[R-G] East Timor: Official “assassination” claims collapse

[Anthony Fenton]

East Timor: Official “assassination” claims collapse
By Mike Head
19 February 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/timo-f19.shtml

After just one week, the official version of the February 11 events  
in East Timor—that army rebel Alfredo Reinado, attempted a “coup” and  
“double assassination” against President Jose Ramos-Horta and Prime  
Minister Xanana Gusmao—is in tatters. As Australian journalist Paul  
Toohey noted last Saturday, “virtually no one in East Timor believes  
it [the assassination plot]”.

While much remains unclear, one thing is certain. The alleged plot  
has been exploited to bolster the hand of two players: Gusmao and his  
unstable coalition government, and the Australian government of Prime  
Minister Kevin Rudd.

Rudd flew into East Timor last Friday and immediately declared that  
Australian troops would remain there indefinitely. The night before,  
Rudd told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Lateline”  
program that the events in East Timor were “murky” and his visit  
would help the Australian government ascertain the facts.

Rudd’s brief stopover was no fact-finding mission, however. It was a  
show of force. After a perfunctory meeting with Gusmao, Rudd convened  
a media conference and vowed to stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” with  
Gusmao’s government. Flanked by Australian Defence Force chief Angus  
Houston and Australian Federal Police chief Bill Keelty, he denounced  
“this brutal and violent assault on the democratically elected  
leaders of this wonderful country”.

Rudd spent most of his four-hour visit being photographed with  
Australian soldiers and police. He said they would stay for as long  
as the Timorese government requested, repeatedly claiming that this  
would be at the invitation of the “democratically elected” Dili  
government. It is clear, however, that the events have been used to  
prop up Gusmao government’s and reinforce its political and security  
dependence on Canberra.

Australian soldiers took control of sections of Dili and nearby  
towns, patrolling in armoured vehicles, setting up roadblocks,  
searching vehicles and enforcing a nighttime curfew. Gusmao then  
extended a declared state of emergency for another 10 days until  
February 23. Apart from imposing an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, the  
declaration bans demonstrations and gatherings, and expands police  
powers.

In a particularly sinister move, about 80 SAS commandos were among  
the 340 Australian military and police personnel dispatched to East  
Timor last Tuesday (counting the crew of a naval warship, the HMAS  
Perth)—taking the total Australian security contingent to more than  
1,100. The SAS units have been sent into East Timor’s mountains to  
hunt down Renaido’s surviving supporters, several of whom have  
alleged that Reinado was “set-up” and killed by East Timorese  
soldiers outside Horta’s house. According to media reports, the SAS  
has been authorised, at Gusmao’s request, to use lethal force.

Reinado killed after deal with Ramos-Horta

For all the official and media hype about “assassination” plots, the  
fact is that both men who were actually targeted—Reinado and Ramos- 
Horta—had struck a peace deal just four weeks earlier. It has been  
established that Reinado was killed at Ramos-Horta’s villa well  
before the president came under fire, and at least 90 minutes before  
Gusmao’s vehicle was allegedly shot at by unknown assailants, some 10  
kilometres away.

An anonymous friend of Ramos-Horta’s told the Associated Press that a  
gun battle raged for around 30 minutes before Ramos-Horta returned  
from his customary morning walk. After being warned of gunfire, Ramos- 
Horta refused a ride from a passing vehicle and walked back to the  
house, escorted only by two bodyguards with pistols. This sequence of  
events was confirmed by unnamed military sources, who told the Age  
that, half an hour before Ramos-Horta’s arrival, Reinado was shot in  
the face by a member of a team of guards who had arrived to relieve  
the night guards and saw Reinado in the house.

An examination of Renaido’s body, which was released to his family  
for burial last Thursday, revealed that he had been shot three times,  
through the left eye, left breast and neck. His bodyguard, a former  
military policeman Leopoldino, was also killed. By contrast, Ramos- 
Horta, who remains hospitalised in a serious condition in the  
northern Australian city of Darwin, was shot in the back. Relatives,  
friends and associates of Reinado have alleged that he was shot by a  
waiting party of soldiers from the Timorese military, the F-FDTL.

