Ex-army major, Alfredo ReinadoTIMOR: NGO's say rebel leader Reinardo should be brought to justice
Radio Australia
Last Updated 27/11/2006 8:49:35 PM
East Timor's rebel leader and murder suspect Major Alfredo Reinardo has emerged from hiding, he addressed a public seminar in the town of Suai on Friday. Before the seminar, Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta was urging the international military forces to arrest him. But now he says Major Reinardo is getting another chance.
Presenter/Interviewer: Joanna McCarthy
Speakers: John Miller, spokesman for the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network; Arsenio Bano East Timor's Minister for Labor and Solidarity
McCARTHY: It's three months since East Timor's renegade soldier Major Alfredo Reinardo escaped from Dili's main jail and last week the government was given a prime opportunity for his arrest. When unconfirmed reports on Friday said Major Reinardo would speak at a public seminar, Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta urged international military forces to arrest him.
But when Major Reinardo appeared at the seminar, Australian and Portuguese forces took no action. The Prime Minister now says the government is giving Major Reinardo another chance. Arsenio Bano is East Timor's Minister for Labor and Solidarity:
BANO: I think Major Reinardo has been given the possibility of coming back to Dili and hand over guns proceed with judicial process. There is confusion as to his interpretation as to what he should be followng. And I think the state, the judicial court, the police has given him a lot of possibility that he should come to Dili and the government itself wants to solve the problem peacefully.
McCARTHY: Prime Minister Ramos Horta says Major Reinardo's reprieve comes at the wishes of army chief Brigadier General Taur Ruak.
It's nearly 8 months since Major Reinardo abandoned the military to join rebel soldiers during the unrest that bought down then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. While Reinardo remains at large, Ramos Horta faces an enormous challenge as his government tries to restore stability among the armed forces, the police and the disaffected youth for whom Major Reinardo remains a hero.
BANO: It's not an embarrassment. I think the approach the prime minister is taking is dialogue and also not to have people killed in solving the problem. I hope Reinardo understand that because a lot of people have tried to convince him to Dili including Bishop Bello. The government still has that line. But as I said he's running out of time.
MCCARTHY: How much longer are you going to give Major Reinardo to surrender?
BANO: I'm not sure. His problem is complicated. Because he has escaped from prison. he is also under investigation. He says he should be criminally prosecuted. So he has those allegations. I think I'm not very sure, sooner or later, we all need to decide what we need to do with major Reinardo.
McCARTHY: But not everyone agrees with the government's conciliatory line. John Miller is the National Co-ordinator of the US-based East Timor and Indonesia Action Network.
MILLER: I think this continuing encouragement of dialogue rather than prosecution has led to impunity. We feel in this instance that a judicial approach is best. It needs to decide and needs to be clear that there's civilian supremacy over the military. And whatever civilian commanders wants the military have to know they have to take the orders from and take second place to whatever the civilian leadership decides.
# posted by Lian Maubere : Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Operation Deputy Sheriff in South East Asia
Timor-Leste 2006
Peter Murphy
Australia’s Howard government pulled off its first ‘regime change’ between April and July this year, on the tiny new country of Timor-Leste (East Timor). Since late May 2006 Australia has had a military presence in East Timor, where it has presided over the resignation of the democratically elected prime minister, Mari Alkatiri. Perhaps needless to say, the Australian government has throughout this period received strong support for its actions from the US administration. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice called Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in early May and ‘is understood to have told him the US was “right behind” any action Australia took’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 13.5.06). She phoned up again later in May to ask what was needed, and subsequently some heavy airlift capacity was added to Australia’s 1300 troops and four warships. This was the Sheriff and the Deputy Sheriff at work.
Events seemed to follow the coup d’etat textbook, and the result has been chaos for almost the entire population of the capital, Dili. At the time of writing, in mid-September 2006, about 150,000 people, almost the entire population of the capital, have been displaced from their homes. Somewhere between 700 and 2000 homes and businesses have been burnt down or looted, and the year’s coffee crop has not been picked.
The demonised Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri - blamed for everything that has gone wrong - was finally forced to resign on 26 June, and the pro-US, pro-Australian Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, was installed as a figurehead Prime Minister on July 10.1 However, the FRETILIN government itself has managed to retain power. The stage is therefore now set for an intense struggle in the campaign for the April 2007 parliamentary and presidential elections.
