't run the political calendar on that."

And things could be much worse. While there are doubts about the economy, the new country's security outlook is good -- a remarkable thing given the destruction caused by its big neighbour only two and a half years ago.

Relations with Indonesia are now cordial and the president-elect, Xanana Gusmao, in particular, has been developing friendships with his former foes.

Ten days ago on a visit to Jakarta, he not only saw President Megawati Soekarnoputri and her key ministers, but also had a private meeting with former general Wiranto who, as armed forces commander at the time, is widely held to be one of the key people responsible for Indonesia's campaign of destruction in East Timor.

Now, finally, it is up to the East Timorese to make their own future.

Asia's newest country is also the poorest

Reuters - May 13, 2002

Joanne Collins, Dili -- Tiny East Timor, counting down to its independence in a few days, is Asia's poorest country and will need considerable international assistance in the years ahead, the United Nations said on Monday.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in a report that East Timor was Asia's poorest nation in terms of financial and human development, with annual per capita GDP of just $478. Its human development indicators put it among the world's 20 poorest countries -- alongside nations such as Rwanda and Angola.

East Timor will declare independence in the early hours of May 20 following centuries of Portuguese colonisation and, more recently, 24 years of brutal Indonesian rule.

"Now that independence is achieved, the problems of poverty and economic growth still remain to be tackled and considerable international assistance will be needed in the years ahead," said the report, released on the eve of a two-day meeting of foreign donors in the capital, Dili.

The UNDP said war-ravaged Afghanistan did not fall under its definition of Asia.

Under UN administration

East Timor, home to some 740,000 people, has been under UN administration since late 1999 after an overwhelming vote to break free from Indonesian control triggered an orgy of violence and looting from pro-Jakarta militias who opposed the move.

That widespread destruction has made the job of the East Timorese even harder, and the statistics paint a bleak picture.

More than 40 percent of the population live below the national poverty line of $0.55 per day, with many Timorese engaged in subsistance agriculture, the report said.

Over half the population is illiterate, life expectancy is 57 years of age, very few people have received adequate education and more than 50 percent of infants are underweight, it said.

Discussions with donors are expected to focus on a vision for national development and strategies to reduce poverty.

Donors will also pledge more aid for a fledgling nation about half the size of Belgium and slightly smaller than Hawaii. It was not clear how much donors have already committed to East Timor since the violence of the independence vote.

While economic growth would be a problem when the UN scales down, the report said Timorese could draw on their determination for freedom to help build the world's newest nation. "Through the long years of colonisation and occupation, the people of East Timor retained an unquenchable desire for freedom. That kind of courage and determination should serve them well in the years ahead," said the report.

Energy resource-rich

One of the main determinants of East Timor's future would be how it used petroleum revenues estimated at $7 billion over two decades from 2004, the UNDP report said.

East Timor and neighbour Australia and will sign a treaty over developing gas fields in the Timor Sea on May 20. Royalties will be split 90:10 in East Timor's favour.

Another problem for East Timor would be the range of languages spoken in the territory, the report added.

East Timor authorities have decided to make Portuguese the language of school instruction, although a household survey last year concluded only five percent of the population spoke it compared with 82 percent for Tetum, the main local language. Tetum is regarded as too limited for the modern world.

Both Tetum and Portuguese are considered national languages by the constitution, the UNDP report said. Bahasa Indonesia, a symbol of Jakarta's harsh and unwelcome rule, was spoken by 43 percent of East Timorese, according to the household survey.

Udayana commander ready for anti-East Timor rallies

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Nusa Dua, Bali -- Udayana Military Commander Maj. Gen. Willem T. Da Costa, who oversees Bali, West and East Nusa Tenggara provinces, warned on Monday pro-Indonesia East Timorese in East Nusa Tenggara against staging demonstrations on May 20, the day of East Timor's independence.

Willem said that pro-Indonesia East Timorese currently living in the province planned to stage massive rallies in various cities in the province. Protesters planned to burn East Timorese flags and pictures of East Timor's president-elect Xanana Gusmao during the rallies.

The rallies, according to Willem, were planned and organized by Uni Timor Aswain (Aswain) -- an association comprising pro- Indonesia East Timorese intellectuals, bureaucrats, tribal leaders and former militiamen. "I cannot tolerate this plan of burning flags and pictures, because the consequences will be grave. If the plan materializes then one of the possible outcomes is that people in East Timor will counteract by holding rallies, during which they will burnour flag and pictures of our president," the general said.

"When this kind of ugliness [retaliation] happens, who will be able to guarantee that millions of Indonesians will keep quiet and do nothing? They might get angry, after being insulted by the burnings. And we certainly don't want that to happen," Willem said.

To make sure that the worst-case scenario does not happen, Willem said he had conveyed to East Timorese people in East Nusa Tenggara that such acts would not go unpunished.

"I have told them that I will not tolerate any rally on that day. I don't care if I am labeled as being against democracy or whatever, my stance is final. I will not allow them to stage any protest or rally as planned. I am being paid as a soldier to takecare of the best interests of the Indonesian people, not of a certain group. I believe that the planned rallies are not in the best interest of our people," he said.

Willem disclosed that he had instructed the East Nusa Tenggara military commander to get his troops prepared for the rallies. The rallies were to be held in East Nusa Tenggara's capital of Kupang, and at Atambua, where the majority of pro-Indonesia East Timorese refugees currently live.

"There is a possibility that I will not be in East Nusa Tenggara on May 20 because I have to accompany Ibu President to East Timor. But I have told the local commanders to get ready," he said.

All the accused seen at church incident in Suai: Witnesses

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

jakarta -- A civilian and policeman testified on Monday at the trial of four soldiers and one policeman accused of gross human rights violations in East Timor in 1999 that they saw all the defendants at the scene of the church incident in Suai.

Pranoto, principal at the local junior high school, said soon after accompanying his family members to seek refuge in Suai he met former Suai military commander Lt. Col. Sugito.

Both Pranoto and Sony Sanjaya, a member of the police Mobile Brigade, testified in their capacity as witnesses at the trial of the five defendants at the Central Jakarta District Court.

At least 27 people were killed in the attack in the church, including three Catholic priests -- Tarcisius Dewanto, Hilario Madeira and Francisco Soares.

The defendants -- Sugito, former Covalima regent Col. Herman Sedyono; Sugito's predecessor Liliek Koeshadianto, Suai military command chief of staff Capt. Achmad Syamsudin, and former Suai Police station chief Lt. Col. Gatot Subiakto -- were charged under Articles 7, 9, 37 and 42 of Law No. 26/2000 of the rights tribunal. The crimes carry sentences ranging from 10 years' imprisonment to the death penalty.

Pranoto explained that the late Olivio Mendoza Manek, the former head of the Laksaur militia, informed Sugito there was unrest at the St. Ave Maria Church. The three rushed to the church where they found the 27 bodies, including those of the three priests.

"When I arrived with my men at St. Ave Maria Church, soldiers and policemen were already around the compound taking cover as shots were still being fired," Sony told the human rights court.

Sanjaya said he arrived at the church in Suai after hearing volleys of shots there. He said he asked one soldier who was taking cover what was happening and was told that a group of pro-Indonesia East Timorese had stormed the church.

When asked why the East Timorese militias were allowed to attack the church, the soldier answered: "It is impossible to stop them because of their large number."

Hopes fade for East Timor justice

Reuters - May 13, 2002

As East Timor readies for independence on 20 May, Jakarta correspondent Richard Galpin writes that most of those who wreaked terrible violence after the 1999 vote to end Indonesian rule still walk free.

"It is not to get justice for the victims, it's just lip service" Human rights lawyer Johnson Panjaitan

The former Indonesian province of East Timor has been under United Nations' control since its people voted for independence three years ago.

But freedom came at a high price. More than 1,000 people were killed, and almost every town and village systematically destroyed, by retreating Indonesian soldiers and their militias.

While a handful of people have been prosecuted in East Timor, most of those responsible for the violence now live in Indonesia, where there has been little progress made to bring them to justice.

Incriminating footage

Archive footage of the top militia leader, Eurico Guterres, shows him in front of a large crowd of his men in April 1999 in the East Timorese capital, Dili.

The pro-Indonesian militiamen shout they are ready for operations. The crowd moves off in a convoy of vehicles led by Mr Guterres, and soon the violence begins.

In a series of attacks across the city, 13 independence supporters are killed, nine people are seriously injured and many buildings destroyed.

Eurico Guterres is seen with the gunmen. Earlier that month he was also filmed in the town of Liquica, just after the massacre of dozens of refugees who had taken shelter inside a church.

An indictment, issued this year by a court in East Timor, accused Mr Guterres and members of the Indonesian security forces of crimes against humanity for direct involvement in the violence in Dili.

Denial

Today, Mr Guterres lives in a comfortable suburb of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. He knows he will not be extradited to East Timor to face trial. The Indonesian Government has refused to hand anyone over. And he continues to deny responsibility for the killings.

"If you look fairly at what happened in East Timor, especially after the independence vote, then I'm sure I'm not to blame," Mr Guterres said.

"The responsibility should lie with the Portuguese and Indonesian governments and the United Nations, whose agreement on holding the referendum was the cause of everything that happened." He could face trial in Jakarta at Indonesia's own human rights tribunal, finally set up by the government in March after intense pressure from the international community.

Mr Guterres and 17 other militiamen, government officials and members of the security forces, have been charged with crimes against humanity. On Monday, Mr Guterres answered questions from Indonesian state prosecutors about his role in the violence.

But so far only seven of the accused have actually appeared in court and there are increasing doubts whether Mr Guterres or any other senior figures, particularly from the army, will ever be called to account.

Asmara Nababan, general-secretary of the National Human Rights Commission, is sceptical.

Fatally flawed

"I'm not sure these tribunals can deliver justice. The recruitment of the judges was not transparent, the indictments are very weak and all the key witnesses are in East Timor.

"Also they are only investigating very few of the violent incidents in 1999. It seems neither the judges, nor the prosecution, intend revealing the truth of what happened, although I think some middle-ranking officials will be sacrificed to save the senior military and police commanders."

The original investigation by the Human Rights Commission into the violence in East Timor called for more than 100 people, including the former armed forces chief, General Wiranto, to stand trial.

But that list was cut right down by state prosecutors to remove the most senior military officers. Human rights lawyer Johnson Panjaitan is also deeply sceptical about the whole process.

"From the beginning, the only purpose of these tribunals was to meet the pressure from both inside the country and from the international community. It is not to get justice for the victims, it's just lip service.

"The papers produced so far before the court are not about the systematic violations of human rights, which were well organised by the military."

'No proof'

And certainly lawyers such as Hotma Sitompul, who are defending those who have appeared in the tribunals, are very confident their clients will not be prosecuted. "So far there is no evidence, no witnesses, to prove that he is guilty," he said. He said he thought his clients would be released.

In the immediate aftermath of the violence in 1999, there were calls for an international human rights tribunal to be set up. But with the Indonesian Government promising to bring those responsible to justice, the United Nations backed off.

Despite the lack of progress, now it seems the idea of an international court has been shelved altogether.

Alex Flor, head of a German human rights organisation called Watch Indonesia, has been observing the tribunals in Jakarta.

The bigger picture

"The international community is very much interested in reinstating good relationships to Indonesia, to the Indonesian Government.

"And especially the United States -- who stopped their arms exports due to the East Timor case -- they are very keen to reinstate good relationship with the Indonesian army in the context of ... "the war against terror" after 11 September. "So they are no longer interested in putting the Indonesian army into a corner."

So whilst a few mid-ranking military police and civilian officials may eventually be prosecuted, it seems most of those responsible for the bloodshed will remain free here in Indonesia.

Weary refugees answer call of home

South China Morning Post - May 13, 2002

Chris McCall at Mota Ain, the Timor border -- Torn between tears and smiles, the refugees line up with all their worldly goods and wait to go home. Some are even bringing their dead.

Waiting to cross the frontier to his native East Timor, Mateas Soares has little to say except that he has to go home. "It is my place of birth. I have to go back," said the father of four.

It is the most common answer among these few hundred weary people. They had fled East Timor amid the chaos and killing that followed the 1999 referendum on independence for the Indonesian- occupied territory, and still feel a strong bond to their native land.

Clutching small wads of US dollar notes handed out by Indonesian officials before they leave, they have their photographs taken and then wait beside the small convoy of yellow trucks which will take them back to East Timor.

Mr Soares, 34, is heading to Manututo, the home town that he shares with President-elect Xanana Gusmao. He remembers when Mr Gusmao studied at a local seminary and is glad he will be East Timor's first president. "He is a struggler," he said.

Mr Gusmao's constant push for reconciliation and visits to West Timor have made him a hero even to many of those who opposed independence.

A line of perhaps 20 trucks is waiting ahead of the group to cross the border, all loaded with the returnees' entire belongings. These often include the remains of the houses they lived in during their two years in squalid West Timor refugee camps. They are allowed to dismantle the buildings and retain the materials to construct new homes back in East Timor.

When the UN military observers monitoring the operation get the okay, the convoy makes its way slowly over a few dozen metres of "no-man's land".

But the border region is very different to the tension-filled place it was in late 1999. Customs and immigration posts have been set up on both sides, and only those with passports or equivalent documents are allowed to go through.

Perhaps 200 to 300 people will cross the border today, the latest in a steady stream of returnees from the dilapidated camps in West Timor that Indonesia wants to close. At the current rate of return, many of the camps might be empty within a few months. Many refugees are rushing to beat the deadline next Monday, East Timor's independence day. After that, Indonesia will not consider them as refugees, but as ordinary Indonesian citizens.

The returnees are searched several times for weapons, at least twice on the Indonesian side and once on the East Timor side. As their belongings are unloaded from the trucks at Batugade, they are also searched.

There, the workers of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees hand out food and blankets, and check their identities again. Some may spend the night there, awaiting new trucks to take them home. Many of the men are interviewed for "security assessment". Local administrations are notified about those considered potential risks, for example, because they joined the anti-independence militia.

One elderly man is bringing the body of his 12-year-old son, who died of malaria in 2000. Jefrino Moises says he will bury his son, Januario, again in his home village of Balibo, where he will resume his old life as a farmer. He says he does not care whether his house is still standing. He has friends and relatives in Balibo. It is his home. With his wife and three remaining children, he is going to farm his land again.

Fury as Indonesian 'army killer' returns to East Timor

Daily Telgraph - May 12, 2002

Philip Sherwell, Maliana -- In a calculated snub to the United Nations and Europe, the prime suspect in the murder of a Financial Times journalist in East Timor in 1999 returned to the territory last week as part of an official Indonesian military delegation on a goodwill visit.

Lt Camilo dos Santos, an East Timorese officer serving in the Indonesian army, has been promoted to the role of general's adjutant, even though he is the subject of investigations by the UN, Holland and Indonesia.

At midnight next Sunday, East Timor will become the first new state of the 21st century, in accordance with the result of a 1999 referendum. The nation's birth will be a humiliating moment for the Indonesian military that organised local militia in a brutal effort to crush the independence movement before and after the plebiscite.

By sending Lt dos Santos to a border-opening ceremony attended by the head of the interim UN administration and East Timorese political leaders, senior Indonesian officers were displaying a provocative defiance. His presence was brought to the attention of shocked officials by The Telegraph. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Brazilian head of the UN mission, looked dismayed. Commissioner Peter Miller, the Canadian UN police chief, said that "this occasion is not the time to act", while Mari Alkatiri, East Timor's chief minister, was clearly furious.

Lt dos Santos had sat just behind Mr de Mello during the ceremony and seemed in a relaxed mood later. When I confronted him about the allegations that he shot Sander Thoenes, a Dutch journalist working for the Financial Times in Dili on September 21, 1999, he replied: "I know nothing about that journalist."

Was he aware that Dutch and UN investigators said he was the main suspect? "Yes, yes, I know," he said. "But there's no proof." He added that the "past is the past", that he would like to return to live in East Timor one day and that he would be happy to answer the accusations in court.

Lt dos Santos had been serving in his native East Timor -- then under occupation by Jakarta -- with the Indonesian army's Battalion 745 when the territory voted overwhelmingly for independence. The battalion responded with a murderous rampage as it withdrew to neighbouring West Timor in Indonesia. Thoenes was one of up to 20 of its victims.

The three-day killing spree -- one of 10 "priority" cases of atrocities under UN investigation -- was allegedly led by a motorcycle squad from Battalion 745 including Lt dos Santos. Indonesia's failure to move against the alleged killers -- most of whom, like the lieutenant, still serve in the army, even though the battalion was disbanded -- has led to a diplomatic row between Jakarta and the West.

A report by a Dutch police investigator concluded that Thoenes had been shot in the back by Lt dos Santos. The Dutch and other European Union governments have urged Jakarta to act.

Indonesia belatedly sent three investigators to East Timor, but they are understood to have reported insufficient evidence to act. The man who said he saw Lt dos Santos shoot Thoenes was an unreliable witness, they concluded, although their Dutch and UN counterparts praised his evidence.

