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East Timor News Digest 10 – October 1-31, 2013

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News & issues

President's pilgrimages keep two sharp eyes on Timor's remote villages

Irish Times - October 16, 2013

Taur Matan Ruak goes to extraordinary lengths to hear the ordinary concerns of his people. In the village of Marobo, a gruelling seven-hour drive from Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, the arrival of president Taur Matan Ruak has all the hallmarks of a homecoming.

Villagers have gathered, eagerly awaiting his visit. When he arrives in the company of his wife, Isabel Ferreira, and their three children, the youngest of whom is asleep on her shoulder, they are formally greeted by the village elders and ushered into the excited crowd.

After a short pause for prayer, the president launches into his latest "community dialogue". The venue is a makeshift corrugated iron structure with a roof woven from palm leaves, and the president and his entourage are perched on precarious plastic chairs while members of the local community hunker on large rattan mats spread out across the floor.

Taking a crackly microphone in hand, villagers one by one air their concerns, which offer a good insight into the challenges faced throughout rural Timor-Leste. They include the lack of access to water, electricity, health care facilities, education, poor infrastructure, and the ever- contentious issue of veteran pensions. The president listens attentively throughout, jotting down notes.

Once everyone has had the opportunity to speak, Ruak takes to the floor. Showing no sign of weariness, he zealously addresses the community at length. Going point by point through every issue that has been raised, he cites clearly what is realistically possible and makes suggestions as to what they as a community can do to improve their lot.

He also promises to convey their concerns to prime minister Xanana Gusmao. The dialogue continues long into the evening, with villagers enveloped in blankets in an attempt to keep the cold mountain night at bay, while the president dons a denim jacket.

With proceedings at an end, he and his wife invite the entire village to join them for a meal of chicken and rice. The mood is distinctly familial and festive, with palm wine provided by the elders.

'Ageing rock star'

Taur Matan Ruak was sworn in as president of this small south east Asian country of 1.1 million people on May 20th last year, the same day Timor- Leste (alternatively East Timor) marked the 10th anniversary of its independence.

A trim, bespectacled statesman in his late 50s, Ruak bears little resemblance to the Economist magazine's portrayal of him as a guerrilla commander during the country's fight for independence: "Like an ageing rock star [with] frizzy hair in a long ponytail and [..] a camouflage jacket over faded jeans".

He appears to have refined his look during his nine years at the helm of the country's military, the Forcas de Defensa de Timor Leste.

Born Jose Maria Vasconcelos, the president is still universally known by his nom de guerre, Taur Matan Ruak, meaning "two sharp eyes".

Running as an independent in the 2012 presidential elections, he campaigned strongly on his credentials, not only as a former guerrilla commander, but also as a man of the people. "I do not have a university degree, my way of studying is by observing and listening to others," he says.

To underline his grassroots approach, since June of this year Ruak has embarked on a series of "suco visits" (or community visits) in some of the most isolated corners of the country. Such is the remoteness of these communities that to reach them, the president often has to travel long distances by foot across wildly inhospitable terrain.

Media & journalism

East Timor PM congratulates media on new code of ethics, press council

Pacific Scoop - October 31, 2013

An historic congress of Timor-Leste journalists held in Dili recently voted for their first code of ethics and a seven-member press council.

The next hurdle for media freedom in East Timor will be a press law currently before the national parliament, which it is feared will feature a journalist licensing system and criminal penalties, journlaw.com reported.

The media law proposed by a committee of journalists advising the government featured self-regulatory controls. However, the final version included amendments proposed by the Secretary of State for Social Communication, Nelio Isaac Sarmento, rumoured to include the licensing and criminal sanctions.

Opening the congress on Friday, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao scolded journalists for not having developed adequate self-regulation when he had warned them to do so in 2009.

But he congratulated the media associations on their latest efforts to unify for a code of ethics and press council, stating that press freedom was important to democracy, but that freedom should be exercised responsibly.

More than 150 journalists in attendance on Sunday – representing several journalism associations – voted for the 10 point code of ethics.

The code of ethics featured a preamble affirming the importance of free expression and media self-regulation and clauses on accuracy and impartiality, opposition to censorship, defence of the public interest, anti-discrimination, separation of fact from opinion, confidentiality of sources, quick correction of inaccuracies, rejection of plagiarism, protection of identity of victims and rejection of financial inducements.

That final clause will present major challenges for Timor-Leste journalists, many of whom freely admit to accepting payments from politicians for positive coverage.

Media sources say reporters are often paid US$5-20 at press conferences and up to US$40 by officials when accompanying ministers on tours to the provinces. Such payments represent a substantial influence, given media outlets only pay their reporters about US$140 per month plus lunch and travel expenses.

Other problems facing the industry are a lack of training, a dependence on government advertising and the endemic drift of journalists to public service positions when they become available. This leaves editors and news directors with newsrooms staffed by inexperienced personnel.

The congress was funded by the European Union's euro 1 million Media Support Program, co-ordinated by Portugal.

[Dr Mark Pearson is professor of journalism at Griffith University following a long tenure at Bond University, Queensland, Australia.]

East Timor leaders eye media curbs

Al Jazeera - October 17, 2013

Tom Benner, Dili, East Timor – Media in this young democracy in Southeast Asia suffer from a lack of professionalism, accuracy, and ethics, argue proponents of new legislation that would punish journalistic transgressions.

But critics worry that such a law, expected to be taken up by East Timor's parliament, could impose onerous restrictions, such as spelling out who may work as a journalist, and how breaches of journalistic ethics should be addressed.

Politicians such as former prime minister Mari Alkatiri are advocates of such a system, alarming free speech advocates in the country. "Media is a power. Every power has to have some limits," Alkatiri said in an interview at his office in Dili, the nation's capital.

"If the politician made a mistake, he has to respond to his mistake. If a company makes a mistake, they have to respond to the mistake. But the journalist, no. They are free to have mistakes, because they are journalists."

In recent weeks Nelio Isaac Sarmento, East Timor's state secretary for communications, visited his counterparts in Indonesia and Portugal to discuss ways to strengthen his country's media industry.

"Almost all journalists are young and many [started their jobs] after high school. They directly entered professional journalism with only one or two weeks' training. That's not enough," Sarmento was quoted as saying last month to The Jakarta Post.

Sarmento was also quoted by Diario Nacional as saying there should be consequences for those practicing journalism without proper credentials. "Sanction will be given to people who say they are journalists. The media law and code of ethics will be used for sanctioning those who violate the law," he said.

Threat to freedom?

But in the era of citizen journalism, the prospect of a statutory media council for licensing reporters – with the power to revoke licenses and fine journalists – is considered by some to be a threat to press freedom.

Toby Mendel of the Canadian-based Centre for Law and Democracy has written extensively on draft media laws that have circulated in East Timor.

"It is important to put in place systems to promote professionalism in the media, including through complaints systems for members of the public," Mendel said. "Under international law, self-regulatory systems run by the media themselves are considered to be more appropriate than statutory systems."

Others say a media law is unnecessary, and the right to sue already amounts to adequate protection against libel, or other possible wrongs committed by the media.

While East Timor's journalists have been consulted on what should go into a media law, the version that was approved by the country's Council of Ministers on August 6 and is expected to go before parliament in the near future has not been made public, said Tatiana Almeida, executive advisor for the Secretary of State for Social Communication.

Journalism challenges

Complaints about media performance are widespread in East Timor. Journalists, who are mostly young in a country where more than 60 percent of the population is under 18, complain of a lack of training and mentoring.

As a result, basic rules of journalism – such as confirming information, separating fact from opinion, and telling all sides of the story – are not uniformly followed. Complicating matters is an illiteracy rate above 40 percent, and a multiplicity of languages in which to report and write.

Portuguese and Tetum are the country's official languages, but about two dozen other languages and dialects are also spoken. Several international NGOs and journalist groups have held instructional workshops with members of the local media, but overcoming language and cultural differences can be challenging.

"The readers, they don't speak a common language," 23-year-old Mariano Martins, who writes for the website Timoroman, said with the help of a friend who translated. "Sometimes in the districts, people don't know how to speak Tetum, they just know how to speak the local language."

The shift to online news sources and social websites has yet to happen in earnest. Internet service is sporadically available in Dili, but most of the country remains cut off. Because electricity is often either unreliable or unavailable, battery-powered radio remains the preferred medium for many.

East Timor's past is filled with media intimidation and violence, including the killing of the "Balibo Five" – five Australian television journalists covering the impending 1975 Indonesian invasion, as well as a sixth journalist who tried to investigate their fate.

Indonesia occupied the country for 25 years until 1999, a period in which the UN says more than 100,000 people were killed.

Press freedom has improved since the enactment of a penal code in 2009 that decriminalised defamation. Cases of reporters being harassed or attacked, once common, are now rare.

But serious systemic problems remain. The government influences what the media report by spending heavily on public notices and official announcements in favoured newspapers, and buying newspapers in bulk quantities for distribution – which serves as a financial incentive for a compliant media and self-censoring journalists.

Meanwhile, a poorly developed private sector limits potential revenue sources outside of the government.

Rosa Garcia, an editor and senior reporter at the Timor Post – which reports news in Tetum, Portuguese, and English – said journalists tend to use their positions to find better-paying jobs in government.

Some in the media accept payments from government officials in exchange for coverage, she said. The practice affects not only news coverage, but media credibility. "Sometimes we approach them and say this is not good, we remind them not to receive payment," Garcia said.

Amanda Wimetal, an Australian who previously translatated newspaper articles for the United Nations, and now works for a health training group in Dili, said Timorese journalists frequently fail to separate fact and opinion, and often report on government without critical context.

"It's very difficult for the journalists to know what they can say, what they can't say," she said. "Someone from the government tells them what to say, they might just write it verbatim, word for word."

The US-based NGO Freedom House rates East Timor's media as "partly free", citing a tendency by the press to be timid and deferential to authority, and to print verbatim accounts recorded at press conferences.

Also known as Timor-Leste, the country was ranked 90 out of 179 countries in Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index 2013.

'Tightly controlled'

For their part, Timorese journalists have complained about the government and what they say is lack of access to information that should be publicly available. In a lengthy July commentary by the The Dili Weekly's Meagan Weymes, the paper complained of frequently being denied access to public documents.

"In the experience of journalists at TDW, information on company registrations, public tenders, single-source tender justifications and other official documents are tightly controlled. This starts at the lower level of the public service and continues right up to the ministerial level."

The commentary added: "When it comes to reporting on corruption with any depth, this tightly controlled environment makes it very difficult for journalists. As a result, the media coverage of corruption in Timor-Leste is mixed. Some media outlets choose to avoid corruption stories. Others report on it sensationally, often without all the evidence."

Against those odds, some Timorese still enter journalism with their idealism intact.

Teodosia Ximenes, 21, grew up in rural Baucau hearing people talk on the radio about news and issues, and wants to make that her career. "Journalists are the people who help the people without a voice," she said.

Health & education

Timor Leste teachers make unwilling language students

UCA News - October 29, 2013

Thomas Ora, Dili – Like many of his Timor Leste colleagues, Fernando da Costa, an elementary school teacher in the mountainous district of Aileu, has struggled to learn Portuguese.

"It is a difficult language to learn," says da Costa, a 49-year-old father of seven who has spent 13 years teaching at the state-run Remexio Elementary School in Aileu, south of the capital Dili.

The country's 2010 census shows that nearly 90 percent of the population use the native Tetum language in their daily life. An estimated 35 percent are fluent Indonesian language users and just 23.5 percent speak, read and write the Portuguese language. But since 2003, the Timor Leste government has made learning Portuguese mandatory for teachers.

