East Timor: Horta claims big lead after peaceful vote

Above: AFP snaps East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao waiting in a queue to vote along with others at a polling station in Dili. East Timor's election for president was peaceful - bolstering hopes that months of deadly political turmoil could be near an end. Gusmao will stand aside for a new president, but he will make a tilt for the prime ministership.

East Timor presidential candidate Jose Ramos-Horta says he's secured a large lead over his rival as vote counting continues following this week's run-off election.
"I am still awaiting official results because they are still being counted, but I could get 70-80 percent," Ramos-Horta told reporters in the capital Dili. "In most of the districts, in all the western districts, I think I am winning."
East Timor held a peaceful presidential election on Wednesday, but Ramos-Horta a Nobel laureate - is alleging vote tampering in some districts that are strongholds of his rival, ruling Fretilin party president Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres.
"In Los Palos, Suai, observers and polling staff found many boxes with pre-perforated ballot papers for Lu-Olo, so there were strong attempts at manipulation," he says. Ramos-Horta repeated his call for the United Nations to stage the parliamentary poll in June, as the local body, the Timorese Technical Secretariat for Election Administration (STAE), was not up to the task.



More from Australia's ABC News

East Timor Vote for Hope

(.. but there's confusion.. : read ABC News Online)


BAUCAU, East Timor, May 9, 2007 (AFP) - From just after dawn they began to queue, waiting patiently in the early light for polling stations to open. At first they numbered about 60, but they kept coming, and within an hour had swelled to several hundred at this primary school in East Timor's second city.
"If you want your country to be run by a person you trust, you have to vote," said Fransisca Belo as she joined the line for what is the tiny nation's first election since independence five years ago. Cancio Fernandes Quintao, a financial administrator at the local hospital, agreed. "Everyone should vote as the country needs a leader who loves and understands his people."
The queues at the school pointed to a good turnout, and observers said they were hopeful it would mirror the numbers at last month's round of voting.
"This is our right," said George Lopes Belo, 29, who was first in line. "We hope that the next president, whoever that is, can take East Timor out of the crisis, the conflict." Belo, who lives nearby, arrived about 30 minutes before the polls opened at the school in Bahu area of the city, east of the capital Dili. Unable to find steady work for several years, he said he hoped the new president would create jobs for the thousands of unemployed in this nation of just one million people.
"For the moment, everything is going well. I think the people need democracy, people need and want peace and they want reconciliation, and this is the way to solve the crisis," EU observer chief Javier Pomes Ruiz said. The quiet chatting among the voters in the rising heat was disrupted by the arrival of presidential candidate Jose Ramos-Horta and his large entourage. There were no cheers of welcome for the Nobel laureate, who spent about 20 minutes in the queue before delegating the duty to one of his minders. Voters looked on as Ramos-Horta, the current prime minister, disappeared to the terrace of a nearby house for a cold soft drink. "I'm totally relaxed, whatever the outcome, I will win," he told reporters. He returned in time, and held up his finger dipped in red ink after voting to warm applause from the crowd. Quintao said the Bahu area was a stronghold for the ruling Fretilin party whose candidate Francisco Guterres is challenging Ramos-Horta in the election to succeed the popular and charismatic Xanana Gusmao. "But it is quite alright for him to vote here. We do not have any animosity towards him or any other East Timorese politicians," Quintao said.
In Dili, voters were peacefully making their way to polling stations as police and Australian-led peacekeepers patrolled the streets. The election is being held amid tight security after violence erupted last year between factions of the military that degenerated into deadly gang clashes. More than 30,000 people remain displaced in Dili fearful to return home.
An election observer, Julio Tomas from the University of Peace of Timor Leste, said it appeared voter turnout in the capital was lower than the first round. "But I am convinced that the election is proceeding in a just way and with no manipulation ... because of the presence of international and national observers," he said.

East Timor's Balibo Five Mystery Remains

The author, outside the "Balibo House" in Balibo, East Timor. In 1975, this is where the so-called Balibo Five spent their last night before Balibo was attacked by Indonesian soldiers. The House is now a museum dedicated to the memory of the five Australian-based newsmen.