Under pressure from the West, Jakarta recently set up a human- rights tribunal to hear cases against 18 soldiers, officials and militia members, but not Lt dos Santos.

The Dutch report also details a deliberate plan by the senior officers of Battalion 745 to conduct a brutal "scorched earth" policy. A battalion member said Lt dos Santos told retreating soldiers: "If you find anything, just shoot it." The motorcycle teams led by example, blasting away at the people and animals they came across en route.

Former 745 members have also told investigators of an initiation ceremony that Lt dos Santos organised for new recruits: drinking palm wine mixed with the blood of a dog and fellow soldiers.

Since leaving East Timor, Lt dos Santos has been serving in Battalion 743 in West Timor. He was included in the Indonesian party on Thursday as adjutant to Gen William da Costa, the senior regional officer. The general brushed off questions about Lt dos Santos's past, saying he had not been convicted of any crime.

Despite the strength of evidence, the UN has not as yet issued an arrest warrant as it wants Jakarta's inquiries to be completed first. Nonetheless, senior UN officials were privately furious that Lt dos Santos had been among the Indonesian party.

Gen da Costa will be told that if he accepts an invitation to attend next week's independence celebrations, he should not bring his adjutant along again. "That would be very embarrassing for everyone," said a UN official. "And, who knows, by then there might be an arrest warrant."

Choosing a native tongue

The Guardian - April 18, 2002

Michael Kessler -- Next month East Timor will become the world's newest nation when the former Portuguese colony, which voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999, formally adopts its first constitution.

But while the document establishes Tetum and Portuguese as the country's official languages and Indonesian Bahasa and English as its working languages, it has failed to resolve a continuing debate about the role of East Timor's colonial languages and the increasing influence of the "global language" of English.

Portuguese was the language of resistance for the present group of political leaders who were active against the Indonesian occupation.

Though Portuguese is only currently spoken by around 10% to 15% of the population (and mainly those over 40), the country's leaders are immersed in it, not least because of their indebtedness to both Portugal and the Portuguese-speaking countries such as Mozambique and Angola for support during the occupation.

Last year concern among this generation of leaders about the spread of English at the expense of Portuguese, was expressed by Ramos Horta, the cabinet member for foreign affairs. He heavily criticised the United Nations mission in Dili for not respecting Portuguese as one of the country's official languages.

According to some, Portuguese also serves other linguistic functions.

An Australian-based academic, Geoffrey Hull, says that the widespread use of Portuguese is essential to the survival of the nation's lingua franca, Tetum.

"Portuguese can serve Tetum because it is not formally very distant from Tetum," he says. "There is a huge Portuguese element in its sound system, grammar and vocabulary, which means Portuguese is not excessively difficult for East Timorese to learn because they already have a partial knowledge of it through speaking Tetum."

The materialistic motives, as Mr Hull puts it, to promote English as an official language would threaten East Timorese culture.

"Linguists often refer to English as a killer, an imperialist language which in world history has a worse record of driving other languages to extinction than any other.

It seems clear that Tetum would be a very inferior and endangered partner in any future cohabitation with English."

Yet there are others, such as Tetum specialist Catharina van Klinken, who do not see Portuguese and Tetum as mutually beneficial.

Ms Van Klinken notes that most of the younger generation of educated Timorese were trained in Indonesian Bahasa but identify with Tetum as their language of resistance.

This is the generation who would much prefer English over Portuguese, she says, who produced a list of electoral vocabulary in Tetum for the United Nations Development Programme.

"Portuguese is held by the educated East Timorese youth to be a problematic language," Ms Van Klinken adds. "Some of their difficulties are linguistic, for instance the fact that it has many verb forms, but a lot of them are social. They say that they just don't have any exposure to it."

Yet Tetum's future as an official language remains in doubt. While it is the language of choice in parliament it is still a language in development.

Its written form is incomplete and experts say that its capacity to function as a strong unifying national language will depend on the level of policy commitment from government.

A Tetum Language Institute has been set up at the University of East Timor and Australian-based linguists are assisting in the development of Tetum grammars and dictionaries.

Yet some analysts remain pessimistic. Helen Hill, senior lecturer in the Sociology of the Asia Pacific Region at Victoria University in Melbourne believes more will be needed.

"My criticism of the language policy is that it's not really practical," she says. "There should be much more discussion about what level people will learn different languages. Policy makers should also be trying to increase the number of interpreters and translators."

Even the Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmao, told Australian radio recently that it would take some 10 to 15 years for Tetum to stand up as the symbolic language of identity.

Ms Van Klinken thinks there's a possibility Portuguese won't work, but nor is she confident that Tetum will succeed either.

"If Portuguese is really pushed as the official language I don't think Tetum will ever make it too. I don't see any practical measure to develop Tetum in five years' time."

Aderito de Jesus Soares is a member of the Fretilin party and lecturer in human rights at the University of East Timor who is widely credited with raising Tetum's status in the constitution. He points out that it is hugely symbolic that Tetum comes before Portuguese in the constitution's wording but adds that it's only a start.

"I think there is a lot to be done. We've got to get reading materials published in Tetum," says de Jesus Soares.

"People have also got to speak and discuss in Tetum. Of course, you still have old leaders who romanticise Portuguese but I think we should speak Tetum in various formal occasions, meetings, seminars, whatever.

"We don't need to be afraid of other languages, we should be open to them but the courage and the spirit to develop Tetum should be there."

The future role of English is also unclear. To some extent its usage as a second language will depend on the success of Portuguese language teaching in the schools and university systems.

Portuguese has already been adopted in years one and two of primary school and the plan is to phase it in in each subsequent school year on an annual basis. Hill does not believe that by relegating English to second-language status East Timor will lose out.

"There's no doubt that English will be a widespread language but it doesn't have to be official to be a significant language," she says.

But this assumption will also depend on which part of the world East Timor is dealing with. The country still counts Indonesia as its biggest trading partner so it's highly likely, according to de Jesus Soares, that Indonesian Bahasa will be the language of commercial transaction between the two countries.

Chris Chrystello, author of East Timor: The Secret Files, spent 25 years reporting on the country. He believes that the adoption of Portuguese will have strategic consequences: "It will make the new country less dependent on Australia and Indonesia, no matter how relevant these two countries will be for East Timor's survival."

East Timor truth commission faces arduous task

Japan Times - May 15, 2002

Stephanie Coop -- After a lifetime dedicated to fighting for a free East Timor, Jacinto Alves will finally see his country move to full independence Monday, when the United Nations' transitional administration steps aside to make way for the country's first democratically elected government.

But the 45-year-old human rights activist's work is far from over. As one of seven national commissioners on East Timor's new Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation, Alves now faces the formidable task of documenting a quarter-century of rights abuses and fostering reconciliation among his countrymen after 24 years of Indonesian occupation.

On a recent visit to Japan, Alves explained that the commission aims to help East Timorese overcome the hatred and divisions the occupation has created by providing local forums for those guilty of lesser violations, such as arson, theft and minor assault, to publicly confess their crimes and apologize to victims.

Perpetrators would then be required to compensate victims in some way, he said, by paying a sum of money, for example, or working to repair the damage they had caused, thereby freeing them from further civil or criminal prosecution.

Criminal prosecution of those responsible for planning and carrying out atrocities in the leadup to and aftermath of the 1999 UN-sponsored independence ballot is moving at a snail's pace, he said.

Ensuring justice for victims of low-level crimes will help alleviate suspicions that reconciliation means nothing more than forgiving and forgetting. "We can't erase victims' feelings of hatred in this way," he said, "but [we] can help minimize them by fostering the feeling that they are being compensated for their suffering to at least some extent."

The commission is due to begin public hearings this week and will operate from six regional offices staffed by between 25 and 30 regional commissioners.

While it is modeled on South Africa's truth commission, it will not deal with serious crimes such as murder, torture and rape, and it will not have the power to grant amnesties. It will work in cooperation with the formal justice system, and any evidence it receives relating to serious offenses will be passed on to East Timor's general prosecutor's office for further investigation.

Observers have expressed concern that many seemingly nonserious crimes, such as arson and intimidation, fall into the category of crimes against humanity when committed as part of a systematic attack on a civilian population and should therefore be dealt with as violations of international criminal law rather than as part of the reconciliation process.

The commission is aware of this concern, Alves said, adding that there are thousands of such possible cases and treating every one as a criminal offense would be too much for East Timor's already overburdened criminal justice system to handle.

During its term, which will run for up to 2 1/2 years, the commission will also look into all human rights violations committed between 1974 and 1999, in order to create an accurate historical record of the conflict.

Alves said the scope of this part of the commission's mandate has sparked fears that it will be flooded with an unmanageable number of cases to investigate.

The commissioners plan to deal with this, he explained, by focusing on representative cases covering major themes such as extrajudicial executions, starvation, deportation, rape and torture. "Considering the vast number of cases, though, even this will still be a lot of work," he said.

The commission is also tasked with helping foster the return of refugees from West Timor, where hundreds of thousands of East Timorese fled or were deported in September 1999.

The Japanese government has pledged to provide $1 million of the commission's $3.8 million budget.

Alves, who spent seven years in jail as a political prisoner and lost many family members to Indonesian military violence, said that while he is willing to forgive, he will never forget. "I accept, and perhaps my family can accept, it as the consequence of our struggle [for liberation]," he said.

Labour struggle

More than 600,000 workers employed illegally overseas

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

Jakarta -- More than 600,000 Indonesian migrant workers, mostly women, face labor exploitation in several countries as they are employed illegally, while hundreds are stranded at several embassies because of problems that developed with employers, labor exporters said on Thursday.

Husein Alaydrus, the chairman of the Association of Labor Export Companies (Apjati), said that despite its tight policy on migrant workers, Malaysia still employs between 400,000 and 600,000 Indonesians who migrate to the neighboring country illegally.

"Out of some 1,000,000 Indonesians working in Malaysia, about 50 percent are employed illegally because they do not hold the necessary documents, including immigration permits and working visas, to work in that country. The more the Malaysian authorities net illegal workers through routine operations, the more Indonesians are entering that country illegally," he told The Jakarta Post.

The Malaysian government has enforced a tight policy on migrant workers, especially those from Indonesia, due to two consecutive acts of violence incited by Indonesian workers in Johor last October and near Kuala Lumpur last December. Over the past six months, Malaysia has also expelled tens of thousands of Indonesian workers for illegally entering the country, undermining the two countries' bilateral ties.

He also pointed out that more than 22,000 of 400,000 Indonesians employed in the Middle East were not registered at Indonesian embassies and their presence had gone undetected.

More than 138 Indonesian workers, who have had problems develop with their employers, were stranded at the Indonesian embassies in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia because they had no money to return home.

"They left their workplace for numerous reasons. But most have left their employers' homes because they were mistreated or underpaid," he said.

Anthon Sihombing, a labor exporter, said the rampant smuggling of Indonesian workers overseas had a lot to do with the absence of the government's tight measures against unauthorized businesspeople and companies without labor export licenses and the ease of ordering Indonesian workers to work abroad.

"So far, many individuals and unauthorized companies have exported workers overseas without any knowledge of the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration and Apjati. This means the workers are employed without a labor contract regulating their payments, working conditions and legal protection," he said.

Separately, Muhammad Yunus, a labor observer, blamed the government for the employment of illegal Indonesian workers because it failed to deregulate the labor export ruling and take action against the smuggling of illegal workers abroad.

"Labor exploitation can be found easily, not only at home but also overseas. It is natural but inhumane of employers to employ cheap laborers because of an absence of the workers' labor contract and other necessary documents," he said.

He said the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration should improve cooperation with the immigration office, port authorities and the Navy to curb rampant smuggling of illegal workers.

Teachers protest against 'discrimination'

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

Tangerang -- Some 1,000 kindergarten, elementary and high school teachers grouped in the Tangerang branch of the Indonesian Teachers' Union (PGRI) staged a rally at the local municipal offices on Thursday to protest against what they claimed was the discriminative treatment they had been subjected to for so long.

Minto, who represented the other teachers, said that administrative staff received a Rp 300,000 transportation allowance per month each, but a teacher only received Rp 150,000.

"Is that fair? The administrative staff are civil servants and we, teachers, are too. So, we should receive the same amount," he told reporters.

The teachers also demanded that the administration soon issued a bylaw on teachers and educational matters.

"Since the regional autonomy policy has taken effect, the education agency should have more authority in deciding on education policies, including determining the transfer of teachers from one school to another," he asserted.

He said that only the municipal Human Resources Agency (BKD) had the authority to authorize the transfer of teachers and administrative staff.

The teachers also protested the appointment of the administration's deputy chief Harry Mulya Zain as the education agency's new director as he had no experience in educational matters.

Pedicab drivers stage protest

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

Jakarta -- About 100 members of the Association of Jakarta Becak (pedicab) Drivers staged a protest at the Ministry of Home Affairs, on Jl. Merdeka Utara, Central Jakarta, demanding the revocation of the city bylaw on public order, which bans them from operating in the capital.

The protesters said that the bylaw No. 11/1988 should be replaced by one that was drafted by activists, and was submitted to the City Council earlier this week.

They argued that the legal basis of the current bylaw, No. 5/1974 on regional government, had been superseded by the issuance of the law on regional autonomy in 2000. Bylaw No. 11/1988 is also prone to violation as it gives the governor full authority to regulate public order, according to the association, which is an affiliation of the Urban Poor Consortium, Antara reported.

Based on the bylaw, city public order officials have carried out raids against the becak and confiscated the vehicles. The becak drivers also demanded that the officers return their vehicles.

Public minivan drivers on strike in Bogor

Jakarta Post - May 15, 2002

Bogor -- Drivers of public minivans in Bogor, West Java, went on strike on Tuesday, demanding that the Bogor city council legalize the increase in bus fares from Rp 900 to Rp 1,000. But city council chairman M. Sahid rejected passing the increase into law.

The drivers increased their fares after the government raised the gasoline price from Rp 1,600 to Rp 1,750 per liter. "The council has formally refused the plan to increase the bus fare. It should be maintained at Rp 900," he told representatives of the drivers who met with a number of councillors on Tuesday.

Chairman of the Bogor chapter of the land transportation owners Association (Organda Bogor), M. Isak, said that his association had only proposed to raise the bus fare from Rp 900 to Rp 1,135 and not Rp 1,300 as had been reported before.

The new fare was proposed two months ago when the government increased gasoline prices from Rp 1,550 to Rp 1,600 per liter. But after the council gave no response, it just canceled the plan. Striking drivers included public minivan operators serving Pasar Anyar-Cimanggu, Pasar Anyar-Pondok Rumput, Jambu-Ramayana and Warung Jambu-Merdeka.

Workers demand dismissal of manager

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Tangerang -- Around 400 workers of PT Mawar Nirwana, a plastic flowers manufacturer in Tangerang, went on strike on Monday, demanding the management dismiss the company's production manager.

"We demand the management dismiss production manager Johan, because he has been acting like a dictator. Johan's policies always disadvantage the workers," said Alamsyah, one of the workers.

Another worker, Fadjri, said Johan often transferred workers from one section to another without consideration and canceled bonuses for those who failed to reach the production target.

"We realize the company is in financial difficulties and we can accept whatever policy has been imposed on the workers. But the manager always decides things as he likes without discussing it with the workers' union," Fajdri said.

The workers gathered at the factory, sat and chatted with each other. The company office closed down and production was brought to a complete halt. None of the management staff could be reached for comment. The workers said they would continue striking until the company dismisses Johan.

Drivers go on strike to demand fare hike

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Kasparman and Apriadi Gunawan, Padang/Medan -- Hundreds of public minivan drivers in Padang, West Sumatra went on strike Monday, forcing thousands of students, civil servants and other commuters to find other means of reaching their destinations.

Nanggalo Transportation Cooperatives (Kopan) chairman Herman Zen said the strike was aimed at forcing the city administration to raise public transportation fares after the central government decided to increase the price of fuel.

"We urge the city administration to heed our demands." Herman said the Padang Transportation Office had promised earlier to raise fares but reneged without giving an explanation.

The central government raised the price of diesel to Rp 1,750 per liter. The increase significantly reduced the drivers' income as public transportation owners usually make the drivers pay for either gasoline or diesel when they operate the vehicles.

"Public transportation owners are still demanding the same daily fee. So, it is better for us to go on strike so that our demands become clearer," said Agus, a driver plying the Padang terminal- Siteba route.

According to Herman, Kopan's 318 members would continue to strike until their demands were met by the city administration.

Public minivan drivers that went on strike on Monday were those plying the routes Padang's city terminal to Siteba, Kampung Kelawi, Simpang Haru, Teluk Bayur, Pengambiran and Nanggalo.

The Padang city administration did nothing to address the transportation problem. To make things worse, the strike was launched just as senior and junior high school students were starting exams.

"We have to take a taxi otherwise we could not attend the exams," said Yanti, a senior high school student in Padang. "The mayor should have anticipated this by providing alternative transportation," she added.

Unlike in the previous strikes, the drivers refused to bring their demands to the Padang Legislative Council or Padang Municipality. "It is useless if we go there since the government will unlikely grant our demand," Agus said.

