Transcript of Press Conference with Acting SRSG Finn Reske-Nielsen and UNMIT Acting Police Commissioner Antero Lopes

UNMIT - 20 October 2006


ADRIAN EDWARDS:

Good morning everyone. A very warm welcome to you. The purpose of today’s press conference is to talk about public security and what the United Nations is doing to help. I believe you know our speakers - I will introduce them again. We will start with opening remarks by Finn Reske-Nielsen who is the Acting Head of the UN Mission in Timor-Leste, and then Acting Police Commissioner Antero Lopes will speak. And then after that it will be your turn [speaking to journalists] for any questions.

FINN RESKE-NIELSEN
Thank you. Good morning everybody.

In the three days since release of the report of the Independent Special Commission of Inquiry Timor-Leste has been calm. Indeed very few incidents have been reported. Acting Police Commissioner Antero Lopes will speak to you in a few moments with details of developments about UNPol and public security. But before he begins I want to say a few words about the response to the report we have seen so far.

In general, and despite only a few dissenting voices, the responses have been overwhelmingly positive. I am very encouraged by and appreciative of the statement by the President, Prime Minister, and Parliamentary Speaker commending the Commission on its wisdom, impartiality and independence. No less welcome have been remarks in the last day or two by Elizario Fereira of Fretilin, and separately by Prime Minister Horta, stressing the importance of judicial follow up on the report’s recommendations. I also thank Bishop Belo for his warm appeal on Wednesday for peaceful acceptance.

On the report itself and the accompanying summary and question and answer paper, copies have been distributed in line with the wishes of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to all areas of the country. To those who have access to Internet the report is available to everyone on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner. I would remind everyone that the English version of the report is the original version, and as such is the version that should be referred to in the event of queries over translation.

Thank you very much. I will now ask the Police Commissioner to say a few words.

ANTERO LOPES
Thank you SRSG. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. A quick update on the security situation. As the SRSG has mentioned, the last three days have registered the lowest recorded violence in the near past and we attribute this to the efforts of the community and the police with the support of the international forces. We are starting to do crime analysis and the statistics indicate that despite the rise of the police - we have more policemen on the streets now - the detected crime and the reported crime has decreased in some 60% in the last five days. As of today, we have 824 United Nations Police. Last week when we spoke there were 648, you can correct me if I am wrong. And within one week time, so by the end of the month, we should have 923.

With those numbers we are activating 24-hour duty stations throughout Dili. As you know we already opened Becora and Caicoli. And Comoro is being activated as well. Those stations will cover all those wide areas where additional sub-stations or posts will also be opened starting on Monday. So, we will open from Monday, onwards, permanent Police presence also in Hera, Bidau – more precisely - Akadiruhun, and UNDIL [University of Dili]. These priorities have been established jointly with the Timorese government and the Timorese civil society and it is expected that they will have a positive impact to facilitate the voluntary resettlement of IDPs.

In addition to the opening of stations, we will have dedicated monitoring programmes to follow up the future resettlement of IDPs. That will be done with the assistance of our community policing patrols; that will be done with assistance of dedicated teams of investigators, and that will be done with a closer cooperation between the United Nations Police and the Heads of Suco, Heads of sub-districts and Heads of Aldeia and the neighbourhood authorities.

Good news also on the PNTL screening programme. With increased resources, you will hear higher numbers in the future, but so far we can confirm that 75 PNTL are already embedded either in operations with UNPol or - a group of 25 is still finishing their intensive course - and next week another batch of 25 will start. So, by the end of this month we will have in Dili, 100 PNTL officers working in co-location with United Nations Police. So by the end of this month, UNPol and PNTL together will be more than 1,000. That is indeed a milestone, and by early November we will be in a condition to start expanding to the other districts in Timor-Leste.

All the UNPol officers arriving from the police contributing countries are subject to an induction programme. And we have the help of other colleagues within UNMIT and the Timorese society to come and talk to the UNPol about the applicable law, about human rights, but also about the strict code of conduct of the United Nations Police. We are activating an office that will be dealing with professional standards, ethics and discipline for the UNPol but the same roles will be applicable to the PNTL. And soon we will announce independent mechanisms that can be used by the population to report any alleged misconduct by either UNPol or PNTL. It is very important that the population can trust all the policemen – internationals and nationals – who are working together to protect their freedom and their rights. So, we will be very strict with conduct and we hope that it will help restore the confidence and the public authority on the police.