This just in from the AFP:

May 8th - Sydney Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam on Tuesday appeared at a coroner's inquest into the death of an Australian journalist killed with four colleagues in East Timor 32 years ago.

The 90-year-old former leader of the centre-left Labor Party, who held office from 1972-75, testified for three hours at the inquest into the death of cameraman Brian Peters at the East Timor border town of Balibo in October 1975.

Officials maintain the so-called "Balibo Five" were killed in crossfire during a skirmish ahead of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor but their families insist they were murdered and there was a cover-up by Canberra and Jakarta.

Whitlam denied he had prior intelligence warning the journalists would be targeted by the Indonesian military in Balibo, Australian Associated Press reported. He said he learned about the men's deaths on October 21 -- five days after they were killed -- and had not seen diplomatic cables sent before that date suggesting they had been executed by the Indonesian military.

Asked whether anyone told him the five journalists had been killed in the orders of the Indonesian military, Whitlam replied: "No." Whitlam said he had twice warned a member of the group, cameraman Greg Shackleton, not to travel to East Timor because there was nothing his government could do to protect them there. "I warned him the Australian government had no way of protecting him or his colleagues," Whitlam told the court. "I assumed Greg Shackleton would have taken notice of my warnings. I assumed he would have warned his colleagues." "It would have been very irresponsible if he didn't, then he would be culpable."

Deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch warned lawyers at the inquest on Monday that they could not question Whitlam about any potential cover-up of the men's deaths because the issue went beyond the parameters of her inquiry. Outside the court, Shackleton's widow, Shirley, described Whitlam's evidence as "bizarre" and said it had little value because the former prime minister claimed he could not remember vital details. Shirley Shackleton, who has led a decades-long campaign to find the truth behind her husband's death, also dismissed Whitlam's statement that he warned her partner about travel to East Timor. "He is totally despicable," she told reporters. "Dead men can't tell stories, so it's left to their poor old wives to do it for them."

Urge for Calm Before East Timor Vote

ISF troops around 50 metres away from a Presidential rally in Ainaro.
Glenn Campbell, The Age

As leaders urge their supporters to remain peaceful, there are fears that if East Timor's ruling party Fretilin loses this week's presidential election, street violence could follow.
The UN mission in the tiny state urged voters to accept the result of Wednesday's runoff which many East Timorese hope will help stabilise the impoverished nation beset by violence and regional rivalry. It's the first presidential poll since East Timor gained independence in 2002, amid concerns of unrest.
Election observers have expressed concern that supporters of the ruling Fretilin party could trigger violence if their candidate, Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres, loses.
Guterres faces Nobel laureate and current prime minister Jose Ramos-Horta in the runoff being held because neither candidate won a majority in the first-round polls last month.
Asked if the UN mission was concerned violence would erupt once the result was declared, spokeswoman Allison Cooper said: "We would urge all people in East Timor to remain calm and peaceful -- so far this has been a free and fair process."
Ramos-Horta, who shared the Nobel peace prize in 1996 for championing East Timor's cause under Indonesian occupation, is favoured to win after five of the six losing candidates in the April 9 poll urged their supporters to back him.
Campaigning for the election has been peaceful, amid tight security provided by thousands of UN and local police, backed by international peacekeeping troops, deployed in the wake of unrest last year.
Meanwhile, Australian-led peacekeeping troops have rejected Fretilin accusations that they were deliberately intimidating party supporters and disrupting its campaign rallies.
Fretilin officials have written to the troops' commander, Brigadier Mal Rerden, complaining about the intimidation, which they suggested was done in support of Ramos-Horta.
A spokesman for the peacekeepers, known as the International Stabilisation Force, said all of their East Timor operations were done to "ensure a safe and secure election."
More on East Timor's presidential vote in "The Age"

Travel with a Twist

Ken Haley - travel writer extraordinaire - has set off on another great adventure. It made me green with envy when he emailed me from St Petersburg to tell me he had just bought a ticket to Petrozavodsk - one of the early legs of his epic journey that will take him to the Arctic Circle, across, up, down and right through Europe.

I can't tell you exactly what's the aim of Ken's latest travels - you'l have to read his book to find out!! In the meantime, Ken is this month's featured writer in "Writers Interview" on my website.