They are required to take a course, which normally runs from October to December. Fernando da Costa has been attending it since 2005. "Of what I have learned in the past seven years, I can remember only little," he says.

Junior high school teacher Joao Reis da Cruz is another reluctant student. He claims the program is ineffective as it has not been reviewed in 10 years. "As a result, teachers are not motivated to go beyond mere completion of the government requirement," he says.

While Portuguese is not new to Timor Leste – the half-island nation was colonized by Portugal in the 16th century – a very small percentage of people spoke the language when it became the world's newest country in 2002. After independence, the fledgling nation's constitution established Portuguese and Tetum as official languages, with English and Indonesian as working languages.

Most official documents are written in Portuguese but it has yet to find widespread acceptance and use. In 2009, a World Bank report noted that "Portuguese was spoken by only five percent of the population, and few younger teachers understand the materials."

Still, the government remains adamant that Portuguese should be seen as a key element in education. "The use of Portuguese has been stated in the constitution," says Caitano Oliveira, 52, an official at the Education Ministry and a Portuguese lecturer at a private institution in Dili.

He says Portuguese has been made an official language because of the potential economic benefits of working with other Portuguese speaking countries. "We can get support from Europe through Portugal, can connect with Latin America through Brazil and with Africa through Mozambique," he says.

Education Minister Bendito dos Santos Freitas maintains that Portuguese for teachers remains a priority, but adds that they can learn at their own pace. "No time limit for teachers as to when they have to master Portuguese. Constant learning of the language is what matters most," he says.

Timor Leste rethinks education for younger generation

Channel News Asia - October 11, 2013

Wei Du, Baucau – Timor Leste is rethinking how it educates its younger generation. At the centre of the issue is what language medium to use in schools.

The country now has a near perfect enrollment record, 11 years after building the school system from scratch. But on closer examination, the picture gets murky.

According to the World Bank, in 2009, 70 per cent of students at the end of grade one could not read a single word. The ratio only improves to 40 per cent with another year of education.

The bank said a full cohort of the population may still be functionally illiterate – a dismal record after a decade of efforts to improve education. The problem is plain to Father Agnelo Moreira, who runs a primary school in Baucau.

Father Moreira, the principal of Ensino Basico Fillial Catolico Sao Domingos Savio, said: "First of all, the teachers don't really speak Portuguese."

Portuguese is one of Timor's two official languages. But only a quarter of the population can actually understand it – most prefer the local tongue of Tetum.

But the government considers Tetum too rudimentary, so in the classroom, Portuguese is mandatory. That decision haunts educators on the ground every day.

Father Moreira said: "I am not against the government, I am not against the constitution, but on this one I see the practical things."

Dulce Soares, vice minister of pre-school and basic education, said: "I think the first approach in the past (was) slowly children will understand Portuguese after being exposed to Portuguese for some years. But in fact, from research and from our observations, it's not really true."

The newly-appointed vice minister for basic education spent her first months on the job visiting more than 100 schools. After that, at her insistence, Timor finally started producing bilingual textbooks.

Now that new textbooks are rolling off the printing press, they will hopefully reach all corners of the country soon. That day cannot come fast enough for Father Moreira.

He said: "I ask my teachers to please teach the children something before they go home, whatever the language is." He said it is the knowledge, not language that counts. (CNA/xq)

80% of public servant irregularities from ministry of education

Dili Weekly - October 7, 2013

Paulina Quintao – The Commissioner of the Public Service Disciplinary Process Alexandre Corte Real said the majority of public servants who committed irregularities came from the Ministry of Education.

Based on statistics from the Public Service Commission (KFP) this year, more than 300 public servants were involved in irregularities.

"From more than 300, 80% of the cases were from the Ministry of Education, because a lot of teachers are placed all over the country and in isolated areas teachers broke the rules, some abandoned work and some committed sexual violence," said Commissioner Corte Real in Colmera, Dili.

Apart from the Ministry of Education, he said there were also cases from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Social Solidarity, the Ministry of State Administration and Territorial Management and the Secretary of State for Security.

From the 300 cases, about 20 people have been dismissed and some were given a penalty like a written warning, suspension or expulsion depending on the gravity of the case.

Many other cases were still pending because of the lack of human resources for investigations.

He said the cases involved public servants who had abandoned work, committed sexual violence, practiced corruption or violated the public service stature.

Apart from the disciplinary process, he said they also recommended the Anti-Corruption Commission hold a deep investigation into civil servants involved in corruption.

When the KFP had strong proof, they also passed it onto the Prosecutor General.

The Commissioner called on civil servants to tidy themselves up to serve the people and avoid irregularities, as civil servants involved in irregularities would not get promoted or receive pay rises.

On the other hand, Vice President of National Parliament Aderito Hugo da Costa said KFP was the regulatory body for all civil servants, set up to give penalties to those who do the wrong thing.

"We must have it, otherwise the work standards of civil servants would drop, starting at eight and leaving at 12, they wouldn't go for regular work hours and would fill the restaurants and streets," he said.

He added that penalties could motivate public servants to make an effort to improve their work performance and contribute to the public administration of the country.

Meanwhile, Minister of Education Bendito Freitas acknowledged the problem and promised to pay more attention to civil servants so they could give positive support to the education system.

"We will look into civil servants connected to government institutions like the Ministry of Education, for example the irregularities, as this does not give positive support to the Ministry of Education system."

Women's rights

SEPI's programs don't reach women in rural areas

Dili Weekly - October 28, 2013

Venidora Oliveira – The Rural Women's Group in Baucau district have complained about the Secretary of State for the Promotion of Equality's programs, which are just implemented at the district level and do not reach the villages and sub-villages.

Head of the Rural Women's Group in Baucau district, Rita Freitas, said many women in rural areas still lacked information, as many had only completed junior high school.

She said many women lacked information about justice, especially about domestic violence. "SEPI should implement its programs so they reach the villages and rural areas, not just in the district capital," Freitas suggested.

She added sometimes women's cases were taken to court but some were still pending. "SEPI should look into these issues, as women find it hard to get real justice," she said.

On the other hand, Member of Parliament Josefa Alvares Soares recognized that SEPI's programs had only been implemented in Dili and the district level, never in remote areas.

"We want to find a good one, so maybe, let's go to remote areas, as we see that women in remote areas lack access to information and health assistance, many women die in childbirth," Soares said.

In response to this concern, Secretary of State Idelta Maria Rodrigues said women in rural areas didn't know a lot about what was happening within the district.

"At the district level we have a gender working group and we also have a focal point, now we have problems but they don't only face SEPI," Secretary of State Rodrigues said.

She said SEPI staff set the systems in the districts, so rural women should follow up the information published at the district level.

Sexual & domestic violence

Dili court hands down 20 year sentence in a case of incest

East Timor Law and Justice Bulletin - October 16, 2013

The East Timor Judicial System Monitoring Program has released the English translation of its report and commentary on a recent case of incest in the Dili District Court.

The text of the translation follows. On 8 October 2013 the Dili District Court issued its decision in a case of incest and sentenced the defendant to 20 years imprisonment for committing sexual abuse against his own underage daughter. This sentence relates to the accumulation of 16 criminal offences that were committed in succession by the defendant against the victim.

The court reached this decision based on the evidence that was presented in the form of the defendant's admission, the testimony of the witness and a medical report.

The Public Prosecutor alleged that the defendant committed the criminal act of sexually abusing a minor on 16 occasions between September and December 2012. Every month the defendant committed sexual abuse on four occasions.

These acts caused the victim to become pregnant and give birth to a boy. This crime was also categorized as domestic violence because the defendant is the biological father of the victim.

In relation to this case the Public Prosecutor charged the defendant for violating Article177 of the Penal Code on the sexual abuse of a minor and Article 182 (d) of the Penal Code on aggravation as well as Article 35 of the Penal Code on the joinder of crimes as well as Articles 2 and 35 (b) of the Law Against Domestic Violence.

"JSMP deeply regrets that at least once a month the courts conduct trials and convict defendants in cases of incest involving close family members such as biological fathers, stepfathers or other close relatives. This is a major concern and we can never allow this type of behavior to continue in our community," said Luis de Oliveira Sampaio, Executive Director of JSMP.

The crime of incest is very severe sexual violence because it involves the exploitation of an authoritative relationship in the family and has multiple consequences for the future of the victim if it is not dealt with in a way that provides adequate and lasting redress.

JSMP praises and applauds the sentences handed down by the court against those convicted of the crime of incest, however JSMP urges all parties to continue to contribute to doing everything possible to prevent such crimes reoccurring in the future, and State institutions in particular need to be more sensitive to this reality.

Previously on 18 and 20 September JSMP observed 2 trials involving incest at the Suai District Court and Baucau District Court with sentences of 8 years imprisonment and 18 years imprisonment handed down against the respective defendants.

"This shows the reality that socially we are facing an extremely serious problem because girls are living in fear of danger and are unsafe in their own homes," said Luis de Oliveira Sampaio, the Executive Director of JSMP.

The State has to do something to stop this crime and to protect the victims because nearly all of those victimized are minors.

In 2012, JSMP wrote a report entitled "Incest in Timor-Leste: An unrecognized crime" and recommended that a specific and comprehensive legislative policy be developed to respond to the phenomena of incest in Timor-Leste.

JSMP is also concerned about the process of reintegrating the victim into her family and community because at the moment the victim doesn't have anybody, including her mother, to care for her and her baby. The victim is currently receiving temporary protection in Fokupers. JSMP believes that the government is responsible for protecting victims and those who are vulnerable, such as the victim in this case.

This case was registered as Case No. 135/2013/TDD. Judge Antoninho Goncalves represented a panel of judges and read out the decision of the court handed down in this case. The Office of the Public Prosecutor was represented by Jacinto Babo Soares and the defendant was represented by public defender Manuel Amaral.

[Source: JSMP Press Release 9 October 2013 Edited by Warren L. Wright.]

Population & migration

ID card system not functioning

Dili Weekly - October 13, 2013

Paulina Quintao – The National Director for Civil Registries in Dili District Vitor da Costa Neto says the system of issuing identity cards to the community has stopped running. He said the system had not been functioning since 2012.

"Our service for the public in regards to identity cards has provisionally closed, as our system isn't functioning properly, so we're waiting for our leaders to negotiate to reopen the identity card service for people," said Neto in Kaikoli.

He said in addition to the RDTL certificate, an identity card was also very important for people as it shows the person comes from Timor-Leste and people need ID when travelling overseas or dealing with any documents.

Neto said since the system was established in 2011 the National Directorate for Registry managed to give 6968 people identity cards.

On the other hand, Comoro resident Alcinda Pinto said the government had an obligation to re-establish a system so the community could deal with their identity cards.

"This card is very important for us as students, as if we would like to continue our studies in another country we need it to identify that we are from Timor-Leste, otherwise people don't believe us," she said. She asked the Ministry of Justice to justify why the system stopped and to resolve it.

Meanwhile Minister of Justice Dionisio Babo recognized the system had stopped, as the system was too technical. He said they were thinking about resolving it soon, so they could serve people and help them access documents like identify cards.

Agriculture & food security

Agriculture not included in decentralization program

Dili Weekly - October 29, 2013

Ezequiel Freitas – The Asia Foundation is concerned about the government's decentralization program to be implemented in the districts because the program does not value the agriculture sector.

Director of the Asia Foundation Hugo Fernandes said the areas recognized in the decentralization program were the economy, tourism, health and education, but the government didn't recognize the agriculture sector.

According to him, the majority of Timorese people make a living off agriculture but the government forgot the sector in the decentralization program.

