Mark Dodd – Eight East Timorese refugees were injured yesterday by thugs using police-issue pistols and machetes in Dili, in an attack diplomats fear was designed to trigger a new wave of violence.
The attack, which left two of the wounded with life-threatening injuries, occurred at 1.30pm in a park just metres away from the five-star Dili Hotel in the city centre.
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Australian security forces hunting Alfredo Reinado, who led a mass escape from Dili's jail this week, should know he has XXX tattooed on the back of his neck.
Quentin Dempster: Returning now to our earlier story, the shootings this afternoon in an East Timor refugee camp, and the so-far fruitless search for 57 men who broke out of a Dili jail earlier this week. Well, Bob Lowry is a military and political consultant and has advised the East Timorese government on national security issues.
International police and troops in East Timor were searching for rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado after a mass jailbreak raised serious concern about fragile security in the fledgling nation.
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Alfredo Reinado, the swaggering military police officer blamed for plunging East Timor into chaos, has escaped from Dili's main jail with 55 other prisoners, including police accused of serious crimes during the violence in May.
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – For years the United Nations tried to cover up perverted and outrageous behaviour by uniformed and civilian personnel who have served in East Timor since 1999.
Canberra – Former East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri said in an Australian television interview that unidentified foreigners had approached army commanders in a failed bid to organize a coup against him.
He also said in the interview, aired Wednesday by public broadcaster SBS, that Australian Prime Minister John Howard had pressured him to step down.
Two months back, when East Timor's then Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, was dramatically forced to resign after weeks of violence and chaos, from many quarters, there was an audible sigh of relief. Gone was the man variously described as undemocratic, alleged to have armed a hit squad to eliminate his political opponents and a crypto-bloody-Marxist to boot!
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – The Australian Federal Police has defended an officer accused of ordering a senior East Timorese policeman to take off his uniform in public, saying two inquiries had found the officer had acted appropriately.
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – An Australian federal policeman allegedly demanded that a senior East Timorese police officer take off his uniform in public in an incident that has angered Timorese MPs and may lead to a diplomatic protest.
August 25 – The International Federation for East Timor (IFET) today said that the Security Council should create a new UN mission to Timor-Leste which fully integrates all international military components.
United Nations – The UN Security Council voted unanimously Friday to authorize 1,600 international police and 34 military liaison officers for a follow-on mission in East Timor – but no troops.
John McBeth – For three years now, the small white house across the street from the football field in the heart of the frontier town of Atambua has been used as a mess by Indonesia's paramilitary Police Mobile Brigade.
Mark Dodd – East Timor will double its spending on police and defence this financial year, under a national budget worth $US451.9 million ($601 million).
Nelson da Cruz, Dili – At this makeshift camp, thousands of East Timor's displaced people fear for their safety as youths intermittently hurl rocks at their temporary homes and rumours swirl of more serious attacks.
Dili – East Timor expressed regret Wednesday over two Australian policemen injured in a mob attack by youths overnight, the latest unrest to hit the tiny nation.
Dili – Intra-mural opponents of former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's continued leadership of East Timor's dominant FRETILIN party said Monday they hope to convene an extraordinary congress to elect new party leaders.
Youths burnt several houses to the ground in the East Timorese capital yesterday in the latest outbreak of unrest to hit the strife-torn country, eyewitnesses and international peacekeepers said.
"There were around 50 houses burnt," said Marito, a 46-year-old resident of the Comoro neighbourhood where gang battles raged earlier this year.
Jerry Norton, Dili – An agreement critical to advancing development of the Timor Sea's biggest gas resource could go to East Timor's parliament in September or October, and would likely be approved, the country's prime minister said.
Jerry Norton, Dili – During the day, Fernanda Gomez stands at her tiny roadside kiosk selling canned goods and sundries in front of the blackened remains of burned-out houses in her village near Dili.
Mark Dodd – East Timor's highest court has declared legal the controversial "show of hands" vote that endorsed the leadership of then prime minister Mari Alkatiri at a national party congress in May.
Jakarta – For more than two decades, the brutal military occupation of East Timor, a distant, impoverished, peripheral territory, brought Indonesia little but disdain and dishonor on the world stage.
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta – One of Indonesia's most senior officials has admitted that his country was directly responsible for failing to stop the murderous chaos that accompanied its withdrawal from East Timor in 1998.
Reporter: Geoff Thompson
Tony Eastley: One of Indonesia's most senior officials has said that his country ran East Timor like a police state and used bribes and allowed militia violence in a failed attempt to defeat the 1999 referendum on independence.
Andy Alcock – For those who have supported the independence of Timor Leste (TL) for over 30 years, Timorese and others, the events occurring there over the past few months are heartbreaking.
East Timor's parliament has passed the 2006-7 fiscal year budget, the young nation's largest ever at 315 million dollars, after a delay caused by violence and political upheaval in May.