Author Profile: Ken Haley
Ken Haley is one of Australia’s most widely travelled authors. To date he has visited 109 countries, 57 of these on his own two feet, and 52 in a wheelchair. He became a paraplegic in 1991, but as far as Ken is concerned the only difference this has made is that he now observes the world from a sitting position. A journalist by profession, Ken has a unique story to tell in his first book "Emails from the Edge" - in which with great humour, and not a hint of sentimentality, he lays bare his darkest times, when he plunged over the precipice into madness, and reveals the wanderlust that led him to the heart of the world�s hot spots.

Read a complete interview with Ken Haley in "Writers Interview" on my website.

Here's a taste:

How did you get started writing?

As a child, all I seemed to need was the alphabet. One was supplied in bubs' class, and it's served me perfectly well ever since. But I feel the urge to scrawl - literally to make my mark - has been so strong that if they hadn't supplied the alphabet I might have just scribbled the same nonsense in a code of my own device.
As an adult, I'm lucky that newspapers nurtured my early efforts long enough for me to work out what it was I was trying to do.

What do you consider your first "break" as a writer?

When a small country newspaper in western Victoria hired an insistent 20-year-old, sight unseen. As a book writer, when a small independent publisher in western Melbourne offered to take up the manuscript of Emails from the Edge and turn it into a book, despite the fact that - when it came to non-journalistic writing - I was an unknown quantity.

Extreme Adventures become Classics

Looking for an adventure book to take you right out of your comfort zone? National Geographic compiled a list of the very best adventure books of all time and its worth a look. The list is from 2004 but most of these titles are timeless classics- like the Journals of Captain Cook, and perhaps the most influencial mountaineering book of all time, Maurice Herzog's tale of altitude and frost bite - Annapurna.

East Timor drowns in language soup

This story comes from Reuters journalist Ahmad Pathoni. It highlights of one of many challenges facing East Timor:


Outgoing President Xanana Gusmao is one who understands the difficulty of the East Timor's language dilemna. He favours Portuguese - but speaks Bahasa and English.





Dili, East Timor - 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.

After Lisbon cut the territory free, East Timor was occupied by neighboring Indonesia for 24 years before gaining full independence in 2002.

Under Indonesian rule, Portuguese was suppressed and speakers of the language now mostly come from the political elite or are older people educated in the colonial era.

Despite government attempts to push the use of Portuguese as an official language, Indonesian remains the main language of instruction in secondary schools and universities, along with native Tetum, the other national language.
Many of East Timor's leaders left for exile in Portugal or its colonies before or soon after the territory was invaded by Indonesian forces and many of them do not speak Indonesian.

They consider Portuguese to be the language of resistance.

But the government's decision to enshrine Portuguese in the Constitution is criticized by some, who see it as short-sighted.

They say many young people educated under Indonesian rule have been denied state jobs because they lack Portuguese skills.

"This is the biggest type of discrimination practiced by the government," said Suzanna Cardoso, a Timorese journalist.

"The government does not recognize the contribution of those educated under the Indonesian system to the struggle for independence," she told Reuters.

Cardoso said English would be more useful for East Timor.

"Why do we have to use Portuguese? Portuguese-speaking countries are poor and they are far from us," she said.

Jumble of languages
Tetum is used in daily interaction but some experts say it is mainly a spoken language and has to be developed further for wider usage.

But the issue is sensitive and a Cabinet minister has been criticised for only speaking Portuguese and never using Tetum in public.

Signboards at government offices are written in Portuguese, although for most Timorese it remains a foreign language they don't understand.

Newspapers run articles in Tetum and Indonesian side-by-side. Indonesian TV soap operas are also hugely popular.

"I don't know any Portuguese. I'd rather learn English than Portuguese," said Ano Pereira, a driver and high school graduate.

The language issue was raised by some of the eight candidates contesting April 9 presidential elections, with one promising to ditch Portuguese if he won the presidency.

News conferences during the elections were held in four languages -- English, Tetum, Portuguese and Indonesian -- adding to the difficulty of coordinating the fairly chaotic polls.

No candidate in the election won a big enough majority to win outright and a run-off is expected to be held next month.

