Macau reforça autonomia ao servir de plataforma entre China e lusofonia - Moisés Fernandes

Macau, China, 08 Set (Lusa) - O papel de plataforma de Macau na ligação entre a China e os países de língua portuguesa contribui para o “reforço da autonomia” do território dentro da grande China, considerou o académico português Moisés Fernandes.

Em declarações à Agência Lusa, Moisés Fernandes, presidente do Instituto Confúcio e que hoje proferiu em Macau uma conferência sobre o papel do território como plataforma de ligação económica e comercial entre a China e a lusofonia, considerou que o trabalho do território lhe confere um maior peso na política chinesa.

“Este papel de ligação, que Macau já desempenhou no passado e que desapareceu com o fim do império português, permite ao território assumir um papel na política externa da China, centrada nos países de língua portuguesa”, disse.

E é nesse papel de ligação ao mercado externo, que Moisés Fernandes recordou não ser uma competência local, já que a diplomacia e a defesa estão a cargo do Governo Central, que está o reforço da autonomia “através da conquista de uma posição internacional”.

“Não sendo Macau uma praça financeira com a dimensão internacional de Hong Kong, ao desempenhar este papel de plataforma entre a China e os países de língua portuguesa, através do fórum, reforça o seu peso político quer interna quer externamente”, disse.

O académico considerou também que o fórum de Macau pode “ajudar a levar São Tomé e Príncipe para uma relação política com a China” já que aquele país africano, que mantém relações diplomáticas com Taiwan, é um observador do fórum de Macau e não está excluído da componente comercial da estratégia chinesa.

“Além de Angola, não podemos descurar que São Tomé e Príncipe e a Guiné-Bissau são também países onde existe petróleo”, afirmou.

Com um crescimento económico que Moisés Fernandes classificou de “avassalador”, a China precisa de recursos naturais que possui mas que “não são suficientes para o seu desenvolvimento”.

“Então compra ao exterior, aproveita Macau para a sua ligação com a lusofonia - principalmente o Brasil e África - e proporciona pacotes de ajuda excelentes como empréstimos a juros mais baixos e investimentos em infra-estruturas que em África são muito necessários”, explicou.

Sem estruturas no país que proporcionem a formação dos quadros necessários a dominarem o português e o chinês, a China recorre a Macau e dá à cidade a oportunidade de reassumir o seu papel de ponte.

“Ao contrário do espanhol, que é ensinado em 68 departamentos na China, o português só é ensinado em quatro universidades, o que não dá resposta às necessidades do Estado”, disse.

Moisés Fernandes considerou que “enquanto a China mantiver taxas de crescimentos elevados, o papel de Macau continuará a ser reforço enquanto plataforma”, mas haverá, na lusofonia, outras alianças que podem originar ganhos maiores.

“Em Angola, a China vai buscar petróleo, mas Angola é longe e os riscos de segurança do transporte do petróleo e a instabilidade política no percurso até à China são elevados e por isso Timor-Leste pode ser uma alternativa”, referiu.

O investigador acrescentou que está a ser trabalhada “uma convergência de agenda política entre Portugal, Indonésia, Malásia e a China para mitigar a hegemonia australiana em Timor-Leste, abrindo caminho a Pequim para aceder aos recursos naturais do país”.

“Não haverá nenhum acordo escrito mas uma convergência de agendas centrada nas questões económicas”, disse, salientando que este será um “trabalho de paciência” e que é feito com pequenos passos, como a abertura de escolas onde se pode aprender mandarim, como hoje acontece em Díli, e outros investimentos chineses que estão a ser realizados no país.

“Depois não nos podemos esquecer que a todos estes países interessa diminuir o peso australiano em Timor-Leste”, concluiu.



JCS.

Lusa/fim

GOVERNO ESPANHOL AJUDA CUBA APÓS FURACÃO GUSTAV

HAVANA, 5 SET (ANSA) - O governo espanhol enviou hoje um avião a Cuba com US$ 82 mil em ajuda para amenizar os danos provocados após a passagem do furacão Gustav. A ajuda se soma às contribuições da Rússia, China, Timor Leste e Cruz Vermelha.

A carga de 15 toneladas inclui geradores elétricos, material para abrigos, kits para higiene, mosquiteiros e depósitos de água, informou em um comunicado a embaixada da Espanha em Havana.
O envio de ajuda, procedente do Centro Logístico Humanitário de Cooperação Espanhola na América Latina, no Panamá, é conseqüência do acordo fechado durante a reunião da Comissão Mista de Cooperação entre Espanha e Cuba, revelou o comunicado.
"Temos escutado as necessidades e respondido com rapidez", disse aos jornalistas o embaixador espanhol em Cuba, Carlos Alonso, segundo publicou a agência cubana Prensa Latina.
Este é o primeiro de vários envios de ajuda, acrescentou o diplomata, que anunciou um programa de reconstrução de escolas na Ilha da Juventude.
A chegada da missão espanhola aconteceu um dia depois que dois aviões do governo russo aterrissaram carregados de tendas, materiais de construção, camas, cobertores e cabos elétricos, segundo afirmou Prensa Latina.
O governo chinês divulgou nesta sexta-feira a doação de US$ 300 mil, enquanto que a Cruz Vermelha da China entregará outros US$ 50 mil à sua correspondente no país, disseram fontes da embaixada cubana em Pequim, citadas pela Prensa Latina.

O governo do Timor Leste -- cujo presidente, José Ramos Horta, realiza nestes dias uma visita oficial a Cuba, onde hoje foi recebido pelo presidente Raúl Castro -- afirmou que vai doar US$ 500 mil.

Gustav, com ventos de até 340 km/hr, é considerado o furacão mais potente que passou por Cuba nos últimos 50 anos. Não provocou mortes, mas na Ilha da Juventude e em Pinar Del Rio destruiu mais de 100 mil habitações, escolas, hospitais, sistemas energéticos e telefônicos, e terras para cultivo. (ANSA)

Austrália se prejudica ao rejeitar timorenses, diz assessor

Dili, 4 set (Lusa) - A recusa da Austrália em criar programa para trabalhadores timorenses "fragiliza a segurança" do Timor Leste e "custará milhões" à economia australiana, afirmou nesta quinta-feira Kevin Austin, assessor de Desenvolvimento Humano e de Segurança de Dili.

Recentemente, o primeiro-ministro australiano, Kevin Rudd, rejeitou a criação de um programa de trabalho temporário que havia sido solicitado pelo premiê timorense, Xanana Gusmão.

Austin disse à Agência Lusa que a recusa do programa-piloto para trabalhadores "não responde às necessidades imediatas de mão-de-obra da Austrália nem à crise da juventude timorense”.

O governo timorense esperava ter assinado um acordo com a Austrália durante a visita oficial de Xanana Gusmão ao país, na semana passada. O anúncio da recusa australiana foi feito por Kevin Rudd após o encontro com o premiê - decisão que Austin considera, “no mínimo, mal informada”.

O programa-piloto, apresentado há três semanas ao governo australiano, pretendia responder a "uma escassez sem precedentes de mão-de-obra" no noroeste e norte da Austrália, em províncias com um crescimento econômico acelerado, explicou Kevin Austin à Lusa. A idéia era suprir a falta de trabalhadores para atividades como horticultura, turismo, saúde, reflorestamento, aqüicultura e infra-estrura.

Do lado timorense, o projeto seria uma oportunidade de emprego e formação profissional, desenvolvimento de capacidade industrial e redução da pobreza.

"Além da diplomacia, sei que o primeiro-ministro Xanana Gusmão, os ministros, o presidente [timorense, José Ramos-Horta], os parceiros da Austrália Ocidental, do Território do Norte e do Estado de Victória, e os governos locais e comunidades de acolhimento estão chocados e desiludidos" com a recusa de Rudd, afirmou Kevin Austin em comunicado divulgado em Dili nesta quinta.

Kevin Austin, que desde 1999 desempenhou várias funções no Timor Leste, representa atualmente a organização sem fins lucrativos Human Securities International (HSI).

Segundo o assessor, no início de 2008, a HSI colaborou com o governo timorense na identificação de "soluções práticas" para garantir a melhoria da segurança e ajudar a desenvolver "um país frágil, com uma 'bolha' de juventude em crescimento, desempregada e pobre".

Na última década, vários conflitos graves no Timor Leste foram provocados ou agravados pela existência dessa população "frustrada", "com uma paleta muito grande de inseguranças do ponto de vista humano que abrem a porta à manipulação por grupos políticos e criminosos", declarou Kevin Austin.

Vários países insulares do Pacífico participam de programas de trabalho sazonal na Austrália.

ONU quer polícia timorense responsável pela segurança do país em 2009

Publico.pt

Missão vai monitorizar a transição

04.09.2008 - 14h38 Lusa
A missão das Nações Unidas em Timor Leste espera que a força policial do país fique a cargo da segurança de Timor por volta de Maio de 2009. Este ano a ONU forneceu 1500 agentes para apoiar os 3000 polícias de Timor nas medidas de segurança e no treino policial.

“Vamos ficar juntos com a polícia timorense para acompanhar a transição e dar assistência durante o primeiro passo para a autonomia da polícia”, disse o comissário da middão da ONU Juan Carlos Arevalo, em Díli. A missão vai aconselhar, dar treino e monitorizar o comportamento das forças policiais timorenses, acrescentou o comissário.

Desde os confrontos de 2006 que a paz em Timor tem sido frágil. A 11 de Fevereiro de 2008, o presidente Ramos-Horta foi baleado e ferido gravemente quando estava em sua casa, em Díli. No mesmo dia o primeiro-ministro Xanana Gusmão foi também alvo de um disparo, mas escapou ileso.

O valor externo da Língua PortuguesaAgualusa no Parlamento Europeu

NOTA DE IMPRENSA

Gabinete do Dep. José RIBEIRO E CASTRODelegação do CDS/Partido Popular no Parlamento Europeu

O escritor angolano José Eduardo Agualusa é o convidado de honra do eurodeputado José Ribeiro e Castro no debate que este organiza, na próxima semana, no Parlamento Europeu, em Bruxelas, sob o título “África, Brasil e a Língua Portuguesa”.

A sessão, marcada para a próxima quinta-feira, 11 de Setembro, pelas 10:00 horas, insere-se no contexto da Semana Africana que o Parlamento Europeu realiza entre 8 e 12 de Setembro, em Bruxelas e conta com o patrocínio do grupo PPE/DE.

