East Timor Law and Justice Bulletin

14 July 2009 DILI, East Timor (AP) — Rebel soldiers accused of trying to assassinate the president and prime minister of East Timor went on trial Monday.

The 28 men ambushed President Jose Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao in "simultaneous attacks" last year, chief prosecutor Felismino Cardoso said in his opening remarks.

Ramos-Horta barely survived after being shot in the stomach outside his home on Feb. 11, 2008. He was flown to Australia for emergency treatment, while Gusmao escaped an attack on his motorcade unharmed.

The leaders, who have not responded to requests to provide statements to the court, may be called to testify during this week's trial.

It was unclear what the maximum punishment could be for attempted homicide against the head of state in East Timor. The country also has a history of pardoning criminals, rather than prosecuting them and potentially causing more violence.

In a dramatic television appearance just months after the attack, Ramos-Horta said he had forgiven the man who shot him after he turned himself in. He personally pardoned a militia leader who confessed to killing people in 1999 when Indonesian-backed gangs killed 1,500 people.

East Timor, Asia's youngest nation with less than 1 million people, has struggled to find stability since violently breaking from Indonesia a decade ago. It faces huge challenges including towering unemployment, poverty and decaying infrastructure.

Fighting between rival security forces took the nation to the brink of civil war in 2006 before Gusmao and Ramos-Horta, a Nobel laureate, were voted into office in relatively peaceful 2007 elections.

The United Nations and Australia are in the process of scaling back a peace keeping mission established to end the violence.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5giGYXoxHyqhxU4mLWhxNQ5CVWG5AD99DIBNG0

Minister Lobato calls on Parliament to approve draft land law Timor Post 13 July 2009 Minister for Justice Lucia Lobato has called on the Parliament to approve the draft land law for next year so that it could help resolve land disputes in the country.

UN-GNR police officers' case handed over to the Public Prosecution Radio Televisaun Timor Leste 13 July 2009 The UN Police Commissary Luis Carilho said the UN-GNR Police officers and the prime minister's security guards case had beesn handed over to the country's Public Prosecution for investigation purposes.

Monteiro urges UN to take necessary action against its police officers Radio Televisaun Timor Leste 13 July 2009 The Timorese Police Commander Longinhos Monteiro has urged the UN Police to take the necessary action against two of the GNR police officers if the investigation findings found them guilty.

Portugal implements colonial system in Timor-Leste Suara Timor Lorosae 13 July 2009 The GNR Police officers recent alleged physical assault on the Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao’s security guards at Casamina Bar shows that Portugal is still implementing colonial system in Timor-Leste.

Human Rights and Justice Ombudsman is continuing to work: Lasama Timor Newsline 13 July 2009 Parliamentary President Fernando Lasama Araujo said that although the mandate of the East Timorese Human Rights and Justice Ombudsman had ended on June 30, it was still continuing to do its work while waiting the appointment of the next Ombudsman.

We will wait how the laws are to be implemented: Lasama Timor Newsline 13 July 2009 Parliamentary President Fernando Lasama de Araujo said the Court of Appeal had decided that the village chiefs elections and anti-corruption laws were constitutional. Lasama therefore would wait how these laws would be implemented.

Ministry of Finance sets up corruption prevention system Timor Post 13 July 2009 The Ministry of Finance is currently setting up a new system of corruption prevention known as Performance Budgeting System (BPS).

Government to start census pilot project Timor Post 13 July 2009 The Government through the Department of National Statistic will start doing a census pilot project in household in 11 villages in 7 districts.

Accelerating anti-corruption law is necessary to combat corruption Suara Timor Lorosae 13 July 2009 It is important for the Parliament to accelerate the legislative process of the anti-corruption law so that it could give the anti-corruption commissioners power to conduct their mission.

STAE will send schedule for village chiefs' election to CNE Radio Televisaun Timor Leste 13 July 2009 Following the promulgation of the village chiefs elections law, the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE) has planned to send the schedule for the village election to the National Electoral Commission (CNE) next week.

Artwork by Arte Moris

East Timor Directory

Land and displacement in Timor-Leste Humanitarian Exchange Magazine Issue 43 June 2009 by Ibere Lopes - A familiar dilemma faced the Timorese government in developing a strategy to promote the return and resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs): should it determine property ownership before promoting return, or should it promote return first, and deal with property issues later? In the end, it chose to promote return and resettlement through a ‘cash for return’ programme, a decision that was heavily criticised by humanitarian agencies – including the UN – who argued that promoting return without first resolving property ownership issues would provoke further tensions and cause re-displacement.