Violence erupted again in Dili at the weekend as gang members armed with slingshots and rocks roamed the streets. Several people are believed injured and up to six houses burnt down in the worst attacks in the city since the prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, was forced from office in June.
Two human rights groups today commended the UN Secretary-General's continued attention to the need for accountability for past human rights crimes in Timor-Leste, but called his proposals to the Security Council "inadequate."
Nelson da Cruz, Dili – More than two months after battalions of foreign troops arrived in East Timor to restore calm, tens of thousands of refugees are still living in grim camps, saying they are too terrified to return home.
Todd Crowell, Hua Hin, Thailand – The turmoil in East Timor and the subsequent deployment of Australian and other peacekeeping troops has prompted much soul-searching, especially among human-rights activists for whom the cause of an independent East Timor was an article of faith.
Australian police could be deployed in East Timor for another five years and in greater numbers after the strife-torn country asked the United Nations to set up an 800-strong multinational force.
Lindsay Murdoch – East Timor's former interior minister, Rogerio Lobato, twice admitted during closed court hearings that he armed civilian Timorese so they could murder enemies of the ruling Fretilin party, court monitors have revealed.
Australia will cut its peacekeeping troops in East Timor by the end of this year, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer announced today, signalling that tension is easing in the troubled state.
Jeremy Ballenger – With the present situation slowly heading for political resolution, time has come to consider the next steps for the fledgling government of Australia's newest neighbour.
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – United Nations peacekeepers have abandoned at least 20 babies fathered with poverty-stricken Timorese women.
His Excellency Kofi Annan Secretary General
The United Nations
1 United Nations Plaza New York
New York 10017-3515
July 21, 2006
Dear Mr. Secretary General,
We are writing on behalf of three coalitions of NGOs concerned with the transitional justice process in Timor-Leste.
Mark Dodd – Lawyers for East Timor's disgraced former interior minister, Rogerio Lobato, have accused Australian soldiers of breaking international human rights laws when they hauled him from his home last month on charges of gun running.
Morgan Mellish, Dili – Australian police have taken over patrolling the streets of Dili from the army, in a sign authorities are confident order has been re-established in East Timor's capital.
The head of the international taskforce, Brigadier Mick Slater, said the change was a major step towards shifting the mission from a military operation to a police operation.
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Life in Dili's refugee camps isn't too bad. A boy sits on sacks of rice strumming his guitar. Mothers stir pots of boiling food. Men doze blissfully in their families' United Nations-supplied tents.
Trucks bring fresh water twice a day. There are deliveries of high-protein corn, rice, cooking oil and soap.
Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Australia's military presence in East Timor will be wound back, starting with at least 300 personnel, the Prime Minister, John Howard, announced during a flying visit to the country's violence-ravaged capital Dili. The force, which peaked at more than 3000 in early June, would not be withdrawn "prematurely", he said yesterday.
Avelino Coelho da Silva, Dili – The conflict that arose recently in Timor Leste has caused more suffering for the nation's poor people, confronting them with an uncertain economic and political future.
United Nations – UN special envoy Ian Martin on Wednesday stressed the need for a "substantial" UN police presence in volatile East Timor to create the conditions for credible parliamentary and presidential elections next year.
Howard is off to East Timor today, allegedly to meet the Aussie troops and the new PM Jose Ramos Horta. But we can be assured that his main purpose in meeting Horta will be to encourage, nay, demand, that he puts the CMATS agreement on Greater Sunrise to East Timor's parliament to ratify. Indeed Horta has already flagged that this is his intention.
Mark Dodd and Stephen Fitzpatrick in Jakarta – On his first day in office this week, East Timor's new Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta accepted a cache of illegal weapons from a former soldier, Vincente "Railos" da Conceicao.
Marianne Kearney, Dili – Mr Joao Cancio Freitas might be the director of Dili's Institute of Technology, but like almost three quarters of this city's population, he has spent weeks living in one of the dozen refugee camps dotted around Timor Leste's capital.
Kalinga Seneviratne, Sydney – East Timor's new Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta has been warmly welcomed by Australia's foreign minister Alexander Downer as a leader who could help solve the country's political crisis. But analysts in the region doubt if Horta can deliver the goods, where his own country is concerned.
East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao has sworn in a new cabinet, taking the tiny nation a step closer to normalcy after deadly violence in May left it in disarray.
Damien Kingsbury – The appointment of Jose Ramos Horta as East Timor's interim prime minister is a move towards installing a unifying figure for a small nation that, for a moment, appeared to be in danger of fragmenting. A fragmented nation, in this case, would have meant a failed state.
John Martinkus – Three weeks ago in East Timor I was given information from senior members of the East Timorese military that confirmed what the now deposed prime minister had been saying all along.
Dili – East Timor's new prime minister Jose Ramos-Horta is the candidate best placed to unify the traumatised nation but the Nobel laureate could still face opposition and challenges lie ahead, analysts warned.