Category Archives: Timor-Leste

José Ramos-Horta accuses Alexander Downer of ‘distorting’ issues around 2004 Timor-Leste bugging

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Exclusive: President of south-east Asian nation says Australia used cover of ‘supposedly altruistic foreign aid program’ to spy on behalf of oil companies

The president of Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta, has accused former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer of “avoiding and distorting” the issues around the 2004 bugging scandal, saying recent comments ignored the fact that Australia had spied “on behalf of oil companies and using the cover of Australia’s supposedly altruistic foreign aid program”.

On Thursday, Downer appeared on the ABC’s Q&A program and was questioned about the 2004 Australian Secret Intelligence Service mission to bug Timor-Leste’s government during sensitive talks to carve up oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.

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Timor-Leste hit by 6.4-magnitude earthquake that was felt in Darwin

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Quake struck to east of Timor-Leste, with residents in Northern Territory capital reporting strong shaking

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 struck off the coast of Timor-Leste and was so strong it was felt in Darwin, Australia.

The quake hit at 11.36am local time (12.06pm Darwin time), according to Geosciences Australia, and prompted some people in the capital of Dili to flee buildings, though a tsunami was ruled out.

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Timor-Leste’s Ramos Horta and ‘Lu Olo’ Guterres face off in presidential election

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Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta the frontrunner in a ballot widely seen as key to the nation’s political stability

Asia’s youngest nation of Timor-Leste will hold the second and final round of its presidential election on Tuesday, with Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta the clear frontrunner in the poll.

Ramos-Horta, who received 46.5% of votes in the first round last month, is up against incumbent president “Lu Olo” Guterres, who got 22.1%, in a ballot widely seen as key to the nation’s political stability.

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How are Australia’s neighbours faring in the Covid pandemic?

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Vaccination rates are rising in much of south-east Asia and the Pacific after recent outbreaks, but some of the largest countries are falling behind

While Australians have focused on the Covid waves in Sydney and Melbourne, many of Australia’s neighbours have recently experienced their largest outbreaks so far. This includes Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu and even Singapore.

Singapore surpassed Australia’s vaccination target weeks ago, but was now seeing more than a thousand cases a day. Fiji recently had one of the highest rates of Covid cases per capita – peaking at 1,850 cases in the middle of July. But the nation of 889,000 was now regularly administering more than 10,000 new vaccinations a day.

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The light that failed: South Sudan’s ‘new dawn’ turns to utter nightmare

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Nearly 400,000 have died since it won independence 10 years ago. Now violence looms again, within and beyond its borders

Independence isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Recent additions to the family of nations, such as Kosovo and East Timor (Timor-Leste), have struggled to find their feet. In 2017, Catalonia’s secessionists split their homeland in two. Scottish referendum voters took a pass in 2014. The uncomplicated glory days when “third world” liberation movements ousted colonial regimes seem a long time ago.

South Sudan, which marked its 10th birthday on Friday, came late to Africa’s independence party – the product of a complex 2005 deal to end Sudan’s decades-old civil war. Barack Obama, seeking the credit, waxed lyrical. “Today is a reminder that after the darkness of war, the light of a new dawn is possible,” he declared.

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‘A ticking time bomb’: Timor-Leste begins to reckon with alleged Catholic church sex abuse

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The trial of defrocked priest Richard Daschbach, charged with sexual abuse of 14 girls, is dividing the small, deeply Catholic country

Lita grew up in a poor family in a hamlet surrounded by the spectacular mountains of Oecusse in Timor-Leste. When she was 11 years old she went to live in Topu Honis shelter home, in the mountainous, forest-encircled village of Kutet.

The shelter was run by Richard Daschbach, a now-defrocked 84-year-old US priest who founded the facility in 1992.

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‘When I woke, the house was full of water’: daunting cleanup follows Timor-Leste floods

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At least 150 people killed in Indonesia and Timor-Leste after tropical cyclone Seroja hit region

In Tasitolu, a suburb in the west of the capital, Dili, Batista Elo balances his young daughter on his hip as he stands in flood waters that reach up his thighs.

“I saved my family first and after that just got into the belongings, but there were some things that didn’t get saved,” recalls Batista of the wild Saturday night when his home was suddenly flooded.

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Witness K is in the dock but institutions vital to Australia’s democracy are on trial | Ian Cunliffe

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Some people seem to be above the law. Those people do not include the whistleblower and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery

Timor-Leste only achieved independence in 2002. It was Asia’s poorest country and desperately needed revenue. Revenue from massive gas resources in the Timor Sea was its big hope. But it needed to negotiate a treaty with Australia on their carve-up. Australia ruthlessly exploited that fact: delays from the Australian side in negotiating a treaty for the carve-up of those resources, and repeated threats of more delays, were a constant theme of the negotiations. In November 2002 the former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer told Timor-Leste’s prime minister, Mari Alkatiri: “We don’t have to exploit the resources. They can stay there for 20, 40, 50 years.” In late 2003 Timor-Leste requested monthly discussions. Australia claimed it could only afford two rounds a year. Poor Timor-Leste offered to fund rich Australia’s expenses. Australia didn’t accept.