Today, it is clear that the government’s IDP reintegration programme has been largely successful. However, unresolved property disputes are still a source of tension in receiving communities, and addressing them remains a condition for the sustainable reintegration of IDPs. Based on recent monitoring reports, this article offers preliminary observations on the results of the government’s approach to land and property issues within its IDP reintegration strategy.

Context

Timor-Leste’s history is marked by numerous episodes of mass displacement. The first occurrences of forced internal resettlement were reported during the Portuguese colonial period, and again during the 1974–75 civil war. The Indonesian occupation, however, accounts for the most significant state-sponsored forced displacement programmes, with entire villages being resettled as part of Indonesian counter-insurgency strategy. Further displacement occurred around the independence referendum in 1998–99, when Indonesian troops and pro-Indonesian militias waged a campaign of violence, destruction and illegal mass deportations, causing thousands to seek refuge outside urban areas. In the latest wave of displacement, in 2006, approximately 100,000 people fled their homes.

Displacement and its consequences are the main causes of the uncertainty over property rights Timor-Leste currently faces. In seeking refuge from violence or being physically forced to move, many displaced families abandoned their former homes, leaving them to be occupied by other displaced people or destroyed. In each episode of displacement, a similar pattern of displacement, resettlement and arbitrary occupation occurred, resulting in constant changes of occupancy. The lack of property records only aggravates this already chaotic picture, and unregistered transactions make it almost impossible to disentangle the chain of transfers and identify legitimate owners, particularly in urban and peri-urban areas.

‘Cash for return’ and the property dilemma following the 2006 crisis

In April 2006, 600 personnel were dismissed from the Timorese army after protests over alleged discrimination based on them being from the west of Timor-Leste. The dismissals sparked tensions that led to widespread violence and the torching of houses, primarily in the capital Dili. Frightened families, predominately from the east of the country, sought refuge in churches, schools, NGO offices and parks, on vacant land in and around Dili and at the international airport. In early 2008, some 30,000 people were living in camps in and around Dili, with another 70,000 staying with family or friends. While the causes underpinning the violence were many, there is consensus that unresolved land and property issues were an important element. Latent tensions between the lorosae (easterners) and loromonu (westerners), exacerbated by these communities’ uneven access to land and property in Dili after 1999, played an important role in fuelling the violence.

The newly elected Timorese government made resolving the displacement crisis its main priority. A survey by the Ministry of Social Solidarity and UNDP found that more than 3,000 abandoned houses had been destroyed and another 2,000 damaged. Discussions between the government and international agencies on how to address the displacement crisis led to an inter-ministerial ‘retreat’, where the relevant ministries, UN agencies, NGOs and other stakeholders met to outline an action plan. The Ministry of Social Solidarity, the leading agency on IDP issues, commissioned a Technical Working Group to develop a Recovery Strategy to address the consequences of the 2006 crisis, with a particular focus on promoting sustainable return and reintegration.

The initial drafts of the Recovery Strategy concentrated on the most immediate impediment to return: the lack of habitable housing. According to the first version of the strategy, IDPs opting to return or resettle would be given a ‘recovery package’ of building materials tailored to their needs, from a two-bedroom shelter to a kit of building materials for minor repairs. Field surveys by the Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Ministry of Public Works identified the houses from which IDPs had been displaced, and assessed the level of damage.

After reviewing the draft recovery strategy, the government requested the inclusion of a ‘cash for return’ programme. The TWG had strong reservations regarding a cash-only approach, believing that giving large amounts of cash to IDPs would reinforce the existing ethnic divide (easterners would have the cash, while westerners would not), exacerbate social tensions in recipient communities and make building materials more expensive. Despite these reservations, a plan was developed under which IDPs opting to return or resettle would be entitled to different amounts according to the level of destruction of their homes. Entitlements were: $4,500 or a new two-bedroom shelter for houses deemed uninhabitable; $3,000 for severely damaged houses; $1,500 for partially damaged houses; and $500 for houses needing minor repairs.

With a history of repeated episodes of displacement, overlapping land rights, a lack of land registry and property records and insufficient legal frameworks to ascertain property ownership, it was extremely difficult to determine whether IDPs were entitled to the land on which they were supposed to build their new homes, and to which they would return. Would the government promote return and encourage construction on land with contested ownership? Would return to such land reignite tensions between returnees and recipient communities? If IDPs had been displaced because they were illegal occupants in the first place, why should they be allowed to return? Such fears and concerns prompted parts of the government and a number of international organisations to suggest that property rights needed to be clarified before IDP return began.