Recorda-se que Ribeiro e Castro contribuiu para introduzir no debate das instituições europeias sobre o multilinguismo o conceito de Línguas Europeias Globais, de que o português é a terceira em número de falantes a nível mundial, à frente do francês.

Nesse mesmo contexto, o deputado democrata-cristão tem defendido persistentemente o conceito “o Português, língua da Europa”, procurando salvaguardar e valorizar, no quadro da União Europeia, o estatuto da língua portuguesa enquanto língua de comunicação universal. Depois de um primeiro êxito pontual em 2003, importantes emendas acrescentadas, em 2006, por proposta do deputado democrata-cristão, ao relatório parlamentar sobre “a estratégia europeia no multilinguismo”, abriram novas portas nessa direcção, decorrendo, nesta altura, um diálogo político com a Comissão Europeia, que procura alcançar o reconhecimento expresso da mais-valia específica das Línguas Europeias Globais, entre as quais o português.

A sessão do próximo dia 11 de Setembro visa aprofundar esse conhecimento no quadro das instituições europeias, pondo em evidência as virtualidades próprias da Língua Portuguesa enquanto língua comum partilhada com o Brasil e vários países de África.

Além de José Eduardo Agualusa, participam como oradores convidados Eddy Stols, professor catedrático da Universidade de Lovaina, e Harrie Lemmens, tradutor profissional. O professor Eddy Stols é um apaixonado da cultura luso-brasileira e um profundo conhecedor dos seus traços, enquanto Harrie Lemmens tem divulgado autores de língua portuguesa nos espaços flamengo e holandês.

Para mais informações:Gabinete do Deputado José RIBEIRO E CASTRO

Tel.: +32 (2) 2847783Fax: +32 (2) 2849783Email: jose.ribeiroecastro-assistant@europarl.europa.eu Portal: www.ribeiroecastro.eu

East Timor: Who shot J R Horta?

By Simon Roughneen

Asia Times 4.9.08

DILI - East Timor's post-independence politics have confounded outside observers, and for the most part the Timorese themselves. Simultaneously transparent and opaque, what was thought to be a mono-cultural, impoverished, Western-backed, state-building poster-child has morphed into a divided half-island, with obscure tribal-linguistic rivalries once considered dormant since stirred by political rivalries and manifested in quasi-mysterious gangs.

The Timorese political elite remain at odds along familiar regime lines, demarcations so old that these rivalries were, broadly speaking, established when Richard Nixon was still in the White House and more sharply honed in the 1980s - when soap operaaddicts spent months wondering who shot J R Ewing, the fictional Texan oil mogul in Dallas.

But East Timor may now have its own Watergate, or at least a watershed political moment depending on which version of the events of February 11 finally emerges as the truth. That day, Dili's usual idyllic dawn was shattered by shots ringing out along the seaside valleys just a few miles east of the city, close to the white sand beaches favored by Timor's affluent expatriate community.

In what was regarded as either failed assassination attempts on President Jose Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, or perhaps instead a meeting-gone-awry between Ramos-Horta and former Timorese soldier Alfredo Reinado, the shoot-outs put the president in the hospital for two months and left rebel leader-cum-assassin Reinado in an early grave.

Reinado led the Petitioners, a group of disenchanted soldiers from the western half of the country who felt discriminated against by army top brass from the country's eastern regions. Prior to being dismissed from the armed services, he was pivotal in a chain of violent events in 2006 that led to over 100,000 Timorese being driven from their homes and the resignation of then-prime minister Mari Alkatiri. The army split, the police force disintegrated and Reinado took to the hills.

Some of Reinado's colleagues that fateful February morning have offered confusing and contradictory versions of what led up to the incident and what finally happened when their flamboyant front man died. Ramos-Horta himself has revised his initial recollection - that one of the rebels, Marcel Caetano, fired the bullets that almost killed him - after visiting the imprisoned would-be assassin in Dili's Becora jailhouse.

So who really shot Ramos-Horta and why? Considering the political machinations that preceded the shootings, it now seems unlikely it was Reinado who pulled the trigger. Ramos-Horta had repeatedly offered olive branches to the flashy rent-a-quote rebel, who had been dismissed by the Australian-led international forces and the ruling Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) coalition headed by Ramos-Horta's ally Gusmao, as a de facto criminal with no political status.

Another rumor doing the rounds was that, behind the scenes, Ramos-Horta had given up on the recalcitrant fugitive and that Reinado had set out in a huff for Dili to confront the president. That would have been suicidal unless it was followed by a coup attempt, hence the apparent simultaneous hit on Gusmao led by Gastinho Salsinha, Reinado's deputy. However, that too now seems unlikely given the lack of men and hardware at Reinado's disposal that morning.

In any case, Ramos-Horta survived, Reinado died, and the political fallout was until now minimal. That was until The Australian newspaper revealed it had reviewed the top-secret report drafted by Muhumad Nurul Islam, Timor's leading forensic pathologist, saying it indicated that Reinado and his sidekick Leopoldinho Exposto were shot at close or point-blank range in an execution style that does not tally with the prevailing shoot-out version of events - namely, that Reinado was taken out at a range of 10 meters or so by one of Ramos-Horta's snipers.

Nurul reported that Reinado had blackening and burning around each of his four bullet wounds and said he had been shot with a high-velocity rifle "at close range". Nurul added that Exposto was shot squarely in the back of his head, also at close range. David Ranson from the Victoria Institute of Forensics was quoted by The Australian saying that the blackening and burning mentioned in Nurul's report only appears when a gun is fired at almost point-blank range.

Ramos-Horta later raged in a Timorese newspaper against The Australian newspaper and the forensic scientists that the newspaper consulted. Attorney General Longinus Montero disputed The Australian version of events, telling reporters in Dili that "It's not right, that information isn't right. The case is still under investigation." He added that the results could not yet be made public.

Apart from the apparent contradictions, much of what apparently transpired on February 11 seems strange. Most glaring was why, with gunfire ringing around his house, Ramos-Horta returned home, or more to the point, why his security detail let him do so. Much has been made of the delay in the army and police response to the shooting, and it appears that Reinado's body was moved around the crime scene, and that police present even answered his mobile phone as he lay dead.

Confusion and conspiracy
Some of Timor's other political grandees appear set to capitalize on the confusion. Mario Carrascalao, a key member of the ruling coalition, said on August 17 that "we still don't know what happened". "For me, all the stories that have been told here - I don't trust them," he said. He called for the immediate release of the prosecutor-general's report into the attacks and the establishment of an independent inquiry into "what happened and more importantly why it happened".

Prime Minister Gusmao has so far resisted calls for any independent inquiry. Before the February shootings, Ramos-Horta's house stood alone at the corner of the route heading uphill from Dili and east to Timor's second city Baucau, no more than a few feet from the roadside, and with some of the gardens easily visible from inside cars and trucks winding uphill to breathtaking views of the Wetar Strait.

The standard version of events, summed up by James Dunn in a paper written for the Australian Human rights Council, took a best-case view that Reinado did not actually intend to kill Ramos-Horta during the fateful encounter: "Almost certainly it was a botched attempt by the rebel leader, Alfredo Reinado, to corner the president and seek further assurances that the proposed surrender conditions, culminating in his pardon, would in fact be carried out."

The report continued: "The plan went tragically wrong because Reinado's target was not there. The President was not at home, but out on a very early beach walk. Reinado's men disarmed the guards and occupied the residence grounds, but two soldiers turned up unexpectedly and shot Reinado and one of his men at what was apparently point blank range. Hearing the shooting, Ramos-Horta hurried back to the residence where he was shot by one of Reinado's men, a rebel enraged at the killing of their leader. It is likely that this angry reaction caused another rebel party to fire on Prime Minister Xanana some time later."

Still, the rumor mill went into overdrive after the shootings. Questions have arisen about the provenance of a US$700,000 bank account in Australia that Reinado allegedly had access to. Other sketchy details surround the links between the rebels and Joao Tavares, who was once described by the UN as the top militia commander in East Timor in 1999. Three rebels were arrested in April in Indonesia-ruled West Timor while staying at his personal residence.

Reinado had a fake Indonesian identification on his person when shot and, bizarrely, Ramos-Horta later railed against Desi Anwar, a well-known Indonesian broadcast journalist who interviewed the fugitive in Indonesia in 2007, for facilitating Reinado's clandestine cross-border travels. In January, an obscure group linked to Reinado known as the Movement for National Unity and Justice (MUNJ) withdrew from moribund talks between the government and the rebels, a failure that Ramos-Horta and Gusmao blamed on Reinado's girlfriend, Angie Pires.

Depending on which rebel account you believe, however, MUNJ representatives were with Reinado right up to February 10, allegedly supplying the vehicles that took the rebels to the capital's outskirts the day of the reputed assassination attempAnother notable and as-yet-unexplained detail emerged from a contact number found on the dead Reinado's mobile phone under the name "Hercul". That's led some to believe the Jakarta-based, Timor-born Hercules Rozario Marca was in contact with Reinado prior to the events at Ramos-Horta's residence. Weeks later two of the rebels linked to Reinado were arrested at Marca's home.

Marca visited Dili in late January and met with Reinado, according to Gusmao's AMP coalition partner and former East Timor governor Mario Carrascalao. During his January visit, Marca also reportedly discussed investment opportunities with various Timorese officials, including both Ramos-Horta and Gusmao, according to the Sun Herald.

With government approval, Marca is now primed to invest in a new swimming pool along Dili's docklands, across from the Parliament House, a remarkable rehabilitation for a man that once allegedly provided muscle to Jakarta's attempts to cow East Timor's independence activists. He has joined other former Jakarta businessmen once linked to Indonesian strongman Suharto who are now cutting government-brokered business deals in Dili, including one for a new casino.

Some say it is no coincidence that those deals were completed around the time an Indonesian-Timorese Commission fudged issues of justice and accountability for crimes committed during Jakarta's brutal quarter-century occupation of the former Portuguese colony, to the chagrin of many Timorese.

The Commission on Truth and Friendship (CTF) was established in 2005 by the Timorese and Indonesian governments to examine violence perpetrated by Jakarta's troops and its Timorese proxies during the 1999 violence that marred the vote for independence from Indonesia.

