East Timor struggles with freedom
By DANIEL KESTENHOLZ
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Dili, East
Timor
Xanana Gusmão, the hero of East Timors freedom
struggle, hardly looks into your eyes when talking. His dark eyes swim and
wander. And now it appears that Gusmão may be losing sight of his
lifelong goal: peace and a future for the new Timor.
Timor, freed from 25 years of Indonesian occupation by a bloody
confrontation between local residents and Indonesian-backed militias, needs
direction and leadership. Because of quarrels with the U.N.-appointed
transition parliament, the former poet, guerilla and prisoner of Indonesia gave
up its chairmanship in March.
Furthermore, Gusmão insists that there is no
way he will be the first president of East Timor. Welcome to the
worlds youngest country, that already features the ingredients of decline
after a kind of cultural revolution: the civil infrastructure has been
destroyed; the people live in grinding poverty with hardly any work; the elite
wrangles for power; reconciliation remains a faraway goal with Indonesias
consistent denial of its past killing regime in East Timor. But thanks to an
ambitious U.N. mission with billion-dollar donations from the world community,
Timor LoroSae (Timor of the Rising Sun) will soon fly its own
flag.
In many ways, Timor has risen phoenix-like from the ashes,
literally. After the August 1999 U.N.-organized referendum showed that the vast
majority of East Timorese wanted autonomy from Indonesia, a firestorm of
violence was let loose on the people. In a few short days, militias backed by
the Indonesian military murdered thousands. Hundreds of thousands were
displaced, fleeing into Timors mountainous hinterland and across the
border into Indonesias West Timor Province.
Hardly anything survived the plundering waves of August and
September 1999. As the last Indonesian tank lorries drove through Dili, they
sprayed houses with gasoline, and entire neighborhoods burned down. U.N.
peacekeeping forces led by Australian troops and commanders restored a
semblance of order in the territory and allowed people to return from the
hills.
By now, the tropical sun and monsoon rains have bleached the
soot-blackened ruins of Dili. Many houses have been provisionally renovated --
and Dili is going Australian. With the inflow of entrepreneurs from Darwin,
Australia, and of the U.N. armada, new hotels, restaurants and supermarkets
opened up, offering the lowest and highest quality selection. And world-class
prices to match.
Perplexed Timorese are left to stare at full shelves. An average
hotel bed costs nearly $100 a night -- the monthly salary of a Timorese.
The U.N. administration Untaet (United Nations Transitional
Authority of East Timor) has a yearly budget of about $600 million, most of
which is sent out of East Timor into the salary accounts of foreign U.N. staff.
In contrast, East Timors yearly budget is $59.4 million, which includes
investments.
Some observers estimate it will take a decade for East Timor to
reach the economic standard it had under Indonesia. Free we are at last,
but poor, says the Catholic bishop of Dili, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo.
Now there are two kinds of society. The society constituted by the people
from outside from abroad, walking around, eating in the restaurants. Every day
a big fish. They have the right to do that, because they have money. But then
we have another class of people, Timorese. They tell me, We are
suffering. OK, we needed international assistance, and we ask them to
come -- but not only to come, but beyond giving security also to help, to give
skills, to give more training, and to be on their side. Side by side. And to be
integrated in the Timorese community.
Strain beginning to show
Signs of division in society are apparent everywhere. The people
have four languages (Portuguese, English, Bahasa and Tetum), three currencies
(Indonesias rupiah and the Australian and American dollars), and even
three telephone systems (Indonesian, Australian and U.N.-installed) that are
not connected to each other.
In the beginning, the Timorese gazed in awe at the glittering
world of the foreigners with their mobile phones, imported limousines and
parties at night. But strains have begun to emerge.
Recently, Hong Kong-Chinese and Singapore-Chinese entrepreneurs
have been attacked. In April, Gusmãos Australian wife got stabbed
at a beach. Says East Timors former governor Mario Carrascalão:
The worst [thing for East Timor] would be [bad] feelings against
foreigners. Its starting already -- mainly because of the [highly
inflated] prices.
Foreign entrepreneurs confirm that brawls among Timorese are the
rule, that little things often ignite violence. Recently on the luxurious
ship-hotel Central moored in Dilis harbor to serve the rich,
the Timorese staff threw the plates against the wall because of bad
food. The hotel staff members have had disputes over taxes, threatening
to burn down the tax office if the economy doesnt improve.
Unrest in the countryside is setting off other alarm bells. In
recent riots in Bacau and Viqueque a mosque was burnt down, 70 houses destroyed
and several people killed. Gusmão says: I am worried that even
with the international community here it seems we cannot assure a peaceful
situation and a feeling of security.