The background to the struggle
East Timor was formerly a Portuguese colony but after the 1974 democratic revolution in Portugal, a process of decolonisation was begun. However, before independence was formally introduced, the Indonesian military invaded, with the agreement of the US, Britain and Australia. Fretilin (formed in May 1974) led the long resistance to this occupation, during which thousands were killed by Indonesian bombardment or died in Indonesian camps.
After heavy defeats in the late 1970s, the resistance was rebuilt under the leadership of current Timorese President Xanana Gusmaõ. The strategy shifted from military struggle to political struggle, eventually creating the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) in 1998, which as well as Fretilin included the Union of Timorese Democrats (UDT), a party also formed in 1974, which was led by wealthy families of local and Portuguese descent. In August 1975 UDT had been backed by the Indonesian military in an attempted coup against Fretilin. During this process, in the late 1980s, Gusmaõ resigned from the FRETILIN leadership in order to facilitate the creation of the wider coalition for independence. Following the fall of the dictator Suharto in May 1998, the new Indonesian government could no longer hold East Timor and surprised everyone by responding rapidly to a mild suggestion from Australian Prime Minister Howard for a referendum on independence.
The CNRT led the vote for independence in the subsequent referendum of 1999, which was supervised by the UN but relied on the Indonesian military for security. After the people’s overwhelming rejection of integration into Indonesia, the army and its militias retaliated by murdering more than 1,300 people and destroying 70 per cent of all structures in East Timor. The United Nations then authorised an Australian-led military force to intervene, with the UN eventually taking over total administration of the country to oversee a transition to an elected independent Timorese government.
The first independent Timorese government was dominated by FRETILIN, which won 57.3 per cent of the vote for the Constituent Assembly in August 2001; and this was converted into the first parliament after formal independence in 2002 (the first Council of Ministers also included members of minority parties and non-FRETILIN people). After independence the UN mission was mandated annually, but it was progressively scaled down, mainly under pressure from the United States and Australia. By April 2006 the UN mission had only 130 personnel, and its mandate was due to expire on 20 May 2006. To maintain its own security East Timor has an army of 1500 regular soldiers, and a police force of 3500 officers, both of which were formed by the UN administration prior to the transfer of sovereignty.
East Timor’s fast-growing population is now estimated at 950,000. The economic mainstay is agriculture and the main cash crop is organic coffee. The unofficial minimum wage, set by the UN administration prior to May 2002, is US$85 per month. Since independence, East Timor’s budgets have relied on donor funds held in trust by the World Bank, but it has refused loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in order to avoid neo-liberal conditionalities. The budget for 2005-06 was just US$89 million. However it has had economic growth every year since the devastation of September 1999, and with new revenue streams from oil and gas, its 2006-07 budget was boosted to US$315 million.
Destabilisation
The progressive FRETILIN government was from the beginning undermined by violent movements associated with the Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party, who did not accept the results of the 2001 elections. From April 2005 new attempts by these parties to destabilise or overthrow the government came through parts of the Catholic Church, and now included efforts to turn the military against the government. (The Catholic Church is very important in East Timor, because it played a positive role in the long dark years of the independence struggle, but its clergy are conservative, and resent the lower incomes and lower church attendances that have come with the end of the occupation.)
In April 2005, during a 19-day church protest against the FRETILIN government, some senior church figures asked the army commander, Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak, to stage a coup d’etat, but he refused. Then early in 2006 two nationals and two foreigners - so far identified only as Australians or Americans - made two separate approaches to Matan Ruak, and one of his senior deputies, Lieutenant-Colonel Falur Rate Laek, to stage a coup against the FRETILIN government. Each time they refused.2 Having failed to win over General Matan Ruak, the next move was an attempt to divide the armed forces. In early January 2006 Lieutenant Gastaõ Salshinha, who had been denied promotion because he had been caught smuggling sandalwood, launched a movement in the army’s First Battalion, claiming that ‘westerners’ were suffering from discrimination in promotion. He met every effort to deal with this complaint by escalating his demands, to the exasperation of President Gusmaõ, to whom the complaints were addressed. There is in fact no ethnic basis to the alleged ‘east-west’ tension. East Timor has 16 ethnic groups located in different areas of the country. The political opposition is mainly based in the west of the country, but FRETILIN also has very strong organisation in the west.