The government had to decide whether to concentrate its scarce resources on clarifying property rights first, promoting return only once such rights were determined, or promoting return first, and dealing with property rights later. On the advice of the TWG, the government chose the latter, for two reasons. First, outstanding property issues were not the only obstacle to return, and resolving them in isolation would not ensure the conditions for sustainable reintegration. Other factors which impeded return and resettlement included fear and insecurity (easterners were not comfortable with the idea of returning to predominately western communities, and vice versa); IDPs in general did not believe that law enforcement agencies had the capacity to prevent attacks after return. Meanwhile, even though conditions in the camps were far from good, the regular distribution of free rice and the delivery of some basic services made them a safer and more attractive alternative given conditions in areas of return. Second, clarifying land rights, even if only in Dili, would take years of complex work, legislative measures and additional resources not available at the time. Leaving IDPs waiting in camps would have been unacceptable. The few existing transitional shelters, built by the government and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), could not accommodate the larger IDP population and no suitable land was available on which to build extra units. Although suitable state land was identified, the government decided to allocate it for other purposes, such as the new Post Office headquarters. Clarifying land rights would require not only a lengthy and expensive cadastral survey, but also the passage of legislation, particularly of a Transitional Land Law, in order to determine criteria for resolving conflicting claims, rights acquired through adverse possession, validation of previous titles and other sensitive issues. There was no chance that such a controversial piece of legislation could be debated and approved quickly, and resolving the displacement crisis was an urgent matter.

The Recovery Strategy

The government’s Recovery Strategy was launched in December 2007, and is ongoing at the time of writing. It has adopted a holistic approach to IDP reintegration, treating each obstacle to return – including land and property issues – as part of a bundle of factors preventing resettlement, rather than as separate issues. The Ministry of Social Solidarity formed dialogue teams, which were dispatched to IDP camps and recipient communities to encourage IDPs to return and to facilitate their acceptance by recipient communities.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), in cooperation with other organisations including UNDP, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Care, the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) and Belun, a local NGO that specialises in conflict resolution, assisted the government in implementing its Recovery Strategy and in monitoring return. By December 2008, the Ministry of Social Solidarity had distributed recovery packages to 11,700 IDP families. An IOM survey conducted with village chiefs shows that 64% of households have returned to their villages of origin. The re-displacement rate has remained remarkably low: only 1.03% of returning families were forced to move out of their communities after return. The same survey shows that there is little correlation between villages reporting re-displacement and villages reporting post-return problems, including outstanding land and property issues. According to the survey report, re-displacement seems to be linked with specific factors related to affected families.

Conclusion

Overall, the government’s Recovery Strategy has succeeded in promoting IDP return and resettlement. The high return rate and the small number of re-displacements indicate that the cash-only packages have met the needs associated with return. However, at the time of writing no hard data is available on how returnees have used the money. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some returnees invested a large portion of their package in rebuilding their homes; others ‘shared’ part of their cash with members of the receiving community, made contributions to community peace-making ceremonies or invested in livelihoods, particularly replacing trading stalls lost during the violence. There were some reports of misuse, but this does not seem to have had a significant negative impact on return and reintegration. A survey by the Asia Foundation on perceptions of security among the general population shows that only 2% consider IDP returns to be the most serious security issue in their neighbourhood, and only 5% of respondents in areas that have received returnees believe that social tensions have increased as a result.

Outstanding land and property issues, although still a potential source of future tension, have not been an impediment to sustainable return. Nonetheless, in villages reporting problems between community members and IDPs land issues are most often cited as the source, indicating that land and property issues remain contentious, and may contribute to further conflict. Clarifying land rights will not guarantee stability in neighbourhoods receiving IDPs, but it will play an important role in promoting peace and preventing future conflict.

Ibere Lopes is the Land Policy and Legislation Task Leader in the USAID-funded Strengthening Property Rights in Timor-Leste project. In 2007, as a Land Rights Adviser in the UNDP Support to Government for IDP Reintegration project, he was part of the Technical Working Group set up by the Timorese government to develop an IDP return strategy.

References and further reading

Daniel Fitzpatrick, Land Issues in a Newly Independent East Timor (Canberra: Department of the Parliamentary Library, 2001).

