Timor Leste Gears Up for 10th Anniversary of Historic Referendum

A demand that has not ceased in the last 10 years is that of an independent war tribunal which should be set up to bring to justice those involved in the abuses in Timor Leste. While many East Timorese continue to demand justice, their Nobel Peace Laureate President Jose Ramos-Horta doesn’t see a need for a tribunal.

Talking to Deutsche Welle recently, he said, “our relationship with Indonesia is exemplary. You cannot have two countries involved in conflict that they have reconciled to the extent that Timor Leste and Indonesia have done, we have not only outstanding state relations, government to government but even at the common people level.” Horta's claims of exemplary bilateral ties are rubbished by rights groups, who continue to demand a tribunal.

Charles Scheiner, co-founder of the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) says, “If Jose Ramos-Horta can take the high road and call for peace, reconciliation and forgiveness, that maybe is appropriate for him to do, but I am not sure if it’s appropriate for him to impose this on everybody else in his country. Most Timorese people are not as noble perhaps as he is, and aren’t able to put those kind of things behind them.”

Lack of resources

Timor Leste has been one of the largest aid recipients, with the total aid over the last ten years reaching up to 5.2 billion US dollars. But this aid has not done much for the local economy with most of the funds being spent on paying the peace keeping forces stationed in Timor Leste and foreign consultants. According to ETAN's estimates, only one tenth of the money managed to find its way to the Timorese people.

“49 percent of people live on a less than 88 cents a day which is the poverty line defined by the world bank that’s a big increase from what it was six or seven years ago,” says Scheiner. “The level of some public services like electricity and telephone and water is worse now than it was then. So they haven’t yet finished recovering from everything that was destroyed.”

Plans for future

About 70 percent of Timor Leste's total population of around 1.1 million people lives in rural areas and survives on subsistence farming. East Timor continues to rely heavily on its oil revenues, which experts believe could soon run dry.

After years of law and order management by UN police, Timor Leste still lacks its own fully functional police force. President Ramos-Horta said, “by 2012, the East Timorese have to be ready! If by then we still say 'sorry we are not ready, we need the UN to stay on', if we are not ready by then, it is because we East Timorese leaders are all a bunch of idiots, incompetent, who cannot manage our country. We should resign.”

Author: Pukhraj Choudhary
Editor: Grahame Lucas