Salsinha led anti-government demonstrations, with the participation of up to 594 striking soldiers, in February, March and April. These failed to bring the government down, and these soldiers were subsequently sacked by Brigadier-General Matan Ruak in mid-March, since they had been absent-without-leave for over a month. Then, on 28 April there was a wild rampage by about 120 anti-government thugs in Dili, associated with the sacked soldiers. This did shake things up - it lead to four deaths, 70 civilian injuries and the burning of around 100 homes. But still the state was united, and the army and police managed to restore order.
However another figure now joined in the destabilisation, Major Alfredo Reinado, the commander of the Military Police unit - a man who had received Military Staff College training in Australia in late 2005, and whose wife was manager of the 57-strong US Peace Corps, and employed at the US Embassy. On 3 May Major Reinado led his small force of 17 heavily armed military police out of Dili, to the mountains at Maubisse, from where he protested against an alleged order by Prime Minister Alkatiri for the army to open fire on civilians during the 28 April disturbances. Reinado declared his continuing loyalty to President Gusmaõ however. Later in May it was Major Reinado’s forces that were to lead the assault that became the immediate trigger for outside intervention.
As well as these skirmishes at home, the East Timorese government was now facing problems at the UN. In New York on 5 May, East Timor’s Foreign Minister Ramos Horta, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and almost the entire UN Security Council, were ready to vote to extend and strengthen the UN Office in East Timor, with a new mandate lasting to 20 May 2007. This was particularly important since the first parliamentary and presidential elections since independence were due in April 2007, and the scare of 28 April had underlined the nation’s fragility. But Australia’s Ambassador, the former Defence Minister Robert Hill, and US Representative William Brencick opposed the extension - and they got their way. The mandate was extended to just 20 June 2006.
Following on from this, on 11 May the Howard government decided to mobilise a naval taskforce and 1100 soldiers to be ready to intervene ‘if requested by the Timor government or by the United Nations’. The Timorese heard about this only on the news. The die was cast. There was no way that such a taskforce would be mobilised simply for practice - it was going to intervene.
The attack came on 23 May, just three days after the second FRETILIN National Congress, which re-elected Alkatiri as General Secretary. (His victory was unopposed but controversial, as his main competitor, Ambassador to the UN and USA Jose Luis Guterres, failed to gain enough support to be nominated, but said that the election by ‘show of hands’ was bullying.) Major Reinado and his troops returned to the hills above Dili and opened fire on an army observation post. Somehow Reinado had managed to arrange an interview with Australia’s SBS TV Dateline programme, in which he called for international intervention, immediately prior to the shootout he initiated. The encounter was recorded and the whole thing broadcast, with Dateline reporter David O’Shea saying to camera, ‘Surely this will bring in the international intervention’. Early the following morning, on 24 May, a second group – this time armed police led by a Commander Rai'los - attacked the army headquarters and a third group – again police led by a former police commander Abilio Mesquita - attacked Brigadier-General Matan Ruak’s house in the west of Dili. That day the police commander Paulo Martins, his deputy Ismael Babo and many Dili police joined the rebel soldiers and police arms were removed from the arsenal. (Martins had been police chief under the Indonesians, and was selected for his post by the UN administration prior to 2002.)
In the face of this crisis, Prime Minister Alkatiri, President Gusmaõ and Francisco (Lu-Olo) Guterres, the President of Parliament, then invited in Australian, Malaysian, New Zealand and Portuguese military and police to restore order. The Australians were the first to arrive, on the evening of 26 May, as troops loyal to the government drove the armed rebels out of Dili. Government troops then returned to barracks and handed their arms to the Australians, as ordered.
The day before this (25 May), two or three government soldiers had attacked 37 unarmed police outside the UN compound in Dili, and this led to a split in the state structures. Just how this shocking incident took place - 12 police were killed and 25 wounded - is still being investigated, but it appears to have been contrived in some way. President Gusmaõ and Foreign Minister Horta, however, reacted to this horror by beginning to separate from Prime Minister Alkatiri and his government, with the President now claiming sole power over all the security forces. There has been no evidence that Prime Minister Alkatiri was in any way connected to this attack, but it has played a significant role in the campaign against him, both in terms of the split within the state leadership, and as a justification for subsequent denigration of the FRETILIN government.