"It's an issue because 80% of the population are farmers living in rural areas, so why don't they recognize the agriculture sector," Fernandes lamented.

Meanwhile, LABEH Executive Director Julio Gil da Silva Guteres explained in the draft law on decentralization there was nothing on agriculture.

However, in the draft law on pre-deconcentration, they recognized agriculture. "The majority of us Timorese, 80% are farmers, so why do they not put in agriculture," added Guteres.

He urged the government before implementing deconcentration and decentralization to add the agriculture sector because the majority of Timorese are farmers.

At the same place, National University of Timor-Leste student Inocencio de Jesus Xavier said this was serious because the majority of Timorese people make their income from the agriculture sector. "It's serious for our nation because we're just dependent on the oil fund," he said.

Xavier said the state should actually develop the agriculture sector so it could become an alternative to oil revenue. "I ask the President when he promulgates laws to consider the importance of the agriculture sector."

According to him, a strong nation has a strong agricultural sector, so it can sustain food for people's lives.

East Timorese selling tons of great organic coffee, but they still starve

Time - October 25, 2013

Charlie Campbell – In East Timor, families have learned to dread the onset of November. It marks the start of "hungry season" – the time when cash from the annual coffee harvest dries up for around four months.

If you've been to a Starbucks, you might be familiar with Timorese beans – the coffee chain purchases a substantial proportion of the national crop for its Arabian Mocha Timor blend. Yet with global world coffee prices currently hitting a four-year low, Asia's youngest nation finds surviving the lean period a long, hard grind.

A tropical hodgepodge of craggy mountains and dense rainforests garlanded with coastal lagoons, East Timor, or Timor-Leste, only won independence from Indonesia in 2002 after a bloody conflict claimed more than 100,000 lives. Coffee is the principal cash crop, accounting for 90% of non-oil exports and directly employing a quarter of the population. "The majority of the people still rely on coffee," Kenny Lay, director of local coffee exporter Timorcorp, tells TIME. "There is no doubt of that."

But when the harvest ends, there is little alternative income to support this former Portuguese colony's one million people, and malnutrition is rife. "Maybe half the kids we see are stunted," says Dr. Dan Murphy, director of Bairo Pite Hospital in the capital Dili. "As soon as they stop breastfeeding, children don't get fats and they don't get proteins."

While rice is the staple food, none is grown domestically and imported varieties are expensive. Without cash from growing coffee, the East Timorese must subsist on small family vegetable plots, typically growing corn, tapioca and potatoes. "They end up eating this stuff called akar, which is made out of the bark of a tree," explains Murphy. "They have to pound it up and cook it and I can't imagine it's very nutritious."

According to the 2013 Global Hunger Index report released last week, East Timor ranks fourth worst in the world – behind only Burundi, Eritrea and the Comoros. An alarming 37% of East Timorese live in extreme poverty, surviving on less $1.25 a day, while the proportion of severely underweight children has increased from 40% to 45% over the past decade.

Coffee is vital to improving living standards, but farmers attempting to get more buck for their bean are caught in a vicious circle. East Timorese coffee is lauded for its organic cultivation – an accident of prohibitively expensive pesticides and fertilizers rather than environmental principles – but this also hampers yields and thus profits.

"There's lot of room to improve both the yield and quality of the coffee," says Lay, explaining that the nation is a comparatively small exporter of some 7,000-10,000 tons annually, depending on climatic conditions. "Some of the trees have been around for 15 or 20 years and are far too old."

Trees grow tall across the hilly terrain – a bad thing, since it means they put their energy into making branches rather than fruit – and acres are only half as productive as those in nearby Papua New Guinea. Modern techniques such as extensive pruning and superior seeds could bring enormous benefits, adds Lay.

Implementing such upgrades, though, is problematic. "Coffee grows wild in East Timor and its single marketing value is that it is organic," says Prof. Damien Kingsbury, of Australia's Deakin University, who has written extensively on the country. Reflecting this, the 2002 National Development Plan states that coffee production in East Timor must be exclusively organic.

Alternative attempts to add value by processing beans domestically have had limited success. Processing machines have been supplied by the government so that coffee beans in their husks (known as "parchments") can be sold instead of unprocessed berries, but this isn't enough. "Parchments are sold to companies, who get most of the benefit," explains Mariano Ferreira, agriculture spokesman for the La'o Hamutuk (Walking Together) government watchdog.

"A lot of the coffee goes to Starbucks and they get a rock bottom price here," says Murphy. "Starbucks don't even want you to peel the shell off the coffee, they want it fresh and so they can make all the money."

Others were not so quick to heap blame on the cafe chain. "[Starbucks] are no different to any other corporate buyer that demands the lowest price, from what I can tell," says Shannon French, who helped found Wild Timor Coffee after first visiting the country as a corporal in the Australian Military, which served as part of the International Stabilization Force during the battle for independence.

A spokesman for Starbucks declined to discuss sourcing procedures "for competitive reasons" when approached by TIME, but highlighted the company's commitment to ethical practices. "Starbucks has invested more than $70 million in collaborative farmer programs and activities over the past 40 years," he said.

Ironically, East Timor's vast offshore oil and gas fields have led to a capital fund worth of around $11.7 bn. This cash offers huge opportunities for poverty alleviation, but opinion is split on how best to invest it. "Why not on education, which might produce a generation of skilled citizens?" says Kingsbury.

And so amid this abundance of petrodollars, and Starbucks' record earnings, the Timorese must settle in for another hungry season. Getting a little more of the profit from that $4.95 Frappuccino to the farmers is trickier than it looks.

A taste of things to come for subsistence coffee farmers in Timor-Leste

Irish Times - October 23, 2013

Mary O'Shea – Armindo de Deus has worked all his life as a coffee farmer in the Ermera district of Timor-Leste. He is a wiry, weather-beaten man with darting, milky eyes. When asked what his family's other sources of income are, he looks puzzled.

"We are coffee farmers," he says, gesturing towards his daughter Elsa who is sifting through the coffee cherries spread out to dry. "Our life is coffee; we grow old with coffee and we are buried amid coffee."

The mountainous coffee-growing Ermera district is a world away from the capital Dili, where today, 11 years after independence, a small emerging middle class can be found sipping on piccolo lattes and frothy macchiatos at Gloria Jeans Coffee, the country's first international coffee shop.

And no place better demonstrates how little the rural poor have benefited to date from Timor-Leste's remarkable natural resource wealth than Ermera, the second most populous district. Here almost 90 per cent of the population are subsistence farmers who gain their income from coffee. Poverty levels are high and the 2010 census confirmed that the district has the lowest levels of literacy in the country.

And this is in the context of a desperately underdeveloped country. Timor- Leste ranked 134 in the 2012 United Nations Development Programme human development index, which measures a combination of life expectancy, educational attainment and income.

Now in his late 50s, Armindo de Deus presides over a household of nine. Becoming an agent for TimorCorp six years ago marked a change in his fortunes. Today he has a small concrete house and a hand-operated coffee pulping machine.

Harvest

As a coffee agent, he buys coffee cherries from local families who navigate the difficult mountain terrain every day during the three-month harvest season. All cherries are handpicked and in the late afternoon, a steady trail of people can be seen making their way back to their villages carting their crop in bags and baskets.

That coffee is important to Timor-Leste is clear. It has long been the country's leading agricultural commodity with almost 30 per cent of households nationwide reliant on the crop for their income. It is also Timor-Leste's second largest export, accounting for US$10 (euro 7.30) for every US$11 (euro 8) of non-oil exports.

However, what is also evident is that a disproportionate percentage of coffee farmers in Timor-Leste live below the poverty line. A recent study funded by the Australian government found that two thirds of coffee- dependent households surveyed in Ermera district earned US$250 (euro 183) or less from their annual coffee harvest.

Recognising the potential of coffee to improve livelihoods in Timor-Leste, a 2010 study by the World Bank said "managed correctly, coffee has the greatest potential for both increasing export earnings and reducing poverty". The phrase "managed correctly" however is a significant caveat.

During the country's fight for independence, coffee cultivation suffered years of neglect, with plantations serving as battlefields. Today, the impact of this neglect remains evident. Due to insufficient attention paid to the pruning and planting of new coffee trees, a significant number are producing poor quality hybrid coffee. The country's yields are half those of nearby Papua New Guinea.

While this is principally due to a lack of education, it is also a case of need. Rehabilitation of trees leads to a short-term fall in productive capacity, giving little incentive to households urgently needing income at the onset of the harvest season. TimorCorp general manager James Rutherford says "people tend to see coffee as a money tree in their back garden".

Long-term benefits

At the Co-operativa Cafe Timor (CCT) centre in Railaco, Dr Aris Wibawa, a longtime expert on coffee rehabilitation, explains that a coffee tree in Timor-Leste yields an annual average of 600 grams of cherry. After rehabilitation, within three years the tree's yield will increase to about 2kg. This means a plot of 2,500 trees per hectare that currently yields $510 per annum could earn $1,700 after pruning.

Policy & governance

Mismanagement highlighted in East Timor

Al Jazeera - October 19, 2013

Tom Benner, Dili, East Timor – East Timor's government has come under renewed public criticism after granting a contract to a Chinese state-owned company to supply furniture to Timorese schools.

The contract of just over $1m is relatively small for a country with oil and gas wealth, but its significance is larger. In 2008 the prime minister, Xanana Gusmao, granted the same company a $300m contract – the largest in the nation's history at the time – to build East Timor's power plants and national electricity grid.

The company, Chinese Nuclear Industry Construction Company No. 22 (CNI22), was widely criticised for its failure to fulfill the terms of the contract, and a big portion of the work had to be reassigned to a different company, increasing the cost by hundreds of millions of dollars and delaying the project for several years.

"We hope that they will never receive another contract from East Timor," a government watchdog group, La'o Hamutuk (Walking Together), wrote in an October 8 letter to the chairman of the National Procurement Commission.

"The project was seriously flawed in concept, design, implementation, community relations, and quality of work," the group wrote. "The company repeatedly failed to meet its commitments regarding keeping on schedule, quality of materials, employing Timorese workers, worker safety, and environmental management. They refused to comply with directives from the supervising consultant and others."

A December 2008 cable later released by Wikileaks from then-US Ambassador Hans Klemm informed Washington: "The decision to award the contract to the Chinese firm again was made by the prime minister with very little consultation with line ministers."

The prime minister's choice follows Beijing's long history of generous aid to East Timor, including the donation of three Chinese-constructed government buildings in the capital city of Dili – a presidential palace, a defence headquarters, and a ministry of foreign affairs building.

The awarding of another contract to CNI22 this month revives questions about the government's relationship with the company. Critics ask: Why would it buy school tables and chairs from an international construction company? Why would it import the furniture, instead of patronising local suppliers – thus generating employment and keeping money in the country? A spokesman from Gusmao's office did not to respond to requests for comment.

Lack of transparency

Longtime Timor observers say a limited tendering process for government contracts often results in inefficiency, mismanagement, and corruption.

"This lack of transparency is becoming much more problematic," said Damien Kingsbury, a professor at Deakin University in Melbourne who blogs frequently on East Timor issues. "If the government is serious about combating corruption, it needs to increase transparency and subsequent accountability."

Critics say a culture of corruption pervades East Timor's fragile democracy, from a lack of transparency at the highest levels of government to an expectation among some journalists of payment in exchange for news coverage. With oil and gas revenues allowing increased spending – the annual budget rose from $600m five years ago to $1.6bn today – government leaders have the resources to splurge on the trappings of power.

Mari Alkatiri, a prime minister from 2002 to 2006 and later an opposition leader, said of corruption among top leaders: "We know each other. We know who was poor two years ago and suddenly became rich. There's no miracle here."