Meanwhile, in Medan, North Sumatra, the Association of Public Transportation Owners (Organda) demanded on Monday that the government raise public transportation fares by an average of 60 percent. "We urge the Medan administration to accept the proposed increase because the drivers are already hard up with the fuel increase," Medan Organda chairman O.K. Chaidir said on Monday.

Responding to their demands, Medan Mayor Abdillah told the drivers not to increase fares immediately. "The public transportation fares will definitely be raised but not too high and should not be unilaterally decided [by the drivers]," Abdillah said.

Aceh/West Papua

Aceh's Puteh promotes peace talk agreement

Jakarta Post - May 18, 2002

Apriadi Gunawan, Medan -- Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Governor Abdullah Puteh held a closed-door meeting with activists of the Aceh Referendum Information Center (SIRA) in Medan, North Sumatra on Thursday to familiarize them with the outcome of the peace talks in Geneva.

SIRA activist Fuady Sony said after the meeting on Thursday that Puteh and his staff organized the meeting to explain the points reached in the agreement made during peace talks between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) on May 8 and May 9 in Geneva, Switzerland.

However, Puteh denied that the meeting was organized to promote the Geneva agreement, arguing that the Aceh administration had not received any official notice on it. "We learned the outcome of the peace talks from the media but we have not received any official notice from the central government," Puteh said.

According to the governor, he and his staff met with Acehnese students affiliated with SIRA in Medan to talk about the government and developments in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD). "We did not talk with SIRA, but with Acehnese students. We discussed the government and developments in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam," Puteh said.

According to Fuady, SIRA activists told Governor Puteh in the meeting that they rejected the special autonomy deal offered by the central government and demanded a referendum to settle the Aceh conflict once and for all.

The government and GAM negotiators agreed to a cease-fire in the peace talks held on May 8 and May 9 in Geneva to end the decades of bloodshed in the restive province. They also reaffirmed their commitment to adopt the special autonomy arrangement as the basis for future negotiations.

Fuady said SIRA as an institution, which consists of some 120 pro-referendum elements, refused to accept the special autonomy package as it did not represent the people's aspirations.

"The Acehnese want the current conflict to be settled once and for all through a referendum," said Fuady, adding that SIRA would continue fighting for a referendum as demanded by the Acehnese during a meeting held on September 8, 1999.

"The autonomy issue is an old one. Aceh has been declared a special autonomous region, but there's nothing special about that. What is special about Aceh is that it has turned into a killing field," Fuady said. Hundreds of innocent people have been killed since January as armed encounters between the Indonesian Military (TNI) and GAM fighters have continued unabated.

SIRA urged the government to declare a cease-fire in the troubled province and invite foreign mediators to monitor it. "I think what is important now is a cease-fire," Fuady said after the meeting.

According to Fuady, it was high time for TNI and GAM to declare a cease-fire as "the Acehnese are tired of the continuing violence and the protracted conflict" in the country's westernmost province.

Puteh also expressed concern over the abduction of nine female Acehnese students by unidentified men recently, saying that the government could not tolerate any violence in the province.

"It is a pity that the students were kidnapped. The students want to study," said Puteh, adding that students should not be exploited in the conflict. "We appeal to all of those involved to realize that kidnapping is not good for the future of Aceh or the future of the Acehnese," he said.

51 Papuan tribes face extinction due to logging

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

Jakarta -- Excessive logging has pushed to near extinction at least 51 isolated tribes living as nomads in Waropen, Papua, the country's eastern most province.

Head of the Papua Social Welfare Office Onnes Rumandei said in Jayapura on Thursday that forests, which had long been the habitat for these tribes, were vanishing due to excessive logging by forest concessionaires.

Onnes did not mention the names of those holding forest utilization licenses (HPHs) operating in Papua, but they are believed to be Jakarta-based companies with a strong connection to the New Order regime.

Logging activities, which have worsened since the central government introduced the special autonomy law on January 1, have driven the tribes to mountainous areas along the Mamberamo River's catchment sites bordering the regencies of Nabire, Puncak Jaya, Jayawijaya and Jayapura.

Under the special autonomy arrangement, local administrations may grant concessionaires the right to exploit the country's forests.

The special autonomy law also allows the province to keep up to 80 percent of the revenue generated from the exploitation of local resources, change its name from Irian Jaya to Papua, and to fly the provincial flag alongside the national flag.

The tribes, which were first discovered by Christian missionaries and foundations, lead a Stone Age life, with tribespeople choosing to wear no clothes and to live in caves, trees or twig huts.

Onnes criticized the government for not paying any attention to the plight of these tribes.

"Where in fact, these isolated tribes are also part of the unitary state of Indonesia that deserve government service," said Onnes, expressing fear that the tribes would become extinct if the government did not act quickly.

"The tribes are currently being taken care of by the church and foundations that are concerned with their well-being," said Onnes, who emphasized that the government had never had the chance to look after the tribes.

Onnes said the central government had always ignored proposals submitted to Jakarta. He did not elaborate on the proposals.

Papuans, according to Onnes, are one of the world's last remaining pure indigenous people and their welfare should be of international concern. He said between 70 percent and 80 percent of the indigenous Papuan population were still living in isolated regions.

In 2002, the Papuan government designated 12 training centers in 12 regencies in Jayapura, Biak Numfor, Yawa, Nabire, Puncak Jaya, Jayawijaya, Merauke, Paniai, Sorong and Fakfak.

Aceh refugees forced to leave UNRC office

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

Banda Aceh -- At least 153 refugees from Central and South Aceh were forced to leave the United Nations Resource Center (UNRC) compound in Banda Aceh, four days after they fled their homes due to increasing violence and security risks.

Ahmad, a refugee from Takengon, Central Aceh, told journalists on Thursday that they left the UN compound after Aceh legislative members refused to guarantee their safety. "They told us that the Indonesian military would shoot us to death if we did not evacuate," Ahmad said.

Before the forced evacuation, Aceh legislative members, represented by Farid Fazri of the military faction, and deputy chief of the social affairs ministry office Nasir Ali, tried to persuade the refugees to leave voluntarily, but failed.

The refugees appealed to the legislators not to force them to leave the compound, which was already surrounded by military personnel. "But the provincial legislators told us that they would not be held responsible for our lives if the military started shooting us," Ahmad said.

Nasir, however, denied that they had forced the refugees to leave the center. "We urged them to return to their homes. We also promised to give them money and rice for one month," he said.

Risma, an activist with the People's Crisis Center, which has been working with refugees in Aceh, said that the refugees were not given food while staying at the UN compound. "It seems they were not given food so that they would go home immediately," Risma said.

Earlier, some 170 refugees had also fled to the UN facility, but they recently returned home.

Aceh rebels detain nine girls for dating troops

Agence France Presse - May 15, 2002 (abridged)

Aceh rebels said they had detained nine female students because of their "close relationship" with Indonesian troops.

Eight high school students and one university student were detained in the Idi Cut area of East Aceh on Thursday and Friday at the request of their parents, said Free Aceh Movement (GAM) spokesman Ishak Daud.

Daud told AFP the nine had initially been released but were later detained again after their parents had asked they be given "further training" by GAM.

Daud said there was "no immediate plan" to free the nine but they were being "treated properly and in good condition." He said GAM was also searching for three women who have been "persuading" students to date government troops stationed in the staunchly Muslim province.

Freedom movement demands independence referendum

Green Left Weekly - May 15, 2002

Kautsar, chairperson of the Acehnese Peoples Democratic Resistance Front (FPDRA), attended the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference in April to build support for the Acehnese people's struggle for self-determination. Kautsar spoke with Green Left Weekly's John Gauci.

Kautsar was the founding coordinator of Student Solidarity for the People (SMUR), the main pro-referendum student-led mass organisation in Aceh established in 1998. He helped lead the mass campaign in Aceh which, along with mass actions across Indonesia, finally toppled Suharto in May 1998.

FPDRA is an increasingly promeninent organisation struggling for independence for Aceh, operating openly in the urban centres. Unlike the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), FPDRA also advocates the fundamental democratisation of Acehnese society in the interests of the workers and peasants.

"FPDRA was formed in 2001 in Banda Aceh at a congress called to unite a number of Acehnese pro-independence organisations. These included SMUR, the Student and Youth Coalition from south Aceh and a Javanese-based student organisation. These progressive organisations share a common ideological and strategic perspective.

"All are opposed to Indonesian militarism and are united around the demand for Acehnese independence. All agree on the need for coordinated mass action and a democratic decision-making process. FPDRA is open to working alongside other organisations with a similar perspective. FPDRA has representatives throughout Aceh, as well as in Jakarta and Yogyakarta. There are also women's and student organisations affiliated to FPDRA." Military repression There has been a dramatic escalation of military repression in Aceh since Megawati Sukarnoputri became Indonesia's president, Kautsar told GLW. The Acehnese are not the only people to reject military intervention in politics. Democratic forces across Indonesia are also demanding an end to the military's political function.

Since Megawati took power, the number of Indonesian troops occupying Aceh has increased from 30,000 to 60,000. Military territorial command has been introduced in Aceh. This has resulted in a shrinking of the "democratic space" that opened up after Suharto was overthrown, making it increasingly difficult to campaign for a referendum on independence.

"Civilian government bodies have been replaced by military officials in Aceh. What remains of civilian government bodies are symbols with no genuine authority. They are used to spread propaganda to convince the outside world that democratic bodies continue to function in Aceh. The truth is the Indonesion military (TNI) control all economic and political activity in Aceh", Kautsar said.

"It has become extremely dangerous to organise large mobilisations in Aceh. Megawati is opposed to any dialogue around independence for Aceh. Her view is that Aceh must be integrated with Indonesia and the strategy for achieving that is to crush the independence movement through military action.

"In her address to the TNI in January, Megawati urged the military not to be distracted by human rights when it comes to matters of national unity and stability", Kautsar explained.

More than 700 Acehnese, almost entirely civilians, have been killed since January. Kautsar reported that, as part of its campaign of terror, the TNI organised a meeting of all village chiefs in Aceh and demanded that each provide details of at least six GAM activists. If a village chief refused to comply, they were told that the entire village would be punished for supporting GAM. To date, 10 village chiefs have been murdered for not complying with the TNI demand.

September 11 "The September 11 attacks in the United States and Washington's `war on terrorism' have overshadowed the international profile of the Acehnese campaign for independence", Kautsar noted. "Human rights around the world are being ignored. International human rights organisations seem to have forgotten about abuses in Aceh." Like governments all around the world, the Indonesian government is attempting to exploit the fear of terrorism to crush legitimate resistance to oppression.

"Megawati has been lobbying the US to label the Acehnese independence movement a terrorist movement. So far, this has been unsuccessful. In an attempt to justify the claim that is rampant in Aceh, the government and military have right-wing Islamic militias from Ambon to stir up religious and ethnic tensions in Aceh and divide our movement. These right-wing forces call for autonomy, not independence. They target Christians and migrants as `trouble-makers'." Kautsar told GLW that most Acehnese reject Megawati's strategy. They have repeatedly rejected the offer of Islamic law in return for independence. The majority of Acehnese want a secular democratic government. The Indonesian government needs Aceh's abundant oil supplies to maintain International Monetary Fund (IMF) repayments. During his most recent visit to Aceh, the US ambassador stated his willingness to facilitate a political dialogue between the Acehnese people and the Indonesian government, Kautsar reported. However, the TNI reject any US involvement, as this would restrict its control of Aceh.

To strengthen their economic ties with Indonesia, the US and Australian governments have been moving to renew military ties. So far, US Congress has refused to lift its embargo on the sale of weapons to Indonesia's military. However, US President George Bush is pushing for Congress to lift the ban and allow Washington to renew its former close ties with the Indonesian regime.

"If this were to happen, the US would once again be sponsoring Indonesian state terrorism against the people of Aceh, West Papua and Indonesia. The people of Australia and the US must not allow their governments to sponsor this brutal and repressive regime", Kautsar insisted.

Cease-fire "There have been an abundance of new pro-independence organisations forming in Aceh", Kautsar told GLW. "These are happy to collaborate with each other. The FPDRA has been communicating with these new groups and inviting them to join the Aceh Peace Alliance (APA)." "The APA seeks a peaceful political dialogue between GAM and the Indonesian government, mediated by the UN. The APA is not involved in raising the demand for a referendum. Its tactic is to push for a cease-fire. This is the most important task in Aceh at present. Conditions in Aceh have become so repressive that it is impossible for groups to work openly.

"A UN-mediated cease-fire would provide the democratic space needed for the pro-independence forces to organise peaceful actions and campaign. After the people of Aceh have had the opportunity to freely debate autonomy or independence, a referendum should be held. One thing we have learned from the East Timor experience is that the Indonesian military must get out of Aceh before a referendum can be conducted safely." Kautsar concluded by emphasising that one of FPDRA's central tasks is "to form an international coalition of organisations in solidarity with the Acehnese people. FPDRA also highlights the link between the Acehnese struggle and the democratic struggle in Indonesia. Many Acehnese workers, students and peasants are clear about this link and are working alongside the democratic forces in Indonesia."

Dita Sari: `Allow the people of Aceh and West Papua to choose'

Green Left Weekly - May 15, 2002

[Dita Sari is a former Indonesian political prisoner and is chairperson of the militant Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggle (FNPBI) union federation. She is also a leading member of the left-wing Peoples Democratic Party (PRD). Green Left Weekly's Sam Wainwright asked Sari about the PRD's attitude to the movements for national self-determination in West Papua and Aceh. Sari was in Australia in early April for the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference, held in Sydney.]

If anything illustrates the precarious and limited versions of democracy and human rights in Indonesia today, it is the Indonesian government's continued repression of the peoples of Aceh and West Papua. President Megawati Sukarnoputri is opposed to independence in both cases, much as she opposed East Timor's independence to the very end.

"The broader pro-democracy movement in Indonesia, including non- government organisations and the student movement, generally do not understand the independence struggle in Aceh. They know people in Aceh are struggling against military repression and the Indonesian armed forces' domination of Aceh's social and political life. But they don't see independence as the solution to the situation.

"The PRD, and the mass organisations close to it, believes that the solution for Aceh has to be a referendum that includes independence as an option. A referendum needs to be called, in conditions free from military repression, so that the people can vote in peace", Sari explained.

Sari told GLW that members of the PRD throughout the country are attempting to convince Indonesians to support the holding of such a referendum.

"As more Indonesians see the escalation of military activity in Aceh and the increasingly close ties between the government and the military, we explain that it's almost impossible for the Acehnese to get any improvements under the status quo. There is no indication that the government will prosecute the generals responsible for human rights abuses in Aceh.

"We explain to people that solving the political and economic problems in Aceh cannot take place in the framework of Indonesian capitalism. They have to be able to take themselves out of Indonesia because they can't wait until, or rely on, democracy coming to Indonesia and changing things in Aceh." The PRD also favours a free and fair referendum for West Papua. However, there are differences between the two struggles, Sari noted. "Pro- independence ideas in Aceh are more widespread and the movement involves more people. The movement in Aceh has clear leadership, organisation and institutions. It actively involves many sectors of the population, such as students and workers. It's a more developed movement than in West Papua." In West Papua, Sari pointed out that repression and killings by the TNI have meant that pro-independence ideas have not had the space to be properly discussed. The PRD's main demand for West Papua is that all the options -- independence, autonomy or integration -- must be allowed to be freely discussed, without repression by the military, pro-Indonesian militias or the government bureaucracy.

"Unless such a process can be guaranteed, then a referendum will be compromised. For people to choose independence, there must be space for pro-independence people to campaign before the referendum takes place."

Thousands protest against integrasi

Green Left Weekly - May 15, 2002

The commemoration of the forced integration of West Papua (formerly known as Irian Jaya, now Papua) with Indonesia on May 1 was marked by peaceful protests by pro-independence supporters across West Papua's major towns.

The demonstrations condemned the highly fraudulent Act of Free Choice facilitated by the UN in 1969, which rubber-stamped West Papua as part of Indonesia. Indonesia's security forces were on high alert around the commemoration sites. In Jayapura, an estimated 1200 people turned up at the burial site of the late Theys Eluay, the murdered chairperson of Papua Presidium Council, to protest. Thaha Al Hamid, presidium secretary general, reiterated his call for President Megawati to reveal the main actors behind Eluay's assassination.

Thousands of other independence supporters crowded the churches, open field and houses in Serui, Biak, Sorong, Fak Fak, Manokwari and Nabire to voice opposition to integrasi,.

No independence supporters were able to protest in Wamena due to threats from Barisan Merah Putih (the pro-integration Red and White Militia) and Laskar Jihad (right-wing Islamic militias).

Indonesia military suspected in Papuan leader's death

Christian Science Monitor - May 14, 2002

Simon Montlake, Jayapura -- When a tall, stocky Army officer came to his home last October with a dinner invitation, Willy Mandowen was reluctant to accept.

As a campaigner for independence from Indonesian rule, Mr. Mandowen knew he had little in common with Maj. Donny Hutabarat, the special-forces officer that sat smiling on his sofa. Indonesia's special forces, known as Kopassus, are trained to quash dissent and rebellions in far-flung territories such as Papua, also called Irian Jaya.