On 26 May - the day that Australian forces arrived in East Timor - Australian Prime Minister Howard declared that East Timor had been ‘poorly governed for years’. He repeated this on 28 May, saying that there had to be change in the government of East Timor.3 This fuelled an already predatory media agenda against Prime Minister Alkatiri in Australia. The Portuguese government at this point officially protested at Australia’s interference in East Timor’s internal affairs. The outside forces had been invited in to support the government in the face of armed dissident elements. Yet it was the government that had been disarmed, and was being blamed for the crisis, while the rebels kept their arms and had free media access.
By early June Major Reinado had dropped his allegations about Alkatiri’s having ordered troops to fire on civilians during the events of April 28, instead arguing that that FRETILIN and Alkatiri were ‘communist’ and had to be destroyed. On 16 July, claiming that he was acting under orders from the President, Reinado theatrically surrendered just 12 weapons to Australian forces. According to Reinado himself, however, he had been enjoying Australian beer with the Australian troops guarding him at Maubisse from the time of their arrival. He and twenty other soldiers were finally arrested by Portuguese police and Australian soldiers on 25 July, in possession of arms and ammunition, and just across the road from the Australian Army HQ in Dili.
The Australian government was perplexed that Alkatiri was still in power when Foreign Minister Alexander Downer visited Dili in early June, but they now had further support from within the heart of the state. Organised gangs, backed up and coordinated by armed rebel soldiers and police, burnt hundreds of houses and looted and burnt many businesses and government offices in Dili, maintaining a reign of terror - in spite of the presence of Australian and other forces. Support for Alkatiri’s overthrow was also forthcoming from the Australian media, as it escalated its campaign. Across most of the media - and in a way which echoed many CIA media campaigns in Latin America and elsewhere - there was a wildly inaccurate portrayal of Alkatiri as an unpopular, authoritarian, fundamentalist Marxist, who ran a corrupt, nepotistic government. Alkatiri, a founder of FRETILIN and leader of its External Delegation, is in fact a well-trained lawyer and an effective administrator, credited along with President Gusmaõ with creating CNRT, and also for creating South East Asia’s cleanest government, with a deep commitment to constitutional rule and institutional development. The violence in Dili was detached from its actual perpetrators and reported as if it was general phenomenon for which the government was in some way responsible.
On 19 June a programme on Australia's ABC TV called Four Corners launched an entirely new Alkatiri scandal, alleging that there was a secret FRETILIN hit squad. A veteran resistance fighter, Commander Rai’los, alleged that he and thirty men had been given automatic weapons by Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato as recently as 8 May, and had been ordered by Alkatiri to kill the 600 striking soldiers, as well as opponents inside FRETILIN. A list of rifle serial numbers was provided to Four Corners. Rai’los also took the opportunity to complain that when his group had taken part in the 24 May attack on the army headquarters at the beginning of the coup d’etat, they had suffered four casualties. This indication that Rai’los was part of the anti-government forces from the beginning did not, however, get in the way of Four Corners’ allegations.
Interior Minister Lobato was hauled in for questioning after the programme, and placed under house arrest. The media was then told by unnamed ‘court officials’ that he had admitted guilt and implicated Alkatiri. Calls for Alkatiri’s resignation redoubled, but he again flatly rejected the allegations. On 17 July, the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in East Timor apologised for wrongly reporting that Lobato had twice admitted guilt and implicated Alkatiri (Sydney Morning Herald, July 27.7.06). In early August, the Judicial System Monitoring Mission asked why Rai’los had not been investigated, while such attention had been focused on Lobato and Alkatiri.
On 21 June, President Gusmaõ publicly demanded the prime minister’s resignation at a Council of State meeting. That night the Australian and US Embassy staff and local opposition figures threw a party in the Hotel Timor bar. Next day anti-government protests swelled from 150 to 2000, as young men were trucked in from Maliana in the west, to roam around Dili in large packs shouting ‘kill the communists’, ‘kill Alkatiri’. On 22 June President Gusmaõ gave a 90-minute speech to the nation, denouncing FRETILIN and saying its leaders had not been legally elected. (On 11 August, however, the Court of Appeal in Dili ruled that the elections at the FRETILIN Congress were legal.)