Related: Witness K and the 'outrageous' spy scandal that failed to shame Australia

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Without seasonal workers, Australia may face a hungry summer | Michael Rose

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With not enough workers to pick the upcoming harvest, Australia faces potential food shortages, and its farmers face economic devastation

As Victoria’s Covid-19 outbreak threatens to spiral out of control and beyond its borders, Australia faces another pandemic-related crisis.

We are sailing into a food shortage and few are talking about it. This needs to change.

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Witness K and the Australian spying operation that continues to betray Timor-Leste

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Charges against Bernard Collaery and his retired Asis agent client confirm the government has few regrets about an exploitative exercise against a friendly neighbour

In the first week of January 2019, a private jet landed at Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste. The former Victorian premier Steve Bracks emerged into the monsoonal heat and was greeted by staff from the office of Xanana Gusmão, Timor-Leste’s chief maritime boundary negotiator. They drove Bracks to the waterfront café at the Novo Turismo Resort and Spa, where Gusmão was waiting.

The subject of the meeting was Bernard Collaery, Gusmão’s former lawyer, who was pleading not guilty to breaches of Australia’s intelligence act. Collaery’s charges related to an Australian Secret Intelligence Service operation in Dili in 2004, in which Canberra is believed to have recorded Timor-Leste officials’ private discussions about maritime boundary negotiations with Australia. In 2013, the Australian government revealed the allegations of spying.

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Australia’s history with East Timor isn’t pretty but it must be told truthfully | Paul Daley

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Good history demands the full and uncomfortable story be in the official account

Suggestions that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is impeding or trying to censor an official history of Australia’s East Timor peacekeeping mission are disturbing but unsurprising.

They’re disturbing because good history must have as bedrock an independence from national reputation-shaping and political interference. The line between that and propaganda is fine.

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African swine fever: the deadly virus that has landed on Australia’s doorstep

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The deadly virus wreaking havoc in Asia has been detected in Timor-Leste, just 680km north of Darwin

One month ago a particularly virulent strain of African swine fever – which has been wreaking havoc in Asia since it was detected in China last year and could potentially kill up to 25% of the world’s pig population – landed on Australia’s doorstep.

The disease was detected just 680km north of Darwin, in Timor-Leste. Australian biosecurity agencies which had been screening major airports and mail distributors for illegally imported pork products redoubled their efforts.

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Crossbench senator pushes to fix ‘shameful’ historic wrong against Timor-Leste

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Centre Alliance’s Rex Patrick wants to overturn the decisions that limit Australia’s exposure to international courts

The crossbench senator Rex Patrick will push to fix a historic wrong stemming from the “shameful” treatment of Timor-Leste during oil and gas negotiations by overturning decisions that limit Australia’s exposure to international courts.

In 2002, the then Howard government decided to limit Australia’s acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the international court of justice and international tribunal for the law of the sea.

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My family lost Timor in the war. I found it in their memories | Luke Henriques-Gomes

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Some day, I hope to visit the country with my grandparents, whose belief in independence was always unshakable

In my family, the thought of Timor always lingered in the air.

At birthday dinners, or Easter or Christmas with the cousins (like all Timorese, cousins is an imprecise term), we would talk about the football or our jobs or studies.

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East Timor independence: a short history of a long and brutal struggle – video

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After nearly 300 years of colonial rule, Portugal withdrew from East Timor in 1975, sparking a bitter rivalry between local groups that ended in Fretilin forces declaring East Timor independent. Indonesia invaded nine days later, beginning an brutal regime of occupation that would last until 1999. More than 200,000 East Timorese died and many more suffered during massacres, torture and starvation. In the 1990s, a combination of the independence movement gaining strength, growing worldwide pressure and political reform in Indonesia led to a UN-sponsored referendum on independence on 30 August 1999.  The historic ballot saw 78% of East Timorese vote for independence. Indonesian-backed militias responded by unleashing a wave of terror with attacks on civilians, looting and burning of homes until an Australian-led peacekeeping force arrived in late September 1999. 

• East Timor: Indonesia's invasion and the long road to independence
• Paul Daley: Australia cast itself as the hero of East Timor. But it was US military might that got troops in

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US knew Indonesia intended to stop East Timorese independence ‘through terror and violence’

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Documents reveal ‘muted’ attempts to convince Indonesian officials to allow free vote to proceed

The US government knew for months that Indonesia’s military was supporting and arming militias in East Timor in the lead-up to the 1999 independence referendum but continued to push for stronger military ties, declassified documents have revealed.

The hundreds of documents provide a window into US policy on the months of terror inflicted on the Timorese and the “muted” attempts by the US to convince Indonesian officials to allow a peaceful and free vote to proceed.

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Timor-Leste rejects report it is taking $16bn loan from China’s Exim bank for gas project

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State-owned company seeks partners to develop $50bn of untapped reserves in Timor Sea

Timor-Leste’s state-owned gas company has rejected reports it is set to take a $16bn loan from China’s Exim bank to finance the Greater Sunrise project.

The Timor-Leste government recently took majority ownership of the project after buying out its former partners – ConocoPhillips and Shell – with the aim of ensuring the gas is piped to its shores instead of Australia’s.

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