At the National University of East Timor, teachers give lectures and students write their theses in Indonesian.
"Most of our textbooks are in Indonesian and most lecturers don't speak Portuguese," management student Julio Rangel said as he sat at the hallway of a white-painted campus building, a Catholic seminary during colonial times.

A report released by the United Nations Development Programme in 2002 said 82% of East Timor's one million populations spoke Tetum, while 43% could speak Indonesian.

Only 5% spoke Portuguese.

The government, dominated by the Fretilin party that spearheaded the struggle against Indonesian rule, has brought in teachers mostly from Portugal to teach in elementary schools.

However, there are concerns that once pupils finish elementary education, they will have to enroll at a secondary school where teachers don't speak Portuguese.

"This is going to be a big problem. These students don't speak Indonesian and their teachers don't know Portuguese," said Julio Thomas Pinto, who teaches at two universities in the East Timor capital Dili.

The head of East Timor's National Institute of Linguistics, Dr Geoffrey Hull, defends the adoption of Portuguese as a national language.

"Anyone with the slightest familiarity with East Timor's history knows that the Portuguese language has long been central to the national identity," he said on the institute's website.

"East Timor needs both Tetum and Portuguese to be fully itself," he said.

But Silvino Pinto Cabral, an economics lecturer at the national university, is not convinced.

"This policy of imposing a foreign language will not work. I doubt that in 50 years the government will be able to make the whole nation proficient in Portuguese," he said.

Protest in Indonesia's Papua

Papua's remarkable highland peaks. Below the mist is the Grasberg mine carved out of the mountains. This is the traditional lands of the Amungme people. According to legend these mountains are the sacred home of their ancestral grandmother who guards the balance of nature. Freeport has been accused of disturbing this natural balance.

In an unprecedented action, thousands of workers from a giant US-run mine in Indonesia's remote Papua province have staged a protest demanding better wages and welfare.

The workers come from the Grasberg gold and copper mine high up in the mountainous interior (see photo above). They demonstrated outside the Indonesian headquarters of Freeport-McMoRan, which is in the lowlands about 70 kilometres downstream from the minesite. News reports say the protest was peaceful , but the thousands of demonstrators were flanked by Indonesian police at all times.

The workers have been gathering in Timika from surrounding villages and towns demanding to speak with a Freeport executive in the US via teleconference.
Critics accuse Freeport of not giving enough to the people of Papua in return for the mine. They allege the mine causes pollution and that the military's protection of the site leads to human rights abuses.
The firm has disputed the claims.
A Freeport spokesman told the AFP News Agency that in the past decade the company had almost quadrupled its Papuan employment, from some 800 in 1996 to the current 3,000 workers.

Freeport runs its Grasberg mine under a 30-year contract with the Indonesian government that began in 1992. The company owns 91 percent of PT Freeport Indonesia, with the rest in government hands.

Members of the Amungme people who live downstream from the Freeport mine project. In 2000 I reported on a mine spill which wiped out part of the Amungme village of Banti. You can read about this story and the struggles of Papua's people in my book Running Amok

Phil O'Brien - Out of the scrub and onto the page

Northern Australia is producing some unique writers - and Phil certainly is unique.
He's the first featured "Writers Interview" on my website.

Here's a taste:

Phil O’Brien spent his early years on Tempe Downs Station 250 km’s southwest of Alice Springs, in the red heart of Australia. Decades on, and several hundred adventures later Phil still roams the outback living a uniquely nomadic life, it’s a life full of challenges, panorama’s and camaraderie…and it’s a journey that has taken him to places and put him in situations that most other Australians living amongst the security of the suburbs ever get to experience...

The Interview:

How did you get started?

It was all pretty fluky how I got into writing, or maybe it was fate I’m not sure. I was at a party half cut sharing yarns as you do, jamming as much Victoria Bitter down my throat as I could, when this bloke came up and reckoned if I could somehow document all those stories in print people might really enjoy the read.

His name was David Harris, a professional writer and he really encouraged me. It was such a ‘way out’ proposition to start with, but once I chewed on it for a while I thought… why not?

For Phil's story and full interview click here.

Elections, headlines and fishing jackets

So the people of East Timor have once again gone to the vote. Although it's likely there will be no clear winner in this presidential poll, the real story is perhaps that despite the precarious conditions, voting was peaceful.