"He was trying to be friendly, but he was hiding something," Mandowen recalls. "He said that he wanted a [political] dialogue, so we talked, but he didn't really say much." Mandowen told his guest he would consider the invitation.

On November 10, the night of the dinner, Mandowen stayed home. His friend and fellow Papuan independence leader, Theys Eluay, however, accepted an invitation to the same dinner, and was later seen leaving the Kopassus barracks about 9:30 p.m.

On his way home, Mr. Eluay's car was hijacked by a group of men. He was later found dead from asphyxiation near the Papua New Guinea border.

Now, six months after his death, a government investigation committee has confirmed what many in Papua say they knew from the start: Eluay was the victim of an Army assassination. So far, six suspects have been detained, including Major Hutabarat and his commander, Colonel Hartomo, who both attended the memorial dinner.

Army investigators have said the accused soldiers could be charged with murder and insubordination, and that they acted alone without orders from their superiors. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Syafrie Syamsuddin says the full picture will be revealed in the military court that will try the men. "The investigators are still looking for the real motivation [for the killing]," he says.

But the success in tracking down the alleged killers has won few plaudits in this rugged and under-populated territory, which was only incorporated into Indonesia in 1963 under a US-brokered deal with the Netherlands, the colonial ruler. Instead, Papuans are demanding to know the motive for the murder and, crucially, who gave the order.

For Indonesia, which has been trying to win over Papuans disgruntled with its rule, the Army's role in the killing undercuts its promise that the repression of the past is over. It also raises the stakes for the independence movement, which has so far campaigned peacefully for a referendum on self-rule, but has little to show for it.

"After 40 years of military occupation, we still have no human rights," says Thaha Al-Hamid, secretary-general of the pro- independence Papuan Presidium that Eluay chaired until his death. Mr. Al-Hamid says he also received an invitation in person from Major Hutabarat to the November 10 dinner, but declined to attend.

The case is proving a stiff test for Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has pledged to bring the killers to justice but faces the difficult task of overturning decades of military immunity from prosecution. Few expect her to win any concessions from the Army, which has refused to take any responsibility for the East Timor violence in 1999.

Although the trial of the alleged killers of Eluay has yet to start (it's expected to begin within two months), some investigators have broken ranks to attack its findings. Rev. Phil Erari, one of two ethnic Papuan members of the 11-man committee, accuses the Army and its political allies of engineering a coverup that lets the real masterminds off the hook.

"There are certain people in high-ranking positions in related agencies in the military that are involved in organizing this execution," he claims, without elaborating.

Even before the suspects are brought to trial, some witnesses in the case have been threatened or even attacked. Last Friday, a local who attended the dinner narrowly escaped from a gunman who was later identified by Elsham, a human-rights group, as a Kopassus Sergeant Yani.

Despite his popularity as a pro-independence firebrand, Eluay cultivated close ties with Army and police officers in Papua, including his alleged killers. He was on good terms with Colonel Hartomo, the Kopassus commander.

Using his influence as a tribal statesman, he also did favors for Army-linked timber companies, who are logging Papua's rain forest.

Such moves alienated some rights groups, who point out that Eluay was once a firm supporter of Indonesian rule. Some believe his dabbling in business may give a motive to his killers or their paymasters, though others dispute this account, saying it was clearly a political murder.

And, if this is how the Army treats its allies, they ask, what does it have in store for its enemies? "He thought that [the Kopassus officers] were his good friends, but they were making a trap," says Mandowen.

Whatever the cause, the effect in Papua has been to agitate pro- independence supporters and cool already lukewarm enthusiasm for Indonesia's offer of autonomy. This may have been the intention: Papua is a profitable fiefdom for Army officers who stand to lose out on legal and illegal business dealings if civilian politicians, and particularly ethnic Papuans, get the upper hand.

Since January 1, the province has been allocated a bigger chunk of revenues from industries operating there. These include the world's richest gold mine -- owned by Freeport-McMoran, based in New Orleans -- and extensive forestry, gas, and fishing operations. This revenue-sharing should almost double this year's receipts to $650 million, for a population of only 3 million.

But many community leaders grumble about how much of this money will reach ethnic Papuans compared with Indonesian migrants who dominate private business. "Money is not the main issue here. What is the use of prosperity if we still have military threats and intimidation?" asks Rev. Willem Rumsarwir, a church leader.

Some civil-society activists say Papuans should concentrate on their own development for now, and keep up pressure for democratic reforms in Indonesia. That includes bringing the Army to heel and ending racial discrimination against Papuans, who are ethnically and culturally distinct from other Indonesians, as well as being mostly Christian. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation.

GAM confirms death of rebel spokesman, five more killed

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Banda Aceh -- A Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatist leader in Aceh Besar, Ayah Sofyan, alias Zakaria Yahya, 37, was shot dead during a raid at a rebel base in Kuta Baro village on Saturday, officials and separatists confirmed. Five other people were also killed in the latest violence in Aceh during the weekend.

Police deputy spokesman in Aceh Comr. Suparwoto said the family of Zakaria identified his body at the local clinic. Aceh Sumatra National Liberation Front (ASNLF) spokesman Sofyan Dawod later on Sunday confirmed Zakaria's death, accusing President Megawati Soekarnoputri of failing to stop military offensives in Aceh.

Meanwhile, another GAM rebel later identified as Nasrullah, 21, was shot dead in an armed clash with the Indonesian Military (TNI) in Gle Ujong village, Jaya district on Saturday morning, military spokesman Maj. Zaenal Mutaqqin said. "A semiautomatic rifle and 20 bullets were seized from the rebel," Zaenal added.

On Sunday Indonesian Red-Cross (PMI) activists evacuated two male bodies with gunshot wounds to their heads from Blang Manyang village in Sawang district, about 40 kilometers south of the North Aceh industrial town of Lhokseumawe. The two were later identified by locals as Muhammad Nasir and Mukhtar.

Earlier on Saturday, another two male bodies with gunshot wounds were evacuated by Indonesian Red-Cross (PMI) activists from Krueng Geukeuh village in Dewantara district in North Aceh to Cut Meutia Hospital in Lhokseumawe.

GAM has been waging a guerrilla war since the mid-1970s in an attempt to break from Indonesia and forge an independent Islamic state. President Megawati Soekarnoputri has flatly rejected demands for independence and instead granted special autonomy to the resources-rich province.

Accord with Aceh rebels marks step to peace

Interpress Service - May 10, 2002

Gustavo Capdevila, Geneva -- Delegates from the government of Indonesia and from the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) have agreed to negotiate an and to hostilities and a process for electing democratic authorities for the northern Indonesian province of Aceh, an effort to be undertaken "with all speed".

The agreement, confirmed Friday after two days of talks in this Swiss city, also calls for a revision -- that reflects the viewpoint of the Aceh people -- of the special statute for autonomy issued in 2001 by Jakarta, known as Islamic Nation of Aceh Law (NAD).

GAM has been engaged in armed and political action since 1976 seeking independence for the province of Aceh, which is rich in natural gas and is home to 4.5 million people, just two percent of the total Indonesian population. The region holds 20 percent of Indonesia's natural gas reserves, but just 1.6 of the revenue the country earns from gas exports are returned to Aceh.

Hasballah Saad, former Human Rights minister of Indonesia, stated that 40 percent of the villages in Aceh, his birthplace, are in complete misery, in spite of being surrounded by the wealth represented by the natural gas fields.

The Indonesian government's repressive actions, ostensibly against the rebels, have claimed more than 10,000 lives, mostly civilians. So far this year, the death toll has reached 400, according to estimates by the Indonesian media.

Indonesia's President Megawati Sukanoputri faces a series of simultaneous conflicts of separatist or ethnic nature, in Irian Jaya (Western Papua) and Molucas.

Since the Sepember 11 terror attacks, US diplomacy has expressed concern about the persistence in Asia of armed conflicts, as is also occurring in the Philippines, involving extremist Islamic rebels.

Evidence of Washington's unease is the fact that the US special envoy to the Middle East, Anthony Zinni, participated in the negotiations this week in Geneva.

Also in attendance were Eric Avebury, chairman of the Human Rights Commission in the British House of Lords, and Thailand's Surin Pitsuwan, former minister of Foreign Relations.

The joint declaration bears the signatures of Ambassador Wiryono Sastrohandoyo, representing Jakarta, and of Zaini Abdullah, representing GAM.

Facilitating the talks was the Henry Dunant Center, an independent Swiss organization dedicated to conflict resolution, named for the founder of the Red Cross.

The joint statement says that the parties recognize the NAD Law on autonomy, drawn up by Jakarta, as the starting point to "democratic all-inclusive dialogue involving all elements of Acehnese society." The Henry Dunant Center will continue to facilitate further talks, which will be held in Aceh.

"This process will seek to review elements of the [statute] through the expression of the views of the Acehnese people in a free and safe manner," states the joint communiqui.

The text is left open to opposing interpretations, because the Acehnese largely opposed the autonomy law because they consider it a palliative measure imposed by Jakarta in a bid for time to see the results of military operations against the GAM rebels.

Indonesian authorities pressed the GAM to accept the statute, which would mean renouncing the goals of independence for Aceh and the convocation of a referendum to validate it, similar to what was demanded and achieved by the people of East Timor, formerly an Indonesian possession.

The direction the agreement will take will develop in the new negotiations slated to begin in Aceh and end within two years, according to sources close to the talks in Geneva.

But before an agreement on the future of the province can be reached, the parties must "work with all speed on an agreement on cessation of hostilities with an adequate mechanism for accountability of the parties to such an agreement," according to the document signed Friday.

Once an understanding is achieved on the two points -- peace and the future of Aceh -- there will be an "election of a democratic government in Aceh, Indonesia."

TNI assassin botches murder of abduction witness

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Tiarma Siboro and Yogita Tahilramani, Jakarta -- The National Military Police Headquarters has put a key witness in the November 2001 murder of Papua Presidium Council leader Theys Hiyo Eluay under its protection following an alleged murder attempt against him last Friday, an officer said on Monday.

National Military Police chief Maj. Gen. Sulaiman AB confirmed that Yaret Imoy, a civilian witness in the alleged murder of Theys in November 2001, had been placed in its protection following Friday's murder attempt.

"Yes, there has been an attempt to execute Yaret Imoy last Friday. Therefore, we've put him under our protection," Sulaiman said.

He also confirmed that the Papua Provincial Military Police arrested on Saturday Sgt. Yani, a member of the Trikora Regional Military Command's Tribuana Task Force in Papua, for the murder attempt.

A National Police source also confirmed the arrest of Yani, saying military police had detained a member of Kopassus for the alleged shooting last Friday. He said that late on Friday night Yani had shot in the direction of Yaret.

"This sergeant shot, but missed. Local military police officers in Papua are questioning him now over the motive for the shooting," said a high-ranking police officer who requested anonymity.

Sulaiman said the military police were seeking to transfer the latest six suspects in the Theys' murder case, all members of the Tribuana Task Force, into its custody. "Currently, the six suspects are still at the Kopassus Headquarters in Cijantung, East Jakarta," he said.

The six, who are non-commissioned officers, are identified as WS, AL, BG, ED, IR and GR. They are the subordinates of three middle-ranking and lower-ranking officers of the Task Force who have previously been named suspects in the murder case. The first three suspects were identified as Lt. Col. Hartomo, Maj. Doni Hutabarat and Capt. Rianaldo.

Theys was found dead on November 11, 2001, a few hours after he had attended the National Heroes Day commemorations at the Jayapura headquarters of Kopassus.

Neo-liberal globalisation

Workers resist globalisation

Green Left Weekly - May 15, 2002

The Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggles (FNPBI), the militant trade union federation, organised mass actions across the country on May 1. Pro-democracy groups joined the workers' rallies.

The workers' demands included legalising May 1 as a national labour day. The neo-liberal economic policies being implemented by the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri were also a target of the protests. The FNPBI was also demanding an end to contract labour, a shorter working week with no loss in pay and a 100% increase in the minimum wage.

Demands for the cancellation of Indonesia's debt were raised, as were call for the abolition of the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank.

The Megawati government immediately rejected the call for May 1 to be legalised, stating that February 20 was the official labour day. This day is marked by the government-approved All-Indonesia Workers' Union (SPSI).

Megawati asked the labour minister Jacob Nuwa Wea to instruct workers not to demonstrate on May 1. The government accused FNPBI of forcing workers to demonstrate and complained about the political nature of protests' demands. "Why should workers deal with foreign issues, it has nothing to do with trade union problems", Nuwa Wea blustered.

In Jakarta, the FNPBI and the May Day Action Committee organised 8000 workers to march from three different location to presidential palace. The commitee consisted of 30 trade unions, student organisation and political parties. The left-wing People's Democratic Party (PRD) played a prominent role.

The military attempted to prevent some workers reaching the protest by erecting roadblocks. At the presidential palace, the workers heard political speeches and watched street theatre.

FNPBI chairperson Dita Indah Sari stated that the source of workers' problems are not simply individual company owners but also the government that stands behind them. Workers must realise that the government and its laws also must be resisted.

Sari said that Indonesian workers have waited long enough for the Megawati government to improve workers' conditions. On the contrary, Megawati has cut price subsidies and is selling Indonesia's national assets.

In West Java, the FNPBI, PRD and National Student League for Democracy (LMND) organised an action by 500 workers outside the regional of house of representatives building. Two days before May Day, police arrested 10 organisers who were distributing leaflets and posters.

In East Java, the May Day Action Committee organised the demonstration. Police blocked workers as they marched from three industrial parks and many could not reach the protest. More than 300 worker were beaten brutally by police as they approached the regional parliament. Ten workers were seriously injured and seven people were arrested.

In Denpasar, Bali, 200 protesters from the May Day Action Committee gathered in front of regional house of representatives. In Makassar, South Sulawesi, 1000 FNPBI protesters demonstrated in front of the local parliament. In Medan, 1000 FNPBI members gathered. In Yogyakarta, several hundred workers demonstrated. In Palu, Central Sulawesi, 2200 FNPBI and the Palu Poor People's Front members marched to the local parliament.

'War on terrorism'

Vice-president preventing more forceful war on terror

Washington Post - May 14, 2002

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Jakarta -- Vexed by assertions that international terrorists may have burrowed into Indonesia, Vice President Hamzah Haz decided to find out for himself -- by hosting a dinner at his house for the country's Islamic extremist A-list.

Among those invited was Abubakar Baasyir, a cleric alleged to be the ideological leader of an al Qaeda-linked organization that plotted to blow up several Western embassies in Singapore with truck bombs.

Jafar Umar Thalib, whose Laskar Jihad militia has fought to evict Christians and implement Islamic law in the Moluccas islands, also was in attendance. So was Al-Habib Muhammad Rizieq bin Hussein Syihab, the leader of a group that threatened to forcibly expel Americans from Indonesia after the United States started bombing Afghanistan last year.

Haz, who leads Indonesia's largest Muslim political party, said the four-hour discussion over dinner in late March reinforced what he suspected, leaving him "certain that there are no terrorists in Indonesia."

"They only want to see that Indonesia has a religious society," Haz said in a recent interview. "None of them have an extreme character."

Although the vice presidency is a largely ceremonial office in Indonesia, Haz's opinions about Islamic radicalism are politically significant. Since September 11, he has emerged as one of the most influential architects of the government's approach to dealing with terrorism, a role that has troubled the United States and some of Indonesia's neighbors.

Indonesian officials and Western diplomats said Haz has counseled President Megawati Sukarnoputri to move cautiously in rounding up alleged terrorists and clamping down on extremist groups, arguing that such actions require not just suspicions but incontrovertible proof of wrongdoing, which the country's intelligence service lacks.

Thus far, Megawati appears to be heeding that message. Despite requests from the governments of Singapore and Malaysia, Indonesian authorities have opted not to arrest Baasyir, who runs a large religious school where he lionizes Osama bin Laden and preaches about the importance of fighting holy wars. Government officials said they do not have evidence indicating he has broken Indonesian laws.

"There are some in the government who want to take firm steps against some of these groups," said a senior Indonesian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But there are others, including the vice president, who are telling the president to be careful, not to go too fast."

Indonesia's reluctance to rein in extremists and detain suspected terrorists has prompted concern in Washington and neighboring Asian capitals that the world's most populous Muslim country could become a base from which to plot new attacks. Although Western diplomats here said they respected Indonesia's insistence on having evidence before making arrests, they question whether authorities have been looking hard enough.

"They're not really at the point where they see international terrorism as a big problem for them," a senior US official said.

Political analysts said that despite preaching prudence to Megawati, Haz, 62, a career politician from the Indonesian half of the island of Borneo, has shaped anti-terror policy more by what he has not said than by what he has.

Because Megawati is not regarded as sufficiently devout by conservative Muslims, she views Haz's support as crucial to neutralize the backlash from a crackdown on hard-line groups, the analysts said. "But he's refused to give her the green light, and she's uncomfortable to proceed without that backing," said Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group in Jakarta.

