A TV documentary and how East Timor
pulled back from the brink

THERE was dancing on the streets, playing of drums and honking of car horns Monday when Jose Mari Alkatiri, East Timor’s unpopular prime minister, announced his resignation after three months of violence that threatened to bring the fledgling nation to the brink of disintegration.

The announcement came just five days after the charismatic East Timorese independence leader, President Xanana Gusmao, had threatened to resign if Alkatiri did not step down. Gusmao’s threat, as well as the resignation over the weekend of Foreign and Defense Minister Jose Ramos Horta, apparently stepped up the pressure on the embattled prime minister who only last week seemed unwilling to let go.

Last Saturday, Gusmao said that he had written a letter to Alkatiri, saying he had lost confidence in him after viewing an Australian television documentary that apparently showed the prime minister’s complicity in the arming of a secret hit squad targeted at his enemies.

The documentary, entitled, “Stoking Fires,” was aired on June 19 by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) on its “Four Corners” investigative program. It provided compelling proof — including documents and letters — that showed that the Timorese Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato had organized, at Alkatiri’s behest, the “Fretilin Secret Security Team.”

The secret army is said to be composed of ex-guerrillas who had fought for Timorese independence from Indonesia. Its members, according to various sources and documents obtained by “Four Corners,” were provided with arms by Lobato.

The exposé has prompted Lobato’s resignation and the filing of court charges against him. ABC reported today that Alkatiri himself may be summoned to court on Friday for his complicity in the hit squads, after Lobato implicated him during his testimony last week.

In the “Four Corners” documentary, ABC reporter Liz Jackson showed a memo to Lobato that listed 30 names, all members of the secret team, and the serial numbers of 16 HK33 rifles that had supposedly been issued to them.

The May 20 memo said that the team was headed by a Commander Rai Los who had been asked by Lobato in April this year to recruit and arm members for a secret army because “the situation in the country has been threatened by an opposition party.” (Click here to view the documents gathered by “Four Corners.”)

Rai Los also told ABC that the secret team’s tasks were to kill the Army rebels, “terminate opposition leaders” and “eliminate any Fretilin (ruling party) members who oppose the policy of Mari (Alkatiri) and of Fretilin.” He said that his men had taken part in a gunbattle with the Army in which four people were killed.

He also provided “Four Corners” with a great TV moment. Right there and then, as the camera was rolling, Rai Los called Lobato on his mobile phone. He also asked his men to fire their guns as he made the phone call — to fool the interior minister into thinking he was in the middle of a gunbattle and his men were being fired at.

“You need to contact comrade Mari (Alkatiri),” Rai Los told Lobato amid the sound of gunfire and as ABC eavesdropped on his phone call.

The interior minister answered, “I contacted him already. You have to fire back and defend yourselves.”

Commander Rai Los’s real name is Vincente da Conceicao and he himself presented the compromising documents to the ABC team. He also recounted that on May 8, the Timorese police handed over 10 rifles and 6,000 rounds of ammunition to him and his men. The delivery was supposedly made in the dead of night at a cemetary near Liquica, a town 70 miles west of Dili.

Interviewed by ABC, Antonio da Cruz, the national commander of the Border Patrol Unit of the Timorese police, admitted the arms delivery took place. Da Cruz said the Interior Minister had ordered him to provide the weapons, but did not tell him why. Da Cruz also faxed to the ABC correspondent dispatch records of the weapons and their serial numbers. As vividly shown on the documentary, those numbers matched the guns that were in Rai Los’s possession. There was therefore not only a paper, but an arms, trail of the transaction. (Click here to view “Stoking the Fires” and here for a transcript of the program.)

Further corroboration was provided by Police Commissioner Paulo Martins, who admitted writing a letter to Prime Minister Alkatiri in May, to inform him that police weapons that had been handed over to the Interior Ministry had mysteriously ended up in the hands of private individuals apparently linked to Rai Los.

“If this is was done with the knowledge Your Excellency, I will not do anything to the contrary,” said Martins’ letter to Alkatiri. “But the population is panicking, and if these measures continue, there will not be a way to put an end to the current problems.”

Martins said he never got a response to his letter, but that he had called the Prime Minister and asked to see him and the Interior Minister. Martins said that Alkatiri told him, “You can see me, but don’t speak about the weapon.” This, to Martins, was a confirmation that the prime minister knew about the secret army.

At that time, East Timor was reeling from fighting between rival army and police factions that was set off after Alkatiri sacked 600 Army soldiers in March for staging a demonstration. The rebel soldiers were protesting what they said was discrimination from Army officers who came mainly from the eastern side of the country. The disgruntled soldiers said they were being treated as collaborators with Indonesia, the former colonial power, while the easterners in the Army were taking sole credit for the struggle that won independence for East Timor in 1999.

The current crisis began to boil when the Army fired at demonstrators supporting the sacked soldiers on April 28. Later, gangs and hooligans joined in the clashes. In the ensuing days, houses in Dili and surrounding areas were set on fire. There was mayhem on the streets and 2,000 international peacekeepers had to be called in as the Timorese police and armed forces were not capable of restoring law and order. (See here for a timeline on the East Timor unrest.)

Alkatiri was unable to do much to douse the fires of conflict. Years of incompetent goverance took their toll, and the prime minister’s unpopularity reached new highs, with demonstrators calling for his resignation just months before general elections scheduled next year.

When he announced yesterday he was stepping down, the prime minister acknowledged his failure. “In the interests of our nation I assume my part of the responsibility for the crisis affecting our country,” a weary-looking Alkatiri said. “I am determined not to contribute to any deepening of the crisis.”

Gusmao is expected to name a replacement in the coming days. Ramos Horta’s name is being touted. But it is unlikely that the crisis will end. Conflicts continue to simmer, fraying the country’s social fabric. East Timor has bought some time for itself but it has yet to address a myriad of economic and social issues, including widespread poverty and unemployment, as it takes the long and bumpy ride to nationhood. (Click here for a background paper by Melbourne-based academic Jacqueline Siapno, who is married to an East Timorese opposition MP.)