Many U.N. staff are deflated, burnt out and stay in Timor only
because of high salaries. Talking in a bar one evening, one says: These
Timorese think freedom means everything is free.
The U.N.s Peter Rimmele, head of the registration
department, asks: Where else has a people destroyed its own
livelihood?
Joachim Metzner of Germanys aid agency GTZ notes that the
violence of today is rooted in trauma from the past. Metzner knows Timor since
Portugals colonial days. Back then violence was not known, he
says. Todays aggressions are the coverage of traumas.
Employees show me hills, crossings, where soldiers murdered.
Only the ones who were aggressive got through.
American Peter Galbraith, East Timors Minister of Political
Affairs, says, however, Even the American liberators were criticized by
the French [in World War II]. I see no reason for pessimism. The U.N. mission
ended violence, solved humanitarian suffering, the hunger and housing problems.
Basically everybody was homeless. The political process with parliamentary
elections in August is going forward.
However, of late, a Popular Council for the Defense of the
Democratic Republic of East Timor, CPD-RDTL, has been stirring up hate
propaganda against foreigners and mestizos, descendants of mixed
marriages with blood from Portugal, Goa and Cape Verde, many of whom lived in
the safe diaspora during Indonesias reign of the territory. The new
Timor, says the Democratic Republic of East Timor, has only replaced its old
dictators with new dictators. Timorese need a government of their own instead
of mestizos and the Brazilian U.N. dictator Sergio Vieira de
Mello.
The transitional cabinet, which de Mello chose by hand, consists
mainly of foreigners and mestizos. Gusmão, Nobel laureate José
Ramos-Horta and the powerful Carrascalão-Clan are considered mestizos as
well. In the computerized Untaet-headquarters, where on the drawing table a
wishful world of democracy and transparency arises, ethnic Timorese remain a
rarity, because most of them have no education. They have always served under
foreign masters. Places in the U.N. workforce mainly went to a small circle of
people, namely old allies of Indonesia, who already worked for Jakartas
occupation regime.
Furthermore, because most property archives were destroyed when
Dili was razed, nobody knows who owns what. That prevents foreign
investors from coming into this country, says Untaets de Mello,
though he says an investment law is being prepared.
In the beginning, Gusmão was full of praise for the United
Nations, even though the United Nations couldnt protect the Timorese
after the U.N. referendum and instead recommended that they flee into the
mountains. But the U.N. mission gave life again after weeks of terror without
food, without roofs, without protection.
But the Timorese are not interested in a legacy of cars and
laws, Gusmão declared in a broadside last October. Quite often,
says Gusmão in private, he is thinking about his days as a guerilla, a
kind of ideal world. It was something like a game. The struggle is
all-important, and you know the capacity of the enemy but also the capacity of
the population.
No interest in presidency
The deadly game he mastered. As a politician is he doomed?
[To be president] is out of my capacity, says Gusmão.
Meanwhile, in Indonesias West Timor, former militia leader
Cancio Lopes de Carvalho has declared a cooling down period for
now. After the United Nations departs Timor, though, he says his men will march
again against Dili. In early April skirmishes along the East Timor-West Timor
border claimed victims. U.N. peacekeeping troops increased their patrols.
Wiser after its contended nation-building missions in Mozambique,
Angola and Cambodia, the United Nations has an exit strategy for
East Timor. Some foreign U.N. staff will remain, after the territorys
formal independence.
But we cant stay here forever, says Untaet head
de Mello. You should never overstay your welcome.
De Mello says he fully understands Gusmãos retreat
from politics. Xanana is not a politician. He never was and probably
never will be. In the sense that he doesnt play games. He was beginning
to feel that the people are criticizing him, telling him: Where are you?
You divorced yourself from reality. They say, You dont listen
to us anymore. You dont talk to us anymore. You are far up in the upper
stratosphere of society. And one of these days he feels that they tell
him: You dont represent us anymore. I am not inventing
[that], says de Mello. He told me that.
Bishop Belo, however, insists: Xanana has to finish the
process of the consolidation, of independence, of peace and democracy and
justice. Many people have died fighting for independence. He has to take
responsibility and not be afraid to present himself as a leader, the
bishop says.
Xanana declines. Quite possibly -- as has happened so often -- he
will change his mind when the time comes. For now he prefers to remain a
simple Timorese, says de Mello. Xanana is convinced by
staying outside he can have more of a moral influence.
In T-shirt and jeans, with his Australian wife and newborn son,
Gusmão often travels to villages, eats with farmers, philosophizes over
beer and shakes hands. In the villages, he is still adored -- not like in
Dilis querulous world of politics, where former friends have become
enemies.
National Catholic Reporter, May 25,
2001
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