However, the CTF had no powers to prosecute, prompting criticism that it served to whitewash atrocities. Its final report, issued on July 15, concluded that Indonesia also had responsibility for gross human rights violations, such as murder, rape, torture, illegal detention and forced mass deportations, that were committed by militias with the support and participation of Indonesian institutions and their members.

While Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono expressed his "deepest regret" for the victims, he quickly dismissed the notion that those responsible should be brought to justice.

After the April shooting, before being released from hospital, Ramos-Horta said Indonesian officers should "come clean" and acknowledge their responsibility for 1999 violence, and that both countries would need to read the commission's report calmly and "see whether we need to take further steps to address the events of 1999".

Earlier, the apparently traumatized Ramos-Horta had visions of a crowd trying to suffocate him, and separately he alleged Indonesian involvement in the assassination attempt on his life. Yudhoyono rebuked that claim, and by the time the CTF report came out Ramos-Horta had completely changed his tune, saying that the victims' legacy would be used to build stronger links between the two countries and that Timor would not be seeking an international tribunal to try those responsible. He was joined by Gusmao in declaring, "We are determined to bring a closure to a chapter of our recent past."

Dormant lightning rod
Reinado's cult-like status led some to fear he could be seen as a martyr and his death become a lightening rod for political discontent. An Australian-led attempt to apprehend him at his southern redoubt in Same in 2007 led to riots in Dili, as his supporters torched buildings and cars. But Reinado's cause seemed to die with its leader, at least in the public eye, although the east-west regional divide inside the Timorese army that prompted Reinado to rebel in the first place remains unsolved.

With illiteracy rates at 60% and child malnutrition 40%, many people are wondering when Timor's some $3 billion in oil revenues, accrued since the establishment of a national petroleum fund in 2005, will start to filter down to the impoverished grassroots. East Timor is listed by the UN as the poorest country per capita in the Asia-Pacific region. More political strife means that potentially lucrative tourism from Australia seems unlikely to take off anytime soon, despite Timor being a closer, cleaner and relatively untouched alternative to Bali, a line Gusmao peddled while on an official visit to Australia last week.

Instead, soaring food and fuel prices are making life even harder for Timor's poor. An official move to give 100,000 hectares of land to the production of bio-fuel crops in a furtive deal with the Indonesian company GT Leste Biotech irked many, not least because it was brokered in January but did not become public until June. That controversial deal with the island state's former occupier was followed by the arrest of around 60 students protesting a decision to buy cars for each of the Timor government's 65 MPs.

The run of government slip-ups only adds to the growing divide between East Timor's politicians and its people, particularly among the restless and unemployed youth. How more contradictory versions of Ramos-Horta's shooting will affect perceptions remains to be seen and reactions will be hard to predict.

Timor has confounded outside observers since independence, with few anticipating the 2006 security meltdown, for example, and others following up with doomsday predictions for the 2007 elections, which in actuality passed off peacefully. What is clear, however, is that since Reinado's demise and the dissolution of his rebellion, the 100,000 internally displaced people have started to return home.

Yet Timor's political top brass have seen their popularity steadily decline in the years since independence. Ramos-Horta attributed Gusmao's disappointing showing in the 2007 parliamentary elections as due to the former fighters "losing touch with the people". FRETILIN, the socialists now in opposition and who were at odds with Gusmao since the early days of Indonesian occupation, saw their vote halved in the same 2007 vote.

Months before the disputed shoot-out, Ramos-Horta did much better in securing around 70% of the votes in the second presidential poll, albeit in a straight run-off against a weak FRETILIN candidate. Now military roadblocks mark the road on both sides of the once-popular president's home, where before the February shootout the Nobel Peace Prize laureate often went for his early morning jog greeting fishermen and bar owners with an easy and secure familiarity.

Simon Roughneen is a roving freelance journalist. He has reported from Africa, Southeast Asia the Middle East and Pakistan.

President of East Timor Arrives in Cuba on Wednesday

HAVANA, Cuba, Sept 3 (acn) The president of East Timor, Jose Ramos Horta, arrives in Cuba on Wednesday for an official visit at the invitation of his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro.
Cuban News Agency

According to a note published on Granma news daily, the visit will contribute to strengthening the existing fraternal and cooperation ties between the two countries.

Currently, 231 Cuban doctors and other health professionals are working in Timor-Leste, 36 professors serve as advisors to that country’s literacy campaign, and nearly 700 Timor-Leste young people are studying medicine in Cuba.

During his stay in Cuba, Ramos Horta will hold official talks with Raul Castro and with other government authorities. He will also visit places of economic and historic interest.

Ramos Horta, 58, was the permanent representative to the United Nations of the East Timor independence movement from 1975-1999. He was elected president in 2007. In 1996 he received the Nobel Peace Prize along with Bishop Carlos Belo, an East Timor religious leader.

East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century in 2002. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor and is located about 640 km (400 miles) northwest of Darwin, Australia.

Leaked autopsy report shows alleged “coup” leader Reinado shot at point-blank range

World Socialist Web Site
WSWS : News & Analysis : Asia : East Timor


By Patrick O’Connor
2 September 2008

Two leaked autopsy reports—which have been published in full on the Wikileaks web site—definitively refute the official version of the events of February 11 in East Timor, according to which former major Alfredo Reinado had engaged in a shoot-out with President Jose Ramos Horta’s security forces while attempting to storm the president’s residence. This was supposedly part of either a coup attempt or planned assassination of both Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao. The available evidence now strongly points to the likelihood—raised by the World Socialist Web Site from the very outset—that Reinado was set up and lured to Dili in order to be murdered.

Reinado’s autopsy report indicates that he died after being shot through the eye at near point-blank range. According to a forensic expert consulted by the Australian newspaper, the autopsy’s finding of “burning/blackening of the surrounding skin” to each of Reinado’s four wounds (to the eye, chest, neck, and hand) means that he must have been shot from a range of less than 30 centimetres. The report on Reinado’s colleague Leopoldino Exposto found that he was killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head, also by a “high-velocity rifle fired at close range”.

Reinado and his men were heavily armed when they entered Ramos Horta’s house in the early morning of February 11. The autopsies reported that Reinado was wearing a green vest with 12 magazines containing a total of “347 live ammunitions” in the pockets. Exposto had one magazine with 39 live ammunitions in his vest, as well as a bag with another 98 live ammunitions. It is inconceivable that Reinado—who had received militarily training in Australia—could have led his men into a hostile operation against Ramos Horta but was then somehow shot at point-blank range while not a single presidential guard was wounded.

Reinado’s men, who have since been arrested, have all sworn that they understood that they had an appointment to meet with the president. Several civilian witnesses have now backed this testimony.

For months after the former major’s killing and Ramos Horta’s wounding the Australian press echoed the official line presented by both the Timorese and Australian governments. Deeply sceptical statements issued by a number of senior political figures in Dili went unreported, most notably those of Fretilin leader and former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, who declared he had photographic proof that the alleged attack on Gusmao’s vehicle had been staged.

The official version of events is now so implausible and discredited that even the Australian media feel obligated to change tack.

After reviewing the autopsy evidence, the Australian’s Paul Toohey concluded on August 13: “What is certain is that the events inside the villa that morning are not as clear as previously presented, and may have involved Reinado and Exposto either walking into a trap or being held at close quarters before being shot.” A later article in the same newspaper added: “Many East Timorese believe the whole thing was a set-up; that rebel leader Alfredo Reinado was invited down to Dili to be killed, to end the two-year stand-off in which he and his rebel band remained armed and roaming the hills in the country’s west.”

An article published in the Fairfax press on August 19 cast serious doubt on the earlier allegation that one of Reinado’s men, Marcel Caetano, had shot President Ramos Horta. “Investigators now believe the shooter was wearing a different uniform from that of Reinado’s men—a uniform gang members used to wear,” the story revealed. “The revelation will fuel fresh speculation in Dili that Reinado was lured to Mr Ramos Horta’s house, where gunmen were waiting.”

The series of leaked evidence and news reports that has emerged in the past fortnight raise the obvious question: if, as appears increasingly certain, Reinado was lured to Ramos Horta’s residence to be killed, who set him up and why? But this question has not been raised by any section of the Australian media. Even more astonishingly, not a single question about the events of February 11 and their aftermath was put to either Gusmao or Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during a joint press conference they held in Canberra last Monday.

Gusmao and the 2006 crisis

The new evidence points to the possibility that Prime Minister Gusmao, or forces closely aligned with him, were responsible for setting up Reinado’s assassination. There is no question that he was among those with the most to gain from Reinado’s death.

Just weeks before his death, the former major released a statement accusing Gusmao of directly instigating the 2006 split in the Timorese military which precipitated widespread violence and culminated in the deployment of hundreds of Australian troops, followed by the resignation of Fretilin Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

There was already substantial evidence pointing to Gusmao’s provocative role in the 2006 crisis. Reinado’s statement, however, indicated that the prime minister had not merely exploited the military split for his own ends but had actively worked to provoke the violence in order to bring down the Fretilin administration. The widely circulated DVD in which these allegations were made also included Reinado’s threat to reveal more information about Gusmao’s actions.
Reinado was killed before he had the opportunity to release further information. But even his initial allegations had seriously destabilised Gusmao’s already unstable coalition government.
By early February, President Ramos Horta had publicly indicated that he agreed with Fretilin’s demand for fresh elections and the formation of a new administration. In a meeting held in Dili on February 7—just four days before Reinado was shot dead—Ramos Horta convened a meeting of Fretilin and government parliamentarians to try to reach an agreement for new elections.

With Gusmao strongly opposed and insisting that his government could continue to govern, the meeting ended inconclusively. Further meetings were planned but never held, due to the February 11 violence, after which Gusmao announced a “state of siege” and claimed emergency authoritarian powers.

Ramos Horta’s apparent rapprochement with Fretilin and moves against Gusmao coincided with the president’s attempts to finalise a “surrender” deal with Reinado. The president met with the “rebel” soldier on January 13 and offered to amnesty the murder charges against Reinado (stemming from his 2006 attacks on government forces) if he first disarmed and submitted to house arrest. These negotiations again point to the absence of any logical motive for Reinado to lead an armed attack against Ramos Horta.

Investigation blocked, evidence corrupted

In the aftermath of the February 11 events, Prime Minister Gusmao has blocked the formation of an international inquiry, despite the Timorese parliament demanding one. As a result, the sole investigation underway is headed by the country’s prosecutor-general, Longuinhos Monteiro, who has little credibility in Dili. An earlier UN report into the 2006 crisis accused Monteiro of blindly following Gusmao and concluded that he did not “function independently from the state of East Timor”.

