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/ 12 February 2008
International troops stepped up patrols in East Timor’s capital, Dili, on Tuesday as President Jose Ramos-Horta recuperated in Australia after an assassination bid doctors said he was lucky to survive. Residents packed markets as usual, seemingly oblivious to a state of emergency.
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/ 10 February 2008
Rebel soldiers shot East Timor President and Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta in the stomach at his home in Dili on Monday, while Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao escaped injury in another attack, officials said. Ramos-Horta was in a stable condition following the assassination attempt.
It has pristine beaches, lush highlands and an exotic cultural mix — and lies just a few hours’ flight east of the Indonesian resort island of Bali. But currently almost the only overseas visitors to East Timor are foreign troops, journalists and aid workers after Asia’s youngest nation descended into turmoil last year.
Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jose Ramos-Horta pledged to unite troubled East Timor on Thursday after the former resistance leader clinched the election as President of one of the world’s poorest nations. Ramos-Horta offered hope to a nervous electorate after a year of bloodshed and unrest that looked to tear the tiny country apart.
Portuguese is one of the two official languages in East Timor, but you can hardly hear it spoken in the streets of the young nation. The tiny country was a Portuguese colony for more than three centuries, but only an estimated 5% of its one million people now speak the European language.
Voters in East Timor cast their ballots on Monday in a presidential election they hope will pull them from a cycle of violence and political tension that has paralysed efforts to rebuild one of the world’s poorest nations. It is the first poll since the former Portuguese colony declared independence in 2002.
East Timor’s Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, widely blamed for triggering last month’s bloody unrest, resigned on Monday in a move expected to ease tensions in the impoverished nation. The announcement sparked jubilation on the streets of the violence-hit capital Dili, where truckloads of protestors cruised the streets waving red, yellow and black East Timorese flags with horns blaring.
East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, blamed by opponents for violence that gripped the tiny nation last month, huddled with senior members of his party as his fate hung in the balance on Thursday. President Xanana Gusmao has told Alkatiri to step down or be sacked after seeing a documentary that purported to show evidence of the prime minister’s involvement in arming men tasked with killing his rivals.
A political solution to the violence in East Timor could take weeks to be hammered out, Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta warned on Monday as the United Nations readied an aid appeal for the tiny nation. The four-year-old country descended into bloody chaos last month after Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri sacked 600 soldiers from the west who had complained of discrimination in the ranks.
Australian troops fired teargas at rampaging gangs in East Timor on Monday, trying to keep a lid on violence as the tiny nation’s Parliament met for the first time since peacekeepers were deployed. Youths attacked each other with rocks and spanners and used petrol bombs to set houses ablaze.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer held crisis talks on Saturday with the leaders of East Timor, trying to end the worst violence here since the tiny nation split from Indonesia seven years ago. Downer met President Xanana Gusmao, Foreign and Defence Minister Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.
East Timor’s capital was returning to normal on Friday after Australian troops took to the streets to restore order and stop bloody clashes between the Timorese military and rebel soldiers. One day after some of the worst violence since independence in 2002 left at least 15 people dead, residents of Dili began leaving their houses.
The house, on the outskirts of East Timor’s capital, was turned into a mere shell. The six people inside — five women and a child — were little more than burnt and broken skeletons. Attackers came in the middle of the night, broke the windows of the concrete dwelling, doused it in petrol and set it ablaze.
Blood-spattered bullet cases, boots and communication radios lay scattered on the street outside the justice ministry in Dili, East Timor on Thursday as the East Timorese capital descended into chaos. In the latest violence of days of clashes, 20 rapid-reaction police came under attack by rampaging rebel soldiers early on Thursday.
Eleven-year-old Nuno de Oliveira intently watches a late afternoon football match on a muddy, barely marked field in East Timor’s capital. One day, he hopes to don the red and yellow shirt of his fledgling nation. ”I like to watch them pass the ball around. The way they pass it, it’s cool,” says de Oliveira, who started playing when he was six and names England’s David Beckham as his idol.
Newly independent East Timor urged former ruler Indonesia to drop its compensation demand for assets left behind after Jakarta ended its two-decade occupation of the country.
Tens of thousands of East Timorese — dancing, cheering, brushing away tears and hugging each other — greeted independence early on Monday with a huge surge of emotion.
After more than 450 years of oppressive foreign rule, East Timor is preparing a huge party to celebrate its accession to nationhood.