Frequently cited examples of spending abuses include generous housing, travel, and other allowances for government ministers, and lifetime salaries for newly elected members of parliament before they even finish their first term.

Accusations of corruption, collusion, and nepotism are commonplace. Finance Minister Emilia Pires is currently under investigation by the country's Anti-Corruption Commission for allegedly steering a government contract to her husband's firm, while former Justice Minister Lucia Lobato is in prison after her conviction for tendering a government contract to her husband.

The US embassy and NGOs list anti-corruption initiatives as a top priority in the country. East Timor currently ranks 113th out of 174 countries in Transparency International's annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

The challenge of self-governing is in many ways proving more difficult than the quarter-century-long fight for independence, particularly for a new country building its democratic traditions and institutions from scratch. Many Timorese like to consider Gusmao, a resistance-era hero who spent time in an Indonesian prison, somewhere between their Nelson Mandela and Che Guevara. But others consider his leadership style to be aloof.

The country's other famous resistance-era hero – former president and Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta – lives and works in Guinea-Bissau as a special United Nations envoy, and declined to comment for this story, citing his physical distance from the country.

Resource curse?

East Timor became Asia's newest country in 2002 and remains among its poorest. A petroleum fund set up as a kind of trust fund is now worth close to $14bn, but many worry that what economics call the "resource curse" will see the country lose its newfound wealth to waste, inexperience, and corruption, as have other countries such as Angola and Zimbabwe.

Petroleum from the Timor Sea provides 95 percent of the country's state revenues and 80 percent of GDP. The International Monetary Fund calls East Timor one of the most oil-dependent economies in the world.

The country's oil wealth is not reaching the bottom half of the population that lives below the poverty line of $1.33 a day, but more importantly, it is not going to productive social investment, watchdogs say. By failing now to fund education, healthcare and infrastructure, the country is not positioning the economy well for the day when the oil runs out. For example, spending on education is lower than on generous veterans' benefits for the resistance fighters (and their families) who expelled Indonesian occupiers in 1999.

Groups like La'o Hamutuk say that ultimately, it's up to East Timor's government to thwart corruption.

Development & infrastructure

MP: Estrada Bo'ot Diak roads of poor quality

Dili Weekly - October 28, 2013

Venidora Oliveira – A Member of National Parliament strongly criticized the company Estrada Bo'ot Diak for constructing poor quality roads that are damaged a year after being built.

MP Ana Ribeiro raised the issue because the road in front of the shop Jacinto is already damaged again, in addition to roads in Bairo-Pite and Kuluhun.

"It's like practically throwing money away because the road has been built and it's of poor quality but the money is still being spent," MP Ribeiro said in Dili.

Therefore she called on the company in charge of the project to do the work with sincerity and with better quality. She also appealed for the government to pay attention to companies, so that when they construct roads, they're of good quality.

In response to this, the Minister Public Works Gastao de Sousa said companies built some roads properly and some poorly, but the ministry was paying attention.

"Like the Dili to Manatuto road, they built it and it's still good. Now we look into it when they're rehabilitated and they're not good, I have the power to stop contracts," Minister de Sousa said.

Currently, he said there was a new system for companies that do poor quality work, in that the government would not pay the referred company.

Meanwhile, Head of the company Estrada Bo'ot Diak Ilidio Cardoso said the company always did quality work, but the problem was the rain. "Rain destroys the roads," Cardoso said.

Regarding the government refusing payment for poor quality work, he said it did not matter and they had already agreed.

Timor-Leste performs poorly in Global Hunger Index

Development Policy - October 22, 2013

Ashlee Betteridge – The 2013 Global Hunger Index (GHI) was released last week, and while most countries in the region had demonstrated a marked improvement in hunger levels since the 2005 index was published, Timor- Leste was among the worst performers.

Hunger levels in Timor-Leste were found to be "alarming" and only 0.4 of an index point away from the "extremely alarming" category. Out of the 78 countries in the index, Timor-Leste was ranked 75th. Timor-Leste's hunger index score was also 3.6 points worse than it was in 2005.

The GHI, published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), measures undernourishment, underweight children under five and under five mortality rates.

The index found that India and Timor-Leste had the highest prevalence of underweight children under five-more than 40 percent in both countries.Most Pacific countries were not included in the index due to a lack of data.

In Southeast Asia, most countries had improved their score. For example, Indonesia's growth has seen it halve its index score since 1990, but it was still rated as having serious levels of hunger. Vietnam was another success story, reducing its index score by three quarters since 1990.

Lawrence Haddad has provided some further analysis of the index's findings on his blog, noting that South Asia had a better GHI score than Sub Saharan Africa in 2000, but now South Asia is performing more poorly.

Timor-Leste: A nation slowly emerging from dire poverty

Irish Times - October 16, 2013

Mary O'Shea – Eleven years after independence, the array of socioeconomic challenges facing Timor-Leste remains significant. According to the United Nations Development Programme's human development index, 37.4 per cent of the population live under the international poverty line of less than $1.25 per day.

Timor-Leste has one of the world's highest birth rates, women having on average 6.95 children. Malnutrition is at chronic levels, with Unicef reporting that Timor-Leste has the highest percentage of children under five who are stunted.

All this despite the country presiding over a petroleum fund worth some $13.6 billion. Since 2005, Timor-Leste has experienced a petroleum boom with oil income accounting for about 95 per cent of revenue.

Gordon Peake, visiting fellow at the "state, society and governance in Melanesia" programme at the Australian National University, observes that perhaps "the main challenge facing Timor-Leste today is in fact a paradoxical one; one that economists refer to as a 'resource curse'".

'Paradox of plenty'

In a "paradox of plenty", research has shown that countries rich in non- renewable natural resources tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than those with fewer natural resources. The International Crisis Group has described Timor-Leste as "an impoverished country with a very large bank account".

Inequality is glaringly evident in Dili. Timor Plaza, an air-conditioned shopping centre and luxury hotel, stands as an ostentatious symbol of progress only a short stroll away from people living in deplorable poverty.

Stylish seaside restaurants, with expensive wine lists, cater for a tiny emerging middle-class elite. The Guide Post, a magazine available throughout the city, sports advertisements for an upmarket gated residential community.

Dr Peake, originally from Downpatrick, Co Down, cautions against focusing too much on the depressing development statistics, pointing out few would have given Timor-Leste much chance of surmounting the obstacles it has already overcome.

That Dr Peake's book, "Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles and Secrets from Timor-Leste", was launched in Dili's new rooftop bar, is indicative of how the country has changed since he first visited in 2005. Timor-Leste's aim is to be an upper-middle-income country by 2030. President Taur Matan Ruak's chief of staff, Fidelis Magahalhaes, says "while in monetary terms we are already a lower-middle-income country, socially we still have a long way to go".

Decentralisation priority

Timor-Leste's population is 76 per cent rural. Decentralisation is a priority in the country's 20-year development plan. This is no small task as 70 per cent of infrastructure was destroyed in the conflict with Indonesia. Irish Aid has been supporting decentralisation in Timor-Leste since 2002.

The World Development Report 2011 found that on average post-conflict countries take a full generation to transition out of fragility and to build resilience. The World Bank has noted that social and economic development in Timor-Leste can be seen as remarkable.

Police & law enforcement

Martial arts club ban prompts growing concern in East Timor

ABC Radio Australia - October 11, 2013

There's concern in East Timor that a recent ban on martial arts clubs could be pushing young people into the grip of organised crime.

Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao outlawed the popular clubs in July after a spate of attacks prompted widespread unease about gang violence.

The ban has divided people in East Timor but all agree it's not band aid solution to the country's problem with violent crime.

Presenter: Sam Bolitho

Speakers: James Scambary, Australian researcher; Nelson Belo, Fundasaun Mahein

Bolitho: Martial arts clubs have a long history in East Timor. Introduced during the Indonesian occupation, they have become an entrenched part of Timorese society. But, as Australian researcher James Scambary explains, it's the clubs' association with organised crime that has many concerned.

Scambary: "They use martial arts groups in the way that say we might use bikie groups in Australia, like a franchise. They provide security for the brothels, for the gambling operations and some of the worst battles have been over control of these sometimes quite lucrative rackets.

Bolitho: Mr Scambary is currently studying communal violence as part of his PhD at the Australian National University, and he's been keeping a close eye on the situation in East Timor.

Scambary: There was a series of really high profile conflicts. One was in the Cova Lima District, another one in Ainaro and each resulted in loss of life and up to I think 100 houses, 60 to 100 houses burnt down in each incident. It seemed to be quiet for a while and then itramped up again. Most recently there was spate of murders and fighting in Dili itself.

Bolitho: It prompted Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao in July to ban all martial arts clubs, saying the violence was intolerable and he'd run out of patience.

Mr Scambary supports the ban and says in the past, moves to regulate martial arts clubs have been effective.

Scambary: A lot of the fighting was provoked by groups parading in their uniforms, walking through the village, so you know they either provoked the fight or the sight of them provokes reaction. So once they stopped that it stopped the source of conflict.

Bolitho: But he warns the ban won't get to the root cause of the fighting: things like urban migration and access to water supplies.

Scambary: You can stop the martial arts groups but you can't stop the communal fighting if you don't remove the source of it. So a lot of it is family stuff. It's just on the surface it appears to be martial arts groups because people align themselves with a group to protect themselves.

Bolitho: Fundasaun Mahein is a Timorese NGO that specialises in security and defence issues. Its director, Nelson Belo, is worried the ban on martial arts clubs might push more people into organised crime.

Belo: I think because of these martial arts bans, and then there is no more organisations and then some of the members of the martial arts, ex-martial arts members been recruited to this action.

Bolitho: But he says the ban isn't the only factor.

Belo: No no. It's not the only one but it's part of the every single year they increase of our state budget and also there is a question of the budget also not benefiting the ordinary Timorese so then the unemployment numbers also getting increased.

Bolitho: Fundasaun Mahein recently released a report documenting what it sees as "new types" of organised crime in East Timor.

Belo: They way of their attack is very uniform. They use vehicles, motorbikes, and then target any place where we identified before.

Bolitho: Mr Belo's group has made four recommendations to combat this "new form" of crime. They're calling for intelligence agencies to be better resourced, a co-ordinated approach from government ministries, village chiefs to be given the power to monitor citizens and an increased police presence.

James Scambary welcomes the recommendations but questions whether East Timor has the resources to carry them out.

Scambary: It's all good but I just don't think it's really going to happen. But finding ways of empowering communities to take control of crime prevention in their own communities would I think be more effective.

B/A: Radio Australia was unsuccessful in its attempts to contact the East Timor Police Force for comment.

Border & security issues

No clash occurs in Indonesia-Timor Leste boundary: Officer

Antara News - October 17, 2013

Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara – Commander of 743/PSY Infantry Battalion of Boundary Security Task Force in Indonesia-Timor Leste border, Major Budi Prasetyo said the situation at the border was normal and no clash had occurred among the people.

"The people of both countries only yelled at each other after an incident of misunderstanding that occurred in the border villages," Budi told Antara here on Thursday.

As per information available on Monday, people in Sunsea villages of East Nusa Tenggara reportedly clashed with Kosta Village residents in Oekuse District of Timor Leste.

Budi said the shouting incident occurred after people of Kosta Village allegedly opened a new farmland in the cemetery area of Sunsea Village.

He added that a few people from the cemetery area of Sunsea had entered into the Timor Leste region in Oecuse District that triggered the incident described as a misunderstanding.

"People of Kosta Village wanted to forcibly clear the land while Sunsea people resisted it. The misunderstanding led the people of these two villages to yell at each other," Budi said.