According to a leaked UN report on Monteiro’s investigation into Reinado’s death and Ramos Horta’s wounding, the National Investigation Department has been subjected to “political and military interference” and a lack of cooperation. An Associated Press report added: “Poor handling of evidence—including the weapons used by the rebels—has also botched the investigation. A source close to the investigation said the F-FDTL [Timorese Defence Force] soldiers guarding the president’s home took Reinado’s cell phone off his body, and continued to receive and make calls for days after his death, before handing it over to investigators.”

This corruption of critical evidence, combined with Gusmao’s veto of an international investigation, may result in the exact course of events leading up to Reinado’s death and Ramos Horta’s wounding never being known. Monteiro’s final report will likely be a whitewash.

Serious questions have been raised by Portuguese journalist Felícia Cabrita about Albino Assis, one of Ramos Horta’s military security personnel. In a report published in the weekly Sol newspaper in March, Cabrita suggested that Assis betrayed both Reinado and Ramos Horta.

Phone records indicate that Assis and Reinado had maintained frequent contact in the period leading up to the February 11 violence. The Portuguese report also alleged that Assis contacted Salsinha, leader of the mutinous military “petitioners”, and told him that Reinado had been killed and Ramos Horta badly wounded. Salsinha had travelled from the western districts with Reinado but, instead of going with him to visit Ramos Horta, had waited near Gusmao’s residence. Why did Assis tell Salsinha what had happened? Did Ramos Horta’s guard know in advance that the petitioners’ leader had come to Dili with Reinado? The many unanswered questions only add to the uncertainty about what really happened in relation to the alleged attack on Gusmao’s vehicle convoy which followed the shootings at Ramos Horta’s home.

Suspicion has also fallen on the Indonesian-based Hercules Rozario Marcal, who visited Dili just days before February 11. “Hercules was born in East Timor and gained notoriety in Jakarta in the 1990s as a gangster running protection rackets,” Melbourne’s Age reported. “His gang also served as enforcers for the Suharto regime, intimidating dissidents and East Timorese independence activists. His military patrons were reputed to include the then general Prabowo Subianto, Suharto’s son-in-law. At one stage he lived in the Jakarta house of Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim, who in 2003 was indicted by a UN war crimes tribunal for crimes against humanity.”

Timorese investigators have reportedly established that Hercules contacted and may have met Reinado. His contact number was also found stored in Reinado’s mobile phone. On January 21, just three weeks before Reinado was killed, Hercules met with Gusmao, ostensibly as part of an Indonesian business delegation investigating hotel and housing investment opportunities. In an extraordinary move, the Gusmao government announced earlier this month that it was awarding Hercules a contract to build a mini-mart and swimming pool on the site of a refugee camp in central Dili—despite the gangster reportedly being under investigation for his potential involvement in Ramos Horta and Reinado’s shooting.

Australian forces stood down?

There remain a number of outstanding questions regarding the Australian government and military’s murky relations with Reinado, going back to his role in the 2006 crisis. (See “East Timor: Hunt for ‘rebel’ military leader called off”)

In the weeks leading up to February 11, Reinado and the Australian military, using Angelita Pires as a go-between, informed each other about their respective movements in order to avoid any unexpected encounters in the jungle of Timor’s western districts. In addition, it is now also known that at least one senior Australian military figure was directly involved in the negotiations between Ramos Horta and Reinado in January. According to an August 22 article in the Australian, Major Michael Stone accompanied the president to the January 13 meeting in the western town of Maubisse. Stone was appointed Ramos Horta’s military affairs adviser in late 2007 after being granted a two-year release from his Australian Army duties.

There can be no doubt that Australian intelligence would have had the former major under close surveillance up to and on February 11. Similarly, it is highly unlikely that Reinado’s many phone calls and text messages sent from his mobile phone—including calls made to and received from Australia—would not have been intercepted.

How then were Reinado and his men able to drive from the Ermera district, south-west of the capital, through the capital and straight into Ramos Horta’s residence without being detected by anyone, including the hundreds of Australian and New Zealand troops in the country? With twelve heavily armed men accompanying Reinado in two vehicles, and another ten with Salsinha in two other vehicles, it was hardly an inconspicuous convoy. In addition, Reinado’s men have told the media that they drove slowly to avoid being early for what they believed was a 6 a.m. appointment to meet the president. “The rebels point out they dawdled on the way to Dili, stopping in places to kill time to arrive at the appointed hour,” the Australian reported.

The day after the February 11 attacks, East Timor’s army chief Taur Matan Ruak expressed his concern: “Given the high number of international forces present in East Timor, in particular within the capital, how is it possible that vehicles transporting armed people have entered the city and executed an approach to the residences of the president and the prime minister without having been detected? There has been a lack of capacity shown by the international forces, who have primary responsibility for the security within East Timor, to foresee, react and prevent these events.”

Ramos Horta later made similar comments: “I didn’t see any ISF [Australian-led International Stabilisation Force] elements or UNPOL [police] in the area ... normally they are supposed to show up instantly, and in this case of extreme gravity they would normally seal off the entire area, blocking the exit route of the attackers. That didn’t happen. As far as I know, no hostile pursuit of the attackers was made for several days. How did Mr Alfredo Reinado happen to be totally undetected in Dili when the ISF was supposed to be keeping an eye on his movements?”

The circumstances of Reinado’s death raise the question as to whether Australian forces were deliberately stood down on February 11.

Such an act would in no way be inconsistent with Canberra’s filthy record in East Timor. In 1975 the Whitlam Labor government encouraged the Indonesian military junta to invade and annexe the former Portuguese colony; the Hawke-Keating Labor government later finalised an agreement with the military dictator Suharto for the illegal exploitation of the billion dollar oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea. In 1999 the Howard Liberal government dispatched hundreds of troops in order to protect the Australian ruling elite’s vital interests in the tiny half-island, and oversee its transition to so-called independence amid the collapse of the Suharto regime.

The precise role played by Australian forces in the 2006 military split and subsequent violence is yet to be determined. There is no doubt, however, that the Howard government manipulated the unrest to send in the troops and then engineer a “regime change” commensurate with its strategic and financial interests. The Alkatiri administration was regarded as too close to rival powers, particularly Portugal and China, and had proved unwilling to fully accommodate Canberra’s demands during negotiations over the allocation of the Timor Sea’s oil and gas.

Having expended substantial efforts resources in ousting Alkatiri, the Australian government would have viewed with alarm President Ramos Horta’s apparent readiness to back the dissolution of the Gusmao government, potentially facilitating Alkatiri’s return to power. Amid escalating hostility among ordinary Timorese towards Australia’s military presence, this would have marked a major setback, with potential geo-strategic consequences beyond Timor’s borders. China’s rising influence is creating serious concerns within the Australian foreign policy establishment that Canberra’s hegemony in the South Pacific is being fatally undermined. It is this, above all, that has led to a series of Australian-led police and military operations throughout the region in recent years, including in East Timor.

Dili investigator called to Canberra as evidence of execution mounts

SMH.com

Lindsay Murdoch in Darwin
September 4, 2008

EAST TIMOR'S top prosecutor, Longuinhos Monteiro, is flying to Canberra to be briefed on the investigation into the February 11 dawn attacks in Dili.

Australian Federal Police forensic investigators have deciphered telephone calls that the rebel leader, Alfredo Reinado, made before he was shot dead at the home of East Timor's President, Jose Ramos-Horta.

The investigation led by Mr Monteiro is at a critical impasse. Evidence gathered over the past seven months suggests Reinado may have been set up for execution in a conspiracy that includes at least one of his trusted lieutenants.

Mr Ramos-Horta has confirmed that the man who shot him twice in the back was not Marcelo Caetano, one of Reinado's men, as had been widely reported.

The AFP investigated telephone conversations Reinado had shortly before the attacks with a Timorese-born Jakarta gangster, Hercules Rozario Marcal. The telephone taken from Reinado's body had a listing for "Hercul".

Hercules, who has denied any involvement in the attacks, last month received approval to develop businesses in Dili.

The AFP has also investigated 47 telephone calls Reinado made to or received from Australia.

Potentially explosive developments in the investigation have been kept secret in East Timor, where Reinado was a cult hero.

Authorities fear an outbreak of violence if it becomes known that Reinado was not responsible for shooting the popular president, who received emergency surgery in Darwin.

The official version of events is that Reinado led rebels to the homes of Mr Ramos-Horta and the Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, to either assassinate or kidnap them as part of an attempted coup.

Political figures in Dili have dismissed recent media speculation in Australia that Reinado and Mr Ramos-Horta had reached an impasse in negotiations at a meeting they held in the mountain village of Maubisse on January 13. The speculation was based on a tape recording of part of the meeting.

The Herald revealed four days after the attacks that during the meeting Mr Ramos-Horta offered to include Reinado in an amnesty to be announced on May 20, the anniversary of East Timor's independence.

"A deal was essentially done," said Joao Goncalves, the Minister for Economic Development, who was present at the meeting.

The Government in Dili is facing increasing pressure to establish an international inquiry into the attacks as Mr Monteiro has delayed for several months the completion of his investigation.

Jose Teixeira, a spokesman for Fretilin, the Opposition, said any further delay in setting up an international inquiry "ignores the wishes of Timorese who want to know the truth behind the attacks".

Mr Monteiro has denied seeing an autopsy report that was first published on the website Wikileaks purportedly showing that Reinado was shot at almost point-blank range.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/09/03/1220121329582.html

East Timor: Who shot J R Horta?

http://www.atimes.com

By Simon Roughneen

DILI - East Timor's post-independence politics have confounded outside observers, and for the most part the Timorese themselves. Simultaneously transparent and opaque, what was thought to be a mono-cultural, impoverished, Western-backed, state-building poster-child has morphed into a divided half-island, with obscure tribal-linguistic rivalries once considered dormant since stirred by political rivalries and manifested in quasi-mysterious gangs.

The Timorese political elite remain at odds along familiar regime lines, demarcations so old that these rivalries were, broadly speaking, established when Richard Nixon was still in the White House and more sharply honed in the 1980s - when soap opera addicts spent months wondering who shot J R Ewing, the fictional Texan oil mogul in Dallas.