One keen ET observer, Rob Wesley Smith reckons the media - and he singles out the ABC - have been obsessed with cheap headlines suggesting violence is the order of the day. This didn't eventuate, so he has written his own instructive sample of how a short radio news report should be written:

"Despite many fears and street gang violence over the last year, the election period has been remarkably violence free, save for some small incidents of rival political factions throwing stones. These incidents and suggested intimidation at times is regrettable, but under the existing circumstances of East Timor's history, gross poverty, gross lack of education and literacy, generalised hunger, lack of media in remote areas, and a short official electioneering period during the end of the Wet season when remote access is difficult, most seasoned observers have been pleased and optimistic of a generally free and fair election today Monday."

Meanwhile another keen observer Dili-gence has this pithy insight into the election scene in East Timor's capital:

"Dili is crawling with international election monitors (ie scrutineers, observers), many wearing fishing jackets. The award for the most stylish fishing jacket goes to the EU team, followed by Japan and the UNDP jacket in last place."


Monitoring elections in East Timor has a rugged history. The photo (at left) shows former Australian deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer and the author, preparing for a 'live' ABC TV news interview on the day of East Timor's independence vote in August 1999. Tim was leading Australia's election monitoring team, and he was fuming. He had just visited a polling station in the volatile town of Liquisa, only to witness an Australian 60 minutes TV crew asking would-be voters (including militiamen) how they were going to vote. The incident nearly caused a riot. You can read about this day - and the tumultuous days that followed - in my book Running Amok.

Xanana's big announcement

(Backtrack to 1999. Xanana Gusmao and the author. Gusmao had just been released from gaol in Jakarta.. but was still being held under house arrest in Jakarta. I had just conducted an interview with the East Timorese leader.)

East Timor's politics has suddenly got very interesting indeed with President Xanana Gusmao announcing he's ready to become the troubled country's prime minister, after he ceases to be head of state.

Gusmao will not seek re-election in East Timor's presidential election on April 9th - instead he intends to join a newly formed political party after the vote.

"By becoming prime minister, there will be hope for change for the people. I will seek to improve everything," he has told AFP. During many past interviews, Gusmao has confided he has no stomach for leadership and would rather be a pumpkin farmer.

East Timor's current premier, Jose Ramos-Horta, is the favourite to win the presidential election. After that, a legislative poll is supposed to follow, but a date for it has yet to be set.

As a guerilla leader, Gusmao fought Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor and enjoys hero status amongst his people.

Ramos-Horta spent the entire Indonesian occupation in exile as leader of the country's independence movement and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

The two men could end up swapping their current jobs if elections go their way.

But expect fierce campaigning from East Timor's biggest political party, Fretilin, and regrettably expect more violence.

Tribute to a great conservationist

It's six months since a tragic helicopter crash in Nepal killed all 24 on board.
It was the worst-ever helicopter accident in Nepal, and one of those on board was my sister, Australian scientist Dr Jill Bowling.
Jill was the UK director of conservation for the WWF, and died together with other WWF officials, the Nepalese Minister of State for Forests, Gopal Rai, his wife, senior officials of the Forest Ministry, Nepalese wildlife experts, two journalists and four crew members.
The helicopter was a Russian-built Mi-17, chartered by the WWF conservation organisation to transport V.I.P's to a function marking the hand back a conserved area - known as the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area - to a local community in far eastern Nepal.
The hand back ceremony had just taken place and the V.I.P. party boarded the helicopter in Ghunsa, a village in Taplejung district, for the return trip to Nepal's capital Kathmandu.
Soon after takeoff the helicopter crashed in a rugged mountainous region dominated by ravines and gorges.
It took two days for search teams to reach the crash site on foot.
Soon after confirmed news of Jill's death my father and I flew to Nepal. On route I wrote this tribute which was published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Many people have read this tribute and contacted my family to offer their condolences. I deeply appreciate the overwhelming response and extend the invitation to leave further comments here.

Also visit the WWF -UK and search for Jill Bowling.

Breakthrough malaria treatment

Aussie Scientists discover malaria treatment

Scientists in Australia's tropical north say they have discovered an effective treatment for the potentially deadly vivax malaria.

