Timor-Leste investigative journalist Jose Belo has been presented with one of the 2013 Sergio Vieira de Mello human rights awards by the President, Taur Matan Ruak. David Robie profiled the Tempo Semanal publisher in an interview in Dili a few days before the award.

He was imprisoned and tortured by the Indonesian occupation forces for a period during the 24 years of illegal occupation of Timor-Leste while smuggling out reports to the world from the beleagured resistance movement.

Five years ago he was threatened with a seven-year prison sentence for criminal defamation over allegations of corruption against the then justice minister.

This prompted a high-profile international appeal by journalists, academics and media freedom campaigners to then President Jose Ramos-Horta to have the case dropped.

Threats are common over Belo's campaigns to root out corruption and nepotism in his fledgling Asia-Pacific state – the world's newest nation barely a decade old.

Corruption, nepotism

"Corruption, collusion, nepotism are when people take the state money and make people suffer," he once said in a radio interview.

But Belo is a tenacious survivor and investigator. When I met up with him, he was holding court on a Dili cafe terrace contemplating how best to use another bunch of leaked government documents that had fallen into his lap for his Tempo Semanal ("Weekly Times") newspaper and website.