But East Timor may now have its own Watergate, or at least a watershed political moment depending on which version of the events of February 11 finally emerges as the truth. That day, Dili's usual idyllic dawn was shattered by shots ringing out along the seaside valleys just a few miles east of the city, close to the white sand beaches favored by Timor's affluent expatriate community.

In what was regarded as either failed assassination attempts on President Jose Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, or perhaps instead a meeting-gone-awry between Ramos-Horta and former Timorese soldier Alfredo Reinado, the shoot-outs put the president in the hospital for two months and left rebel leader-cum-assassin Reinado in an early grave.

Reinado led the Petitioners, a group of disenchanted soldiers from the western half of the country who felt discriminated against by army top brass from the country's eastern regions. Prior to being dismissed from the armed services, he was pivotal in a chain of violent events in 2006 that led to over 100,000 Timorese being driven from their homes and the resignation of then-prime minister Mari Alkatiri. The army split, the police force disintegrated and Reinado took to the hills.

Some of Reinado's colleagues that fateful February morning have offered confusing and contradictory versions of what led up to the incident and what finally happened when their flamboyant front man died. Ramos-Horta himself has revised his initial recollection - that one of the rebels, Marcel Caetano, fired the bullets that almost killed him - after visiting the imprisoned would-be assassin in Dili's Becora jailhouse.

So who really shot Ramos-Horta and why? Considering the political machinations that preceded the shootings, it now seems unlikely it was Reinado who pulled the trigger. Ramos-Horta had repeatedly offered olive branches to the flashy rent-a-quote rebel, who had been dismissed by the Australian-led international forces and the ruling Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) coalition headed by Ramos-Horta's ally Gusmao, as a de facto criminal with no political status.

Another rumor doing the rounds was that, behind the scenes, Ramos-Horta had given up on the recalcitrant fugitive and that Reinado had set out in a huff for Dili to confront the president. That would have been suicidal unless it was followed by a coup attempt, hence the apparent simultaneous hit on Gusmao led by Gastinho Salsinha, Reinado's deputy. However, that too now seems unlikely given the lack of men and hardware at Reinado's disposal that morning.

In any case, Ramos-Horta survived, Reinado died, and the political fallout was until now minimal. That was until The Australian newspaper revealed it had reviewed the top-secret report drafted by Muhumad Nurul Islam, Timor's leading forensic pathologist, saying it indicated that Reinado and his sidekick Leopoldinho Exposto were shot at close or point-blank range in an execution style that does not tally with the prevailing shoot-out version of events - namely, that Reinado was taken out at a range of 10 meters or so by one of Ramos-Horta's snipers.

Nurul reported that Reinado had blackening and burning around each of his four bullet wounds and said he had been shot with a high-velocity rifle "at close range". Nurul added that Exposto was shot squarely in the back of his head, also at close range. David Ranson from the Victoria Institute of Forensics was quoted by The Australian saying that the blackening and burning mentioned in Nurul's report only appears when a gun is fired at almost point-blank range.

Ramos-Horta later raged in a Timorese newspaper against The Australian newspaper and the forensic scientists that the newspaper consulted. Attorney General Longinus Montero disputed The Australian version of events, telling reporters in Dili that "It's not right, that information isn't right. The case is still under investigation." He added that the results could not yet be made public.

Apart from the apparent contradictions, much of what apparently transpired on February 11 seems strange. Most glaring was why, with gunfire ringing around his house, Ramos-Horta returned home, or more to the point, why his security detail let him do so. Much has been made of the delay in the army and police response to the shooting, and it appears that Reinado's body was moved around the crime scene, and that police present even answered his mobile phone as he lay dead.

Confusion and conspiracy
Some of Timor's other political grandees appear set to capitalize on the confusion. Mario Carrascalao, a key member of the ruling coalition, said on August 17 that "we still don't know what happened". "For me, all the stories that have been told here - I don't trust them," he said. He called for the immediate release of the prosecutor-general's report into the attacks and the establishment of an independent inquiry into "what happened and more importantly why it happened".

Prime Minister Gusmao has so far resisted calls for any independent inquiry. Before the February shootings, Ramos-Horta's house stood alone at the corner of the route heading uphill from Dili and east to Timor's second city Baucau, no more than a few feet from the roadside, and with some of the gardens easily visible from inside cars and trucks winding uphill to breathtaking views of the Wetar Strait.

The standard version of events, summed up by James Dunn in a paper written for the Australian Human rights Council, took a best-case view that Reinado did not actually intend to kill Ramos-Horta during the fateful encounter: "Almost certainly it was a botched attempt by the rebel leader, Alfredo Reinado, to corner the president and seek further assurances that the proposed surrender conditions, culminating in his pardon, would in fact be carried out."

The report continued: "The plan went tragically wrong because Reinado's target was not there. The President was not at home, but out on a very early beach walk. Reinado's men disarmed the guards and occupied the residence grounds, but two soldiers turned up unexpectedly and shot Reinado and one of his men at what was apparently point blank range. Hearing the shooting, Ramos-Horta hurried back to the residence where he was shot by one of Reinado's men, a rebel enraged at the killing of their leader. It is likely that this angry reaction caused another rebel party to fire on Prime Minister Xanana some time later."

Still, the rumor mill went into overdrive after the shootings. Questions have arisen about the provenance of a US$700,000 bank account in Australia that Reinado allegedly had access to. Other sketchy details surround the links between the rebels and Joao Tavares, who was once described by the UN as the top militia commander in East Timor in 1999. Three rebels were arrested in April in Indonesia-ruled West Timor while staying at his personal residence.

Reinado had a fake Indonesian identification on his person when shot and, bizarrely, Ramos-Horta later railed against Desi Anwar, a well-known Indonesian broadcast journalist who interviewed the fugitive in Indonesia in 2007, for facilitating Reinado's clandestine cross-border travels. In January, an obscure group linked to Reinado known as the Movement for National Unity and Justice (MUNJ) withdrew from moribund talks between the government and the rebels, a failure that Ramos-Horta and Gusmao blamed on Reinado's girlfriend, Angie Pires.

Depending on which rebel account you believe, however, MUNJ representatives were with Reinado right up to February 10, allegedly supplying the vehicles that took the rebels to the capital's outskirts the day of the reputed assassination attempt.

Another notable and as-yet-unexplained detail emerged from a contact number found on the dead Reinado's mobile phone under the name "Hercul". That's led some to believe the Jakarta-based, Timor-born Hercules Rozario Marca was in contact with Reinado prior to the events at Ramos-Horta's residence. Weeks later two of the rebels linked to Reinado were arrested at Marca's home.

Marca visited Dili in late January and met with Reinado, according to Gusmao's AMP coalition partner and former East Timor governor Mario Carrascalao. During his January visit, Marca also reportedly discussed investment opportunities with various Timorese officials, including both Ramos-Horta and Gusmao, according to the Sun Herald.

With government approval, Marca is now primed to invest in a new



swimming pool along Dili's docklands, across from the Parliament House, a remarkable rehabilitation for a man that once allegedly provided muscle to Jakarta's attempts to cow East Timor's independence activists. He has joined other former Jakarta businessmen once linked to Indonesian strongman Suharto who are now cutting government-brokered business deals in Dili, including one for a new casino.

Some say it is no coincidence that those deals were completed around the time an Indonesian-Timorese Commission fudged issues of justice and accountability for crimes committed during Jakarta's brutal quarter-century occupation of the former Portuguese colony, to the chagrin of many Timorese.

The Commission on Truth and Friendship (CTF) was established in 2005 by the Timorese and Indonesian governments to examine violence perpetrated by Jakarta's troops and its Timorese proxies during the 1999 violence that marred the vote for independence from Indonesia.

However, the CTF had no powers to prosecute, prompting criticism that it served to whitewash atrocities. Its final report, issued on July 15, concluded that Indonesia also had responsibility for gross human rights violations, such as murder, rape, torture, illegal detention and forced mass deportations, that were committed by militias with the support and participation of Indonesian institutions and their members.

While Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono expressed his "deepest regret" for the victims, he quickly dismissed the notion that those responsible should be brought to justice.

After the April shooting, before being released from hospital, Ramos-Horta said Indonesian officers should "come clean" and acknowledge their responsibility for 1999 violence, and that both countries would need to read the commission's report calmly and "see whether we need to take further steps to address the events of 1999".

Earlier, the apparently traumatized Ramos-Horta had visions of a crowd trying to suffocate him, and separately he alleged Indonesian involvement in the assassination attempt on his life. Yudhoyono rebuked that claim, and by the time the CTF report came out Ramos-Horta had completely changed his tune, saying that the victims' legacy would be used to build stronger links between the two countries and that Timor would not be seeking an international tribunal to try those responsible. He was joined by Gusmao in declaring, "We are determined to bring a closure to a chapter of our recent past."

Dormant lightning rod

Reinado's cult-like status led some to fear he could be seen as a martyr and his death become a lightening rod for political discontent. An Australian-led attempt to apprehend him at his southern redoubt in Same in 2007 led to riots in Dili, as his supporters torched buildings and cars. But Reinado's cause seemed to die with its leader, at least in the public eye, although the east-west regional divide inside the Timorese army that prompted Reinado to rebel in the first place remains unsolved.

With illiteracy rates at 60% and child malnutrition 40%, many people are wondering when Timor's some $3 billion in oil revenues, accrued since the establishment of a national petroleum fund in 2005, will start to filter down to the impoverished grassroots. East Timor is listed by the UN as the poorest country per capita in the Asia-Pacific region. More political strife means that potentially lucrative tourism from Australia seems unlikely to take off anytime soon, despite Timor being a closer, cleaner and relatively untouched alternative to Bali, a line Gusmao peddled while on an official visit to Australia last week.

Instead, soaring food and fuel prices are making life even harder for Timor's poor. An official move to give 100,000 hectares of land to the production of bio-fuel crops in a furtive deal with the Indonesian company GT Leste Biotech irked many, not least because it was brokered in January but did not become public until June. That controversial deal with the island state's former occupier was followed by the arrest of around 60 students protesting a decision to buy cars for each of the Timor government's 65 MPs.

The run of government slip-ups only adds to the growing divide between East Timor's politicians and its people, particularly among the restless and unemployed youth. How more contradictory versions of Ramos-Horta's shooting will affect perceptions remains to be seen and reactions will be hard to predict.