This is a major breakthrough because vivax is the commonest strain of malaria and is the scourge of many developing countries.

Researchers at the Northern Territory's Menzies School of Health Research say they have successfully trialled two treatments for the vivax strain of malaria in Timika in West Papua (the easternmost province in Indonesia).

The treatment combines a Chinese herbal extract and a longer-acting anti-malarial drug used to combat another, even more potent strain of the disease found in Africa.

In Running Amok, I write about malaria research going on in Timika (page 230) - not the good work carried out by the Menzies School - but a more dubious experiment being carried out by one American researcher using locals as live bait to catch and collect malaria-carrying mosquitoes! Timika is an extraordinary town carved out of the tropical jungle. Men from all over Indonesia have flocked to work at the nearby Freeport mine - one of the richest gold mines on earth. It's Indonesia's "wild east" - a place of considerable social and ethnic as well as health problems.

On page 190-191 you can also read about my wife Kim's ordeal with vivax malaria - including days of cold fits and high fever. We suspect that she was bitten during a stay at a luxury resort on the island of Lombok. Kim describes how the whole experience felt like near death. Luckily she was treated relatively quickly with Primaquine at an Australian Embassy clinic.

Most malaria sufferers don't have the advantage of being treated quickly or with access to the right drugs. Each year there are up to two million deaths from the disease.

It's reported that malaria causes the death of an African child every thirty seconds, and the main victims are young children and pregnant women.

The value of this new treatment can't be underestimated. It not only stops the malaria infection but it also protects sufferers from reinfection.

More about the history and cultural issues at Freeport

Everyone in Indonesia has an airline story

How very true.

Today on the Indonesia Blogsite a frequently flying Jakarta-based expat writes:
Following the Garuda air crash, there will no doubt be lots of newspapers publishing air disaster statistics, but they will not cover the near misses and the shambolic state of the Indonesian air industry as a whole, writes a Jakarta-based expat.

My comment on this is that as a one-time frequent flyer in Indonesia I know most passengers consider Garuda the airline of choice. Merpati Airlines for instance, is considered a far more precarious ride.
I have one experience to share: Several years ago flying aboard a Merpati Hawker Cassa from the tiny Banda Islands to Ambon. All was fine on the one hour flight until we hit the tarmac at Ambon's Patimura Airport. Suddenly the wheels jammed and the aircraft skidded off the tarmac into the grass. It was a wild, bumpy ride which ended with the plane on its side and the right wing wedged deep into the ground. We the passengers had to squeeze out through the door which was now like an overhead hatch in a boat.

We emerged into the Ambon sunshine with the smell of fuel all around us and the sound of emergency fire engines rushing across the airfield towards our plane.

Clock one up to good fortune! MB

Related: How Indonesia became aviation's Wild West

Indonesian aircrash: a tragic twist of fate for Australians

Now being reported are some tragic explanations of why some of the Australian journalists and officials came to board the ill-fated Garuda 737. The following comes from the news service AFP:
Five Australians were among the 21 believed dead after the Garuda Airlines Boeing 737 crashed at Yogyakarta airport on Wednesday morning as they flew to the town ahead of visiting Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
Some were due to have been on a plane that left the previous evening, but missed that flight when Downer's visit to a school in the capital Jakarta ran over schedule.
The Australian newspaper's Jakarta correspondent Stephen Fitzpatrick has described how, in a further twist, fate decreed he would live but fellow Jakarta-based journalist, the Australian Financial Review's Morgan Mellish, would die.
Both men were booked on a Garuda flight to Yogyakarta on Tuesday evening, but realised while following Downer on the school visit that they would miss the plane.
Discovering that the next morning's doomed Garuda flight was fully booked they reluctantly took seats on an Adam Air service leaving half an hour later "despite its appalling safety record," Fitzpatrick wrote.
But later that night, Mellish was having a drink with other journalists and Australian embassy officials when he was told there was a spare ticket on the Garuda flight in the name of an embassy staffer.
Embassy spokeswoman Liz O'Neill -- who is also missing and believed dead -- offered the ticket to Mellish "and his fate was sealed," Fitzpatrick said.
"I caught the Adam Air flight, which was turned around just minutes from Yogyakarta, after the Garuda flight crashed on landing," he wrote.
The other Australians killed were federal police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott, and embassy staffer Alison Sudrajat.
Five other Australians, including Sydney Morning Herald foreign affairs correspondent Cynthia Banham, were injured in the crash.
Downer was to have travelled to Yogyakarta on his own official plane.

