UN report vindicates East Timor PM, as regime change becomes official

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Regime Change in Timor-Leste, the ousting of Mari Alkatiri
Tue, 17 Oct 2006 02:02:14 -0700 Mari Alkatiri and Xanana Gusmao, in happier times Print

By Sam Urquhart

The United Nations report into human rights violations during the East Timor crisis of April and May 2006 has now been delivered, and it’s a hot one. It provides yet more evidence that the tiny Pacific nation suffered an externally directed “regime change” – when its leader adopted policies in opposition to the American and Australian political elite and its corporate allies.

The managed crisis began in April 2006, when part of the tiny Army rebelled against the Timorese Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri. After a month long mutiny, riots developed helped along by gangs of unemployed youths. At the time, the BBC reported five deaths in clashes between mutineers, gangs and the police.

After the clashes, thousands of residents of Dili – the national capital – took flight, fearing a repeat of past ethnic violence, yet this did not materialize. Reports from the ground suggest that this was more mass hysteria (well grounded in history) than an actual threat.

In this context, a movement against the PM of East Timor seemed to blossom.

Exaggerating opposition, slandering the incumbent

Protests against Alkatiri were reported in meticulous detail, while his record was smeared. ABC reported on the 20 June, that “Protesters have begun massing outside the government palace in East Timor’s capital Dili, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.” Quoting optimistic organizers over government sources, they predicted that 30,000 people would turn up to voice their discontent whilst they noted that “Australian police and troop numbers have also begun building in case the protest turns violent.”

Perhaps they should have checked their sources better. The BBC reported on 23 June that only 4,000 turned up. This, it should be said was a demonstration in support of the East Timorese president, Xanana Gusmao who had threatened to resign if Alkatiri did not step down. So it was not exactly a resounding vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister himself.

Still, the BBC was happy to report that Alkatiri is “increasingly unpopular” and repeated that “he has also been hit by allegations that he helped recruit a “hit squad” to act against his political opponents – accusations he denies but which Mr Gusmao said contributed to his loss of confidence in his prime minister.” One of the protest organizers was quoted luridly slandering the Prime Minister, “Mari Alkatiri is the one to blame for the trouble. He is a communist, a criminal.” said Agosto Junio.

The UN report has found, six months after these reports (which passed unquestioned by the media) that “there was no massacre by the F-FDTL [The Timorese police] of 60 people at Taci Tolu on 28-29 April.” Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri had been blamed for the “death squads” who, it turns out, killed no-one.

The very worst accusation levelled at Alkatiri is this:

With regard to the former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, that he failed to use his firm authority to denounce the transfer of security sector weapons to civilians in the face of credible information that such transfer was ongoing and involved members of the Government.

In fact, it is the ex-President, Xanana Gusmao, who receives the most sinister coverage in the report. It seems that Gusmao did not act to restrain “Major Reinado and the men who comprised his group are reasonably suspected of having committed crimes against life and the person” when Reinaldo deserted to form the nucleus of a movement against Mari Alkatiri. This, despite Gusmao being in communication with Reinaldo (as the UN report puts it, he showed little “respect for institutional channels”).

Alkatiri’s crude awakening

Understanding the present crisis is impossible without a discussion of energy resources in the Asia-Pacific region. Underneath the Timor Sea lie what at current prices is about $30bn worth of oil and gas. That treasure trove has been known about for some thirty years. In fact, it brought Indonesia and Australia together in a cold embrace during the murderous Suharto era.

In exchange for loans and a share of the loot, Suharto agreed to redraw the maritime boundary between Indonesia and Australia, transferring large hydrocarbon reserves to Australian and American corporations in the process (the 1989 Timor Gap Treaty). That this was totally immoral was not a problem for the Australian government.

In 1999, Australian troops landed on Timor to usher in an era of independence, but the economic sovereignty of the new nation was not paramount in the operation. As UN troops took control, the Timor Gap treaty was renegotiated to suit the new arrangement. The unequal border remained in place, but under UN jurisdiction (corporate contracts remained unaltered).

Meanwhile a new oil and gas field, Bayu-Undan, was opened up for Australian, U.S. and Japanese investors to plunder. Coming from the coast of Timor, oil and gas would flow to Darwin in northern Australia where it would be refined and sent away to market. Timorese rewards were kept to a minimum.

As Timor actually became independent in 2002, its politicians muttered about taking Australia to court over the maritime boundary. Some thought that a nation ravaged by warfare and poverty had some moral claim to at least equitable treatment by its wealthy neighbours. Not so. The Australian government simply decided to ignore maritime rulings of the World Court.