However, the issue was resolved through a peaceful dialogue at a meeting of traditional leaders. Major Budi added that the Indonesian Boundary Security Officers also cooperated with Timor Leste Police to ensure that the situation in the region remains conducive.

"We will conduct the next meeting of the traditional leaders from both sides soon to solve the problems peacefully. We hope that both the people could hold a dialogue in the next few days," Budi said.

He suggested to the Indonesian people in the border region of Indonesia - Timor Leste to maintain ties of kinship and solidarity to preserve the peace.

"Though we are living in different countries, but all still hail from the same ethnic group and have a similar culture. We should maintain peace in the border area," Budi said. (B019/INE)

Foreign affairs & trade

Timor Leste hopes to be associated with Malaysian Parliamentary Friend

Bernama - October 2, 2013

Kuala Lumpur – Timor Leste has expressed its wish to be associated with the Malaysian Parliamentary Friend to facilitate better cooperation between the two countries.

The hope was extended by Timor Leste Ambassador to Malaysia Jose Antonio Amorim Dias when he paid a courtesy call on Dewan Rakyat speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia at Parliament House here today.

"Amorim has expressed hope that the Malaysian Parliament will invite Timor Leste parliamentarians to Malaysia in an effort to strengthen relationship between the two countries," Pandikar Amin told reporters here today.

Amorim also invited Malaysia to explore joint venture opportunities in Timor Leste, particularly in oil and gas and tourism industries.

The ambassador thanked Malaysia for the help extended during its turmoil and after its independence in 2002, said Pandikar Amin, adding that Amorim told him that the embassy here still kept a Proton Perdana donated by the Malaysian government as its official car.

Timor Leste wants to emulate Malaysia's development

Bernama - October 1, 2013

Kuala Lumpur – Timor Leste has expressed the desire to emulate Malaysia in developing its infrastructure.

Dewan Negara Speaker Tan Sri Abu Zahar Ujang said the matter was stated by Timor Leste Ambassador to Malaysia, H.E Jose Antonio Amorim Dias, during his first courtesy call after three years here.

"Amorim said he saw Malaysia as a good role model with a rational leadership. He was keen to know about the important criteria for development, particularly on infrastructure such as airports, roads and schools," Abu Zahar said after the 40-minute meeting at Parliament Tuesday.

Abu Zahar said the ambassador also described his country as sharing similarities with Malaysia in terms of having a multi-racial population and natural resources such as oil and gas.

He said Malaysia had assisted Timor Leste a great deal during its time of conflict before attaining independence on May 20 2002, including sending its peace-keeping troops.

He said Amorim also expressed Timor Leste' desire to be accepted into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) community during the organisation's meeting in Kuala Lumpur in 2015. According to Amorim, Timor Leste had submitted its application to do so two years ago.

Tourism & hospitality

Timor Leste's tourism industry still in early stages

Channel News Asia - October 9, 2013

Bacau – To diversify its economy, Timor Leste has identified tourism and agriculture as two key industries.

Tourism was chosen because the country is blessed with natural beauty and it is a fast way to get the people employed. The few people who have been diving in Timor Leste call their experience one of a kind.

Kevin Austin, CEO of Sustainable Marine Industry Development Facility, said: "Just four days ago, we had three adult blue whales coming through the lagoon. We haven't seen that in the world, this close to the shore. It's unusual around the world now. Around 95-97 per cent of the time, we see green turtles, sharks, reef sharks, and occasionally manta rays."

The tiny nation sits at the heart of the Coral Triangle – an area so rich in marine life that it has been called the Amazon of the Seas.

But divers, or tourists in general, are few and far between. The ones who find their way there are doing it for special reasons.

Tourist Cath Cock said: "I heard of the Santa Cruz massacre in the 90s. As an Australian, for these things to happen in our nearest neighbour, in Timor Leste, I felt some responsibility."

Timor's turbulent past does not have much mass market appeal. The tourism industry brought in just US$21 million in 2011, practically unchanged from five years ago.

Security problems are a big concern. Until a few months ago, the UK was still warning its travellers about the danger of getting caught up in fights among gangs of youths.

Australia still urges its citizens to exercise a high degree of caution when they are here. Perceptions are hard to change and Timorese officials seem at loss about what to do.

Maria Isabel de Jesus Ximenes, secretary of state for arts and culture, said: "If the country's not safe, it will be in the news that we are fighting each other, but there's nothing in the news."

In a country where half the youths are unemployed, getting tourism right is crucial to creating jobs, and ensuring long term stability. Austin, a former United Nations security advisor, decided to stay after the UN peace keeping mission ended last year.

He said: "I guess it's unfinished business. In our time here, I felt we didn't do enough to generate employment in the industry. You can see there's so much potential for things like tourism to benefit the community directly. "

Now he runs Baucau Beaches, a community-based tourism project. With five tents, two boats and a restaurant, it employs 13 locals. Austin is happy with what he has to work with.

He said Timor is not trying to become another Bali – adorned with flashy night spots and five-star resorts. He said what is more important is to preserve the country's pristine beauty and make sure the people of the land are the ones to benefit. (CNA/xq)

Mining & energy

Santos to boost output with Timor Sea expansion

NT News - October 23, 2013

Alison Bevege – Energy giant Santos has given the green light to expand its Bayu Undan gas project in the Timor Sea and has increased its gas exports from Darwin's Wickham Point LNG plant.

Bayu Undan has been in production since April 2004 in the joint petroleum development area of the Timor Sea, located 500km northwest of Darwin. Gas from the project is transported to Darwin by pipeline, liquefied at Wickham Point then exported to Japanese firms Tokyo Electric and Tokyo Gas.

ConocoPhillips is the operator of the project with Santos a minority investor in Darwin LNG alongside Inpex.

Santos has now made a final investment decision to build two new wells linked to the existing platform at Bayu Undan, it has revealed in its third quarter activities report. The Bayu Undan Phase 3 development is designed to improve offshore well capacity.

Detailed engineering and procurement activities is now expected to begin. First gas is expected to flow from the third phase in 2015, the energy giant's report to the Australian Securities Exchange said.

Santos reported that Bayu Undan produced 59 petajoules of gas in the three months to September, a 3 per cent increase on the same quarter last year thanks to increased efficiency following the 2012 maintenance shutdown.

Because Santos is a minority owner in the project, it is not entitled to the entire amount. Santos exported 4.6 petajoules of gas from Darwin's Wickham Point LNG plant in the three months to September, an increase on the 4.3 petajoules in the same quarter last year.

Economy & investment

Fears of foreign domination in East Timor economy and land

East Timor Law and Justice Bulletin - October 7, 2013

A newspaper in East Timor has reported comments by a local citizen expressing fears of foreign domination in the economy and land particularly by Chinese and Indonesian investors.

According to a report in the leading Suara Timor Lorosae publication, "[i]n the next five years, foreigners will dominate each village of Timor-Leste and Timorese people themselves will lose their right to live in a piece of land.

The newspaper reported a comment by a Mr Jose dos Santos who said that he "as a Timorese he is sad because after independence, Timor-Leste is full of foreigners who do business in many places in Dili and other districts and these people are mostly Chinese and Indonesian.

"I am sad when seeing there are many foreigners who do small business in Timor-Leste, therefore, I am calling on the Government to control these foreigners because if the leaders cannot control these people, then, in the next five years Timorese people will lose their right to live in a piece of land," Jose told STL in Caicoli of Dili on Monday 26.

Xenophobic sentiments tantamount to racism were recently attributed to Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao. On 11 May 2013, ETLJB published a post about an article in another media outlet, Jornal Nacional Diario, that reported public statements by the Prime Minister that the country's be "capable people... contribute to the thinking of the people, so that the Chinese cannot dominate Timorese in the capital, Dili."

"Organize yourselves, meet together, speak with one another, otherwise the "Shing-Zhang" will rise above you, otherwise we talk about commerce to do what, industry to do what, because the biggest danger to us is that we have money, but if we did not have money then we will feel ashamed when our kids go asking for money, our kids go asking for US$20 but they only give US$10, we thank them and we are happy, but we have money so we don't worry anymore," Xanana explained.

At the same time, however, the Government has done nothing to limit the number of Chinese migrant workers in East Timor. When I was living in East Timor (2000-2004), I observed significant numbers of Chinese workers working on building projects doing jobs that were apparently unskilled and that could have been done by local workers. Of course, migrant workers are cheap and easily exploited by those who employ them so the project grantees can make more profit while local youth remain idle.

In East Timor, Chinese migrants were granted land and business concessions by the Portuguese colonial government and the evidence of that can be seen on the streets of Dili. The Chinese-descent East Timorese were targeted by the Indonesians when the invasion began and most fled. Some returned after East Timor broke away from Indonesia and reclaimed their land that they had been forced to abandon.

As one commentator noted at the time, the reported comments by the Prime Minister "provide a glimpse into the xenophobic undercurrent simmering beneath the facade of democratic and tolerant Timorese elites."

But they also carry the danger of incitement to racial hatred and violence against East Timor's Chinese-descent citizens.

The Chinese government has been a significant donor to East Timor which made the Prime Minister's observations even more bewildering. Under Article 54 of the Constitution of East Timor, only citizens may own land but land is leased for business purposes to foreigners.

[Sources: Suara Timor Lorosae 27/08/2013 English translation of article by TLMDC; ETLJB, Diak ka Lae Edited by Warren L. Wright.]

Language & culture

Language policy in East Timor: The quest for cultural democracy

The Nation - October 21, 2013

Gerald W. Fry – The discussion of language policy in East Timor begins with the statement of two key related underlying principles: cultural democracy and the right to begin basic studies in an individual's mother tongue.

Latino scholars Manuel Ramrez III and Alfredo Castaeda first introduced the importance of cultural democracy to recognise an individual's rights to remain identified with the culture and language of their cultural group.

With respect to education in the mother tongue, Unesco has established a special website related to this approach. Unesco has encouraged mother- tongue education in early childhood and primary education since 1953.

Research evidence, from many settings around the world – including northern Thailand – indicates that when children start school in their mother tongue, they are more likely to like school and not to drop out – and to learn much more effectively. Later they can transition to standard Thai, for example, or in the case of East Timor, to Portuguese.

In East Timor, there is definitely no universal agreement that students should start off in the official language of Tetum.

What impresses me most about East Timor is its multilingual landscape and the extent to which the Timorese are polyglots. Many Timorese speak two or more languages. Signage is linguistically diverse and signs are common in Tetum, Portuguese, English, and Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian). Official signs are primarily in Portuguese and/or Tetum, the two official languages of East Timor.

Data from the 2010 national census clearly indicates the linguistic diversity of East Timor. There are 32 local indigenous languages, six of which are considered endangered. Based on this census, the most commonly spoken mother tongues are Tetum Praca, 36.6 per cent and Mambai, 12.5 per cent. It is estimated that 59 per cent know Indonesian, 31.4 per cent, English, and 23.5 percent, Portuguese. English and Indonesian are considered working languages.

It is important to note that there are two varieties of Tetum (from the Austronesian language family): Tetum Praca or Tetum-Dili (which is heavily influenced by Portuguese) and Tetum-Terik, a prestigious regional variety primarily spoken in the south and southwestern regions of East Timor.

Danielle Boon did a fascinating study of East Timor's adult literacy programme, based on the Cuban model, Yo Si Puedo. Though the formal curriculum is in Tetum, she found that multiple languages were being used in the classroom for diverse purposes.

A new language of instruction policy has recently been drafted. A key element is that the mother tongue will be the focus of the early years of schooling. It is currently in a pilot stage.