Lost for Words

Australia has producd some fine writers in the last 150 years. The works of these great masters such as Henry Lawson and Patrick White have reflected the uniqueness of the Aussie character, lifestyle and landscape. The quality of writing has been applauded worldwide, but why isn't this distinct branch of literature celebrated Down Under?

Early in December 2006, the Weekend Australian's Review section featured an article on the teaching of Australian Literature in universities entitled 'Lost for Words' (The Weekend Australian Review, December 2-3). It noted that undergraduates seemed less interested in studying Australian writing than in the past and put forward various theories as to why this had occurred. The article attracted much comment, including claims that there needed to be more teaching of Australian literature in secondary schools as well.

As a follow-up, Sydney PEN has organised a panel to discuss how much Australian literature is currently read, as well as how much was, is and should be studied at school and university. Elizabeth Webby, Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, will be the participating chair and other panellists include well-known writers Delia Falconer, John Hughes and Emily Maguire, who are also teachers of literature and creative writing. More...

5.30 for 6.00pm, Wednesday 21 March 2007
Mitchell Theatre, Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts
Level 1, 280 Pitt Street SYDNEY NSW 2000
RSVP: (02) 9262 7300 or programs@sydneymsa.com.au
FREE ADMISSION

Inquiries: Kathryn 1300 364 997 sydney@pen.org.au

Canberra spotlight on travel writing

"Bowling is far from the caricature foreign correspondent, braving bullies and bullets to "get the story". Instead he reveals himself as the sensitive family man.."

Tracks of Asian life on divergent paths - from The Canberra Times 24/02/2007

TWO BOOKS about Australian journalists coming to grips with Asia - and there the similarity ends. Mark Bowling's is a story about the usual hardships, frustrations and more than occasional dangers involved in reporting for the ABC on Indonesia during one of the most troubled periods in that country's recent past - descriptions sharpened in the context of renewed attention to the fate of the Balibo Five during the Indonesian invasion of East Timor more than 30 years ago.

lain Finlay and Trish Clark, as befits a late middle-aged couple who have lived and worked together for four decades, travel at a gentler pace. Not a gun is raised, or a blow struck during their stay of more than year in the Vietnamese capital as workers for Australian Volunteers International: their greatest dramas involve severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and bird flu. The battles they describe are now part of history.

Bowling is far from the caricature foreign correspondent, braving bullies and bullets to "get the story". Instead he reveals himself as the sensitive family man, constantly concerned about his wife, Kim, and children left alone in their temporary Jakarta house while he rushes from one trouble spot to another. "Kim feared for my safety, she feared that my work would consume me, that the close-knit family life we cherished would be blown apart, and that our relationship would crumble," he writes.

At other times he describes eloquently the panic that any reporter feels when threatened with becoming "part of the story": literally running for his life when spotted by a wild mob of pro-Indonesian militiamen in Dili: tear-gassed during student riots in Jakarta - "I remember the soldiers' clenched teeth, the look of hate in their eyes." Bowling arrived in Indonesia just in time to cover the last days of President Suharto. He saw the short, doomed reign of Bachartuddin Habibie, the mounting crisis around his successor, "Gus Dur" Wahid, and the rise of Megawati Sukarno Putri, and the first Bali bombings form a bloody epilogue to his four-year assignment.

He was present for the birth pains of East Timor: he looked into a mass grave in Aceh and experienced the fry of sectarian strife in Ambon, yet still found time for "colour" stories on exorcism Indonesian-style, starving Sumatran tigers and the misery of Jakarta's garbage-dump dwellers.

Somehow Mark's relationship with Kim survived Indonesia and they have settled with their four children in Darwin. I am left with the impression that Running Amok has been written as a form of catharsis, and that he will not be thirsting for more adventure any time soon.

Finlay and Clark, two of the founders of the long-ru ning television program Beyond 2000, were fulfilling a long-held promise to themselves to do some overseas volunteer work when they accepted an assignment in Hanoi with the English-language service of the Voice of Vietnam radio network.