However, Mari Alkatiri, as the East Timorese Prime Minister, continued to demand fair treatment. Australia totally refused to take him seriously. In a leaked meeting dated November 2002, foreign minister Alexander Downer told Alkatiri, “We can stop everything” meaning cut off the flow of royalties and aid to East Timor if, that is, Alkatiri did not accede to Australian demands. To this Alkatiri replied “We want to accommodate all your concerns, but accommodating is one thing and scraping off a plate is another.” Knowing how strapped for cash East Timor was, and is, Downer replied “you can demand that forever for all I care, you can continue to demand, but if you want to make money, you should conclude an agreement quickly.”

Unrepentent, Australia continued to rake off revenue from fields that by international law, were not theirs to exploit. In an excellent article for the World Socialist Website, Mike Head notes that “During 2003 alone, Australia received $US172 million in royalties from the fully operational Laminaria-Corallina field—twice as much as the entire budget of the East Timorese government.” This at a time when life expectancy was just forty, with over 50 percent unemployment is hard to defend.

By 2005, after three years of principled resistance to what amounted to piracy and theft, East Timor renegotiated the borders on Australia’s terms. Agreeing to renounce its claims for 50-60 years meant that East Timor would inherit exhausted resources and pollution. As Head reports “The upshot has been that, in 2004-05, East Timor’s oil and gas revenues came to a total of just $US25 million. This amount is forecast to rise to $75 million in 2007-08.” This is a paltry amount at a time of record high oil prices and obscene profits being made by oil companies.

The consortium that will be exploiting the ‘Greater Sunrise’ field off southern East Timor are the major beneficiaries of this enormous scam. Made up of Woodside Petroleum (an Australian firm accused of bribing its way into Mauritania’s oil industry), Osaka Gas of Japan, Shell and the American firm Conoco (owned by Dupont), the Greater Sunrise is governed by a 2003 agreement that allocated 82% of revenues to Australia and only 18% to East Timor. As an East Timorese government document states, “If the field is developed under the Greater Sunrise IUA and MOU, Timor-Leste’s share would be approximately US$1 billion. However, if the field is developed after Timor-Leste and Australia have agreed to maritime boundaries that are consistent with international law, Timor-Leste’s share would likely be significantly greater.” Yet, with a lifespan estimated at 30-40 years, and the renegotiated agreement running out on 50-60 years (had to cover their backs) this is not going to happen.

Alkatiri extracted a significant concession from Australia in January 2006 when he secured 90% of the revenues from 20% of the Greater Sunrise field (itself a small portion of the Timorese reserves, but still sizable).

Bayu Undan, a smaller field, is operated by Conoco-Phillips and will feed the demand for natural gas generated by the metropolis of Tokyo, but ENI Australia, Santos, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Inpex have significant stakes as well. In other words, that too is a joint U.S./Australian/Japanese operation.

From the perspective of the Australian government, the interests of these consortia have been paramount. A leaked document circulated within the Australian Defence Force (ADF) from 2001 puts this succinctly. “The first objective,” it said “is to pursue Australia’s broad strategic interests in East Timor, namely denial, access and influence,” it began, “The strategic interest of denial seeks to ensure that no foreign power gains an unacceptable level of access to East Timor, and is coupled with the complementary objective of seeking access to East Timor for Australia, in particular the ADF. Australia’s strategic interests can also be protected and pursued more effectively if Australia maintains some degree of influence over East Timor’s decision-making.”

Rebel, without a voice

Another of Alkatiri’s crimes was to offer economic particpation in Timorese hydrocarbon reserves to China and India over Australia or the U.S. In 2004, he allowed a Chinese and Norwegian team to survey the northern portion of the Timor Sea for deposits. Reports suggested in 2005 that he was talking to Sinopec about constructing an oil refinery on Timorese soil, with Chinese backing therefore interfering with Darwin’s monopoly on crude oil processing in the region.

Then, as mentioned above, in January of this year he secured a greater share of the Greater Sunrise field revenues for his people and has worked towards the creation of a national oil company to ensure that East Timor benefits from East Timorese resources. This trend has placed him in the line of fire for those who seek both super-profits and strategic domination in the region.

As Prime Minister of East Timor, Mari Alkatiri also sought to seek a broad range of international contacts yet it is also this very openness that brought him to the brink of resignation. He invited Cuban doctors into the country to help deal with its crippling mortality figures and rampant poverty. This stimulated vitriol from commentators in the pay of western corporations or under their ideological sway. For example, Lora Horta writing for the Asia Times commented that “Alkatiri has implemented a foreign policy overtly confrontational to the West. His recent decision to hire nearly 500 Cuban doctors after visiting that country, despite strong objections from the US ambassador, was highly controversial and oddly aligned East Timor with the resurgent leftist movement gaining ground in Latin America.” Odd to him perhaps, as the son of Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta who by then had become a prominent supporter of regime change.