The goal is certainly culturally democratic, emphasising "preserving cultural and linguistic diversity as a means to achieving national unity, peace, and equitable development (National Education Commission, 2011).

In a cultural democratic environment, Timorese parents and students have had freedom to choose between different language tracks such as their mother tongue, then Portuguese; Tetum, then Portuguese; Tetum, then English... Many Timorese have chosen Portuguese and rejected mother-tongue instruction.

Many younger Timorese, especially those in Dili, see English as having great social capital with respect to job opportunities. During the first decade of this century, 15 UN agencies and 122 international NGOs were active in East Timor. Many of these organisations use English as their working language. Others, such as the large number who go to Indonesia, see Indonesian as having valuable social capital.

The Timorese freedom to choose the language of instruction (won through their fight for independence) is consistent with Amartya Sen's (Nobel laureate) concept of "development as freedom" and Robert Chamber's (professor at Sussex University) emphasis on participatory development.

Having curricular materials in multiple languages is, of course, more costly, but East Timor probably can afford this, given an economy turbo- charged with oil and gas revenues, and development funds from diverse donors.

Ken Westmoreland, a Portugusese and Tetum translator, has done a recent book on East Timor entitled, "A Pretty Unfair Place: East Timor Ten Years after Self-Determination (2009)". He has an in-depth understanding of the cultural and linguistic landscape of East Timor.

Critics of the policy of having Portuguese as an official language fail to appreciate the value of learning Portuguese. First, Portuguese is a link to the relatively large Lusophone community of Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Sao Tome and Principe. Also, Portuguese is used in Goa and Macau. Second, it is relatively easy to transition from Portuguese to Spanish, a language spoken in a large number of countries and clearly a world language. Third, important abstract words in Portuguese, Spanish, and English are often similar but with different pronunciations. Thus, Portuguese can be a valuable window to English.

Invasion & occupation

Revolutionary sex-appeal & reminders from decades of war

Explorers Journal - October 21, 2013

Emelyn Rude – In 2007, despite mounting civil unrest, Timor-Leste established its first National Park connecting a number of endangered bird areas and encompassing a large section of the Coral Triangle, an underwater zone believed to hold the greatest diversity of marine life on Earth. Emelyn Rude is a Young Explorer studying the balance between environmental conservation and economic development in a nation of newly restored independence.

Naming Timor-Leste's first national park after the revolutionary leader Nino Konis Santana was an excellent move. Firstly, revolutionary leaders are sexy and the bureaucratic designation of protected environmental zones is one thing that could definitely use more sex-appeal. Secondly, national unity was something the post-independence federal government desperately needed and Nino Konis Santana was just the storied freedom fighter and beloved war hero that could make this togetherness happen.

Born in Tutuala in 1955, a town on the easternmost tip of Timor in the now protected zone, Nino Konis Santana spent much of his youth as a student leader and school teacher. Following the 1975 Indonesian invasion, he fled into the mountains to join the FRETILIN (translated from the Portuguese as the "Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor") and struggled against Indonesian occupying forces for the next two decades.

After the capture of the then-leader of the Falantil, the military wing of the FRETILIN, in 1993, Santana took up the mantle as guerrilla leader, reorganizing resistance forces and coordinating operations until his accidental death in 1998. Not only a military commander, Nino Konis was beloved throughout Timor and his diaspora for his untiring efforts as a diplomat and his drive to forge Timorese unity.

Coming from the United States, I can't help but being reminded of Che, with the dusty fatigues and ragged hair, the years spent struggling in the mountains, and the pensiveness of their personas. While the initial invasion of Timor was motivated in part by a Cold War, post-Vietnam fear of socialism (FRETILIN is a leftist group and was in fact initially called the "Timorese Social Democratic Association"), Konis Santana was decidedly not Marxist; his only declared and practiced political ideology was the doctrine of Timorese National Unity.

Images of Nino Konis Santana (and Che as well actually) pervade the park. Nino Konis' face is on T-shirts, on high school buildings and uniforms, and on graffiti. A home town hero gone big, Santana's status as the first and only resistance leader of Fataluku descent is still highly celebrated in this easternmost part of Timor, home of the ethnically and linguistically distinct Fataluku people who are much closer in descent to melanesians than other Timorese groups.

But all romanticized visions of the past aside, the horrors of the decades of Indonesian occupation can still be seen throughout this area of the island. Many of the buildings we passed were still riddled with bullet holes or burnt out (apparently some 70% of all structures in Timor-Leste were razed as the Indonesians fled in the late 1990s). Talking to locals at Com, one of the sleepiest seaside towns you can imagine, they told me stories of the armed Indonesian troops that would patrol their one stretch of road and pointed out the now ruins of the former Indonesian Administrative building that overlooked the harbor.

As a visitor to this beautiful place, its hard to really understand the hardship that a lot of Timorese experienced throughout their history. Reading about things like the "Fence of Legs" operation, in which the Indonesians rounded up Timorese civilians to form an epically long human chain and marched them through the countryside in an effort to force the guerrillas out into the open, and statistics that say at least one fifth (up to one third) of the entire country's population was unaccounted for following the Indonesian withdrawal, a National Park seems epically unimportant.

But with this difficult history in mind, I can see why a model of stewardship would work well in the Timorese context. Decades spent hiding in the mountains and living off the land would give one an intimate respect for the environment and its health. The rigorous scientific understandings of conservation practices being brought in by groups such as the Coral Triable Initiative (more to come on these efforts!) would only bolster these innate Timorese ideas.

As we spend more time exploring, I am appreciating the benefits of both peace and a park, both of which the work of Nino Konis Santana helped bring about. As we sit enjoying the view and learning more about life and history in Timor, I can't help but wonder what this venerable Timorese hero would have to say about having nearly one tenth of the island he loved so much protected in his honor.

Australia 'too slow' to respond to East Timor's humanitarian crisis: Fraser

ABC World Today - October 3, 2013

Peter Lloyd: New light is being shed on Australia's preparedness to challenge Indonesia over its actions in East Timor after the invasion back in 1975.

A recently uncovered diplomatic cable suggests the Fraser government was warned about a humanitarian crisis unfolding by 1978, but evidence suggests that it failed to act. Malcolm Fraser now says that in hindsight, Australia should have responded sooner.

James Bennett reports.

James Bennett: In June 1978, the Australian Embassy in Jakarta sent Canberra a cable detailing a meeting between the then ambassador Tom Critchley, and Indonesian defence minister General Mohommad Yusuf.

Clinton Fernandes: We've got the Indonesian defence minister saying that there is a humanitarian calamity unfolding, that there is about 270,000 women and children who have been separated from their men and there is a famine building. It's clear that he's warning of a humanitarian catastrophe and he is calling for international assistance.

James Bennett: Indonesia had invaded East Timor in December 1975. Two and a half years later, word of food shortages among displaced was beginning to emerge. Clinton Fernandes is an East Timor scholar from the University of New South Wales.

Clinton Fernandes: And the embassy in Jakarta writes this down and sends it as a cable to the Department of Foreign Affairs and nothing is done, nothing at all. That was 1978.

James Bennett: How long was it before there was humanitarian intervention?

Clinton Fernandes: There would not be any international Red Cross aid for another 16 months.

James Bennett: In Australia, Malcolm Fraser was in power following Gough Whitlam's dismissal during the 1975 constitutional crisis.

(Question to Malcolm Fraser) Malcolm Fraser, these documents would seem to indicate that your government knew or ought to have known the extent of the humanitarian crisis in East Timor well before anything was done about it. Would you agree with that?

Malcolm Fraser: The documents seem to show that, yes.

James Bennett: But Malcolm Fraser doesn't believe he ever saw the cable in question.

Malcolm Fraser: My invariable practice was to initial documents that passed across my desk and because any copy that I might have seen does not have my initials, I don't believe that I did.

James Bennett: Malcolm Fraser argues by the time he took office, the opportunity to prevent an invasion had passed.

Malcolm Fraser: Earlier in 1975 when Gough Whitlam, meeting with president Suharto, virtually agreed to the incorporation of East Timor. At that time we should have been asking the United Nations to send in blue bereted observers to protect the integrity of the borders. When my government came into office, Indonesia had already moved.

James Bennett: Do you think though that there might have been a possibility to get some sort of humanitarian assistance earlier than was done?

Malcolm Fraser: I think it could have been. In retrospect many mistakes were made, yes.

James Bennett: Clinton Fernandes is now battling the National Archives in court seeking further cables from the early '80s, but says the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) is objecting to their release on national security grounds.

Clinton Fernandes: Under the 30 year rule, they ought to have been released a long time ago, but on this occasion the Government is claiming that to release these documents would harm our national security today and that just doesn't seem plausible to me.

James Bennett: The cables released so far will be published on the website 'The Citizen' today.

Peter Lloyd: That is James Bennett reporting. The program is still awaiting a response from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Australia warned about humanitarian crisis in East Timor and failed to act

ABC Radio Australia - October 2, 2013

James Bennett – Malcolm Fraser has acknowledged newly obtained diplomatic cables from the period after Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 suggest his government was warned of a looming humanitarian disaster.

A diplomatic cable sent by the Australian Embassy in Jakarta to Canberra in 1978 detailing a meeting between then ambassador Tom Critchley and Indonesian defence minister General Mohommad Yusuf has recently been uncovered.

Mr Yusuf was warning of an unfolding humanitarian calamity saying about 270,000 women and children had been "separated from their menfolk" and that a famine was building as a result of Indonesia's invasion.

The cable was sent more than a year before any humanitarian aid was sent and Mr Fraser now admits Australia should have responded sooner. "In retrospect many mistakes were made, yes," Mr Fraser, who was in power following Gough Whitlam's dismissal during the 1975 constitutional crisis, said.

While acknowledging that his government knew or ought to have known the extent of the humanitarian crisis in East Timor well before anything was done about it, Mr Fraser does not believe he ever saw the cable in question.

"My invariable practice was to initial documents that passed across my desk and because any copy that I might have seen does not have my initials, I don't believe that I did (see it)," he added.

Mr Fraser argues that by the time he took office, the opportunity to prevent an invasion had passed.

"Earlier in 1975 when Gough Whitlam, meeting with president Suharto, virtually agreed to the incorporation of East Timor, at that time we should have been asking the United Nations to send in blue-bereted observers to protect the integrity of the borders," he said. "When my government came into office, Indonesia had already moved."

Scholar battles to get further cables released

Clinton Fernandes, an East Timor scholar from the University of New South Wales, explains that while warnings of deteriorating conditions were sent, it was not until the end of 1979 that a rescue mission was put into action.

"The embassy in Jakarta writes this down and sends it as a cable to the Department of Foreign Affairs and nothing is done, nothing at all – that was 1978," Mr Fernandes said of the cable.

"Its clear that he's warning of a humanitarian catastrophe and he is calling for international assistance. There would not be any international Red Cross aid for another 16 months."

Mr Fernandes is now battling the National Archives in court seeking further cables from the early '80s but says the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) is objecting to their release on national security grounds.

"Under the 30-year rule, they ought to have been released a long time ago but on this occasion the Government is claiming that to release these documents would harm our national security today and that just doesn't seem plausible to me," he said.

The cables released so far have been published on The Citizen, an online publication produced by the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism.

The World Today is still awaiting a response from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Cables point to Australian indifference to plight of starving Timorese

The Citizen (Australia) - October 2, 2013

Key Australian government officials sounded early warnings about the rapidly deteriorating situation in East Timor in the late 1970s that led to the starvation deaths of an estimated 100,000 people, recently-released diplomatic cables reveal.

The cables, sent from Jakarta, warned over several months about the looming human catastrophe, caused by the Indonesian military's campaign against the Fretilin independence movement. They add weight to accusations that Australia and its allies were slow to act in a bid to avert the tragedy.