"He's the ballast in Indonesia's fight against terror," said a Western diplomat here. "He's not playing a helpful role."

Since taking office last July, Megawati has spent relatively little time reaching out to conservative Muslim groups, leaving that task to Haz, Wanandi said. "She's let him set the agenda with the Muslims," he said. "She hasn't reined him in."

Haz said he does not condone terrorism, but added that he does not regard radical groups as worthy of automatic suspicion. Among senior government officials, he has some of the most sympathetic attitudes toward the activities of Baasyir and other hard-line Muslim figures.

Haz said his stance was shaped by 32 years of dictatorship under former president Suharto, when scores of Muslim leaders were jailed on trumped-up subversion charges. "We are living in an era of human rights and supremacy of the law," he said. "In the past, you could arrest people just like that. Now we can't do that anymore."

Haz said there are "probably only one or two" hard-line Islamic leaders in Indonesia. "But none of them has an organized network with a power to create chaos and cause instability," he said. "There is no such thing."

Jafar, the Laskar Jihad leader, said he appreciated the opportunity to talk to the vice president. "He asked us directly whether we were terrorists," Jafar said. "Then, he discussed the issue with us."

Police arrested Jafar earlier this month on charges that he ordered an attack on a Christian village in the Moluccas in which 12 people were killed. Haz visited Jafar in his jail cell to "offer sympathy" as a "Muslim brother."

Haz first riled US officials a few days after September 11, when he told worshipers at a Jakarta mosque that the attacks in New York and Washington "will cleanse the sins of the United States." In the interview, he insisted the quote was taken out of context. He said he was not condoning terrorism but simply looking at the tragedy as a devout Muslim would.

"As a Muslim, if we face a misfortune or we are in an accident, we still have to thank God," he said. "The misfortune will cleanse our sins. That is the context of the quote."

Haz, who wears a fez-like prayer hat made of black felt, prays several times a day. He has two wives who have official security details and attend government functions. Local media organizations have reported that he also has two other wives, a subject upon which he would not comment. "It's between me and God," he said.

Haz is widely expected to vie for the presidency during the country's next general elections, in 2004. Analysts said that although they do not think he will get a majority, he could emerge as a strong contender to represent a coalition of Muslim parties.

In 1999, he lost the vice presidency to Megawati when she lost the presidency to Abdurraham Wahid. Her party had received the most votes, but Haz and other Muslim leaders opposed her becoming president because they did not believe a woman should serve in that role. After parliament dismissed Wahid last year, a decision that improved Haz's chances of gaining the vice presidency, he dropped his opposition to Megawati's ascension.

Haz's rise to power illustrates the growing clout of Muslim- oriented political parties since Suharto stepped down in 1998. Although the platforms of the Muslim parties, which collectively control about one-fourth of the seats in parliament, are in many ways identical to those of their secular rivals, particularly on economic and security issues, they have a markedly different social agenda. Several of them want to transform Indonesia into a strict Islamic nation, replacing the country's secular legal system with Islamic sharia law.

Several radical Islamic leaders have been critical of Haz, saying he has not pushed forcefully enough for sharia since becoming vice president, a shift that appears to have been calculated to improve his popularity.

Haz denied backing down from his support for sharia, but he said he wants it implemented not by vigilantes but by parliament. "It is the obligation of Muslim parties to struggle for matters related to Islamic laws and values," he said. "Of course we want to implement Islamic regulations. But in our struggle we have to be realistic. We have to see whether the struggle is possible constitutionally and democratically. We don't want to create any instability."

Government & politics

Presidential hopes glow for Amien...

Straits Times - May 18, 2002

Derwin Pereira, Jakarta -- Spurred on by recent problems between President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her deputy, national assembly chairman Amien Rais is fast moving in to consolidate his links with moderate Muslim groups to strengthen his position with an eye on the 2004 polls.

Bereft of strong military support, Dr Amien, who is also leader of the National Mandate Party (PAN), has been making overtures in recent weeks to several Muslim parties and groups across the ideological spectrum to build a coalition to support his presidential ambitions.

That speculation grew on Thursday night when he held a meeting in his house to discuss amendments to the Indonesian Constitution.

At the discussion table were the country's top Muslim leaders from a wide range of groups that included the Muhammadiyah, Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) and the Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI).

Political parties were also represented with the likes of PAN, the United Development Party, the Justice Party, the Nation Awakening Party (PKB), and the Crescent Star Party (PBB).

Observers said that while the meeting focused on constitutional reform, it was symbolically significant for the 58-year-old leader given the audience he had from these groups. A senior PBB official who was present for the Thursday meeting told The Straits Times: "This is a tactical move by a very consummate politician reading the ground well." Dr Amien had long seen the value of cultivating the Muslim ground especially after his party's disastrous performance in the 1999 election.

PAN ended up a distant fifth. He subsequently turned PAN into a Muslim-oriented party to go beyond wooing Indonesia's middle- class voters to win the Muslim vote.

Analysts believe that there was even greater urgency now for him to work the ground as the political fallout between Ms Megawati and her Vice-President Hamzah Haz has presented a leadership vacuum for him to move in.

The President, with her secular-nationalist credentials, would find it hard to woo the Islamic camp.

Mr Hamzah, despite his grassroots links, was staring at a party that was divided.

While he is linking up with several Muslim groups, his main targets appear to be the Muhammadiyah -- where he was formerly its chairman -- the Nadhlatul Ulama and ICMI.

The Nadhlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah provide a strong mass base given that they are the largest Muslim organisations in Indonesia. ICMI is significant because of its links to the urban centres and the middle class.

But dim for Akbar

Straits Times - May 18, 2002

Devi Asmarani, Jakarta -- Parliamentary Speaker Akbar Tandjung is staring at the end of an illustrious 30-year political career with more incriminating evidence being gathered against him in a graft trial and as members of his Golkar party plot to overthrow him.

Career prospects are not looking up for Akbar. The chairman of Indonesia's second largest political party has increasingly become a liability to his party members, who are concerned that his involvement in the 40-billion-rupiah (S$7.2-million) Buloggate scandal will further harm its image.

Golkar sources conceded that many executives in the central board have been lobbying party officials to agree to elect new leaders if the courts convict Akbar of graft. To hold an election of new leaders, at least two-thirds of Golkar's regional leaders must first approve it.

Party officials said they would remove Akbar as soon as possible. "We have been going to the provinces, giving local party leaders pessimistic views of Mr Akbar's legal problems to convince them it is unlikely he will escape justice," a high-ranking party official said.

Mr Akbar was allegedly responsible for the misuse of 40 billion rupiah from the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) -- meant for food supplies for the poor in 1999.

A key witness in the trial of Bulog chief Rahardi Ramelan, who is being tried separately, last week admitted that there were attempts to protect the Golkar chairman at the beginning of the Attorney-General's investigations into the case. Sources said that Golkar deputies had managed to convince several major provinces to back their plan.

But at the same time, observers believe President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) have an interest in preventing the party from going down with Akbar.

Political analyst Kusnanto Anggoro said: "With Islamic factions in Parliament now maintaining a distance from her nationalist PDI-P, Megawati's most suitable ally is Golkar, the only other main secular party in Parliament."

Megawati's party ponders what to do with Haz

Straits Times - May 17, 2002

Derwin Pereira, Jakarta -- President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) is divided over how to deal with her errant deputy, with some members calling for Mr Hamzah Haz to be summoned to the palace for an explanation.

But others are urging restraint, warning that open confrontation with the Muslim leader with strong grassroots links could sink Indonesia into another political crisis.

The hardliners, led by Ms Megawati's husband Taufik Kiemas, made clear their feelings at a party meeting on Tuesday.

PDI-P insiders said that they wanted the 54-year-old leader to hold her Vice-President accountable for his open courtship of Muslim militants which included his meeting Laskar Jihad leader Jafaar Umar Thalib who has been detained for stirring up violence in Maluku islands.

They were seeking an official explanation from Mr Hamzah and expected the palace to censure him for his actions. Some in the faction even wanted Ms Megawati to come up with a specific job description "to keep him occupied everyday".

Said a PDI-P legislator: "By not doing anything, Ibu Mega is being perceived at home and abroad as being weak and not in control of the situation. We cannot let the No 2 set the agenda." The more pronounced view, however, was to try and cool down political temperatures. Those subscribing to this view included conservatives like Mr Theo Syafei and Mr Gunawam Wirosarodjo who, sources said, appear to have the President's ear on this issue.

There were two reasons why Ms Megawati and the moderates did not want to go for the jugular. For one, she wanted her administration to remain united until 2004. Taking Mr Hamzah head on risked tearing apart the government and could percolate downwards to grassroots levels, pitting PDI-P supporters against Muslim groups.

"We are trying to play things down because we don't want any violence," said a PDI-P source. "We also do not want a third party like Golkar to become the chief beneficiary in this squabble."

A related consideration was that by taking a hardline stance against Mr Hamzah, it could alienate the wider Muslim community in Indonesia that could damage severely the PDI-P's chances of winning their votes in the 2004 election.

Ms Megawati and the PDI-P's standing was not helped given perceptions that it was warming to the armed forces (TNI) and could launch a Suharto-style crackdown on Islamic elements in the country.

Even though Mr Hamzah's Muslim-based United Development Party is split, it would come together -- with perhaps even moderate elements from the Nadhlatul Ulama where the Vice-President is one of its elders -- to challenge secular nationalist parties like the PDI-P.

The political strategy now was to lie low. But the moderates were preparing to slug it out against Mr Hamzah by cultivating the Muslim ground as well.

PDI-P sources said that Ms Megawati's aim was to go on the offensive in the run-up to the election by also courting several of the Muslim groups, both moderate and militant.

House unmoved by lies during the trial of Akbar

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Muhammad Nafik, Jakarta -- Lies and irregularities uncovered during the ongoing trial of a corruption scandal implicating House of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung have failed to encourage legislators to set up a separate inquiry into the high-profile scandal.

Yet the opportunity, though slim, is still present for the House to establish a special committee to investigate Akbar, who is being charged with siphoning off Rp 40 billion from the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) when he served as minister/cabinet secretary under then president B.J. Habibie in 1999.

An official of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), which controls the largest seats in the House, said on Monday that it had to wait until the completion of Akbar's trial at the Central Jakarta District Court before making a decision whether to support the House inquiry or not.

"Our stance has not changed. We will discuss it again tomorrow [Tuesday] during our weekly meeting at the PDI Perjuangan headquarters in South Jakarta," Roy BB Janis, who chairs the party's faction in the House, told The Jakarta Post.

He said the House should stay away from "intervening" in the trial of the scandal, widely dubbed here as "Buloggate", since the beginning.

Roy said the proposed special committee would only be necessary, should it be aimed at "seeking the truth". He did not elaborate further. However, he refused to answer whether the irregularities uncovered during the hearings of the Bulog trial should be soon followed with a separate inquiry by the House.

Analysts and legal experts have urged the House to set up a special committee soon to investigate Akbar after court witnesses testified in favor of Akbar, saying that the Rp 40 billion fund was spent on a 1999 charity project for the needy as they had previously told prosecutors and the public.

Winfried Simatupang, a contractor hired for the project, had even returned the Rp 40 billion through the Attorney General's Office in an apparent attempt to save Akbar from a likely conviction.

Legislators from the Akbar-led Golkar Party share the same view as PDI Perjuangan, saying that as long as the trial proceeds lawfully, there is no need for the House to set up a special committee.

Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, a senior Golkar legislator, said his party left it up to the court on whether to convict Akbar or acquit him of all corruption charges. "Let the court decide on Pak Akbar. We should not interfere in its proceedings," he said.

The National Awakening Party (PKB), which has been fighting for an inquiry into Akbar, insisted that the House should place the demands on its prioritized agenda.

Meanwhile, in an apparent move to shift the public's attention away from the Bulog scandal, Golkar legislators and those from other parties have instead been campaigning for the House to summon President Megawati Soekarnoputri, also a chairwoman of PDI Perjuangan, to clarify the source of a Rp 30 billion donation she extended for the development and rehabilitation of housing for Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel. Many have said that the President's move was meant to win support from TNI.

Corruption/collusion/nepotism

'Reformasi' should deal with corruptors

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

A'an Suryana and Berni K. Moestafa, Jakarta -- A businessman once shared with an acquaintance his frustration and confusion in doing business in the democratic, but corrupt climate of Indonesia.

"Before reformasi [reform], you knew the price [of corruption], whom to pay and what you got from [doing it]. Nowadays, you never know the price, whom to pay and whether you will get it in the end," said the businessman.

His statement clearly reflects the current corruption problem in Indonesia.

The reform movement started in May 1998 with one of its agenda being the eradication of corruption; however, corruption is not decreasing. Instead, it's on the rise.

International surveys, including those by Transparency International, show that corruption in the country is becoming more severe, making Indonesia one of the world's most corrupt countries.

Indonesia was ranked 88th out of 91 countries surveyed by Transparency International, coming in just above Uganda, Nigeria and Bangladesh, with the lowest place reserved for the most corrupt country. In 2000, Indonesia placed 85th on the list.

Under former president Soeharto's rule, corruption was allegedly confined to Soeharto's inner circle. Now, however, corruption is widespread, affecting more people and more areas in the country.

"Not only President Megawati [Soekarnoputri], but the House of Representatives and regional governments are currently not free of the allurement of corruption," Teten Masduki, the coordinator of the Indonesian Corruption Watch, told The Jakarta Post.

"The only positive thing to come out of the reform movement has been that we have a strong watchdog for corruption -- the free media," he added.

The gloomy face of the state of corruption in this country should be of great concern to the public.

While the reform movement is under way, corruption should have been the first target of reform as it poses the most danger in almost every aspect of people's lives.

In the economic sector, corruption comes at a high cost to the economy, in which the public would certainly bear the losses.

Under a corrupt system, business communities are forced to allocate parts of their production funds to bribe government officials at the expense of the public, who are later forced to pay higher prices for goods and services.

"Companies are in a weak position because they must either follow the system or they'll never be allowed to operate in the market," said Indra Ibrahim, the chairman of the Indonesian Textile Association. In addition, corruption brings adverse effects to the social and political sectors.

According to Teten, the majority of the public do not have access to a proper share of the country's economic resources under a corrupt regime, since those funds would fall only to the haves and those who are in power.

Corruption would eventually aggravate the widening gap between the haves and the poor.

In politics, the soaring use of political money would also hamper the development of democracy, which would eventually pose a serious threat to the continuing reform movement, Teten added.

Judging from the dangers of corruption, corruptors must be punished severely to deter new corrupt practices, said political observer Daniel Sparingga and lawyer Kamal Firdaus.

Daniel, a lecturer at Airlangga University in Surabaya, and Kamal, the chairman of the Indonesian Court Monitoring, said that the court should impose the stiffest sentence, such as the death penalty, for those who are convicted of corruption. "This would help deter people from committing corruption in the future," said Daniel.

To insure that justice is established, Kamal said the reform movement should first of all touch on the corrupt legal system. "Corrupt prosecutors, judges, police and lawyers must be dealt with first to create a credible, clean and respected legal system," said Kamal.

Regional/communal conflicts

Military contributes to Maluku conflict: Kontras

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

Jakarta/Ambon -- Human rights watchdog, the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) blamed the escalating tension in Maluku on the lack of law enforcement and poor coordination between the security and civilian authorities.

Kontras coordinator Ori Rachman pointed out that the latest gunfight in Ambon between members of the Army's Special Force (Kopassus) and police officers in Kudamati, Ambon, on Tuesday was a reflection of how the security forces in Maluku have been involved in the conflict and have disregarded civilian authority.

"The presence of the local military and police in war-torn provinces has actually contributed to the escalation of violence ... This proves that the security approach is not able to solve the conflicts. What is happening in Ambon is similar to the conflict in Papua, Aceh and other parts of the country," he told a media conference here on Thursday.

He cited examples of the involvement of Kopassus in numerous human right abuses in East Timor, Aceh and Papua.

He warned that the call for the imposition of a martial law is increasing, a new move that will give more power to the military and worsen the conflict. The proposed martial has met opposition from civilian figures.

He said the government needed the guns to help restore security and order but a more human and peaceful approach to solve the conflicts.

Maluku Governor Saleh M. Latuconsina said after briefing Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that the province did not need military reinforcement but rather improved coordination among officials.

He also said his province was in urgent need of law enforcers, especially judges and prosecutors, and security equipment to disarm supporters of conflicting factions.

He acknowledged that Laskar Jihad which had entered Maluku over the last two years was a headache because he did not know how to expel it as required by the Malino peace deal.

He said he was still optimistic that the conflict that started to erupt on January 19, 1999 and has since claimed more than 6,000 lives, would end peacefully provided that all authorities in the province united, left their own interests behind and pursued the implementation of the Malino peace agreement and the central government's recent directives.

Tensions in Maluku have been growing again after the signing of the Malino peace agreement on February 12.

South Maluku Republic (RMS) movement chairman Alex Manuputty who has been under arrest since April 17, was transferred to Jakarta on Thursday under the custody of the National Police for his trial to be held in the near future.