According to the Australian’s Toohey, two of the men who were with  
Reinado on February 11 have told Reinado’s adoptive father, Victor  
Alves, that F-FDTL troops shot Ramos-Horta from behind while they  
were hiding inside the residence’s compound. Among those insisting  
that Reinado was lured to the house to be assassinated is Angelita  
Pires, a Timorese-born Australian woman, who was dramatically  
arrested yesterday in connection with the February 11 attacks.

It remains unclear how Reinado entered Ramos-Horta’s house, and why  
he was there. It is quite possible that he was at the residence, with  
Ramos-Horta’s explicit or tacit permission, to seek further talks  
with the president. Radio Timor Leste reported that Reinado was not  
an attacker but had been a guest in Ramos-Horta’s villa for up to a  
week, and had run out of the house to try to stop the attack.

A motive for the shootings became clearer when photographs were  
published in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday of  
Reinado and Ramos-Horta standing smiling together with supporters  
after a clandestine meeting on January 13, where a deal had been  
struck to end the two-year rebellion by Reinado and some 600  
“petitioners”—disgruntled former soldiers.

Ramos-Horta had gone unarmed and without security to the mountain  
village of Maubisse to discuss the plan, brokered by the Centre for  
Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva. It was agreed that Reinado and his  
men would surrender to house arrest, and be tried on charges of  
murder and armed rebellion, but be pardoned by Ramos-Horta under an  
amnesty to be declared on May 20, the sixth anniversary of the formal  
independence of the former Portuguese and Indonesian colony.

East Timor’s Economics Minister Joao Goncalves told the Fairfax-owned  
newspapers that the rendezvous was relaxed and friendly, and a deal  
was essentially done. After a lunch of goat, lamb and chicken, washed  
down by wine, Reinado and Ramos-Horta parted with a handshake,  
agreeing to meet again within days.

In an apparent move to undercut the deal, however, Gusmao reportedly  
arranged a meeting with disaffected and sacked soldiers, some loyal  
to Renaido’s ally, Gastao Salsinha. The prime minister allegedly  
offered the rebels a compensation package of three years’ salary or  
reinstatement to the army, an offer that threatened to isolate Reinado.

Last December, Gusmao issued an ultimatum to Reinado, demanding his  
immediate surrender. Reinado responded in January by releasing a DVD  
statement, accusing Gusmao of being the puppet master and “author of  
the petition” behind the army rebellion and violence that led to the  
Australian military intervention in 2006 and ultimately forced the  
resignation of Fretilin Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

Renaido’s allegations were extensively reported in East Timor, but  
blacked out by the Australian media. Alkatiri asked Gusmao to answer  
the allegations in parliament, but Gusmao refused. When local  
reporters pressed Gusmao, he warned that if they pursued the story  
and interviewed Reinado, they could be arrested.

Renaido’s claims rang true. As the WSWS has documented,  
communications were held between Gusmao, Reinado and Vincente Railos,  
another principal figure in the 2006 rebellion. Railos, whose  
allegations against Alkatiri on the ABC’s Four Corners triggered  
Alkatiri’s resignation, subsequently became an organiser for CNRT,  
the party Gusmao formed to contest the 2007 parliamentary elections.

Renaido’s accusations had the potential to not only lead to criminal  
charges against Gusmao, who was president in 2006, and end his term  
as prime minister, but also raise questions about Australia’s  
involvement in the destabilisation and ousting of the Fretilin  
government.

During last year’s presidential and parliamentary elections in East  
Timor, Gusmao and Ramos-Horta sought to block Reinado’s arrest. They  
needed the support of the second largest political party at that  
time, the Democratic Party, to gain majorities and complete  
Fretilin’s ouster from power. Like Reinado, the Democratic Party drew  
its support from the western half of East Timor.

At the time he was killed, Reinado still held a written guarantee of  
protection. The Australian last week cited an October 18 letter  
written by the Australian commander of the International  
Stabilisation Force (ISF), to Reinado’s lawyer, Benny Benevides,  
assuring him of the rebel leader’s safety. "Your client is hereby  
assured that, subject to his complying with any pre-agreed  
arrangements during the dialogue period, your client’s movements will  
not be interfered with,” the letter stated.

Ramos-Horta was not the only political representative holding talks  
with Reinado. As recently as February 6, three government MPs met  
Reinado in Ermera, only to have the meeting disrupted by the arrival  
of Australian troops. Fretilin MP Domingos Sarmento last week  
demanded an explanation from the three MPs, asking which government  
leaders had told them to meet Reinado.