Timor has confounded outside observers since independence, with few anticipating the 2006 security meltdown, for example, and others following up with doomsday predictions for the 2007 elections, which in actuality passed off peacefully. What is clear, however, is that since Reinado's demise and the dissolution of his rebellion, the 100,000 internally displaced people have started to return home.

Yet Timor's political top brass have seen their popularity steadily decline in the years since independence. Ramos-Horta attributed Gusmao's disappointing showing in the 2007 parliamentary elections as due to the former fighters "losing touch with the people". FRETILIN, the socialists now in opposition and who were at odds with Gusmao since the early days of Indonesian occupation, saw their vote halved in the same 2007 vote.

Months before the disputed shoot-out, Ramos-Horta did much better in securing around 70% of the votes in the second presidential poll, albeit in a straight run-off against a weak FRETILIN candidate. Now military roadblocks mark the road on both sides of the once-popular president's home, where before the February shootout the Nobel Peace Prize laureate often went for his early morning jog greeting fishermen and bar owners with an easy and secure familiarity.

Simon Roughneen is a roving freelance journalist. He has reported from Africa, Southeast Asia the Middle East and Pakistan.

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Budget Execution Report Up to Second Quarter - January - June 2008

http://www.mof.gov.tl/en/treasury/download/en/Qtr2_2008_En.pdf
Ministry of Finance - National Directorate of Treasury

MAQUIAVEL EM TODO O SEU ESPLENDOR

Blog Timor Lorosae Nação:

GONÇALO TILMAN GUSMÃO *

As origens

Nascido em Laleia, Manatuto, lado nascente de Timor-Leste, portanto lorosae, Alexandre Gusmão beneficiou de estar integrado numa família conceituada e beneficiada aos olhos da Igreja Católica e do Colonialismo Português. Por tudo isso usufruiu dos privilégios da administração colonial e acabou por vir estudar para Dili e ingressar na Administração Pública. Como todos os jovens também ele tinha os seus sonhos, mas porque os horizontes eram pouco espaçosos naquela ilha paradisíaca de nada valia sonhar com o impossível.

Os sonhos, as ambições não podiam ir muito além de uma carreira no funcionalismo público de então. Gusmão conseguira-o, por via do privilegiado estatuto da sua família, mas essa não era a sua ambição daquele momento. Alexandre Gusmão queria ser figura do desenvolvimento agrícola de Timor. Ter as suas propriedades de exploração agrícola, os seus empregados, a sua independência e bem-estar arrancado ao terreno fértil que o viu nascer. Se bem o pensou, melhor o tentou.

O crédito

Julgando beneficiar do seu estatuto de funcionário público requereu um empréstimo financeiro á banca colonial... Que não, não senhor, não lhe emprestariam nem um chavo, que o seu projecto enfermava de incongruências e não era fiável nem viável. O colonialismo frustrara a mente voluntariosa e ambiciosa do jovem Alexandre. Abespinhado, acabou por se demitir da função pública colonial e andar um pouco aos caídos por Dili, fazendo as patacoadas próprias de um jovem com algumas habilitações e experiências, muito reprovadas para as convenções de então. Aquele jovem era uma enorme dor de cabeça para a família, principalmente para o pai, pessoa muito considerada pela sua postura exemplar para a época.

Fez uma tentativa de emigrar para a Austrália, que não resultou, tendo o 25 de Abril de 1974 surpreendido Gusmão dias depois de ter regressado a Timor. Alexandre ingressa então no jornal A voz de Timor estagiando e auferindo um parco ordenado, que mesmo assim era muito bom em comparação com os ganhos dos timorenses comuns.

O Che Guevara de Lorosae

Invadido de um nacionalismo serôdio por contágio de outros elementos realmente esclarecidos e anti-colonialistas Alexandre Gusmão adere á ASDT, partido social-democrata, fundado por José Ramos Horta e outros. Mais tarde a ASDT viria a transformar-se na FRETILIN com um programa mais ambicioso e consonante com os tempos revolucionários que então se viviam. O desempenho de Alexandre era de simples aprendiz das teorias maoístas, marxistas, guevaristas, etc. Che Guevara cativou-o particularmente e de forma a influencia-lo durante muitos anos de luta contra a ocupação indonésia. No topo da sua mente figurava a luta pela libertação e independência do seu país, não como Guevara que via as coisas de um modo universal. Alexandre era um guevarista, comportando-se como tal mesmo em relação á sua família, pais, mulher e filho. Um combatente tem por sua família o combate pela liberdade e os seus camaradas, nada mais.

A captura do guerrilheiro e o "estrelato"

A partir daí foi por demais conhecido o percurso de Gusmão, agora Xanana. Com a sua captura pelos indonésios a sua imagem correu mundo, popularizando-se e adquirindo estatuto romântico-heroico para preencher as faltas de tais personagens que eram e continuam a ser actualmente raras ou inexistentes. O julgamento, a prisão em Cipinang, catapultaram Xanana para as páginas dos jornais de todo o mundo e assim um anónimo timorense passou a herói e vítima da boçalidade indonésia.

A gaiola dourada

Só ao princípio a prisão de Xanana era sentida sob a forma mais rigorosa do termo e a sua imagem corria mundo capitalizando atenções para a agenda política da Fretilin e da luta pela libertação de Timor-Leste. O regime indonésio, liderado por Suharto, estava a apodrecer lentamente e já se prognosticava a sua queda, o que representava um sério problema para aquela estratégica região e para o caso de Timor-Leste. Os governos australianos sempre jogaram com um pau de dois bicos em relação á invasão e consequente ocupação de Timor pela Indonésia e com o sofisma de explorarem o petróleo no Mar de Timor, reconheceram a anexação pelo putrefacto regime indonésio, apoiando a Indonésia nas Nações Unidas, juntamente com os USA, ou obstando a que medidas para a reposição da legalidade e reconhecimento de Timor estado soberano fossem tomadas. A Austrália tinha de limpar as suas mãos sujas de toda esta sua política em nome da exploração ilegal do petróleo no Mar de Timor. Num fantástico golpe de rins, característico de países e políticas sujas, o assunto começou a ser equacionado por qualificados mentores. A aproximação a Xanana Gusmão foi a solução encontrada e a que acabou por resultar plenamente quando a fórmula foi encontrada.

Os discípulos de Maquiavel

Várias tentativas diplomáticas foram feitas ao longo dos anos em que o líder da guerrilha timorense foi residente na prisão indonésia, mas a receptividade de Xanana era moderada e parecia sempre esbarrar no comportamento pró-indonésio da Austrália.

Foi uma tentativa simples e impensável que resultou: uma mulher! Xanana Gusmão foi vencido pela gula do sexo e convívio amistoso com uma sua admiradora e apoiante da luta de libertação de Timor-Leste. Kirsty Sword, de seu nome, australiana de origem, personificando a via para a continuidade desencabrestada da exploração petrolífera. A bem urdida abordagem ao futuro homem forte de Timor independente, a fabricar, resultara e agora só era necessário garantir a sua consistência e a prossecução do vasto plano.

Maquiavel em acção

Manipulável, perante a "inteligência" norte-americana, inglesa e australiana, o presidiário caiu que nem um pato. A Indonésia foi arregimentada para que a "abertura" do regime acontecesse o mais pacificamente possível e levada a mostrar boa vontade em relação ao líder da guerrilha timorense.

Os encontros amorosos entre Kirsty e Xanana aconteceram muitas vezes fora da prisão de Cipinang, em locais previamente definidos e acordados com as autoridades indonésias colaborantes. A libertação estava para breve e Xanana sabia-o.

Só aqueles que desconheciam que Shuarto ia cair de podre é que ainda resistiam, caso da guerrilha timorense que continuava a perder resistentes em operações contra o invasor. Tudo aconteceu num abrir e fechar de olhos. Xanana casou-se com a australiana com o mais puro dos sentimentos, garantindo assim á Austrália o passaporte para o controle do líder, do país e do petróleo, bem como todos os benefícios que daí para si advirão.

Liberdade rumo á "independência"

Noutro abrir e fechar de olhos Suharto resigna á sua política de punhos de aço e a Indonésia passa a conhecer a auto-estrada para a democracia. O direito ao referendo é reconhecido em Timor-Leste e a independência não tardou - com o saldo negativo de muitas chacinas por parte dos pró-indonésios que nunca entenderam o que se preparava há tanto tempo.
Xanana é libertado finalmente com honras de chefe de estado e recebido em muitos países sob esse estatuto.

Era o natural PR para Timor-Leste, assim estava delineado pelas altas políticas internacionais e os grandes lobbies do petróleo.

A República dos Xananas

Xanana será sempre refém do bem urdido plano que dura há anos e tudo é tão natural para ele que se lesse esta análise a repudiaria com todas as forças que conseguisse reunir. É muito provável que uma pessoa tão limitada quanto a mulher por quem se apaixonou agora esteja a seu lado naturalmente, com sentimentos recíprocos aos do homem que a ama. Pode mesmo querer iludir-se que a farsa só existiu no princípio, mas a verdade é que a farsa continua e a manipulação também. Consciente ou inconscientemente, deve ser horrível sobreviver assim, com a alma vendida ao diabo.

Para Timor-Leste o futuro há muito reservado foi o "progresso" de uma jovem nação denominada República dos Xananas!

* O original encontra-se em http://timorlorosaenacao.nireblog.com/ - 09.12.06
- Este artigo também se encontra em http://resistir.info/

Under a cloud

Australian Network NewsHour with Jim Middleton
[watch via here: http://australianetwork.com/newshour/archives.htm ]

East Timor is battling chronic unemployment and the future of its potentially biggest asset - gas - is under a cloud. Jim Middleton speaks to Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.

East Timor may be one of the world's poorest nations but it does have one very valuable asset - oil and gas.

Woodside Petroleum wants to exploit the Greater Sunrise field but has rejected Dili's proposal to process the gas in East Timor. Now a confrontation appears to be looming with East Timor's Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao insisting it's not just up to the company, but his country also has a say.

Jim Middleton spoke to Mr Gusmao during his whirlwind visit to Australia.

Jim Middleton:Prime Minister, thank you very much for your time. You sometimes seem like a very reluctant Prime Minister, if I can put it that way. I saw you say that you'd prefer to be growing pumpkins, I think it was. How are you enjoying the job these days?