The National Police announced that they would take over the investigation into the Manuputty case. Police officials said on Thursday that factors taken into consideration in making this decision included possible disruptions to the investigation like intimidation of police investigators, continuing clashes amongst local security forces and Muslim and Christian communities in riot-torn Maluku.

Sources at National Police Headquarters said that forces of the militant Muslim group Laskar Jihad were angered over the arrest of their leader Ja'far Umar Thalib.

One source said that Laskar Jihad forces would continue to intimidate Maluku Police, as long as Manuputty was being questioned in Maluku.

"Laskar Jihad forces believe that even though Manuputty has been arrested, he is still near his rebels in Maluku and his rebels draw strength from the fact that Manuputty is in Maluku, whereas Ja'far, is far off in Jakarta. Jihad fighters want Manuputty out of Maluku as well," a senior official at National Police Headquarters told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Ja'far is charged with inciting the attack of the Christian village of Soya on April 28, which claimed 14 lives.

Human rights/law

Tommy's lawyer reprimanded for 'influencing' witnesses

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Jakarta -- The Indonesian Advocates and Lawyers Association (HAPI) reprimanded on Monday a lawyer defending Tommy Soeharto on weapons and murder charges for influencing witnesses to change their testimony, according to reports.

Elza Syarief violated the association's code of ethics by influencing witnesses to change their testimony in the trial of Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, HAPI's ethics council said, as quoted by Antara.

The association has issued a "strong reprimand" against Elza, said Yan Apul Girsang, the chairman of the panel investigating the matter.

Tommy, the youngest son of former president Soeharto, is charged with masterminding the murder of Supreme Court justice Syafiuddin Kartasasmita in July 2001, 10 months after the justice had sentenced him to 18 months in prison for graft.

Elza, who has been detained by the police on bribery charges since May 6, was not present at Monday's final hearing of the association's ethics council.

Elza has admitted to giving money to three witnesses to purchase new clothes and to rent a car and driver for their court appearances. She has denied bribing the witnesses.

Indonesian scion's trial becomes a media event

Boston Globe - May 12, 2002

Michael Casey, Jakarta -- With tales of deception, violence, and corruption, the murder trial of Tommy Suharto is gripping this country.

Hundreds of Indonesians have crammed a makeshift courtroom for testimony in the case of the former dictator's son, who is accused of masterminding the murder of a judge who had found him guilty in a real estate scam. Others follow the proceedings on television each Wednesday, the only day of the week the trial convenes.

There are a few other quirks -- like the second wife of the slain judge describing her sexual prowess, or a lawyer for Suharto having been detained for allegedly bribing witnesses. And the case has proved more lurid than any soap operas that compete in that time slot.

But more than anything else, it's the sight of the defendant that is the big draw. Tommy Suharto, now 39, represents to many Indonesians the worst excesses of the past. They see his trial as a test of the country's willingness to embrace the rule of law following the corrupt rule of his father, Suharto, who was removed in 1998.

"It's very important to have a guilty verdict," said Kurnia, a businessman who saw the proceedings Wednesday [and who, like former President Suharto and many Indonesians, uses one name]. "People aren't stupid anymore," Kurnia said. "People are aware now. If he's found not guilty, people will protest."

Like many in his father's inner circle, Tommy, whose given name is Hutoma Mandala Putra, made tens of millions of dollars in the 1980s and 1990s. A favorite among the dictator's six children, he was given control of the country's lucrative clove trade, and permission to import vehicles tax-free.

He became one of the country's most powerful tycoons, running a conglomerate that spawned dozens of companies. By the time his father's 32-year reign ended, Tommy Suharto had a net worth of almost $1 billion. But it was not so much the money as much as how he flaunted it that angered most Indonesians. While they struggled to live, he drove fancy cars, chased women, and jetted around the globe.

The law caught up with the younger Suharto in 1999. A court initially dismissed charges of corruption against him; he had been alleged to have stolen millions in government money.

But in September 2000, Judge Syaifudin Kartasasmita headed a Supreme Court panel that reversed the lower court ruling and that sentenced the younger Suharto to 18 months in prison.

The judge, according to his wife's testimony at the trial, turned down a $20,000 bribe from the young Suharto and ignored threats of violence. Tommy Suharto dropped out of sight, and Kartasasmita was killed by two gunmen in July 2001.

Along the way, the younger Suharto used police connections and the country's instability under the president at the time, Abdurrahman Wahid, to remain a fugitive.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri came to power last summer promising to crack down on corruption such as was alleged in Tommy Suharto's case, and to reform the court system. Suharto was apprehended in November.

Tommy Suharto's trial started in March, and he has denied through his lawyers that he had anything to do with the judge's murder. He showed up dressed in a batik shirt, wearing a smug grin, and waving to supporters. They yelled back, "Long Live Tommy."

The trial, held in a convention center to accommodate the crowds, has featured plenty of evidence that Tommy Suharto first bribed, then threatened, the judge. When that failed, witnesses said, he hired a friend to carry out the murder-for-hire scheme.

But scores of witnesses have retracted their testimony. And the younger Suharto's lawyers say police planted evidence and tortured witnesses. In fact, police grew so frustrated with embarrassing revelations that they arrested one of his lawyers last week and accused her of bribing three witnesses to change their stories.

The missteps have brought to mind another celebrity murder trial of O.J. Simpson, and reinforced what many have long believed -- that Tommy Suharto will never be convicted.

Still, most Indonesians seem to have patience with a legal system that, like much of this country's Democratic institutions, is still finding its footing. Their optimism was bolstered Wednesday when the two men convicted of shooting Kartasasmita were sentenced to life in prison.

"We want to see the truth," said Aqung Triyuwanto, a law student attending the trial. "We just want the facts. If he's found guilty, this would let people know that even an ex-president's son can't do what he likes."

If convicted, the young Suharto faces the death penalty. But as police Wednesday led him past star-struck supporters, dozens of journalists, and street vendors hawking cakes, he seemed oblivious to the setbacks in his case. He strolled confidently into the convention center, finding his place in the packed courtroom.

Siti, a 23-year-old housewife, admitted that she still had a soft spot for Tommy Suharto, but said that she knew a guilty man when she saw one. "He didn't look around," she said. "He just went in and didn't even smile."

Some of his supporters also said they realized that even if he beats this rap, Tommy Suharto, like his ailing 80-year-old father, is finished. "He'll face justice," said Suparto Soejatmo, who designed engines for the younger Suharto's Timor car project. "He cannot run away like before. I'll be sad if he's found guilty because he is a friend. But that is the way it has to be."

NGOs seek review on controversial bylaw

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Ahmad Junaidi, Jakarta -- Several non-governmental organizations (NGO) officially proposed on Monday to City Council a draft bylaw that aims to replace the controversial No. 11/1988 bylaw on public order, which is considered by many to be unjust.

Led by Azas Tigor Nainggolan, several activists from the NGOs, including the Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta), the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH), the Jakarta Social Institute (ISJ) and the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC), submitted the draft to the council's Commission A for legal affairs.

The NGOs stated that bylaw No. 11/1988 carries no justice or principles of legal certainty. "The bylaw also gives chances for the practice of corruption and collusion," Sri Palupi of ISJ said at the meeting with the council.

Palupi viewed that most of the articles in the bylaw consist of prohibitions, but the prohibitions could be turned into permission with the governor's approval. She also pointed out that 60 percent of the articles ban activities conducted by the poor.

For example, Article 16 stipulates that no one is allowed to open a business in public places, except with the permission of the governor.

This is the first time that the public has submitted a draft bylaw to the council.

Horas Siringo-ringo from UPC said the administration often used the current bylaw to oppress the disadvantaged for the sake of city public order.

"The administration has not given the people a chance to regulate themselves. Our efforts to educate the people, including pedicab drivers, was halted by the administration with the bylaw," Horas said.

The draft bylaw stipulates that every decision related to public order should involve public participation.

Article 2 in the draft also states that non-motorized vehicles, including becak (three-wheel pedicabs) are allowed to operate in certain areas of the city. Hundreds of becak were seized by the city administration in public order operations over the past years.

Fakta chairman Azas Tigor told reporters after the meeting that he was disappointed as the councillors refused to review the bylaw. "They said the bylaw could not be reviewed, at least until the new governor is elected in October this year," he said.

The councillors, led by commission chairman Maringan Pangaribuan, promised to discuss the draft bylaw with other councillors in the council. "We appreciate the suggestion. But we should discuss it first with our leaders," said Maringan of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

Focus on Jakarta

Hawkers make a living on buses around city

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

Leo Wahyudi S., Jakarta -- Although city buses are not really supermarkets, passengers may buy a variety of goods on them at low prices.

It is very common nowadays to see hawkers getting in and out of buses, not only at bus stops but also at traffic lights in the city. Sometimes even along toll roads during traffic jams.

Even people traveling on the buses along the main roads, such as Jl. Thamrin, Jl. Sudirman, Jl. Gatot Subroto, and the Jakarta- Merak toll road, will have a chance of hearing hawkers offering their merchandise, which includes stationery, housewares, snacks and fresh fruit.

Sabam Manurung, 34, a welding supervisor at a construction company three years ago, is a hawker. He was laid off by his company following the economic crisis in 1998.

The father of two children, who lives in Manggarai, South Jakarta sells scissors, glue, cotton buds, and pins. "I like selling goods this way as it is profitable," said Sabam, who comes from Sibolga in North Sumatra.

He purchased his merchandise from wholesalers in the Mester market at Jatinegara, East Jakarta, because it was cheap there.

He made a profit of 30 percent to 50 percent. For instance, he bought a pair of scissors at Rp 750 but sold them at a minimum price of Rp 1,000. But sometimes he managed to sell them for more than that. He claimed that with an average sale of four dozen to five dozen items per day, he could earn a net income of about Rp 30,000.

"That's much better than my income as a supervisor a few years ago," Sabam proudly told The Jakarta Post.

Emil, 24, another hawker, seemed to be luckier in selling multipurpose knives, which move well. "I can sell on average three dozen knives per day, earning a daily net income of around Rp 70,000," he said.

He relies on his ability to use promotional patter to attract passengers to buy his goods. He seemed to have boundless reserves of energy for getting on and off buses that passed in front of him to explain in amusing fashion the use of his goods to passengers.

"My patter is the key to attracting buyers," Emil said, noting that most passengers bought his goods due to his persuasiveness and the lower prices he offered compared with those for goods sold at supermarkets.

Emil, who has been working as a street hawker for 12 years, underlined the importance of communication skills to win over public transportation passengers. Otherwise, a hawker would suffer great losses, he said.

Sabam and Emil said that they enjoyed being street hawkers as they were their own bosses, despite the fact that sometimes they got into difficulty.

"Sometimes the bus crews won't let us board. At other times we have found that passengers have felt bothered by our presence. Once I was spat at by a passenger," Emil said. "I wonder why passengers feel upset at us as we're only trying to earn a living."

Chinese-Indonesians still fearful of more rioting

Jakarta Post - May 16, 2002

Damar Harsanto, Jakarta -- High, strong fences were erected surrounding some malls and shopping centers here in the wake of the May 1998 riots, yet they fail to ensure business safety, at least for most shop owners who are still traumatized by the bloody incidents four years ago.

Patty, 45, an owner of a cosmetics shop at Mal Ciputra in Grogol, West Jakarta, said she still felt unsafe and worried that similar riots might recur though the mall management had constructed strong, three-meter high fences.

"The strong fence will only hamper the rioters from trespassing but not totally block their way," said Patty, whose shop at Glodok Plaza in Kota, West Jakarta was demolished during the May riots. She worried that imminent riots were still possible amid the country's unstable political and economic situation.

The most important thing, Patty said, was not the construction of the fences but the improvement of the country's political and economic situation. After she lost her shop during the May riots, Patty now has an insurance policy on her shop, but she still feels unsafe and admits that the insurance company would only minimally reimburse any losses.

Leo, 40, the owner of a shop at Gajah Mada Plaza in West Jakarta admitted that the fence at least gave a bit of a feeling of safety though "it is like being imprisoned." "The mall is located near to Chinatown, which is consistently exposed and can easily become a riot zone again," Leo said.

He said there was a lingering anti-Chinese sentiment, among most native Indonesians, as evidenced by the May riots, the looting and burning of shops and houses, mostly belonging to Chinese- Indonesians and the gang rape of many Chinese-Indonesian women.

Leo used to have two textile outlets, respectively at Gajah Mada Plaza and Glodok shopping center. But the latter was destroyed during the 1998 riots. "Today, for business safety, all my goods have been insured for any unexpected incidents, including riots," Leo said.

The May riots incurred losses of more than Rp 2.5 trillion (US$268 million). Thousands of buildings were destroyed during the violence, which also claimed 2,244 lives, according to the latest data from the Volunteers' Team for Humanity.

After the riots, some malls and shopping centers in Jakarta, including Mal Ciputra and ITC Roxy Mas in Central Jakarta have constructed strong, high steel fences.

Saidi, spokesman of the security department at Mal Ciputra acknowledged that the 2.5-meter high fences would be effective only as a temporary block for rioters, hopefully long enough for help from the police to arrive.

Meanwhile, Xiung xiung, owner of a cellular phone shop in ITC Roxy Mas said that security still topped the shop owners' concerns. "Certainly, we still worry of possible riots in Jakarta because nobody, including the government, can guarantee order and safety in the city," said Xiung.

Xiung recalled the latest clash in January this year when hundreds of residents of Duri Pulo subdistrict in Central Jakarta ran amok following the violent eviction of alleged illegal squatters. In the incident, a car and three motorcycles were set ablaze but no fatalities were reported.

Billboard permit rules: Easy money for officials

Jakarta Post - May 15, 2002

Bambang Nurbianto, Jakarta -- The complicated process for obtaining permits for advertising billboards or outdoor advertisement has been used by certain officials of the city administration as a source of illegal levies from the applicants, businessmen said.

The Indonesian Outdoor Media Association (AMLI) said that to obtain one permit for one advertising billboard, an outdoor media company has to wait around five months as its application has to go through many agencies of the administration.

AMLI deputy chairman Gunadi Soekemi told a press conference on Tuesday that the long process in obtaining the permits had discouraged many companies to advertise their products through billboards. He said that many companies instead used other kinds of advertisement.

According to Gunadi, the 14 regulations on billboards have many loopholes. "The ambiguous regulations for billboards are often used by the corrupt officials for obtaining their personnel benefits," he said.

Muljadi Suriawan, another AMLI executive, concurred with Gunawan, saying that the city administration, for example, only stated to charge an applicant some Rp 215 million for a billboard that should be worth some Rp 1.2 billion. In fact, the applicants paid more than that amount, but then was corrupted by the officials.

"How it could happen, you can answer by yourself," said Muljadi, citing the example of a billboard of a cigarette product near the Hilton Hotel on Jl. Gatot Subroto, Central Jakarta.

Muljadi also criticized the city governor decree no 46/2001 which gave guidelines where the billboards should be placed. He said that in the decree, there are many places which could not be used for installing the billboards. "But, such prohibitions become meaningless, as an article of the decree said that the locations could be a place for billboards if it is permitted by the governor," he said.

According to AMLI's chairman Aip Syarifudin, the inconsistent regulations have also caused chaotic conditions of billboards in the city. "We can see the condition along the streets that shows no order on the placement of billboards," said Aip.

Meanwhile, head of the city revenue agency Dadan Supriyadi denied that the process of issuing a permit for billboards takes five months. He said that the normal process in all agencies in the city administration is only around 31 days.

"I do not understand if they say the processing of a permit takes five months," said Dadan, adding it could take so long if their applications were incomplete. Dadan also denied about the rampant corruption. "I cannot comment on such an allegation if there is no evidence, as it will only waste my time," according to Dadan.

Long process in obtaining permits for billboards:

1. Submitting application to city revenue agency. (one day)
2. City revenue agency issues notes for creation of the billboard's block plan to the city planning agency. (seven days)
3. The block plan is processed by city planning agency while the city revenue agency asks the billboard picture from the applicant. (30 days)
4. City revenue agency issues notes on the billboard rates to the mayoralty's construction supervision agency. The latest agency issues its calculation of tax and levies. (30-50 days)
5. The city revenue agency takes files on the billboard from the mayoralty's construction supervisory agency. (seven days)
6. Further process in the revenue agency. (58 days)

Bus fares to increase while thugs still extort drivers

Jakarta Post - May 15, 2002

Leo Wahyudi S., Jakarta -- The Jakarta administration's plan to increase bus fares does not necessarily mean improving drivers' welfare. Bus and public minivan operators claim the benefits for them are limited as they are also burdened with illegal fees, leading to a high-cost operation.

Bus drivers complained to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that they must allocate between Rp 30,000 (US$3.20) and Rp 50,000 for "security fees" given to thugs in certain bus stations and shelters.

"I have to pay the thugs nearly Rp 21,000 per day," complained Narto, a 37-year-old driver of a medium-sized bus the plying Kampung Melayu-Pondok Kopi route in East Jakarta.