Thank you.

ADRIAN EDWARDS:
Thank you. The usual ground rules for questions: one question at a time each, and please do identify your name and news organisation and let us know who you would like to ask a question to.

QUESTION:
I am Tito from Radio Timor-Leste. As you said that by the end of this month we will have here 100 PNTL officers, so could you please explain the role of the PNTL while they are working with the UN Police?

ANTERO LOPES:
Thank you. They will be subject to the same rules of engagement as the United Nations Police according to the applicable law in Timor-Leste. We will soon sign an agreement with the Government of Timor-Leste that will regulate details of this relationship between PNTL and UNPol.

QUESTION:
I am Trante from Suara Timor Lorosae. I would like to ask about the guns that are in the hands of PNTL and why you have not collected them?

FINN RESKE-NIELSEN:
Let me first state that it was reported at last week’s press conference, held jointly with the International Military Forces, that 96% of the weapons that had been distributed have now been collected and accounted for. That means that there are only 4% left. But I will ask Police Commissioner to update you on the remaining 4%.

ANTERO LOPES:
Thank you. We do corroborate what was said by the International Military Forces last week as well. They have done a very good job and intensive work with the communities and the authorities of Timor-Leste to recover the majority of the weapons. The weapons that are still in the possession of PNTL, most of them are due to be with the PNTL who are providing for security for the populations in all the other districts; so we are not counting those numbers in these weapons – the missing numbers – but we have spoken with the Minister of Interior. He has called all the PNTL Commanders and they are talking also with the communities in case some of those weapons would have gone to members of the communities who are not PNTL. We are tracing those weapons. The assurances we have so far is that there are people who are willing to hand over those weapons to the international forces or to the United Nations Police or to the Timorese authorities. We do believe that very soon we will account for those missing weapons which are mostly pistols, and it is believed they are in possession of people for self-protection.

QUESTION:
I am Gido from Associated Press. Although you said that the incidents have been reduced, but some small community which is mainly Muslim – they are inside the mosque – every night they say that youth, drunken youth, go there and threaten them and even hurt them. So, what UNPol and PNTL that are working there, what have you done to protect them? Second question: Major Alfredo is still on the run and they say that some eight or ten URP members are involved. So what have you done in regards to this matter?

ANTERO LOPES:
Thank you. On the protection of the Muslim community, it is part of one of the programmes and with the activation of some posts closer to where these communities live; we do believe that the daily contacts will be intensified. We have sent patrols to the location; we have so far intensified the mobile patrolling especially around the mosque and we do know that some of these harassment or intimidation activities still go on especially at the end of the day when it is believed that youth groups under the influence of alcohol perpetrate those acts. So we do believe that the efforts will be intensified, more and more, and we will consider for vulnerable niches of the communities that we will need to have a more dedicated approach and permanent presence and definitely that is one the cases that would benefit from such programmes.

The police and the International Military Forces continue to conduct operations envisaging the capture and safe return of the escapees, amongst them is of course Senhor Alfredo and we have a presence on the police side, mostly focused in Dili, where as the military are following up the situation in the other districts. We do not have any information that Senhor Alfredo and the other escapes that you may have alluded to are in Dili. However, we are working closely with the military and exchanging information to locate those elements. We cannot confirm who may be in that group. You have made reference to former URP elements; you may know more than we do. I am not in a condition to confirm that they are indeed with that group.

QUESTION:
I am from STL and I just want to ask a question about the weapons that have not been recovered. Regarding the guns that are in the civilians’ hands, yes, I am aware that some have been recovered, but in the district of Ermera, some still report that some guns… [inaudible] Have you identified who has got those guns?


ANTERO LOPES:
At this stage of the investigations, we would refrain from announcing details as it could jeopardise the process of recovery of those weapons. We do strongly encourage the communities to report any such situations where they know that some individuals may have weapons - so we are talking about illegal possession of weapons - and we do have a police hotline number that we would like to remind you of – it is 723 0365; I repeat 723 0365. It is very important that the communities report such situations so that we can take immediate action and investigate the case and recover the weapons.

[So do you know more or less the number of weapons that were distributed to the civilians?]

We know that there are some 200-ish weapons that belong to PNTL that are unaccounted for, most of them are pistols, and we are tracing them. And we have information about some of them already and very soon we will start to recover them.

FINN RESKE-NIELSEN:
Can I just add to that? Well, over 3,000 weapons have been collected already including the vast majority of the long-barrel weapons.