Still FRETILIN insisted that Alkatiri should stay as Prime Minister, based on the fact that they had received 57.3 per cent of the vote in the 2001 elections, and on the constitution. But then Foreign Minister Horta resigned and Gusmaõ also threatened his resignation. To forestall this, and in the interests of maintaining national unity, Alkatiri resigned on 26 June. On 28 June he addressed FRETILIN supporters in a public rally to the east of Dili calling on them to defend the constitution, and to focus on winning the 2007 elections. Despite long delays by the Australian military, 20,000 people were finally allowed to assemble and parade in Dili on 29 and 30 June, where they called on President Gusmaõ to uphold the constitution and to work with the elected leaders to resolve the political impasse legally and peacefully. They called for reconciliation. The President responded positively.
Jose Ramos Horta was sworn in as Prime Minister on 10 July, technically nominated by FRETILIN. On 14 July, Agriculture Minister Estanislau da Silva, a strong supporter of Alkatiri and a senior leader of FRETILIN, was sworn in as First Deputy Prime Minister. (Da Silva is also the Chair of the Council of Ministers.) Jose Luis Guterres (the man defeated by Alkatiri at the FRETILIN congress) is now Foreign Minister. The Health Minister Rui Maria de Araujo, an independent, has become the Second Deputy Prime Minister.
On 18 July, Prime Minister Howard flew to Dili to congratulate the new Prime Minister.
Motives for the attempted coup
The Democratic Party, with seven seats in the 88 seat parliament, and the Social Democratic Party, with six seats, have never accepted the 2001 election outcome, and have not been a constructive opposition. They have repeatedly used destabilisation tactics, including violence, and have exploited the well-known tension between President Gusmaõ and FRETILIN to pressure the President to dismiss the government.
It was this negative dynamic that was used and amplified by foreign interests in 2006. An important background to these events, however, is western strategic relationships with Indonesia. Both the Howard and Bush governments are focused on the ‘global war on terror’ and relations with China; and Indonesia and the Indonesian armed forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia - TNI - who still play a dominant role in Indonesian politics) thus loom very large in strategic value for both governments. The Bush administration wants a renewed alliance with the TNI, and to keep Chinese influence in Indonesia to a minimum. Australia’s interests are slightly different. Though recognising the need for co-operation with Indonesia in the interests of the global alliance against terror, all Australian governments see Indonesia as a strategic threat, or as the pathway of an invader from further north. The Australian strategy is thus to placate Indonesia, but always to be able to defeat the TNI in a conflict, and to have guaranteed US support for this. Both Howard and Bush want to suppress any Al-Qaeda development in Indonesia. Thus on 6 June, while chaos was reigning in Dili under the gaze of Australian troops, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was visiting Jakarta to develop practical aspects of military cooperation.4
The US and Australian governments are currently seeking to normalise relations with the Indonesian military. Both governments have previously quarrelled with TNI over East Timor. The US broke relations with the TNI after the Dili Massacre in December 1991, restoring them only in November 2005. And the TNI abruptly broke relations with Australia in September 1999, when the UN military force, dominated by Australia, entered East Timor, and the TNI had to withdraw forever from the territory they had seized in 1975.
But tiny East Timor continues to upset the main game. For the TNI, East Timor is a symbol of the treachery of Canberra and Washington; and East Timor’s first government, led by the national liberation movement, is a neon sign in the region that the TNI can be thwarted. This is particularly dangerous for the Indonesian government as their rule over the provinces of Aceh and Papua is under serious challenge. They therefore use the fact that the US and Australia need their co-operation in order to pressurise their governments on regional issues. Thus for both Howard and Bush, beating up on the FRETILIN government made good strategic sense.
And the Bush administration also had another motive to punish East Timor’s government - its agreements with the Cuban republic for 220 Cuban doctors and 30 medical technicians to work in East Timor’s public health system, and for 300 Timorese students to study medicine in Cuba. (Health care in East Timor is now widely available and free.)
What’s more, both President Gusmaõ and Prime Minister Alkatiri had offended Australia’s Foreign Minister Downer during the protracted negotiations about the seabed boundary between their respective countries, and the share of each in Timor Sea gas and oil revenues. In the 1980s Australia’s Labor government had signed a Timor Sea Treaty with Indonesia to facilitate oil and gas developments, on terms exceedingly generous to Australia. Under the UN administration, a new treaty was negotiated on fairer terms to East Timor, which Alkatiri was pressured to sign in 2002. At this time there was also disagreement about the seabed border, which has yet to be resolved, partly because the biggest gas and oil field lies in a highly contested zone and the arguments about revenue share and the border were linked. Only in January 2006 was it agreed that Timor and Australia would share equally in the revenue from this field, but there will be no seabed boundary determined for 50 years. Alkatiri is widely credited for getting this better than expected - but still unfair - outcome, though both he and President Gusmaõ were reviled in the Australian foreign affairs establishment for their defiant stance. This provided further emotional context for official venom against him this year.