There is really nothing in Good Morning Hanoi that the average working tourist might not discover and experience during a prolonged stay there. The couple get a taste for the culture and make many good friends among their Vietnamese colleagues, neighbours and other overseas volunteers, especially Rebecca Hales, a young teacher.

They give seminars and lectures, and start a program featuring news of entertainment and other events around the country which they bequeath to a couple of their younger colleagues, delaying their departure to take in the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phil, which ended French rule in the country and ushered in the "American War". Finlay and Clark are two good-natured Australians with a genuine desire to reach out to the people they have come to help, and only occasionally do the frustrations with the stultifying Vietnamese bureaucracy show through. There are a few dark moments and historical slip-ups (Richard Nixon was not the United States president during the 1968 Tet Offensive) but mostly everyone has a jolly good time. Good Morning Hanoi will be useful to anyone planning an extended visit, or even just a holiday, but that is about the sum total - a kind of superior guide book with a lot of anecdotes attached.

Graham Cooke is a former Canberra Times journalist.

Rebel leader caught in the crosshairs

ChannelNewsAsia is reporting that Australian soliders are closing in the mountain hideout of Major Alfredo Reinado, about 50 kilometres south of the capital Dili. Reinado has been partly blamed for deadly civil unrest last year, and more recently accused of stealing firearms.

Whether he is arrested or not, Reinado remains one of Timor Leste's most intriguing figures as the tiny new nation heads towards a Presidential Election on April the 9th. Parliamentary elections are due to follow.. and one thing is for certain.. these are precarious times for East Timor.

Amidst this volatility, a Gold Coast filmmaking team is planning to head to Timor Leste. Producer Linda Arnold has written to me explaining that she and filmmaker husband, Philippe Deseck believe that "one of the ways we can help is by increasing public awareness of what the East Timorese have been through andthe problems they face now to build up their new nation." She adds that reading Running Amok was "the source of our inspiration".



Follow Linda and Philippe on a remarkable filmmaking journey by visiting their website . This will be a worthwhile but expensive project, and they are seeking donations and sponsorship. Linda confides on the website: "I decided then that I wanted to create documentaries and TV programs that would make a difference in the world. So I’ve quit working on Big Brother and put all my savings towards “East Timor”.

East Timor Unrest

Tensions have heightened on the streets of Dili after the shooting death of a youth by an Australian soldier.

Radio reports in the capital say that the civilian was firing metal arrows at Australian troops carrying out an operation at a Dili refugee camp. The troops are part of an international stabilisation force.

The incident reflects an upsurge of street violence around Dili, mainly between members of rival martial arts gangs. In recent days there have been numerous house burnings and gang battles which have left seven UN police officers injured and led to 148 arrests in recent days.

With elections looming the security situation in East Timor is growing worse, according to the United Nations News Service.

The U.N. Security Council has just voted to extend the U.N. mission in East Timor for a year and beef up the international police force ahead of East Timor's Presidential election on April 9, with full parliamentary elections to follow.

The council has extended the mission until Feb. 26, 2008 and authorized an additional 140 police to supplement the current force "particularly during the pre- and post election period." The mission currently has about 1,300 international police.

This is what it looks like staring down the barrel of a gun.

(Pictured: a young pro-Indonesia militiaman weilding a homemade gun, Dili 1999.)

As a Commission of Truth and Friendship convenes in Bali it is once again time to remember what really happened about the time of East Timor's vote for independence in 1999.

The Commission hearings are taking place in a luxury hotel on the holiday isle - surely this must be a surreal setting for witnesses recounting horrific memories of cold-blooded killings at the hands of militia squads organised and armed by the Indonesian military.

And what about the Commission's intent? Does it puzzle those long-suffering East Timorese citizens taking part that the whole idea of the commission is not to seek judicial prosecution, but to set the record straight.

Australia's major daily newspapers are covering the Commission hearings including The Sydney Morning Herald.

The horrific events surrounding East Timor's independece vote are also dealt with in my book Running Amok. In April 1999 I reported on the Liquisa churchyard massacre, and I was in Dili the day that militia squads attached the home of the independence leader, Manuel Carrascalao.