The official story that Gusmao was also an assassination target on  
February 11 has been called into question by reports that any shots  
fired at his vehicle were aimed only at its tyres. United Nations  
investigators then appeared to switch the official story, telling  
journalists that the plot was intended to kidnap, not assassinate,  
the two political leaders. This claim is no more credible than the  
initial one.

Gusmao and Australian strategic interests

Particularly since Alkatiri’s removal in 2006, Gusmao has been a  
linchpin of Australian policy, having shifted from the president’s  
post to the prime minister’s in 2007 with Canberra’s backing.  
Fretilin won the most votes of any party at the 2007 elections, but  
Ramos-Horta invited Gusmao’s newly-created CNRT to form an anti- 
Fretilin coalition.

Despite Rudd’s support, Gusmao’s government remains insecure, with  
Fretilin stepping up demands for new elections. Fretilin has  
condemned the government for failing to prevent the February 11  
attacks, with Alkatiri saying that if he had still been in office,  
people would have been calling for him to resign. Political tensions  
have been fuelled by the circulation of a highly suspicious document  
that claims that Fretilin offered Reinado $US10 million to  
assassinate Ramos-Horta and Gusmao.

Popular disaffection with Gusmao has grown because his government has  
proven unwilling and incapable of doing anything to address the  
poverty and misery of ordinary people. Some 100,000, mostly Fretilin  
supporters, still live in squalid displaced persons’ camps, and about  
80 percent of the workforce are unemployed or in subsistence  
agriculture. Six years after so-called independence, East Timor’s  
people remain among the poorest on earth, even though billions of  
dollars worth of oil and gas are being drilled beneath the Timor Sea.

On the back of its first military intervention into East Timor in  
1999, the Howard government eventually bullied the Alkatiri  
government into accepting ongoing Australian control over the major  
share of the undersea fields, while the International Monetary Fund  
(IMF) and world banks insisted that Timor’s oil and gas revenues be  
placed in a petroleum escrow fund, to prevent so-called over-spending  
on social programs. The petroleum fund currently stands at more than  
$US2 billion, but even when it reaches its optimistically estimated  
peak, decades from now, the annual investment returns will only  
amount to $2,500 per person. Last year, the IMF predicted that  
poverty would continue to worsen in East Timor for several years.

Behind the scenes, sections of the Australian security establishment  
are calling for a deeper intervention into East Timor, along the  
lines of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI),  
whereby the Howard government took effective control over key posts  
in the state apparatus, such as the police, courts, prisons and  
treasury. In a “strategic insight” paper issued last November, the  
government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)  
suggested: “Expatriates in critical posts like chief of police,  
prosecutor general, and senior court appointments could provide a  
circuit-breaker from political interference as well as promote  
professional development and an ethos of public service complementing  
the political and economic advice and audits provided by UN missions  
and the IMF.”

Australian foreign editor Greg Sheridan gave voice to these neo- 
colonial aspirations in a column last week, urging the Rudd  
government to take a longer-term view of its involvement in East  
Timor. “[I]f we are the new metropolitan power in the Melanesian  
world, guaranteeing security, dispensing vital and ongoing aid,  
keeping the international order benign, monitoring the spread of  
infectious disease and everything else, then we need to make a long- 
term investment in national skills in this area,” he wrote. None of  
these calculations has anything to do with assisting or uplifting the  
living conditions of the Timorese masses. While Rudd pledged an  
indefinite military presence last Friday, he offered only vague and  
unspecified economic assistance. Since 1999, according to ASPI  
estimates, Canberra has spent $4 billion on military and police  
operations in East Timor, but just $550 million on Official  
Development Assistance. In any case, the main purpose of “aid” is to  
bolster Australian interests, as well as the profits of locally- 
operating Australian companies.

The Australian corporate and political elite’s preoccupation is to  
strengthen its grip over the resources-rich and strategically-located  
neighbouring half-island and prevent rival powers, notably China,  
from gaining sway. The ASPI report referred to concerns that “China  
has a large embassy in Timor-Leste and is a major aid contributor”.  
Rudd’s exploitation of the February 11 events underscores his  
government’s underlying commitment to the course charted by the  
Howard government in 1999.