Senior Murdoch media commentators Paul Kelly and Greg Sheridan each had articles in The Australian at the end of May projecting a view close to the government - that, post-9/11, Australia had to interfere in and change regional governments to avoid ‘failed states’. (There was also the more extreme view from the Jakarta lobby in the Department of Foreign Affairs, that East Timor should never have been independent.) On 30 May Kelly wrote that Australia’s military intervention was ‘a highly political intervention in its impact, atmospherics and consequences’. He continued: ‘In this sense Australia is operating as a regional power or a potential hegemon that shapes security and political outcomes … We have taken complete charge of law and order in East Timor and its domestic power struggle is conducted against the backdrop of our unstated pressure’.
Endnote, 21 September 2006
The story continues to unfold - on August 30, Reinado led a breakout of his troops from Becora jail, after troops under Australian command withdrew from the area for four days. In September, it was revealed that Gusmaõ had paid part of Reinado's hotel bill at Maubisse, and that Mesquita - arrested with 16 automatic weapons in Dili on June 19 - had provided a written statement to the US Embassy and Australian military officers about his role on May 24, claiming he was under orders from President Gusmaõ. Reinado, again armed an on the loose, again well connected to the media, has harshly attacked the new Prime Minister for failing to keep his promises, echoing the demands of the Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party to immediately take over government.
This article is Peter Murphy’s personal account and does not necessarily represent the views of his employer, the SEARCH Foundation.
Notes
1. Mr Horta, part of the External FRETILIN Delegation since late 1975, resigned from FRETILIN in the early 1990s to become the personal ambassador of Xanana Gusmaõ (now President of East Timor, then leader of the liberation struggle). Horta was never a leftist in FRETILIN, and in his diplomatic life appears to have absorbed the conventional neo-liberal wisdom. At the time of the coup he was Foreign Minister of East Timor. (To become prime minister Horta had to put off his strong ambition to become the next UN Secretary-General.)
2. See Australian journalist John Martinkus, New Matilda, 28 June 2006.
3. Transcript, ABC TV Insiders, 28 May 2006.
4. American Forces Press Service, 6.6.06.
# posted by Lian Maubere : Monday, November 27, 2006
Southeast Asian Times
Sunday 26 November 06
By John Loizou
Dili, November 26: The contrast between the physical presence of Cuba and the rest of the world in East Timor is as stark as the difference in the philosophies that divide them.
Most of the grand embassies and their subsidiaries, such as the ubiquitous USAid, built for the countries that have rushed to recognise newly-independent East Timor — Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the former occupier, Indonesia, and the former colonialist, Portugal — dot the elegant esplanade that borders Dili harbour, the Avenida dos Martires da Patria, where centuries-old tropical trees provide shade and in less-troubled-times, tranquillity.
In the morning, middle-aged diplomats, accompanied by their security guards, jog the beach.
By day, fishermen hawk their catch from beneath the shade while women — many dressed in traditional sarongs — offer tomato, garlic and bananas or play cards in the dust while they await customers.
Before sunset, their more affluent sisters from the spacious houses used first by colonial administrators and then the commanders of the Indonesian army sit by a lighthouse that I’m told was built immediately after World War II and watch the sprinkling of cargo vessels, wooden fishing smacks and inter-island ferries riding at anchor or look out to the massive statue of Christ installed by Jakarta that dominates the far skyline on the barren island of Atauro.
Portuguese East Timor was a place of exile for opponents of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar who was overseer of the authoritarian right-wing regime that controlled his country’s social, economic, cultural and political life from 1933 to 1974. Atauro served as a prison — a place of exile for the exiles.
But the embassy for the Republic of Cuba stands amid the hot dusty, busy streets of the overcrowded — and now sometimes violent city — in the lee of the rugged mountains that are so essential to life in the most eastern of the sparsely-populated Lesser Sunda Islands.
Here, in this unexpected concrete jungle, the only shade is that provided by the darkened windows.
But if the Cubans lack grandeur, they do not lack generosity.
