'Free' East Timor

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 17:53:19 +1300
>From: Philip Ferguson <plf13 at it.canterbury.ac.nz>
>Subject: 'Free' East Timor
>
>The following article appeared in the Australian magazine 'Socialist
>Alternative' #45, September 2000.
>
>
>
>John Howard and the media haven't let up about how wonderfully East Timor
>is progressing as an independent country and how proud we should all be of
>Australian troops in East Timor. According to their logic, the struggles of
>East Timorese people are all over, and the United Nations transitional
>government is to be congratulated. This report from Kate Habgood, working
>with students in East Timor, demonstrates how far these claims are from the
>truth.
>
>
>After fighting off 500 years of Portuguese colonialism and 25 years of
>Indonesian colonialism, East Timorese are once again second-class citizens
>in their own country.
>
>Nine months after the arrival of the United Nations Transitional
>Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), East Timor is widely regarded here
>as the UN's greatest failure yet. A colossal, top-heavy bureaucracy sits on
>the harbour in Dili.
>
>The head of the administration, Sergio Vieira de Mello, has sweeping powers
>which effectively make him an autocrat.
>
>It wasn't long before students re-named one branch of the UN's tentacles,
>the National Consultative Council, "Nepotisme, Collusi, Corrupsi",
>recognising that the NCC's job was to approve every decision made by the UN
>and that it worked only in the interests of its members.
>
>Protests against UNTAET came to a head in April. The central focus was the
>lack of job opportunities for Timorese, but also about the fact that, six
>months after UNTAET's arrival, Dili still consisted of piles of rubble and
>blackened structures.
>
>The UN responded with reams of propaganda about how only private and
>foreign investment could rebuild the nation, and the biggest danger was of
>producing a civil service on the scale of Indonesia's.
>
>One particularly lovely example was an article in their newspaper about a
>good bloke called Eddie Taylor, who out of the goodness of his heart came
>from Bali to assist with the rebuilding. Eddie employs dozens of local
>staff in his construction company, restaurant and god knows what else.
>
>His restaurant, phil's grill, sits near the airport. International staff
>can drink $4 beers and eat $12 meals while groups of unemployed East
>Timorese sit on the embankment above the restaurant, watching them.  Most,
>if not all, of Eddie's local staff would be receiving less than a main meal
>per day.
>
>These cockroach capitalists are not willing to share more than a tiny
>fraction of their quickly accumulating wealth with the Timorese.
>
>The notorious Timor Lodge is run by Wayne Thomas and a consortium of
>Australians, including Liberal Party president Shane Stone. The hotel is
>situated on a former Indonesian army barracks, officially the property of
>UNTAET. Thomas has been credited with introducing prostitution to East
>Timor and was most recently rumoured to be caught importing bullets.
>
>Staff receiving 25,000 rupiah ($A5) a week at the Timor Lodge earlier this
>year struck for higher wages and won 40,000 rupiah. However, a week later
>they were handed a lump of money and told never to show their faces on the
>property again.
>
>In other areas, local Timorese staff are often treated with contempt,
>ordered around as photocopy dogsbodies and denied higher wages because of
>"lack of skills". The UN still has a general practice of hiring only
>English speakers.
>
>The disparity between local and international salaries is emerging as one
>of the biggest issues. Local wages have been set in accordance with the
>current price of goods. The NGOs (Non Goverment Organisations) have drafted
>an agreement with "an explicit understanding between employing agencies
>that they will adhere to these salaries in order to minimise the poaching
>of employees." These salaries start at $A4.36 a day for unskilled labour.
>
>Many goods for sale in the Dili markets are more expensive than in
>Australia. Bus fares before the ballot were Rp100 (2 cents), now they are
>Rp1,000. Kerosene has doubled in price while petrol, which is now brought
>to East Timor exclusively by an Australian company, has quadrupled.
>
>One Timorese student estimates that an adequate wage to feed, clothe and
>support a family of eight or nine people is around $A30-$35 a day.
>
>A "bottom of the pile" wage for international staff is around $US40,000 a
>year, while for Timorese it's $US360. For example, an apprentice carpenter
>in Maliana gets $US1.50 a day - plus rice.
>
>The UN justifies this in an internal document (written to respond to sticky
>questions from locals) stating: "National staff's remuneration is set
>according to local salary conditions. International staff are paid
>according to international salary scales, based on the cost of living
>elsewhere."
>
>The UN argues that it is legitimate to invest more money in the maintenance
>of UNTAET rather than in rebuilding the country because UNTAET receives its
>finances from member nation tithes. But why should all the UN funds
>received by member countries be channelled towards maintaining bureaucrats
>and their inflated wages?
>
>Donor countries have a vested interest in giving money to countries like
>Cambodia and East Timor. It gives them a stake in the future of the country
>- and a share of the money pie for both government and business.
>
>As far back as last September, Australia was holding forums in Canberra on
>"opportunities for Australian businesses in East Timor" - giving a hint as
>to the real agenda behind sending troops there.
>
>NGOs are constantly grandstanding about how much they are contributing to
>Timor, yet their projects could often be realised for a fraction of the
>price if the bureaucracy was cut out. For example, some Timorese say it
>would be simpler to provide a machete to build a house straight away than
>wait months for a shelter kit while endless investigations and needs
>analyses are carried out.
>
>NGO workers are not averse to making a quick buck for themselves while they
>indulge in a little aid work. NCBA, a coffee "NGO" from America, "helps"
>East Timor sell its coffee overseas. However, this company has been in East
>Timor for many years and apparently worked in collaboration with Indonesian
>companies. Timorese coffee farmers struggle on the less than $A1 which NCBA
>gives them for each kilo of coffee. NCBA said on Radio UNTAET recently that
>part of their work was to help East Timorese workers understand the
>stockmarket and why coffee prices fluctuated!
>
>Taxes are also being imposed, "focusing on revenue generation with an
>emphasis on business activities and on products marketed to those with
>higher purchasing power."
>
>Imports attract a duty of five per cent of their value, while tobacco and
>alcohol are subject to a higher excise duty. This doesn't worry UN staff,
>however, as they enjoy tax-free incomes, daily $US100 expense accounts and
>exclusive access to a duty-free shop in Dili. In the new East Timor, the
>richest get access to the cheapest beer.
>
>With its fractured political nature and lack of resources, CNRT (the uneasy
>coalition of pro-independence organisations) lost faith with the people of
>East Timor long ago, and the UN seems to have replaced Indonesia as the
>oppressor.
>
>UNTAET's ideology is summed up by Jaret Chopra, a disillusioned ex-staff
>member: "Rather than trying to render itself obsolete as swiftly as
>possibleŠUNTAET resisted Timorese participation in order to safeguard the
>UN's influence.
>
>Widespread unemployment, intermittent food distribution and the absence of
>reconstruction indicated that the UN had no operational plan; there were no
>timetables or milestones of achievement that might have driven a transfer
>of power. The dispute over the Community Empowerment Project (where local
>communities elected representatives who considered funding proposals at a
>village level) confirmed the worst suspicions of the East Timorese: that
>the UN had no inclination to share power with them during the transition,
>or to
>include them in any decision-making beyond perfunctory consultation.