Narto, as well as other drivers on the route, has to pay Rp 9,000 in illegal fees on each journey from one station to another. During an eight-hour workday -- from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. -- Narto pays a total of Rp 30,000 in illegal fees. Besides the illegal fees, Narto also pays a Rp 130,000 daily bus rental fee and Rp 90,000 for fuel.

"Our spending is very burdensome. I and Subeni, my conductor, can only have Rp 10,000 for lunch and cigarettes," he said. In short, Narto and Subeni must collect around Rp 250,000 to earn a Rp 30,000 profit.

Narto claimed he could not envision a greater profit from the administration's plan to increase bus fares by between 25 percent and 40 percent following the fuel price hike of 14.46 percent on average. The last time the administration raised bus fares was on July 11, 2001, when the increase was between 28 percent and 50 percent.

Rendi, who works on a regular bus serving Grogol, West Jakarta, and Kampung Rambutan, East Jakarta, expressed similar concerns. He needs Rp 30,000 to pay the security fee during an eight-hour workday. "It's really burdensome because we still have to pay Rp 550,000 for the daily rental fee," he said.

Rendi named six bus stations and shelters -- Jl. Baru near the Kampung Rambutan bus station, Halim Perdanakusuma shelter, UKI shelter, Slipi Jaya shelter, Ciputra Mall shelter and Grogol station -- where thugs at each bus stop regularly demand between Rp 200 and Rp 1,000.

Air-conditioned bus crews have to allocate more money. "We have to give them [the thugs] Rp 50,000 per day," groaned Warpu, whose air-conditioned bus serves the Kampung Rambutan to Cimone, Tangerang route.

"We have to pay them. They don't care if we object. If we don't pay, the thugs along our route smash up the vehicle, particularly the windows." "If I'm lucky, I can bring home Rp 45,000. Most of the time I earn less than Rp 30,000. How can we survive?" he said.

Bus companies have a superannuation scheme under which staff deposit Rp 10,000 per day. The total amount can be withdrawn when they quit or retire.

Unlike regular buses or public minivans, air-conditioned bus crew do not have to pay daily rental but get a 12 percent commission from their total daily revenue.

Besides the illegal fees paid to thugs, bus operators have to pay "coordination fees" to the City Land Transportation Agency (DLLAJ) and police officers.

Syam, not his real name, has worked for six years as an area supervisor at a bus company in Kampung Melayu bus station, East Jakarta.

"The company where I work has to provide Rp 1.8 million per month for the officers to oversee our buses operating between Kampung Melayu and Tomang, West Jakarta. The 'coordination fee' varies depending on the area, but the amount is around that figure," he said.

"However, the company benefits by paying the money. We always get protection and privileges whenever our bus or crew are involved in a traffic problem." Syam disclosed that certain DLLAJ and police officers earned between Rp 50,000 and Rp 350,000 from bus companies. "We don't mind paying them because we also need their security service," he said. "So far, it has worked well."

Activist ignores police summons

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Jakarta -- The chairman of the Jakarta Residents Forum, Azaz Tigor Nainggolan, failed to answer a summons from the city police on Monday morning, when he was to be questioned as a suspect in defamation case involving Governor Sutiyoso.

Tigor said he did not answer the summons because it did not clearly state who he was suspected of defaming. "The summons just stated that I was charged with defamation. The name of the person that I allegedly defamed was not stated in the summons, which arrived on Friday," he said.

Tigor said he was charged with violating Article 11 of the Criminal Code on defamation, which carries a maximum punishment of four years in jail.

He claimed dozens of lawyers from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, the Jakarta Social Institute and other organizations were prepared to defend him.

Sutiyoso filed a complaint against Tigor with the police, based on comments attributed to the activist in newspapers that Sutiyoso had given city councillors Rp 3 billion (US$322,580) to accept his accountability speech.

News & issues

Opposition mounts against new broadcasting bill

Jakarta Post - May 17, 2002

Muhammad Nafik, Jakarta -- Opposition continued to grow on Thursday against the new broadcasting bill, which many critics see as an attempt by the government to once again curb freedom of the press.

If passed into law, they said, the bill will reestablish "repressive" governmental control of radio and television.

"Under the current broadcasting bill, the government can justify its repression of the electronic media. It will be even more repressive than the days under Soeharto's New Order regime," Leo Batubara, one of the staunch critics, told The Jakarta Post.

He said the bill contained at least 21 articles which were repressive toward the electronic media. The bill has a total of 63 articles.

Such repressive measures include the empowerment of the State Ministry of Communications and Information to control the media by imposing sanctions for breaches of regulations, he said. He added that the previous law, enacted by the authoritarian Soeharto regime, contained only 11 articles deemed repressive.

Leo, a senior member of the Indonesian Broadcasting and Press Society (MPPI), said the new bill also required the electronic media to obtain approval from the ministry over the substance of their programs.

"For the government to administer applications for frequency licenses, it's fine. But it has no right to control the substance of radio and television programs," he added.

With provisions limiting advertisements and banning media cross- ownership, the bill will also dwarf the country's broadcasting industry, he said.

In addition, the bill allows overseas investment in the electronic media but at the same time prohibits foreigners from serving as top executives. "It doesn't make sense. Foreign investors will not come in," Leo said.

The bill, currently being deliberated by the House of Representatives and the government, has been proposed by the 500-member legislature.

The new bill includes the proposed establishment of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), but curtails its authority by not giving the commission the authority to issue licenses and control frequency distributions.

"Based on the bill, KPI will serve merely as a body like the current National Press Council," Leo said. The independent commission, proposed by MPPI, would have the authority to set a code of conduct for electronic media, issue licenses, impose sanctions, and regulate frequency distribution.

Senior journalist Rosihan Anwar concurred, saying the bill "severely restricted" the freedom of the broadcast media. "The bill contains a political motive on the part of the government to control the media," Rosihan told the Post. "The government is trying to recoup losses caused by press freedom during the reform era," he added.

Santoso, director of Jakarta's 68 H radio station, asked the House to adopt the concept proposed by MPPI in the establishment of the independent commission, which he said should serve as a regulatory body.

Otherwise, the bill will provide justification for the government to be repressive again toward the media, he said. Santoso said KPI should be akin to those broadcasting commissions long- established in the United States and Britain.

Another media observer Alwi Dahlan, who is a former information minister, said the proposed establishment of KPI would be similar to the independent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that overseas all media activities in the United States.

Alwi said that the KPI should include members from credible organizations appointed by the House, adding that owners of electronic media industries must not be represented in the commission. But, KPI should not be given the authority to "intervene" in news programs produced by TV and radio, he said.

TV, radio operators reject bill on broadcasting

Jakarta Post - May 16, 2002

Kurniawan Hari, Jakarta -- Television and radio broadcasting operators warned on Wednesday they would go off air if the House of Representatives (DPR) and the government failed to revise the broadcasting bill currently being deliberated.

During a peaceful rally in front of the House compound, dozens of protesters claimed that the bill was a threat to independent broadcasting activities which they had been fighting for.

Among the articles criticized by the protesters was the establishment of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) that would hold the authority to determine program guidelines, impose sanctions for violations, issue licenses and set a code of conduct for the broadcast community.

One of the protesters, Sunaryo, said both the government and the House had the intention of controlling the national broadcast community through regulations, action reminiscent of the days under Soeharto's New Order. The protesters did not say when the plan would materialize.

Indonesia is home to one state and 10 private television stations and one state and 1,070 private radio stations. The off-air threat was earlier issued by the Association of Indonesian National Private Radio.

Separately on Wednesday, an association of 36 community-based radio operators demanded that the government recognize their existence separate from the state and commercial stations.

The Indonesian Community-based Radio Network denied the government's accusation that its members' broadcasts could jeopardize national unity, saying that people had taken advantage of their services.

During the protest some of the radio operators from Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi shared their experiences, saying that local people welcomed the presence of their stations.

A draft broadcasting bill outlined by the House acknowledges the community-based broadcasting stations, but the government opposes it on the grounds that it is prone to provocation.

Apart from regulating broadcasting operators, the bill also regulates cross-ownership, foreign investment in domestic broadcasting and advertising.

Nostalgic for the 'good old days of Soeharto'

Jakarta Post - May 15, 2002

Berni K. Moestafa and A'an Suryana, Jakarta -- Chatting to a number of commuters at the Gambir station, a man complains about rampant crimes. Politics too is a mess and he thinks the military should return to power. Nostalgia sets in. "It isn't as it use to be, times were better under Soeharto," he said.

Disturbing as it sounds, he may have a point there. Glaring shortcomings during the reform era undermined faith in the four- year-old movement.

"Nothing has changed after the 1998 reform movement started," said Nico Adrian, a former student activist of the City Forum (Forkot), known for its rowdy proreform rallies.

Forkot fought for political reform. Along with other student organizations it was at the front to get the message across. At the opposite end were the status quo forces of the then ruling Golkar party and the military.

Calls for reform gained the upper hand, but four years later Golkar and the military continue to wield heavy political clout. They reinvented themselves as also-reformists. For Nico, it is a slap in the face.

Outside politics, the promise of a better life beyond Soeharto remains elusive. In fact, life has turned for the worse since the double blow of the 1997 economic crisis and the political turmoil that followed.

The immediate impact was inflation. In 1997 and 1998, inflation surged to 78 percent from just below 10 percent, driving millions into poverty.

According to the Indonesian Human Development Report 2001, unemployment also rose drastically from 4.7 percent in August 1997, just before the crisis, to 5.5 percent in 1998 and 6.4 percent in 1999.

The combination of high inflation and slow growth in nominal wages resulted in a steep drop in real wages. Overall, real wages fell by around one-third between 1997 and 1998 but in some places the drop was far steeper -- by 45 percent for industrial workers in Jakarta, for example.

These falling real wages and increasing unemployment resulted in the increase of the number of poor people.

A World Bank report last year showed nearly 60 percent of the population, or about 120 million people, were poor or vulnerable to poverty. As the crisis sapped economic growth, the means to lift these people out of poverty became ineffective. Banks did not extend loans, companies did not invest, development stalled and not enough jobs were being created to offset the rise in unemployment.

Economic reform should have been the remedy. But the reform program, set out with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since late 1997, falls short of expectations.

Head of the Indonesian Electronics Producers Association (Gabel), Lee Kang Hyun, said the country's adverse business climate kept foreign investors away.

Since this year, Lee said, the climate has improved, though less because of genuine reform measures. "It's stable because nothing extraordinary happened," he said.

Political instability and security threats stalled reforms for the first seven months of last year. Stability returned after President Megawati Soekarnoputri assumed power last July.

Elsewhere, legal reform is facing an uphill battle. "I don't feel safe anymore walking on the streets at night," said Rusminiati, a counselor who works in a law firm on Jl. Jend. Sudirman. She said going home by bus at night was now out of the question.

Rusminiati is one of many concerned over the city's high crime rate that is another fallout of the 1997 economic crisis. Every week of last year, Jakarta saw 21 armed robberies, 12 thefts of cars and motorcycles, and two dead bodies found with stab wounds.

Legal reform is under way to fight it, but the results have yet to show on the streets. Analysts said failure to bring about legal reform was at the heart of most of the country's problems: corruption, rampant security threats, power abuses and a heap of economic woes.

In retrospect, the Soeharto era looks more appealing. Political stability was a fact of life, people felt secure, and Indonesia was one of the new tigers of the Asian economies.

But returning to a Soeharto style of government is no option, said Arie Wibowo, a former student activist from the University of Indonesia. He pointed out that Soeharto's achievements came at the expense of freedom and justice.

Reform may be painstakingly slow, he said, but it introduced freedom of expression which is the essence of true democracy. In the face of adversity, Arie urged people not to tire of the reform process. "This is a transitional period, when we get through this depends on us."

Armed forces/Police

70 enlisted men in East Java to stand trial

Jakarta Post - May 18, 2002

Jakarta -- Seventy military personnel in East Java will be court-martialled for various violations, a senior officer said on Friday.

Brawijaya East Java Military Police chief Col. Soejono revealed that the military personnel, who come from all the three forces in the Indonesian Military (TNI), face charges ranging from desertion to ordinary crimes.

Soejono said they were arrested in the first three months of the year. The number, he added, was less than the 78 court-martialled over the same period last year.

"There were more crimes toward the end of the year, which we surmise had something to do with year-end needs. Some of the errant soldiers committed the crimes for money that they needed to pay off debts," he said as quoted by Antara.

Soejono said desertion topped the violations committed by enlisted men, with the most common being vehicle theft, illegal logging and providing protection to gambling dens and brothels.

He acknowledged that the crimes were related to socioeconomic problems. Other crimes were sparked by love affairs and family disputes.

"The problems made them reluctant to report for duty or see their commander. After they failed to turn up for so long, their commander considered them deserters," he said.

Soejono said desertion was the most serious violation in the military. "There are so many rules in the military. It's hard to be an enlisted man," he said. He said a deserter could lose his pay.

Soejono said that suspending a soldier's pay was always a dilemma for the TNI leadership because the punishment would adversely affect the family of a military member. The sanction is decided by the TNI chief.

Soejono claimed that wives played a pivotal role in curbing crime involving military personnel, because they could encourage their husbands to comply with the rules.

"In every meeting with wives of our personnel, we ask them to give their husbands a moral boost to maintain the high standard of military discipline," he said.

Army chief for top TNI post

Straits Times - May 14, 2002

Derwin Pereira, Jakarta -- Army chief Endriartono Sutarto looks set to become Indonesia's next military commander by the end of this month after President Megawati Sukarnoputri forwarded his name to Parliament yesterday.

Observers said her choice of General Endriartono as armed forces (TNI) chief signals her growing links with the army, which under her presidency has emerged as a key political ally in the face of challenges to her leadership from the Muslim camp.

The four-star general once served as head of the influential presidential security guards under former presidents Suharto and Habibie.

There seems little chance that he will not get the coveted post, given that Parliament is likely to back him.

Mr Amris Hasan, a senior official from Ms Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party -- Struggle (PDI-P), said: "We think that he is the best man for the job. He has the backing of the palace and his peers in the military. Indonesia needs someone like him to head the military." Mr Amris sits on the parliamentary commission that will deliberate on Gen Endriartono's candidacy for the post.

He said that even if legislators -- who will be meeting Gen Endriartono early next week -- rejected the President's nomination, all they can do is to send her a formal note stating their objections. There is nothing in the books that could force Ms Megawati to bow to parliamentary pressure on this issue, he added.

Indeed, a key adviser told The Straits Times that the 54-year-old President had deliberately proposed just one name to forestall legislators from being split on a choice. "It must be a yes or a no to just one choice," said the source. "She does not want Parliament to be divided on this matter or for legislators to challenge her prerogative to choose the TNI commander."

Military sources said that the other potential candidate for the job was former army chief Tyasno Sudarto. Until the eleventh hour, he had been trying to lobby Vice-President Hamzah Haz. But Mr Hamzah, whose ties with the President are deteriorating fast over recent political differences, failed to convince the palace of Gen Tyasno's credentials.

PDI-P member Tjahyo Kumolo, who is close to Ms Megawati's husband Taufik Kiemas, said 55-year-old Gen Endriartono was the President's only choice.

For a start, he was the most senior ranking officer in all the three armed forces services, including the navy and air force. More importantly perhaps, he had already proven his loyalty to Ms Megawati by opposing moves by former president Abdurrahman Wahid to impose a state of emergency last July and by backing her for the presidency.

Support from the army is even more crucial for her now, given the sectarian and religious violence breaking out in different parts of the sprawling archipelago and the challenge to her rule from radical Muslim groups.

Well-placed sources said that in a meeting with the President recently, Central Java-born Endriartono pledged his support for her leadership until the 2004 general election.

Support from the army will strengthen further if Ms Megawati is also able to push through her nomination of Lt-Gen Ryamizard Ryacudu, head of Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad), as army chief.

Indonesia's military: Will it help to help this army?

New York Times - May 12, 2002

Jane Perlez, Jakarta -- When the United States recast the Central Asian states from dubious dictatorships to necessary allies in the war on terrorism, Indonesia's generals took heart. Having enjoyed American aid during the cold war and then lost it when American policy stressed human rights in the 1990's, the top military officers in the world's largest Muslim nation began to hope that the United States would soon come calling again.

This week, in fact, Indonesia's defense minister, Matori Abdul Djalil, will be in Washington to talk up the need for reviving military relations. But he will be entering a tricky debate, in which Washington is unsure which way to step.

Should the United States back a military with a history that includes deep corruption and atrocities committed in East Timor three years ago? Some in the Bush administration argue that, whatever the history, the army is the only institution that can keep Indonesia together during the messy transition to democracy.

Or should the United States keep its distance, demanding that Indonesia's military show accountability for its past? According to this argument, popular in Congress and the State Department, only an army leadership that showed contrition could be trusted to strengthen, not weaken, democratic gains.