At last count, the defiantly Socialist Caribbean country had 302 volunteers working in East Timor.
They began arriving in April 2004 and their two-year tour of duty has them working throughout the republic, including five hospitals and its most remote villages.
There are: 228 physicians, 23 nurses, 40 health technicians and 11 teachers of Portuguese and Spanish who help prepare young East Timorese to study medicine in Cuba.
Another 12 member of the team work with the East Timorese students in Cuba.
Almost 500 young East Timorese study medicine in Cuba with the first 20 now in their third year.
When he first saw the emaciated new arrivals from far off Southeast Asia, President Fidel Castro quipped that they would have to be first “fattened” before they could be expected to study successfully.
The programme was initiated by East Timor’s former Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, and his successor, Jose Ramos Horta, told a meeting with relatives of the students in Dili earlier this month that the cooperation and solidarity symbolised by the Cuban health workers was a beautiful gesture of friendship with the people of East Timor.
“Cuba has given the opportunity to these youth to prepare themselves, be better men and women, and return to their homeland in 2012 to work for the welfare and health of the people of Timor Leste,” he said.
Cuba has physicians working in 68 countries, says a member of his country’s management team for the East Timor programme, anaesthetist Dr. Eries Ramirez Salomon.
“We will stay as long as the people of the country need us.
“But our programme will ensure that in ten to 12 years most of the doctors will be from East Timor.
“Our plan is to stay here until the East Timor Government says we are no longer required and our goal is to provide medical treatment for all of the people of East Timor and to prevent disease.”
Dr Salomon and three of his senior colleagues, programme — deputy co-ordinator, Dr Roberto Fernandez, the dean of the Medical Science Faculty at East Timor’s National University, Dr Marcia Cuervo Calvino, with co-ordinator of the Cuban nurses in East Timor, Javier Garrido Guerraro, who previously served in Botswana, as interpreter — and I have met at the small, neat house in the grounds of the Dili Hospital occupied by the Cubans where they proudly explain their programme to me.
In keeping with the portraits of revolutionary Che Guevara that look down from the walls, a computer linked to the internet via broadband in the corner and sipping excellent coffee — “a present from Cuba” — they provide “collective” response to my questions.
Were they shocked by the primitiveness of medical facilities in East Timor, I ask.
After 45 years of the United States economic blockade we are accustomed to hardship, they reply.
They also explain that the principal threats to the health of East Timor’s mostly rural and slum-dwelling population are malaria, dengue fever, respiratory infection, tuberculosis and malnutrition.
Data about the severity of these maladies is not available but the Cubans are developing a variety of programmes to reduce the prevalence of these common diseases in East Timor, says Dr Roberto Fernandez.
But the most important task is eradication of the mosquito habitat.
The Cubans also teach the action needed for preventative health — information now crucial to the thousands still living in the capital’s refugee camps — where many of the Cubans are now working.
Cuban medicine throughout the world has two major objectives, they say.
To prevent disease and pay particular attention to the patients.
“We are doing both in East Timor and all the members of our group have the same tasks,” says Dr Salomon.
The team [presents] a comprehensive collection of statistics as proof of their success.
For example, the child mortality rate where members of the Cuban team work is 27.5 for each 1,000 live births — more than 50 percent less than elsewhere .
Maternity mortality is 175/100,000; elsewhere the figure is between 600 and 800 for each 100,000.
But myriad specialist services ranging from essential gynaecology to orthopedics and pathological anatomy to forensic medicine and dermatology to psychiatry and dentistry are also being provided.
The team has done more than 4000 surgeries in East Timor and these includes the first Caesarean delivery at Oecusse — the first such operation in the district.
The Cuban government pays all the team’s living costs, including travel despite the blockade by successive United States administrations.
# posted by Lian Maubere : Monday, November 27, 2006
AIM (Moçambique) - Friday 24/11/2006
Maputo, 24 Nov (AIM) - The former prime minister of East Timor, Mari
Alkatiri, on a private visit to Mozambique, has accused the
Australian government of interference in Timorese internal affairs.
Despite the fact that he leads the Timorese liberation movement
Fretilin (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor), which
remains the country's largest and most popular political party,
Alkatiri was forced to resign earlier this year in what has been
described as "a constitutional coup d'etat".