Likewise, and perhaps more importantly, “Alkatiri’s bizarre attempt to declare a national day of mourning for Yasser Arafat’s death did not endear him to the US or other Western countries. There was also widespread speculation that Alkatiri planned to award a multibillion-dollar gas-pipeline project to PetroChina, an invitation that would have won both the United States’ and Australia’s ire.” Commemorating Arafat maybe, but thinking about building a pipeline with Chinese help? Heretical. Here was a man who, perhaps without thinking, had begun to challenge U.S. and Australian corporate hegemony in the Pacific.

As Horta also made clear, the U.S. was aware of, and opposed to Alkatiri. “The United States’ discontent with Alkatiri was clearly on display when the US ambassador openly supported the Catholic Church against his government during street protests last year, with the senior US official even briefly attending one of the protests in person. Political insiders now wonder about the United States’ connections to rebel leader Reinaldo, whose wife works for the US Embassy and helps to oversee the Peace Corps program.”

This Reinaldo was leading the very rebel forces who have provided the stimulus for a new international but Australian led peacekeeping mission to East Timor. He turned out to be the premier human rights abuser of the crisis.

April 2006 : Endgame for Alkatiri

The evidence is in that East Timor suffered the fate of Haiti and Iraq and it looks like a job well done by the U.S. and Australian governments.

Journalist Maryann Keady – was present on 28 April when mutinying soldiers turned into deadly riots. After 600 members of the armed forces were dismissed for a one month mutiny, Keady wrote that “It is impossible in East Timor’s case to understand how a gang of unruly unemployed youths protesting about their dismissal from the armed forces could emerge into two rebel gangs (with UN and Australian advisors present throughout the melee) calling for the Prime Minister’s removal.” She also reports that Alkatiri himself spoke explicitly about the disruptive presence of ‘foreigners and outsiders’ in causing the unrest.

Foreign interference also sometimes bubbled close to the surface of the mainstream media.

On 30 May, in an interview with ABC, Brigadier General Michael Slater was asked about security in Dili. He told anchor Jessica Rowe, that “I feel quite safe, yes, but not because I’ve got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good. I don’t need these guys here.” Admittedly, he said “It is not safe on the streets, as it is back home in Sydney or Brisbane – no it’s not, if it was we wouldn’t be here. But things are getting better every day.”

When those Australians arrived, as John Pilger reported in the New Statesman “an Australian brigadier flew by helicopter straight to the headquarters of the rebel leader, Major Alfredo Reinado – not to arrest him for attempting to overthrow a democratically elected prime minister but to greet him warmly. Like other rebels, Reinado had been trained in Canberra.”

Allegations about ‘death squads’ organized by or on behalf of the Alkatiri government were then without any evidence to support them and the fact that Mari Alkatiri had agreed to a full, UN run investigation into the claims – while he had also disciplined the Interior Minister said to be responsible in order to restore confidence – did not dent the thrust of the campaign to unseat him.

At the same time, World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz made a veiled threat to the current PM. In an official communique entitled “Timor’s difficult path ahead” he wrote that “Reflection amongst Timor-Leste’s leadership and society on what has led to this crisis is important. The international community must also evaluate its efforts and make the changes needed to our assistance programs. We cannot go back to business as usual.” In a country which seven years ago suffered a scorched earth campaign by a colonialist power and lost half of its economy, such threats carried weight.

The attitude of Wolfowitz is surprising given the praise he gave to Alkatiri during a recent visit. On April 10, he said that “The bustling markets, the rebuilt schools, the functioning government – and above all, the peace and stability – attest to sensible leadership and sound decisions” while “from my discussions on managing petroleum revenue, to my visits to a school or a market or a local drainage project, what I have seen has given me much to think about, and many lessons that we can share with other countries.”

On the 24 June, the BBC reported that the PM was ‘willing to resign.’ Taking the baton from ABC it wrote that “Mr Alkatiri has become increasingly unpopular. Many people have blamed him for failing to prevent recent unrest which has led to thousands fleeing their homes. He has also been hit by allegations that he helped recruit a “hit squad” to act against his political opponents – accusations he denies but which [President] Gusmao said contributed to his loss of confidence in his prime minister.”

Amidst such innuendo, threats and half truths the government fell.

Alkatiri left so as to prevent a genuine crisis and massive loss of life. In the process, East Timor became the most recent casualty of Peak Oil geopolitics. The UN, as Alkatiri might have hoped it would, has provided ample proof.

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