The sudden interest in the Indonesian military stems, of course, from the war on terrorism. Indonesians in general practice a moderate version of Islam, but a growing number of extremist Islamic groups have emerged in the last few years. Their activities, including the massacre of 14 Christians on the Molucca islands 10 days ago, appear to be tolerated by the military; some American officials point out that the army leadership has not condemned the groups.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was ambassador here during the Reagan administration, is likely to give Mr. Matori the most sympathetic hearing. He has said the best way to promote Indonesia as a model moderate Muslim country is for the United States to have influence over the military and help it hold the center together.

"I think it is unfortunate that the US does not today have military-to-military relationships with Indonesia," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week.

Those who disagree say that the Indonesian military shows few signs of reform. Dana Dillon, a retired American army officer and a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, notes that the violence in East Timor three years ago stopped only when the Indonesian Army left. "They had 20 years to reform," said Mr. Dillon. "It didn't work with American military assistance then. Why now?"

Others, like Robert B. Oakley, a former ambassador to Zaire and Pakistan, harbor few illusions about how far American training and money can push Indonesia on the path of reform. But Mr. Oakley takes the pragmatist's view that the United States cannot afford to keep itself shut out of the military. "We can influence them a bit," he said. "we can't revolutionize them."

The history of American involvement with the Indonesian military is one of steady contraction after a high point in the 1970's and 80's.

During the cold war, Indonesian officers trained in the United States. When Indonesian troops fired in 1991 on marchers in East Timor, which was then an occupied territory of Indonesia, Congress placed human rights conditions on training. In 1994, the Clinton administration stopped the sale of small arms, and in 1998, Congress ended all American training of Indonesian soldiers after it learned that a special forces organization whose units had fired on student demonstrators had had American training.

More restrictions were added after army-backed militiamen rampaged through East Timor in 1999 after the area voted for independence. Over 1,000 East Timorese were killed, according to United Nations estimates. This week, after three years of United Nations tutelage, East Timor will gain its formal independence.

The most recent restrictions, which basically outlaw contact with the Indonesian army, are at the heart of the debate in Washington.

Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, has insisted that the military be held accountable for atrocities in East Timor. The trial of four mid-level army officers, under way now, is the most significant government effort to meet the demand.

But American officials who oppose the renewal of military ties dismiss it as a sham. Most of the defense lawyers also represent the family of Indonesia's deposed dictator, Gen. Suharto. And generals sit in the spectators' gallery, with their presence seen as an effort to intimidate the judges and prosecutors.

In the very short term, the Pentagon may be satisfied with restoring only modest ties. It plans to push Congress for $8 million to equip and train a counterterrorism unit in the Indonesian police force and $8 million to train a peacekeeping force. The members would be vetted by the F.B.I. to weed out human-rights violators.

Gonawan Mohamad, an Indonesian weekly columnist and respected commentator, believes that in the long run the United States should try to work with the army, especially to train young officers. Now, he says, is not the moment to start because the military still needs to acknowledge its mistakes in East Timor.

But the army cannot be left to its own devices forever, he said. If that happens, he predicts, the result will be a rotten army that would only suffocate a nascent democracy.

International solidarity

Timor solidarity brigade opposes oil deal

Green Left Weekly - May 15, 2002

Sibylle Kaczorek, Darwin -- The fourth solidarity brigade to East Timor organised by Action in Solidarity with East Timor/Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific will leave for Dili on May 13.

"We will be helping build a well in a village, attending the May 20 independence celebrations and identifying further solidarity projects to be undertaken by ASIET-APSN", Ralf Scharmann, co- organiser of the brigade told Green Left Weekly.

"We are in complete support of the East Timorese people's right to have full decision making powers over all economic resources and their development", brigade member Ruth Ratcliffe added. "This obviously includes supporting East Timor's right to control the Timor Sea oil and gas. We are opposed to any deals on this resource being made before May 20. The new government will need to be given the time to become fully functioning."

Acehnese and West Papuan activists speak

Green Left Weekly - May 15, 2002

Pip Hinman, Sydney -- "We have no relationship with Indonesia anymore. We have to find our own way", was how Erwanto, a visiting Acehnese democracy leader summed up his people's determination to win their independence.

Speaking at a meeting organised by Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific on May 9, Erwanto, who is the international officer for the Acehnese Popular Democratic Resistance Front (FPDRA), said that under the Megawati government the number of human rights abuses in Aceh have increased. In Aceh today, the democratic forces are being prevented from even organising meetings. Demonstrations are banned, and people are afraid to travel from village to village until after 6pm.

Negotiations between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government are scheduled for May 11. Erwanto believes that negotiations are important, but to be effective they have to be mediated by a foreign government or, preferably, the United Nations. "Only the UN is in a position to point the finger at Jakarta for its human rights abuses." Erwanto was emphatic that Acehnese do not want an Islamic state, despite it being on offer from Jakarta. He said when the leader of the fundamentalist militia group Laska Jihad came to Aceh none of the independence groups including GAM, were willing to meet with it.

Rex Rumakiek, a leader of the Free Papua Movement (OPM), described to the meeting a similarly deteriorating situation in West Papua. Indonesian military have been given free rein to carry out their dirty work.

However, he is hopeful that an international campaign launched last year to pressure the UN Secretary General to review the 1969 Act of Free Choice will gain momentum. Rumakiek described the sham UN-organised "referendum" of that year as "West Papua being caught up in Cold War politics". He said that the US desire to contain communism in this part of the world led to the UN undemocratically handing over West Papua to Indonesia.

Already some 40 NGOs internationally have supported the review appeal, with 10 adding their names last week.

Rumakiek is hopeful that this year's South Pacific Forum to be held in Fiji in August will also carry a strong resolution supporting West Papua's struggle for independence. He said that the governments of Nauru and Vanuatu among others would support the push.

Given the abundance of natural resources in West Papua, Rumakiek said "we should all be millionaires, if not for the multinationals like Freeport".

International relations

Indonesia army wary about US military aid offer

Straits Times - May 15, 2002

Derwin Pereira, Jakarta -- Indonesia said it would not follow the Philippines in allowing US troops into the country, even as it held out the prospect for resuming military ties with the United States.

Defence Minister Matori Abdul Djali, who met US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for talks in Washington, told reporters on Monday that Indonesia was confident its police and military force could handle terrorist threats.

His comments came as Mr Rumsfeld assured Jakarta that he would call on Congress to ease restrictions on aid to the Indonesian armed forces (TNI).

But generals here welcomed the offer cautiously. They said the thinking in the TNI was that Washington was offering to lift the embargo as a "bargaining chip to get Indonesia to do whatever it wants in the fight against terrorism".

A three-star army general told The Straits Times: "We have to draw the line somewhere. I think the US has got the message that we will never allow them to send troops into Indonesia because there will be a backlash. We will never allow them to violate our sovereignty."

But Jakarta continues to see considerable value in rebuilding military ties with the US. For a start, a resumption of formal defence links would bring in money for the military. This is evident from the steps being taken by Washington now.

The State Department has requested US$16 million for Indonesia in this year's supplemental appropriations request before Congress. About US$8 million is for a rapid reaction peacekeeping force to deal with trouble in Indonesia's remote provinces.

Another US$8 million is for national police training in counter- terrorism. An additional US$17.9 million is for a regional counter-terrorism fellowship programme, which could include Indonesian military officers if Congress gives the go ahead.

However, Indonesian calls for a resumption of ties appear to be emanating more from the air force and navy than the army.

Before 1999, for example, Indonesia depended on Washington for much of its weapons procurement. The air force, in particular, has complained that the suspension of ties left many of its F-16 jets grounded by the lack of spare parts. It says the operational readiness of its planes -- combat and transport -- leaves much to be desired, with several of them grounded for lack of spares.

In the case of the Indonesian army, there appears to be less enthusiasm to get ties back on an even keel. Senior officers interviewed by The Straits Times said that the army had barely been affected by the cut in military ties with the US.

Noted a two-star army general: "Of course it is better for us if the Americans get rid of the embargo. But we are still surviving with whatever restrictions they have imposed. After three years, is there any evidence that the TNI has collapsed without US aid? The embargo can continue for another 10 more years but it will still be business as usual for us."

Rumsfeld urges Congress to ease curbs on military ties

Agence France Presse - May 14, 2002

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged the US Congress to ease restrictions on military relations with Indonesia, saying Jakarta was dealing with past human rights violations "in an orderly, democratic way."

Rumsfeld spoke after meeting at the Pentagon with Indonesian Defense Minister Matori Abdul Jalil, who said he was in Washington to make the case for restoring military ties curtailed in the wake of Indonesian military atrocties in East Timor in 1999.

"The president, the secretary of state and I have all been interested in finding ways to work with Congress to reestablish the kind of military to military relationship that we believe are appropriate," Rumsfeld said. "We are hopeful that we will be able to find support in the Congress to move in the correct direction," he told reporters.

The State Department has requested 16 million dollars for Indonesia in a 2002 supplemental appropriations request before Congress. Eight million dollars would go for a rapid reaction peacekeeping force to deal with trouble in Indonesia's far-flung provinces. Another eight million would go to train the national police in counter-terrorism.

The Pentagon also has requested an additional 17.9 million dollars for a regional defense counter-terrorism fellowship program, which could include Indonesian military officers if Congress gives the go ahead.

The Pentagon has had no military training or foreign military sales programs with Indonesia since 1999 when Congress passed an amendment barring funding for those activities until Indonesia accounted for its military's role in the East Timor killings.

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Rumsfeld and others in Pentagon have lamented the absence of military ties with the world's most populous Muslim nation and a potential haven for operatives of suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Ten Indonesian army officers are currently on trial by Indonesia's first human rights courts for rights abuses, but so far no military officer has been punished over East Timor.

Jalil, speaking through an interpreter, said that his government could not intervene in the legal process "but continues to encourage the court to have a fair trial." He said both the government and the military were committed to reforms aimed at creating a professional military under civilian control. He also reaffirmed Jakarta's commitment to cooperate in the US war on terrorism, but said his government did not want US military trainers to come to Indonesia as they have to the Philippines, Georgia and Yemen.

"That is not our foreign policy, and we remain confident in the ability of our national police and the military to deal with these affairs," he said.

Rumsfeld said he was hopeful that the steps taken by Indonesia on human rights and other issues of concern will help persuade Congress to ease the restrictions.

"We are of the view that it is time for them to be adjusted substantially," he said. "The argument that we'll make to the Hill is that Indonesia is an important country, it is a large country, it is a moderate Muslim state, that they are addressing the human rights issues in an orderly democratic way," he said.

Economy & investment

Economy grew by 2.47% in first quarter

Jakarta Post - May 16, 2002

Dadan Wijaksana, Jakarta -- The economy grew by 2.47 percent in the first three months of 2002 compared to the same period last year, fueled mainly by strong consumer spending, the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) reported on Wednesday.

Although the growth rate is lower than what most analysts had predicted -- including Bank Indonesia, which foresaw a 3.2 percent growth -- optimism still remains that the government's full-year target of 4 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) can be achieved. Bank Indonesia deputy governor Miranda Goeltom said the economy would pick up faster in the coming quarter, still on the back of strong consumer spending.

"I think we'll grow faster in the second quarter and the target of 3.5 percent to 4 percent growth is expected to be met," Miranda said, referring to the central bank's full-year growth forecast.

Standard Chartered Bank economist Fauzi Ichsan said that although most analysts had been overly bullish on the first quarter GDP figure, the actual growth figure was not bad.

"I think the overall picture is still good," he said, adding that the government should be on track to meet its growth target for the year as long as it could maintain political stability and the pace of the economic reform program.

BPS also expressed optimism that this year's economic growth would be better than last year's 3.2 percent. "If the situation remains conducive, economic growth this year could fare better than last year," said BPS deputy chief La Ode Syafiuddin in a news conference. BPS said that the GDP grew by 2.15 percent in the first quarter from the fourth quarter of last year.

Indonesia's economic growth still hinges on consumer spending as the current slump in the world's economy has been dragging down the country's exports, while foreign direct investment would remain low as the country has yet to address various problems at home, including legal uncertainty, labor unrest and a security problem.

Foreign direct investment approval was down 90 percent to US$292 million in the first quarter of this year compared to $2.44 billion in the same period last year, according to a report from the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM).

Reports of an improvement in investor confidence in the country during the first quarter, analysts said, was mostly dominated by portfolio investment as shown in the rising stock market index and 10 percent rise in the value of the rupiah to the US dollar, considered to be one of the best performing markets in the region.

Although the economy could grow by 4 percent this year, the government is still facing an uphill task as the growth figure is not sufficient to absorb the millions of unemployed people.

Experts have said that the country needs to have growth of between 6 percent and 7 percent to be able to absorb the huge unemployment.

Imports of costly rice up, local rice crops down

Straits Times - May 15, 2002

Robert Go, Jakarta -- Increasing rice shortages could force many Indonesians into having to give up their favourite dish of nasi goreng by the end of the decade.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, Indonesia will become the world's biggest rice importer this year.

It will move into the unenviable position with the importation of more than 2.5 million tonnes -- up from 1.5 million tonnes last year -- from countries such as Thailand and Vietnam.

Indonesian experts have disputed this assessment, saying the country can maintain production levels and will buy about the same amount of rice as last year. But they do agree that without long-term agricultural planning from Jakarta, the country will have to import more rice by 2010.

Expensive imported rice is a commodity that Indonesia's struggling economy might not be able to afford. Agriculture Minister Bungaran Saragih last week described the food-security issue as "a time bomb" and said Indonesia was still too caught up in quick fixes rather than long-term solutions.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri has said she is "annoyed and embarrassed" by her nation's slide from being a self-sufficient rice producer in the 1980s to a net importer in 2002. Signals from the government suggest it still has no plans for dealing with the problem.

In 1995, Indonesia had to import rice once again after being self-sufficient for 10 years because its production capacity failed to keep up with a quickly growing population.

At the height of the economic crisis in 1998, it bought 5.75 million tonnes to cope with a shortfall in domestic crops hit by drought and pest infestations.

Rice-growing areas continue to shrink. They are down to as low as 11.2 million ha from 16.7 million ha in 1983 as a result of soil erosion and development projects. Farmers have also been switching to more lucrative cash crops such as chillies or corn.

Rising fertiliser costs, degrading soil quality and deteriorating irrigation systems have also contributed to the slump in rice production of the past five years.

The low price of domestic rice, which is regulated by state- logistics agency Bulog, is yet another reason why farmers often plant other crops or abandon their rice fields altogether.

A change in the nation's diet, switching to other foods such as wheat noodles, bread and corn-based items, could help to alleviate the problem. But rice is clearly still the people's choice with many saying they have not eaten properly if they have not had rice.

An adult Indonesian consumes as much as 122 kg of rice each year, according to official estimates. "Indonesians cannot imagine life without rice. That is why the government needs a comprehensive plan to solve the shortage issue," said agricultural economist Dr Dibyo Prabowo. "The reliance on rice is so heavy that shortages of, or price increases for, the commodity could result in social trouble."

IMF says economy shows encouraging progress

Jakarta Post - May 14, 2002

Jakarta -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave a positive report on the Indonesian economy on Monday, saying that macro economic indicators in the first few months of the year were encouraging.

IMF senior advisor for Asia Pacific Daniel Citrin urged the government to stick to the agreed reform program to maintain the current positive sentiment in the economy.

"There's been encouraging progress in the first months of the year. Under the program, the market sentiment has improved, the rupiah has started to strengthen, the [Bank Indonesia] rates are starting to come down ... But we have to make sure of continued forward momentum under the program," Citrin told reporters.

Citrin spearheads an IMF delegation to the country for a regular review on a set of economic reform programs called the letter of intent (LoI).

The LoI contains a set of targets by which the IMF measures Indonesia's progress in implementing economic reform. Failures on behalf of the government to meet the targets would lead to a halt in the IMF's lending program. The IMF is sponsoring the program under a three-year US$5 billion loan package.

Citrin's statement shows another vote of confidence in the country's commitment to economic reform. This follows IMF approval of a $347 million loan tranche for the country last month and willingness to waive several of the conditions under the three-year loan program to give Indonesia more time to carry out needed reforms.

Since the start of the year, Indonesia has managed to make significant progress in several of its key programs, which has been the cause of the revival of needed foreign confidence.

Progress in question includes, among other things, the sale of assets held by the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) and the approval by the House of Representatives of thegovernment's privatization program for 2002. Progress in the asset sale program includes the sale of government shares in Bank Central Asia (BCA), and the launch of the Bank Niaga divestment plan.

The positive development had lifted sentiment in the Indonesian market, both currency and stocks, to new heights. The rupiah has appreciated by more than 10 percent of its value since the beginning of this year, while the Jakarta Stock Exchange Composite Index has jumped almost 40 percent. It isconsidered as one of the most best performing markets in the region.

Also helping the rupiah's upward movement was the Paris Club of creditor nations agreeing last April to reschedule Indonesia's debt repayments totaling $5.4 billion. The benchmark interest rate on Bank Indonesia one-month SBI promissory notes has also been declining since the beginning of the year. The rate is now hovering at 16.20 percent compared to around 18 percent late last year.

Bank Indonesia has said that there is more room for a further cut in interest rates as inflationary pressures are easing.