The immediate cause of the violence that wracked East Timor in late
May was a mutiny by Timorese troops who had been sacked from the
armed forces and were led by a man who had played no role in the
struggle against Indonesian occupation, but spent the years of war in
comfortable exile in Australia.
The violence was used as an excuse to destabilise the Timorese
government and remove Alkatiri, bitterly disliked in the Australian
establishment because of his tough (and successful) negotiating
stance over the oil reserves under the Timor Sea.
Alkatiri lived in exile in Maputo for many years, and has returned to
see old friends. In an interview published in Friday's issue of the
independent weekly "Savana", Alkatiri stressed his belief that there
had been an Australian hand in forcing his resignation.
Over the previous year and a half, he noted, the Australian media
"launched a deliberate campaign to denigrate the image of the
Timorese government and of Fretilin in general, and my image in
particular".
At the height of the May/June crisis, Australia's right-wing prime
minister John Howard, Alkatiri added, "was the only political leader
who declared that he wanted me to resign, in a clear act of
interference in the internal affairs of Timor".
Clearly the oil negotiations were a weighty factor behind this. "The
negotiations were tough", said Alkatiri, "and I strongly defended
Timorese interests. In one block, we got rights to 90 per cent, when
initially we had only been allocated 50 per cent, and in another we
got 50 per cent instead of the initial offer of 18 per cent".
Asked about the role of the Catholic Church, the religion followed by
most Timorese, Alkatiri replied "I don't much like to talk about the
church as an institution, but it's a fact that part of the hierarchy
was militantly opposed to the government".
"I have no doubts in stating that the Catholic Church played the role
of an opposition, organising demonstrations for two or three weeks",
he added.
A complicating factor is that Alkatiri himself is not a christian,
but comes from a moslem family. "I admit that the fact that I'm a
moslem, in an overwhelmingly catholic country, may be difficult for
some catholic sectors to accept", he said.
As for the trumped-up charges that Alkatiri had distributed guns to
civilians, the UN's commission of inquiry had found no proof, but
nonetheless recommended continued investigation.
Alkatiri was not surprised, and regarded this as a way to save the
face of those Timorese politicians, notably President Xanana Gusmao,
who had forced his resignation. "The way the UN report was presented
shows clearly they don't want to affectthose in power", he said. For
if the UN had clearly stated there was no basis for the accusations
against him, "then what would the position of the President have
looked like, since he asked for my resignation precisely because of
those charges ?"
Alkatiri dismissed rumours that he had come to Mozambique to escape
Timorese justice. He had told the Attorney-General in advance of his
travel plans, and he had given him his contact numbers.
Furthermore, Alkatiri remains in regular contact with the man who
replaced him as Prime Minister, Jose Ramos-Horta. "In Timor, we meet
once a week", he said. "When I'm abroad, we speak regularly on the
phone".
Fretilin had given Ramos-Horta's government its backing. Ramos-Horta
had inherited the Alkatiri government's ambitious plans, but Alkatiri
thought he had been "unable to define clearly the difficulties and
tackle them frontally".
In particular, Ramos-Horta had not re-established law and order, and
the authority of the state, or solved the problems of those displaced
in the May-June fighting. "That should have been a priority, and it
wasn't", said Alkatiri.
He was sharply critical of Gusmao. Although he did not believe the
President was initially involved in the plans to topple the Alkatiri
government, he came on board later, and showed "the unjustifiable
hatred he has for Fretilin".
Alkatiri admitted the key role that Gusmao played in the resistance
to Indonesian occupation, following the death of Fretilin's first
leader, Nicolau Lobato. Gusmao introduced a new style of leadership,
very much centred on his own person - and in the dark years of the
1980s, Alkatiri admitted, this worked and the resistance survived.
Gusmao was the de facto leader of Fretilin, even when he formally
separated himself from the party.
But when independence came, the situation was radically changed.
Fretilin reorganised, and Gusmao was outside of the party structures.
"President Xanana's great problem is that he has lost the leadership
of Fretilin", said Alkatiri. "You can't try to lead a party if you
are outside of it. Only those who are prepared to subordinate
themselves to Fretilin structures can lead Fretilin. What the
President wants is, at the least, irrational. That was where our
quarrels began".
Alkatiri said he did not want to be Fretilin's candidate for prime
minister at the next elections. Instead, he would prefer to work to
build up the party.
# posted by Lian Maubere : Monday, November 27, 2006