Chega!, Final Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR), 2008.

Timor-Leste’s Displacement Crisis, International Crisis Group, March 2008.

Cynthia Brady and David Timberman, The Crisis in Timor-Leste: Causes, Consequences and Options for Conflict Management, Prevention and Mitigation (Dili: USAID, 2006).

Andrew Harrington, ‘Ethnicity, Violence and Land and Property Disputes in Timor-Leste’, East Timor Law Journal, 2007, http://www.eastimorlawjournal.org.

Scott Leckie, Housing, Land, and Property Rights in Post-Conflict Societies: Proposals for a New United Nations Institutional and Policy Framework, Legal and Protection Policy Research Series, PPLA, March 2005.

Chefe de Aldeia Survey, September–November 2008 Monitoring Report, IOM, Dili, 2009.

Liam Chinn and Silas Everet, A Survey of Community-Police Perceptions, The Asia Foundation, East Timor, 2009.

July 13, 2009 - 6:24PM - Australian woman Angelita Pires told East Timorese rebel leader Alfredo Reinado to go to Dili to "kill two dogs" the day before the 2008 assassination attempts on the country's top two political leaders, a court has been told.

Pires, a dual citizen of Australian and East Timor, is facing trial with 27 others allegedly involved in the February 11, 2008 attacks on President Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.

Pires, 43, was then the lover of Reinado, who was shot dead in an ambush that left Ramos Horta critically wounded.

Tight security surrounded the Dili District Court on Monday for the beginning of the trial, as prosecutors detailed the allegations against Pires and her co-accused.

On February 10, Pires told Reinado: "You are going there (to Dili) to kill two dogs," prosecutors said.

In the days leading up to the attack Pires also told an unidentified person that "something" was going to happen in Dili, they alleged.

The month before the attacks, Pires travelled to Australia to raise money for Reinado's group, the court heard.

"Angelita went to Australia to try to find money to support Reinado," a prosecution document, read out by court staff, said.

"It's not true she was there to take part in a scholarship."

Pires provided Reinado's group with food, cigarettes and medicine, the court heard.

Prosecutors also alleged that during 2007 Pires repeatedly convinced Reinado not to attend peace talks with Ramos Horta and top military leaders.

Dressed in traditional Timorese clothes with no shoes, Pires, who maintains her innocence, said she felt "strong".

"I am still fighting for justice," she said as she walked inside.

"I still fight for Alfredo Reinado, I cannot blame him."

The defendants and their legal teams packed into the small courtroom while family of the accused and journalists crammed into another room to watch via video link.

The court dismissed a move by prosecutors to prevent Pires's Australian legal team taking part in the trial.

The trial, before a panel of three judges, continues on Tuesday.

http://www.watoday.com.au/breaking-news-world/pires-told-lover-to-kill-timor-leaders-20090713-di6l.html

BBC News 13 July 2009 - An Australian woman, Angelita Pires, is among 27 people being brought to trial in East Timor, for the attempted murder of President Jose Ramos-Horta.

The confused incident, on 11 February 2008, saw guards and rebel soldiers shooting around Mr Ramos-Horta's home.

Rebel leader Alfredo Reinado and one other rebel were killed in the attack, which Prime Minister
Xanana Gusmao described as a coup attempt.

Ms Pires was then the lover of Mr Reinado and insists she is innocent.

Holding both East Timorese and Australian nationality, Ms Pires, 43, has told reporters she feels she has not been given a chance to prepare for the case.

"I have been struggling to get access to the case, to know really what I have been charged with," she said.

Prosecutors are expected to allege that Ms Pires urged Mr Reinado to kill the small state's president and prime minister.

Ms Pires' Australian lawyer, Jon Tippett, QC, says the case against his client remains "hopelessly inadequate and unfounded".

Pires' legal team will seek to have much of the state's evidence deemed inadmissible, he said.

Antonio Pires, Angelita's brother, said the family had no confidence in East Timor's legal system.

Instability

The shooting of Mr Ramos-Horta provoked a declaration of a state of emergency in East Timor, and heightened fears for the state's stability.

However, Gastao Salsinha, who took over the rebel leadership on Mr Reinado's death, surrendered to the government in April last year.

Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao had escaped unhurt from an attack on the same day the president was shot and seriously injured.

The rebels - former soldiers - had been on the run since violent protests in 2006 that left more than 30 people dead.

The protests were triggered by then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's decision to sack 600 striking members of the army. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8147058.stm