Xanana Gusmao, East Timorese Prime Minister:Well, if you ask me how I enjoy the job I must tell you that by the daily achievement you can enjoy your, you can fulfill your promise to the people. It is the way how you enjoy your job. If you don't get to solve the problems, of course you will be, at night you will have say, bad nights.

Jim Middleton:So are you sleeping well?

Xanana Gusmao:Sometimes very badly, but many times I feel that I am getting, I'm sleeping well because things are going, the country's calm now, it's stable. Many of the problems that we inherited are solved.

Jim Middleton:You've talked a lot while you were in Australia about the need to provide jobs for the unemployed in East Timor. Is providing work for those without jobs the key to political stability in East Timor, do you think?

Xanana Gusmao:They need jobs. Every year we receive 15,000 to 16,000 youth to the job market. The problem is that we don't have this market and we have to provide job, we have to assist them to gain skills and it's why we are asking to help us in this.

Jim Middleton:I was speaking to President Jose Ramos-Horta earlier in the year and he was pointing out to me that Cuba, for example, was educating doctors for you and yet Australia was not able to see its way clear to do, to provide similar skills training for East Timorese. Do you find that a little ironic?

Xanana Gusmao:Well, everyone can see this. Of course, we are trying also to get other options to send our people to study...

Jim Middleton:I guess what I'm saying is should Australia be doing more?

Xanana Gusmao:But if Australia thinks that it can help in this way, of course we will appreciate very much. And we send already 54 civil servants to Indonesia to have post-evaluation abilities.
The problem for us is the education is better here but also very expensive.

Jim Middleton:Do you think that the refusal at this stage of the Australian government to allow your people to participate in the new guest worker scheme reflects some dissatisfaction on the part of the Australian administration in the steps you have taken yourself and your government, to provide employment and encourage employment in East Timor?

Xanana Gusmao:We understand, we understand, we understand that we are not part of Pacific Islands. And that is why by the statements from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, he said that in the end of the year we will see what we can do or Australia can do. And we hope, we hope.

Jim Middleton:What do you say to your critics within East Timor who suggest that in your current budget too much is being spent on or wasted I think they would suggest on recurrent expenditure and not enough is being spent on capital investment - 15 per cent I think as opposed to 85 per cent.

Xanana Gusmao:This is the difference - capital investment in what?

Jim Middleton:Well in education, in health, in schools?

Xanana Gusmao:Well we are investing more than $US2 million to scholarships, to human resources. That never happen. That never happen.

And every year we will spend more and more to prepare our young generation for 10 to 15 years to take over the country. That is why it is not true.

And in my campaign I said we have to cut this vicious cycle, to fix holes and to create new holes.

It is not capital investment for my understanding. That is why we are studying how to invest in proper way to push the development growth.

If not, we will not. We will just say, oh I have more two or three police posts this year, three or four schools here. But our people live, our children live far away from schools. There is a big rate of dropouts. Our people live far away from the health service. Our people cannot bring their product to the cities or to the towns because of bad roads. Our people, our children cannot study because they don't have light at night. Our small enterprises, our medium enterprises cannot do anything because we don't deliver electricity, power to their houses.

And what will move the economy? Not only the big investments but also the rural capability to make sure that productive activities are there, are in place in the rural communities. It is what we think about capital development.

Jim Middleton:While you were in Australia you've met with executives from Woodside Petroleum about their plans for exploitation of the gas field at Greater Sunrise. They seem to think that they will not proceed with plans to process the gas in East Timor. Is that a disappointment and is that the end of the story as far as you're concerned?

Xanana Gusmao:I don't believe so.

Jim Middleton:Do you have other options? I mean is it actually a matter for Woodside to decide?

Xanana Gusmao:... the end of the story because the decisions should be from all of us.

We did one decision, important decision in our history - unilateral proclamation of independence in '75, nobody, no-one supports this, no-one, only a few countries supported us. Unilaterally it is the wrong way to seek for solutions, no? We have to seek for other options also. It is in our interest.

We cannot go and discuss something that we don't know. We have to know, we have to look at the possibilities.

Jim Middleton:So are you saying there are other options beyond Woodside?

Xanana Gusmao:We are trying, we are trying to, we are doing the feasibility studies. For us the problem will be, the problem for us, the decision will be more in technical factors - feasibility, safety, commercial viability, including the cost in each options - will be the deciding factors for this issue.

That is why we promise that in the first quarter of the next year we will announce our own findings. Because it is fair that you, somebody present in the table, one part present his options, and another part present also its options. And only the technical and commercial factors will decide, and we will decide together.

Jim Middleton:So are you saying it's not up to Woodside alone to determine how it proceeds, it is up to East Timor as well?

Xanana Gusmao:Of course.

Jim Middleton:East Timor as well and you could say no to the whole deal?

Xanana Gusmao:Of course. We will discuss. We'll be, there will be Commission for Greater Sunrise. Also we are drawing the protocol to make clear the rules of engagement. We, next year we will announce the strategic planning, the development planning. This is not unilateral problem. It is bilateral problem.

Jim Middleton:Let's go to one final subject which of course is the traumatic events at the beginning of the year with the assassination attempt on Jose Ramos-Horta, I think also yourself.

Has the country been able, do you think, in the intervening months been able to put that entirely behind it? Do you think that has now, the trauma is over, stability has returned? Do you think it's as simple as that now?

Xanana Gusmao:Yes. Only by one factor. We started to understand that the fragile state only can come when the institutions of the state don't work together. But if they are together in big national interest issues the state is not fragile. The state can consolidate year by year. And by only this factor I can tell you yes.

Jim Middleton:Prime Minister, it's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Xanana Gusmao:Thank you.

Published: 28/08/2008

Ramshackle revolution

The Australian
Paul Toohey September 02, 2008

VICTOR and Teresa de Sousa were friends of Alfredo Reinado's lover, Angie Pires, and had come to know the rebel leader. Reinado was charming and edgy; they sometimes went to the hills to lunch with him. On this day, February 10, he took them by surprise with a remark that would, in hindsight, carry heavy meaning.

"If I die tomorrow, what will you put on my grave?" Reinado asked.

"It was like he was only half-joking. We were silent, we were all shocked," says Teresa.
Men with guns were coming and going from Reinado's hilltop hideaway. Cars were being readied. Victor and Teresa did not know he was planning a visit to Dili.

Victor had bought Reinado a bottle of vodka. "I put it on the table. He said, 'No, Victor, I don't want to drink. I want to change my life'. Normally when I go there, he drinks. He said, 'All you people can go to the beach on the weekend. I want to be the same as you. I don't want to live here in the bush any more. I don't deserve this life'. He was not the same person."

The following day Reinado was dead, shot inside President Jose Ramos Horta's villa after a dawn visit and, soon after, Ramos Horta would be lying on the road outside his home after being hit by two bullets.

Reinado had become desperate. He'd offended just about everyone in authority in East Timor with his refusal to surrender his stolen weapons and end a two-year stand-off.

One of Reinado's senior non-rebel advisers, who knows the truth and begs not to be named, says, "He had lost patience because the Government had no mechanism to solve his problem."

Ramos Horta, who had promised amnesty for Reinado, realised he did not have the power to deliver on his promises and was under strong pressure not to do Reinado any favours. Reinado decided to force a meeting.

It was a dangerous gambit, so he had his second-in-command, Gastao Salsinha, wait at Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's house in the Dili hills as his insurance policy in case things went wrong.

In the words of one Australian military source: "They went to Dili to touch power, to get close, to kidnap or kill if needed. This is very simple case of a murderer and a bandit doing what he did best. And things did go wrong."

In Reinado's pocket, along with his magic protection charms, was his fake Indonesian identity card. On the night before the attacks he took a text message from a mystery woman, who told Reinado she would love him forever. Investigators have been unable to trace the source of that message but think it was one of his many girlfriends.

Conspiracies are swirling in East Timor, blaming Gusmao for faking his own ambush. The theory goes that Gusmao used planted agents to tell Reinado that Ramos Horta wanted to see him, and had him executed; and that he also wanted to kill Ramos Horta, who was talking about bringing forward elections that could have ended Gusmao's ruling coalition. The ambush was a decoy to establish Gusmao's innocence.

There is no proof for this. What is certain is that Reinado had lost hope. Secret recordings published by The Australian show Reinado and Ramos Horta had run out of things to talk about in their last meeting on January 13.

Gusmao had made no secret of his hate for Reinado, saying in late 2007 that he wanted him captured "dead or alive". By early 2008, Gusmao was making efforts to undermine Reinado.
In early 2006, some 600 western-born petitioners were sacked after abandoning their barracks claiming discrimination within East Timor's armed forces, with eastern-born soldiers (more likely to be former anti-Indonesian resistance fighters) being preferred for promotion.

The near civil war that followed saw thousands of Timorese take to tent camps around Dili, refusing to return to their homes while the rebel stand-off continued. For Gusmao, the problem of Reinado and the refugees was linked. Proof of that came when Reinado was killed: they all packed up and went home.

It also meant Reinado's death suited Gusmao. It does not follow that he had him killed.
Gusmao had appointed his special adviser Joaquin Fonseca to try to separate the petitioners from Reinado's leadership group, by bringing them down to Dili to live in cantonment. Reinado knew that once the petitioners were taken from him, he was nothing: just a group of 22 rebels that could be easily destroyed.

Fonseca focused on a group of 11 of the original petitioners who were fed up with Reinado. "They were pissed off that Alfredo didn't keep his word by not turning up to meetings. They thought he was playing." These 11 were sent to speak with petitioners, offering safety and compensation if they came down to Dili.

As Fonseca was trying to assure the petitioners they would be safe in the Dili cantonment, a cocktail-bomb was thrown into the compound. That was on February 6 and was courtesy of Reinado.

"Reinado had said the cantonment was not going to happen," said Fonseca. Nevertheless, the following day, the first group of 87 petitioners came down to Dili. On the night of February 7, a grenade exploded in the ISF's barracks in Dili, also thought to be a rebel message.

"I warned the prime minister in January there would be trouble when we separated Alfredo from the petitioners," said Fonseca. "I learned the only power he had was drawn from the petitioners." Fonseca prevailed and the petitioners started coming down in big numbers. Reinado's influence was collapsing.

On February 9, Reinado received a message from Ramos Horta that a meeting scheduled for the following week was not going to happen. Reinado became morose, believing Ramos Horta had given up on him. He began to gather his core rebels.

A shady group called MUNJ - the Movement for National Unity and Justice - spent the last days with Reinado.

