navelfluff

Much to my surprise, the presidential elections in Timor-Leste were featured in both the newspapers we subscribe to at home (Hbl, HS). It doesn’t seem unlikely that there will be a second round (meaning no candidate got over 50% of the votes cast), and it seems equally likely that my forner boss José Ramos-Horta will [...]

I haven’t written anything about Timor-Leste lately, partly because i haven’t even had the chance to keep myself updated on the situation there. Well, in short, it’s a whole lot messier than when i was there.
Anyways, it’s news time.  UN has decided to extend the Timor-Leste mission in Timor-Leste by twelve months (the AlertNet article [...]

Pássabe is a village in the Oecussi enclave of Timor-Leste, right next to the border of Indonesia/West Timor. Passabe is also a film i did not know that existed until just recently, though it’s existed since 2005. It’s a film about the aftermaths of the horrible events that happened after the 1999 referendum and [...]

I haven’t had the time to do much blogging lately, and i still don’t, but this is kind of relevant. Kofi Annan recommends sending a force of 2000 peacekeepers to Timor-Leste. In practice, this means instigating a new peacekeeping (PK) mission in the country, in a new attempt to keep some stability [...]

Warning: Gruesome stuff below
On the 25th of May, the Timorese army (F-FDTL) attacked the police (PNTL) headquarters. About 100 policemen and a handful of UN police were trapped inside. In negotiations between the FDTL top commanders representatives of UN, it was decided that the police would be allowed to surrender and safely exit the [...]

Update: Wikipedia is following the East Timor crisis.
The situation in Dili has deteriorated into what seems to be full chaos. I am no longer worried for my friends’ well-being. I am scared. Dili was in the main Finnish news today for the first time since the independence four years ago. It was ugly.
Since my [...]

“…what i want is the deadliest weapon — it is truth.” (Fish: Vigil)
I got a message originating from the East Timor Studies mailing list. According to it, the situation in Dili is not as peaceful as the Government would want us to know.
According to the government version, only 5 people have died, and 75 wounded. [...]

According to today’s UNOTIL media monitoring, things are cooling down in Dili. There are still people leaving town, but the numbers are few compared to what it’s recently been. Maybe there’s nobody left to leave?
The same press monitor raises another serious issue. Many of the “internally displaced people” (internal refugees) are children. [...]

BBC has an article on post-riot Timor-Leste with some background on both what happened and a bit of insight to the Timorese political scene.
And on Pacific Magazine, José Ramos-Horta says that given the right circumstances, he might run for UN Sec-gen after all. Ramos-Horta still says that his first and foremost obligation is to his [...]

Although getting calmer, the situation in Dili is still tense. Four people are reported dead. As reported by Max Stahl, up to 400 may have been injured and at least ten thousand have fled their homes. These numbers are best guesstimates, nobody can tell for sure. There have even been (unconfirmed) reports of 10-20 dead. [...]