The former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who was in power at the time, expressed concern when shown the documents by The Citizen, claiming key intelligence had not been brought to his attention. He said Australia should have acted to provide humanitarian aid to starving Timorese.

"I would like to know who should have acted and didn't," he said, referring to the Canberra bureaucracy. Mr Fraser added that the government "should have been asking for United Nations monitoring and observations to keep a watch on East Timor".

The warnings about the military-induced famine came in a series of briefing notes.

Indonesia's then-Defence Minister, General Mohammad Yusuf, told Australia's ambassador in Jakarta in June 1978 that his forces were struggling to care for the 270,000 Timorese women and children who had been "separated from their menfolk" as a result of the military crackdown.

Embassy officials also saw photographs depicting "many sick, starving and malnourished women and children, typical of famine scenes throughout the world", according to a report filed on August 15, 1978.

Earlier, in May of that year, the first secretary at the embassy, David Irvine, who is now the director-general of ASIO, reported being told by Indonesian Brigadier-General Adenan that Fretilin supporters were "suffering lack of both ammunition and food" and "were in poor physical condition", and that "some could not even stand".

However, it was not until the end of the following year – 16 months after evidence of starvation started emerging – that a humanitarian rescue mission swung into action.

The previously classified documents were obtained from the National Archives by the noted Timor researcher and University of NSW academic Clinton Fernandes, who claims the material points to Australian complicity in Indonesia's oppression of the former Portuguese colony.

"Cabinet of the day not only looked away from calamity, but participated enthusiastically in the subjugation of Timor," Dr Fernandes told The Citizen. "The foreign policy establishment never said a word about what they knew and what they did. There has been total silence."

However, it is not clear whether any of the briefing notes sent to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra were on-passed to individual ministers or made known to Cabinet.

Dr Fernandes, a former army intelligence officer, claims the partly redacted documents also indicate that Australia was aware that Indonesia was using Australian-built Nomad aircraft for military purposes in Timor despite having received assurances to the contrary from Jakarta.

He also believes they point to Canberra helping to keep secret the whereabouts of the mother of the pro-independence leader Jose Ramos-Horta as part of the military dictatorship's attempts to "keep him guessing".

However, Mr Fraser rejected the notion of Canberra's complicity, arguing that Australia was "powerless and played" by Indonesia and that the documents were inconclusive about what was known and by whom.

Australian government officials are currently fighting against a further release of documents that could shed additional light on Australia's part in the controversy, a ruling that Dr Fernandes is challenging before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. A hearing is expected early next year.

Although the documents could be declassified under the 30-year archives rule, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) claims their release could compromise Australia's security, defence or international partnerships, especially its US ties.

An affidavit sworn by a DFAT official in July revealed that the US was insisting on keeping confidential the material under its intelligence sharing agreement with Australia. But Mr Fraser said the continued classification was "nonsense". "There are no implications for national security now," he said. "Bureaucracies are notoriously secretive."

The additional documents being sought relate to events in East Timor between 1977 and 1982 when the invasion and subsequent dislocation of farmers led to famine, the effects of which were exacerbated by Indonesia's refusal to allow the International Red Cross to provide assistance and food aid.

Estimates of the death toll vary around 100,000, although Dr Fernandes is convinced that it was likely double that figure.

East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation reported in 2001 that between 1977 and 1979 the Indonesian military employed "chemical weapons which poisoned water supplies, killed crops and other vegetation, and [used] napalm bombs and other incendiary devices, whose effect was to indiscriminately burn everything... [including] civilians".

The documents so far obtained by Dr Fernandes confirm that Australian officials were becoming increasingly aware of the impact of Indonesia's campaign of terror.

One of the reports stamped "secret" reveals that embassy officials were shown photographs of the Timorese refugees in the border district of Bobonaro in August, 1978.

"[Censored] said the condition of the refugees, many of whom had in any case arrived in a desperate condition, was extremely poor," the document reads. "The Indonesian authorities were 'doing almost nothing' to alleviate the situation.

"He estimated that at least 1.5 per cent of the refugees were dying monthly and that in some groups the death rate was around 8 per cent per month."

Although the circumstances on the ground in Timor were murky, the briefing concludes: "It is clear that the Indonesian Government is not coming to grips with the critical condition of many refugees not far from the border with West Timor."

And it warns that the problem in East Timor "will probably become worse", and "unless there is firm [Indonesian] government action, people will continue to die of hunger".

That same year, General Yusuf told Ambassador Tom Critchley and the embassy's acting defence attache that one of the biggest problems in East Timor was the "270,000 women and children to care for".

"This figure seems unduly high to us considering that the total population of the province is somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000," a summary of the telephone conversation continues. "But it was repeated. Apparently the majority are women and children who have become separated from their menfolk."

It adds: "General Yusuf agreed that... the assistance of the international community including the International Red Cross would be very welcome."

However, the confidential briefing concludes: "We consider that the reference to the International Red Cross was an ad hoc reaction which is not necessarily official policy."

Although the non-government agency The Australian Council for Overseas Aid provided some relief, food aid for the refugees was not provided until 16 months later, in late 1979.

On viewing the documents, Mr Fraser questioned the extent of the famine and said he was not aware how many people had actually died. He said he "knew there were refugees", but was not clear on the extent of the crisis.

The former prime minister (1975-1983) was not convinced the Commission had accurately reported the number of Timorese who died. "The evidence [in the report] was not tested. It was designed to be a valve to release pressures. It is dangerous to take what is said as fact," he said.

He also doubted that the notes from the phone conversation with General Yusuf constituted a request for aid from Australia.

He believed he had not previously seen the documents, as his custom was to mark all documents viewed with his initials.

But Mr Fraser acknowledged that, arguably, he should have been shown them. He said Australia was "not powerless to do something in respect to humanitarian aid".

In 1978, Melbourne's Sun News-Pictorial reported that "tens of thousands of Timorese have been starved into submission by the Indonesians", editorialising that "as the corpses rot and the living cry for help, a timid shying away by Canberra... saying that we cannot risk offending the sensitivities of Jakarta".

The documents obtained by Dr Fernandes also show that on December 16, 1975 the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, Mr Hertasning, gave Foreign Affairs Minister Andrew Peacock an undertaking that Nomad aircraft purchased from Australia would not be used in Timor. But evidence being gleaned from the Indonesian military in April 1977 was that the Nomads had been used in Timor and were vulnerable to ground fire.

A further record, dated December 1981, reports that Indonesia's "Navy Air Arm has been strengthened with the arrival of two type N-22 [Nomad] aircraft from Australia recently".

Dr Fernandes believes documents denied to him could more closely tie the use of the Nomads with Indonesia's military campaign in Timor at a time when it "was committing grave breaches of the Geneva Convention".

However, Mr Fraser dismissed this implication, arguing that Nomad were small passenger aircraft that could have been used for relief or medical evacuation.

Cables sent from Jakarta by Australian officials in October 1978 also suggest that the pro-independence leader Ramos-Horta had been seeking confirmation from Indonesian officials at the United Nations in New York that his mother had been taken into custody.

One of the cables, copied to the Prime Minister's Department and Foreign Minister, notes that Ramos-Horta's mother had surrendered "about three weeks ago" and was in Dili.

It continues: "The disposition in Jakarta was to keep [Ramos-Horta] guessing. Ambassador [Anwar] Sani [Indonesia's representative at the UN] had therefore been instructed not rpt not to confirm the surrender to Horta."

Invited to comment, Mr Fraser said that the notion "sounds ridiculous". "Why would you not tell him where his mother was?" He added: "We should have helped [Ramos-Horta] if we could have."

Dr Fernandes argues that the documents reveal a "pattern of concealment" about what was happening in East Timor, about which there had been "bipartisan consensus".

But Mr Fraser said Australia had been caught between two powerful nations. "The right thing would have been for UN inspection teams [to go in]. But this would have been opposed [by the US] and wouldn't have succeeded," he said. "The US never would have chosen Australia over Indonesia – the largest Islamic country. What we did would have been immaterial."

Analysis & opinion

How my murdered friend became my story

Al Jazeera - October 30, 2013

Step Vaessen – Everything seems easier in my role as a journalist; I handle the death, pain, danger and even murder I encounter scarily well. Protected by my professional shield I can observe, write, report and analyse without being too badly wounded myself. At least that is what I like to believe. But while making the film Trail of Murder I stepped outside of this role and confronted all of these things just as me, as Step, and it was shocking to realise how much it hurt.

When I decided to embark on this journey a little voice inside my head kept warning me: Why do you want to go back there and confront those dark moments all over again? But the urge to somehow try to close this unfinished chapter was stronger than my sense of foreboding.

After everything I had experienced in my personal life I was feeling surprisingly well. And, more importantly, my 13-year-old son, who had lost his father so sadly and so suddenly just a few years before, was in a good place. So maybe this was the right time to go in search of some answers, answers that might help assuage the sense of guilt I, as a journalist, felt for failing to achieve justice for my friend and for all the others who were murdered in cold blood.

Flowing through my veins

Indonesia has been my home for more than 16 years. I feel a deep love for this beautiful and intriguing country that has so captivated outsiders for centuries. It is hard to describe what exactly it is, but there is something about Indonesia that gets under your skin and flows through your veins, never to leave your system again.

When I arrived, in 1997, the country had been ruled by President Soeharto for 32 years. A year later he was forced from power and, before my eyes, Indonesia was engulfed in a whirlwind. I became a witness to one of the most significant and bloody transitions the country had ever experienced.

Together with my husband Andre I traveled to remote parts of the archipelago to cover the religious and ethnic conflicts that surfaced as soon as the tight control Soeharto had exerted disappeared.

And, it was in the midst of all this tension, that the newly-installed President Habibie announced a referendum for East Timor, the region that had been violently annexed by Soeharto's troops 24 years earlier.

It became one of the biggest international stories of the year and definitely the most difficult to report on. Despite reassurances by the government that the vote in East Timor would be fair, all Jakarta-based journalists knew better.

In the month's leading up to the August referendum, I tried to gather evidence about a military plan to systematically destroy the territory if Indonesia lost the vote and the East Timorese chose independence. My sources within the military confirmed that such a plan existed, but nobody wanted to talk on the record. In my stories leading up to the vote I showed how the military was arming East Timorese militias and how voters were being systematically intimidated.

The United Nations, which was organising the vote, could clearly see that we were all walking into a ravine with our eyes wide open. But nobody, including the East Timorese leadership, wanted to stop the voting process because this would be exactly what the Indonesian military wanted.

Voting for freedom

I was in the Mahkota Hotel in Dili when the result of the vote was announced. More than 71 percent of the East Timorese had ignored the threats and intimidation and bravely voted for their freedom. There were no celebrations, not even any cheers. With tears in their eyes and fearful smiles on their faces my East Timorese friends began to cautiously hug one another. I had never before experienced a moment when such extreme fear and joy had come together in one instance.

I learned that day that a peoples' need for freedom is a force unstoppable even by death.

Our role as journalists felt even more important after the announcement, because only we could counter the Indonesian propaganda and show the truth of what was about to happen. Being fully aware of this, the military did everything they could to scare us away.

Their first move was to evacuate all of the Indonesian journalists – this included our producer at the time – because they could not 'guarantee their safety'. Then militias suddenly began to attack hotels where foreign journalists were staying. I told my worried bosses at NOS television in the Netherlands that despite all the threats we were staying put. But when all the international TV channels decided to move out, including the European Broadcasting Union we used for our transmissions, NOS decided to pull us out too.