They supplied the vehicles used in the Dili visit. MUNJ had recently resigned from a task force set up to resolve the Reinado issue. The Australian learned recently that the rebels continue to protect MUNJ, saying its members were not with Reinado on February 10. This was despite photographic evidence to the contrary.

Fonseca lived 300m from the President's villa. On the morning of February 11, at about 6.20am, Fonseca heard two separate bursts of automatic fire."As I told my wife we had to leave, neighbours came saying, 'Get out of the house. Alfredo's men have shot the President'." It is known Reinado was alive at least until 6.17am, when he made his last call to his buddy Salsinha.

The Australian manager of the Dili ANZ branch, Mike Durman, had been on a morning bike ride past Ramos Horta's villa. He looked up and saw outside the gate of the President's house gunmen walking around firing weapons. It was between 6.30am and 6.45am.

Then, from behind a concrete block about 30m away, someone started firing close over Durman's shoulder. The shots may have come from a rebel posted to keep anyone from entering the area. Durman sheltered behind a statue, and then rode back to warn Ramos Horta, whom he'd just ridden past.

The President seemed startled by the news. He started heading for his home, but would not get far up the road before he was shot.

Reinado and his mate Leopoldino were already dead inside the President's compound, having been shot - as autopsy results would show - at point-black range. When Reinado and his 11 rebels arrived in two cars, just as daylight was breaking, the two sleepy guards on the front gate were clearly not expecting them. They went to arm their weapons but were restrained by Reinado, who ordered one of his men to watch them while he went inside with three rebels.

They removed automatic rifles and machine guns from sleeping guards and took them back out to their vehicles. Some were wearing balaclavas, which is not what expected visitors wear.
The public story is that Reinado and Leopoldino were shot from a distance. It seems more likely that they were surprised by two of the President's guards at close quarters. Reinado was shot through the hand and the neck as he offered a reflex defence, and then again, twice, once he had dropped. Leopoldino was shot through the back of the head.

Reinado's gunshot wounds featured blackening and burning, forensic evidence that he was shot at a point-blank range. The sniper story was likely concocted to protect the President's guards, who had acted in understandable haste.

Reinado's rebels were not the crack soldiers they imagined themselves to be. There is a belief Reinado had not even explained the mission to his men. "They were small people," says an investigator. "Reinado never told them anything."

The rebels called out for Reinado, who did not respond. There was a brief exchange of fire. Most of them ran for the hills. Two braver rebels delayed, and one of them, upon sighting Ramos Horta walking up the street, shot him on the belief he had lured Reinado to his death. As they ran, they sent text messages up to Salsinha that Reinado was gone.

Salsinha was a coward, and on this morning had put a number of his men in ambush positions while making sure he was clear of the action.

Gusmao's security, preparing to take the boss to work, received calls at 6.45am that there was gunfire at the President's house. Gusmao decided to go down. By the time Fonseca got through to Gusmao to warn him that Ramos Horta had been shot, Gusmao was inside the ambush.

Salsinha watched the motorcade pass and gave the order to attack the Prime Minister's car.

Then he walked inside the house, pretending to ask if the Prime Minister was in residence.

Despite persistent claims Gusmao set the thing up, I keep returning to the interview I had with Gusmao's driver, Adolfo Suarez dos Santos. This man was uncomplicated and honest. When the firing started, a bullet came through the back of the vehicle, through his seat and lodged in the dashboard. Gusmao, who was by then laying on the back seat, was lucky to survive.

This was a genuine attempt by incompetent rebels to kill or kidnap the Prime Minister, in response to Reinado's death. "I went to see the (PM's) car at the police station," said Fonseca. "They weren't playing."

The core group of rebels had come to hate Gusmao. They believed he had used them in the troubles of 2006 to help overthrow Mari Alkatiri's Fretilin government but had since abandoned them.

Even so, Gusmao had more rebel blood than any of these men and retained a certain mystique.

Explaining why the men could not finish him off, or kidnap him, Fonseca said: "It takes a lot of courage to face Xanana, you know. They would have been very nervous about killing him."

East Timor president heads to Cuba

ABC Radio Australia

Updated September 2, 2008 20:31:28

East Timor's President has boarded a plane to Cuba for a medical check up.

Jose Ramos Horta has gunshot wounds from an attack on him in February by rebels.

The nobel laureate was given a military guard as he boarded a commercial flight to Singapore from Dili's airport.

East Timor's Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao says the President is still feeling unwell.

But he says Dr Ramos Horta also wants to convey the solidarity of the Timorese people to Cuba, where Hurricane Gustav swept through on Saturday.

The hurricane destroyed many buildings.

Convite para comemoração do aniversário do referendo de 1999

CONVITE

Prezado/a Amigo/a de Timor
Irmão/ã e Conterrâneo Timorense
Estimados Associados

Associação Para Timorenses – APARATI, o “CROCODILO E O SEU LABARIK” têm a honra de vos convidar para se associarem ao evento da Comemoração do Referendo de Agosto de 1999 e a Festa dos Estudantes Timorenses que concluiram o estudo em 2007 e 2008, culminando com a noite de jantar e baile abrilhantada pelo conjunto “IRMÃOS BORROMEU”, não faltando os pratos típicos timorenses como o saboroso Tukir, Sassate e Ikan Saboko, não regados com a TUA ACA, mas jamais faltará o sumo da uva e a loirinha de Sagres.

Aparece e traz um amigo.

Antecipadamente grato pela vossa presença,
O Presidente da Direcção
Manuel Jacob Guerra Caldas

Associação Para Timorenses
APARATI

Comemora o Referendo de 1999 e organiza a Festa dos Estudantes Timorenses que concluiram o estudo em 2007 e 2008

Referendo de 30 de Agosto de 1999

O maior e mais importante marco histórico do povo timorense.

A mudança política na Indonésia para a democracia e a colaboração da comunidade internacional, cujos protagonistas foram a ONU, Portugal, Indonésia e Timor, permitiu o encerramento do capítulo mais conturbado, cheio de páginas de sofrimento de luta pela liberdade do Homem Timorense.

INDEPENDÊNCIA – Consequência do referendo

Sonho tornado realidade graças às forças naturais e sobrenaturais que comandam a vontade e actividade do homem.

Chegou finalmente o tempo de mudança (mudam-se os tempos, mudam-se as vontades) em relação aos senhores governantes desta ilha paradisíaca perdida no hemisfério sul – O CROCODILO E O SEU LABARIK – serem finalmente livres e independentes.

Finalista

Semelhante ao alpinista que para atingir o ponto mais alto da terra ter que atravessar vários perigos, provas mais duras de determinação de vontade de vencer ao longo da caminhada de ascensão.

Quando atinge finalmente o ponto mais alto o alpinista sente-se realizado e orgulhoso por ver o mundo estender-se aos seus pés e considerar-se consagrado vencedor.

O finalista é também autêntico vencedor porque atingiu o mais alto dos seus sonhos, tendo aos seus pés o mundo que passará a servi-lo com todos os conhecimentos adquiridos ao longo da caminhada difícil dos seus estudos, muitas vezes cheias de incertezas e interrogações.

Programa

1º dia – 5 de Setembro de 2008 – sexta-feira

17H00 – Inauguração da exposição de pintura de quadros temáticos timorenses e artesanato por Senhor Embaixador da República Democrática de Timor-Leste em Portugal, Dr. Manuel Soares Abrantes.

17H40 – Palestra sobre Referendo por Sr. Provedor da RDP Adelino Gomes e Engenheiro Luís Cardoso e jornalista

18H00 – Manifestação cultural com actuação do grupo cultural BEI GUA

18H30 – Recitação de duas poesias por Letícia N. C. Baptista e Carlos N. F. Morais.

19H00 – Cocktail

Local: Instalações do INATEL nas praias de Oeiras – junto ao Forte de São Julião da Barra

Como lá chegar – Av. Marginal Lisboa/Cascais e Vice-Versa com saída em S. Julião da Barra para INATEL.

Comboio Lisboa/Cascais e Vice-Versa com saída na estação da CP de Oeiras para INATEL, junto à praia.

2º dia – 6 de Setembro de 2008 – Sábado

11H00 – Torneio Futsal no estádio 1º de Maio em Alvalade – Lisboa

17H00 – Testemunho de dois recém-licenciados: Vicente Paulino e Filomena Isabel

17H30 – Manifestação cultural apresentada pelo grupo cultural Associação dos Académicos Timorenses de Coimbra (ATC) (a confirmar)

18H00 – Entrega de troféu e prenda aos Finalistas

19H00 – Jantar seguido de baile

24H00 – Encerramento

Local: Grupo Desportivo Unidos Caxienses em Laveiras, frente à esquadra da PSP.

Como lá chegar – Comboio Lisboa/Cascais e Vice-Versa com saída na estação CP de Caxias e Camioneta LT117 até á paragem de Laveiras. Camioneta LT117 no parque das camionetas junto à estação CP de Monte Abraão para Caxias com paragem em Laveiras.

Inscrição para Jantar e baile

Associados € 10,00

Não associados € 15,00

Pagamento

Cheque em nome de Associação Para Timorenses – APARATI

Transferência através das Caixas de Multibanco para a conta bancária número 21780 2741 0530

Pagamento directo na entrada

Confirmação da presença até dia 1 de Setembro de 2008

Contactos:
963301815 – Manuel J. G. Caldas
933553829 – Dr. Carvalho Martins
967107943 – Cipriano S. Soares
964132131 – Maria de Fátima F. C. C. Viegas
962458286 – Drª Fernanda M. A. F. Castilho

Patrocinadores

Embaixada da República Democrática de Timor-Leste em Portugal
Embaixada da República da Indonésia em Portugal (a confirmar)

Apoios

INATEL
Grupos Culturais Timorenses – Bei Gua e Associação dos Académicos Timorenses de Coimbra (ATC) (a confirmar)
Pintores – Leopoldino Soriano, Abel Júpiter, Herman Handjan, Victor Lobo e Maria Dulce
Artesãos – João Filipe Gonçalves Tolentino, Fátima Guterres e outros

Juventude Timorense

Agradecimentos

Em nome da equipa que realizou este evento, realço a distinta comparência de Vossas Excelências que muito honraram e animaram este nosso modesto convívio.

Bem hajam e até o próximo
O Presidente da Direcção
Manuel Jacob Guerra Caldas