QUESTION:
During the crises, do you know how many PNTL guns were distributed to civilians?

ANTERO LOPES:
UNPol itself has not conducted such investigations, so we cannot confirm at this stage any of such numbers, but the PNTL weapons that have been distributed about 200 have not been recovered yet and we are tracing it. That we can confirm.

QUESTION:
Yesterday an incident happened in the St. Jose school, some groups are using … with Rama Ambon and they aim to some students in St. Jose school. So what kind of measures have you taken in this regard? Second question: when will you complete the number of UNPol in Timor?

ANTERO LOPES:
On the last one, which is the easiest to answer, the numbers will be completed by January 2007, but I would like to tell you that the deployments that will occur in December and January are mostly of UNPol officers that will be deployed to the sub-districts to help the electoral security process. So, all the other programmes will be attended by UNPol officers who will be deployed until the end of November. So, within the next six weeks, I think that the substantive part, except some electoral security elements will be throughout Timor-Leste.

On the schools, we have been talking within the international community with colleagues from agencies and programmes including the UNICEF to have special attention to the youth and the students at various levels. We cannot say at this stage that we are doing much operationally about it other than reinforcing the patrols around the schools, but very soon we hope that we can establish those teams that will be working under a programme called Eskola Segura – Safe School – and they will conduct visit programmes to the schools without establishing police posts there of course. And there is also, as part of this programme, a series of activities which include seminars and lectures and there has been a programme with ten lessons – if we want to say – to encourage the youth, students and non-students to help the police fight violence.

QUESTION:
What means have you used to identify those illegal groups; they use cars.

ANTERO LOPES:
The traffic control is very important in public security, and we started actually on the first day of the Mission by launching a programme which aims at educating drivers on how to drive safely and people have noticed that in comparison to other countries in the region, people are driving more carefully and slowly; and we will be soon in a phase where we have to start more aggressively with the enforcement measures; and we are also going to increase the check points and random traffic operations where we will stop the drivers and we believe that some of those vehicles may be apprehended in those operations. I can remind you for instance that as of today 23 vehicles belonging to the government that had been deviated have already been recovered through those operations and of course indications to such incidents will be continued.

QUESTION:
It is alleged that there have been threats in Leorema, in Maubara sub-district and I just want to ask if UNPol have received those complaints and if you have conducted anything in this regard?

ANTERO LOPES:
Yes, we did receive the complaints; we did receive the letter from the district administrator and the sub-administrator with his version of the facts and we are investigating the case and its quite a number of people that will need to be interviewed and investigated and we will be ready to take action in the course of the investigations.

QUESTION:
I want to ask Mr Finn about the judicial system in Timor, which has stated in the report that is weak, so do you have anything to say anything about that, because even in the judicial system at the moment you have international staff integrated in it?

FINN RESKE-NIELSEN:
As you would have noted in the report of the Special Commission of Inquiry, they do conclude that the judicial system of this country is weak and most of the judges, prosecutors, and public defenders are in fact internationals, and that is likely to continue for some time to come. The system remains weak also in the sense that there are not enough legal personnel to deal with all the cases. The plans that were drawn up late last year did not and could not take into account the increased pressure that would be on the legal system as a result of the events since the beginning of the year. The report of course recommends prosecution of a significant number of individuals, and if that is indeed that those recommendations are followed then that would put even more pressure on the legal system. And there is therefore a need to further strengthen the system unless you would have noticed that the report recommends that international judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers be appointed.

QUESTION:
Yesterday Mr. Alfredo said that the UN Report is a joke. It means that he does not want to come down to [be captured], so what is the UN doing [to bring him down]?

ANTERO LOPES:
From a law enforcement perspective, I need to emphasise that we treat everyone equally; everybody is equal before the law and we do respect the human rights of everybody. But we also need to enforce the law, and we continue our operations to recover the escapees and of course we detected that by now if people were very willing to return voluntarily they would have sent signals. And we will be ready as we expand to the districts in conjunction with international forces to explore both ways: the voluntary return of the escapees, or the forceful return of the escapees. We do have the means and we are ready to conduct both kinds of operations. It’s on-going.

ADRIAN EDWARDS:
Thank you very much everyone. One last point I would like to mention is that any journalist interested in accompanying the UN police on patrol, in seeing police activities, please be in contact with us and we will try and facilitate that.

Thank you for coming along.

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