When the military evacuated us in their trucks I felt utterly defeated. While being driven away, I looked at the scared faces of the hotel staff and our East Timorese friends and all I could think about was how badly we had failed them.

Death and destruction

Then the bloodshed began. Back in Jakarta we heard about the massacres. Little information made its way out so we depended on freelance friends who had stayed behind.

When we finally returned, two weeks later, on a chartered plane, East Timor had been systematically destroyed. I don't remember seeing my friend Sander Thoenes that day. He came in on the second plane and we were all so focused on our mission: covering a story we had come late to while simultaneously trying to stay safe.

Sander had arrived in Jakarta at around the same time as me. He amazed me with his knowledge and how quickly he learnt to speak Indonesian.

In the short time he was there, he had made many friends and we would often spend time with a group of journalists speculating about where the country was heading. We traveled together to Liquisa for the referendum in East Timor and we shared the excitement of witnessing that historical day together.

On September 21, 1999 – hours after we had arrived on that chartered plane from Jakarta – we heard that Sander was missing.

We had taken shelter in an abandoned convent, and a long night ensued during which we waited, worked, tried to sleep a little and attempted to find out where Sander was.

Early the following morning, friends burst into our room with the news – Sander's body had been found. In that moment, I suddenly realised that I had never expected one of us to die. In shock and grief I continued my work. That day our friend and colleague had become our story.

Unanswered questions

A week later we all attended his funeral in the Netherlands. I met his mother, brother and other relatives and felt lost as they asked the questions we could not answer. I understood then that something had changed.

In 2002, I decided to confront Sander's killers. A Dutch police investigation and a UN report had shown that Battalion 745 was responsible for his death and the deaths of many others on the same day.

I traveled to East Timor to talk to survivors and relatives of the deceased and reconstructed the events of September 21, 1999.

Then I went to the Indonesian side of the island of Timor and visited Camillo dos Santos, an East Timorese member of the Indonesian army and, according to witness reports, Sander's alleged killer.

Alone, I walked into his military compound with a small camera. I found him sitting on his veranda with his wife and five children. He was suffering from malaria.

I began filming and asked him about Sander's murder. He denied any involvement. And, worried about the reaction of the soldiers on the compound, I quickly walked away. As soon as I climbed inside the waiting taxi, I began to shake. In that moment, I was not a journalist, I was Step and, emotionally, I told the driver: "This man has killed my friend, please hurry and get out of here."

When I later interviewed the commander of Battalion 745, a man named Jacob Sarosa, he too denied everything.

The meaning of forgiveness

All my efforts to get the story out and to confront the alleged killers never resulted in any form of justice. When the East Timorese leadership told me that we should move on and forgive them, I decided to let it go. But while it might be better for East Timor to bury the past, I do not believe that is right for young Indonesians. No child should ever grow up learning that murder goes unpunished in their country.

Now, 14 years on, I have accepted the fact that Indonesia is not ready to confront its dark past. The real change has yet to come and it will come soon enough. After all, it took the Dutch government 67 years to apologise for mass murder in Indonesia. When I met East Timorese President Taur Matan Ruak – 14 years after we first met in the jungle when he still was a guerilla commander – I understood what forgiveness means. It means wisdom, confidence and truth – all the things the East Timorese have gained from being on the right side of history, at least in 1999. It means maturity and vision.

It is sometimes difficult to live in a country that has allowed so many mass murderers to go unpunished. But my journey has taught me that while justice is not always about right or wrong, forgiveness is.

'Resource curse' haunts Timor-Leste

Today Online - October 25, 2013

Tom Benner – There is a free health clinic in Dili, the capital of Asia's newest and poorest country, Timor-Leste, that treats some 400 people a day. The doctor who runs it was telling me about the kinds of cases he generally treats – tuberculosis, malaria, dengue, typhoid, malnutrition, stunting, poor growth, pregnancy complications.

Dr Dan Murphy is actually happy about this. Back before Timor-Leste became a country in 2002, he treated gunshot wounds, machete wounds, victims of torture and hand grenade victims.

What passes for progress in Timor-Leste is a lot like that. The war zone days are over, but the patient at the door has new problems with endemic causes. Now that United Nations (UN) peacekeepers are gone and the civil unrest has quieted, the challenges of governing a very poor country and inexperienced democracy seem far greater than anticipated in the hopefulness of its first sovereign days.

I just got back after spending 10 days in Timor-Leste. I took part in workshops with the local media, rode the bumpy and barely passable roads into the country's mountainous interior, and got to see up close the lives of everyday people.

High youth unemployment

The country's existence is a miracle in itself. Occupying half of Timor Island, East Timor was colonised by Portugal for 400 years, and its overwhelmingly Catholic make-up is only one of its many cultural differences from West Timor, which was settled by the Dutch and is now part of Indonesia.

When Portugal pulled out of East Timor in 1975, Indonesia launched a bloody invasion and occupied the country for a quarter-century.

That the East Timorese resisted the occupation despite horrific costs, including losing about a third of the population, is a tribute to their love for independence, their resilience and their commitment. They are fighting still.

I visited a junior high school in Baucau, the second-largest city, that had no books or learning materials. Its one-room buildings are crumbling, there are no lavatories and no running water.

I saw rural villages with little to no electricity or running water, where children bear the telltale signs of malnutrition, such as orange streaks in their hair. Most rural families get by on subsistence farming and often go without food during the "hungry season" between harvests.

In Dili, I saw young men walking the streets aimlessly; youth unemployment is over 50 per cent, in a country where more than 60 per cent are under 18. More than half the population is illiterate. More than a third live below the international poverty line.

Communication problem

The country is divided by too many languages among its relatively small – 1.2 million – population. Tetum is one of the two official languages, along with Portuguese, but also spoken are Bahasa Indonesia, English and somewhere around two dozen local languages and dialects.

No wonder the local media have a hard time communicating. Worse than the language problem is that, since there isn't much of a private economy, the media relies on the government for its revenues.

The government spends heavily on public notices and bulk newspaper subscriptions and, in return, the local media has an incentive not to bite the hand that feeds it. There is room for some sort of non-profit business model.

Those brave journalists who do seek truth without fear of consequences have their work cut out for them: The country scores a 33 out of 100 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.

You'd never know it to look around, but the country is rich, for now at least. There are tens of billions in oil and gas deposits at the bottom of the Timor Sea, and petroleum revenues give the government the ability to throw money at some of its problems.

The resource curse

But the widespread criticism is that the money goes to a well-compensated and growing government bureaucracy without trickling down to the average citizen and priorities such as healthcare and education.

One example: Members of Parliament are eligible for lifetime salaries after serving less than one full five-year term. Such cushy guarantees do not exist for the many Timorese living on less than US$1 (S$1.20) a day.

Another: More money is spent on veterans' benefits for those who fought against the Indonesian occupation (and their families) than on education.

Those pension costs represent huge transfer payments and amount to a short-term political tactic to buy complacency among the governing generation. Worse, this and other misplaced budget priorities come at the expense of investment in education, healthcare and infrastructure, setting up future generations for failure, and detracting from the institutional trust and credibility that a democracy needs to thrive.

Such is the problem with what economists call the "resource curse", when Third World countries squander wealth from natural resources on waste, mismanagement and corruption. Angola and Zimbabwe offer cautionary tales.

Another worry is that the country's economy is not diversified. The organic coffee and tourism industries show potential, yet 95 per cent of the country's revenues are from oil and gas, a finite resource that could be exhausted in a generation.

Timor-Leste's leaders very much want the country to be admitted to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which would put them in the prestigious league with their regional counterparts. But after years of assistance from the UN and non-government organisations from the outside, Timor-Leste must rely on itself for its survival.

Winning its hard-fought independence, it turns out, is followed by the even tougher challenge of self-governance.

[Tom Benner is a Singapore-based freelance journalist.]

Book & film reviews

Documentary revisits murder of FT journalist in East Timor

Financial Times (UK) - October 31, 2013

John Aglionby – Florindo Araujo is certain that Sander Thoenes was still alive when he last saw the Financial Times journalist. The motorcycle taxi driver says they had just been repeatedly shot at as they fled Indonesian soldiers in the Becora district on the outskirts of East Timor's capital Dili when a bullet hit the front tyre, causing the vehicle to crash and the two men to fall.

"I know he [Thoenes] was still alive then, bullets had not hit him because I didn't see any blood," Mr Araujo says. "The [Indonesian soldiers] shouted: 'Get him. Kill him' and they pointed their guns at us." Mr Araujo fled the scene. The next time Thoenes was seen was as a corpse the following day, lying on his side in a pool of blood down an alley not far from where Mr Araujo says they fell.

The attack occurred on September 21 1999 as East Timor was in turmoil. Three weeks earlier the people had voted overwhelmingly for independence from Jakarta and the Indonesian military was rampaging through the country before leaving.

Two members of the Indonesian army's Battalion 745 were indicted for the murder by the UN but they have never stood trial.

The traumatic events of 14 years ago have been repeatedly dissected. But they have been vividly retold – including the above interview with Mr Araujo – in a powerful 50-minute documentary by Step Vaessen, then working for Dutch television and now Al Jazeera English's Jakarta-based reporter. The film, Trail of Murder, is to be broadcast by the Qatar-based network on Thursday.

Ms Vaessen, who, with Thoenes and other foreign correspondents, had arrived in Dili hours earlier on a charter flight billed as a "one-way ticket to hell" weaves two themes through the film.

For many viewers the most gripping thread will be Ms Vaessen's retracing of the murderous journey of Battalion 745 from Lospalos in the far east of the country to Dili to board transport ships back to Indonesia.

The UN blamed the battalion for 17 counts of crimes against humanity, including 14 murders – the death of Thoenes among them – in the wake of the independence referendum.

Ms Vaessen's interviews provide jaw-dropping witness accounts. Jacinta da Costa, for example, describes how her nephew happened to return to their village when the battalion was passing through. "They captured and killed him, took his body and hid it in a river," she says.

Perhaps because time has healed her grief, or because of the fatalistic nature of East Timorese culture, she shows almost no bitterness, let alone anger. "War in this world has to be like that," she continues, adding that she herself has three children conceived during repeated rapes by Indonesian soldiers during Jakarta's 24-year occupation of the former Portuguese colony.

Retired General Wiranto, who was the Indonesian military chief in 1999 and has also been indicted over East Timor but never prosecuted, does not deny that Thoenes's murder and the other atrocities happened. But he justifies them to Vaessen by saying the conflict was "state policy", that he lost many subordinates and attributes them to "the dynamic of change".

I knew Thoenes well and count Ms Vaessen as a friend, so the second theme of the documentary is equally gripping: Ms Vaessen's search for closure, although she openly admits she is not quite sure on what.

Both Ms Vaessen and Thoenes were Dutch and had become close friends in the way that foreign correspondents from the same country do. "Everyone chatted with Sander, he was that kind of man – young, smart and keen," she says in the film of the 30-year-old reporter who talked his way into the FT by gatecrashing a reception in Moscow and charming the then editor Richard Lambert who was attending.

For Ms Vaessen, however, Thoenes's death is only one part of the tragedy of East Timor. Her cameraman at the time was her husband, Andre Bentlage. Covering the crisis affected him deeply and in its wake, she says, he became so depressed that he committed suicide in 2010. For all its sadness, though, the documentary does, thankfully, end on an upbeat note.

Near the end is a shot of the memorial stone the East Timorese made to mark Thoenes's death. Underneath his name it says simply: "Murdered in search of the truth".

FT journalist John Aglionby covered the 1999 East Timor crisis for the Guardian but was not on the September 21 flight to Dili because his wedding was four days later, a ceremony Thoenes had said he would attend "if I am in town".


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