Political Continuity and Conflict in East Timor

A History of the 2006 Crisis

Ruth Nuttall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000381047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Asie

This book examines the history of political continuity and conflict in East Timor between 1974 and 2006, and the origins of an unexpected crisis in 2006 which caused an international military intervention and several more years of UN missions.

Providing a fresh and empirical political history to explain the crisis, the book offers new dimensions to the understanding of East Timor, its independence struggles, political transition and politics after independence in 2002. The author revisits historical materials and brings to light new resources, making extensive use of the 2005 Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation and contemporary diplomatic, UN and news media reports, to provide a precise context and chronology for the events in 2006. The book provides an analysis within which factors such as ethnic and inter-communal violence, security sector weaknesses and conflict between the army and police, the constitution and legal system, state-building and peace-building can be located in the larger context of the 2006 crisis.

Demonstrating how and why, in the space of four weeks in April and May 2006, the newly independent country of Timor-Leste plunged from 'UN success story' into catastrophe, this book will be of interest to academics working on Southeast Asian Politics, Southeast Asian history, Development Studies and Nation-, State- and Peace-Building and International Relations.

1 The end of Portuguese rule in Timor

East Timor was poorly prepared for the sudden political change thrust upon it in 1974. A military coup in Lisbon on 25 April 1974 overthrew the dictatorship that had ruled Portugal since 1926, and set in chain a rapid disintegration of the Portuguese colonial system. In East Timor’s case, this resulted in its annexation by Indonesia 18 months later, at the end of 1975.

Despite more than 450 years of contact, for most of that time Timor had been, for Portugal, a remote and unimportant outpost at the periphery of a fragmented and declining empire. By the end of the colonial era, the achievements of Portugal’s colonial ‘civilizing mission’ in Timor were slight. Timor had been spared the worst depredations of colonial rule that afflicted Portugal’s African territories. But in a population of 609,477 in 1970, the official rate of adult literacy in Portuguese Timor was at most 7 percent. Tertiary education could be pursued only overseas. Ninety-five percent of the working population was engaged in subsistence agriculture, and there were only 16 km of surfaced road, all in Dili.¹ Portuguese Timor, like Portugal’s other ‘overseas provinces,’ was governed under an administration where the governor doubled as military commander. In modest reforms in 1972, a limited legislative assembly was formed, but civil and political freedoms remained suppressed, and a branch of the feared Portuguese secret police, DGS (formerly PIDE), kept a tight rein on political activity. In 1974 only two educated Timorese outside the church held senior positions in the administration: José Gonçalves (Director of Economics) and Mário Carrascalão (Director of Agriculture).

The coup in Lisbon on 25 April 1974, later known as the Carnation Revolution, was carried out by a faction of the military calling itself the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA or Armed Forces Movement). Its aims in overthrowing the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship were twofold. Paramount was the attainment of a political, that is, non-military, solution to Portugal’s debilitating colonial wars in Africa, by means of rapid decolonization. Second was the restoration of democracy in Portugal through free elections and the withdrawal of the army from direct involvement in domestic politics.² The MFA created a Junta (Board) of National Salvation to oversee ‘the purging of internal policies and institutions, transforming them by democratic means into institutions truly representative of the Portuguese people.’³ In Lisbon, the fate of the colonies became a major source of disagreement in the 1975 First Provisional Government, between interim president, António de Spínola, and the MFA Programme Coordinating Committee. Spínola, a conservative, wanted to create a loose federation with the colonies, while the MFA wanted rapid decolonization.⁴ The end of almost 50 years of dictatorship also let loose a period of violent political turmoil in Portugal. Until the promulgation of a new constitution in April 1976, Portugal suffered a chaotic series of attempted coups and counter-coups, under two presidents and six provisional governments.

In July 1974, the Portuguese Government for the first time accepted UN decolonization principles of self-determination and independence for its territories.⁵ Portugal formally announced proposals for Mozambique and São Tomé e Príncipe to become independent, and for provisional governments to be established in Angola and Cape Verde in the course of 1975.⁶ Guinea-Bissau had already resorted to a unilateral declaration of independence in 1973, recognized with its admission to the UN in September 1974. Only Timor and Macau were left outside the July 1974 proposals. There was no war in Timor, and it was ‘far, far away, remote and forgotten.’⁷

In July 1974, the Governor of Timor, Colonel Fernando Alves Aldeia, was recalled to Lisbon, as he had made the grievous blunder of criticizing the MFA in a speech shortly before the coup. After 25 April, Major Arnão Metelo, the delegate of the MFA and advocate of Timor’s integration with Indonesia, for a few months became the most powerful figure in the colony and a detrimental influence.⁸ Loyal Timorese were highly offended by remarks by the Portuguese Minister for Inter-Territorial Coordination, António de Almeida Santos, responsible for Portugal’s colonies and decolonization processes, reported in the newspaper Expresso on 3 August 1974. Without having been near Timor, Almeida Santos described it in unflattering terms as a transatlântico imóvel—a broken-down transatlantic liner.⁹ Almeida Santos had a change of heart after he received a rapturous welcome when he visited Timor in October 1974. But Timorese distrust of Portugal was accumulating. The new governor, Colonel Mário Lemos Pires, did not arrive in Timor until November 1974, a long six months after the revolution in Lisbon. Lemos Pires found himself in a weak position and without specific instruction or guidance from his government. In Dili, Lemos Pires’ authority was undermined by the political chaos emanating out of Lisbon and his perceived links to Spínola and political conservatives. From a Timorese perspective, compared with his predecessors, Lemos Pires was governor in name only, and in 1975 it was his staff, the MFA ‘red majors,’ especially Francisco Mota and Costa Jonatas, who were really in charge.

At the UN General Assembly in December 1974, Almeida Santos announced Portugal’s intention to hold a referendum in Timor on decolonization, towards the middle of 1975.¹⁰ The options for the colony were continued association with Portugal, incorporation into Indonesia or independence. Almeida Santos observed that with Timor’s undeveloped conditions, ‘total and immediate independence is a dream,’ and given Portugal’s limited means, a collective effort would be necessary to promote Timor’s economic self-sufficiency.¹¹ But because Portugal did not want the UN involved in its African decolonization, early in 1975 it decided against involving the UN in Timor, or only as a last resort.¹²

Not until July 1975 was legislative provision for the decolonization of Portuguese Timor promulgated in Lisbon. Political parties were legalized and a compressed timetable was set out. According to the plan, within 100 days (by late October 1975) a provisional government was to be formed, presided over by a (Portuguese) High Commissioner. The election of a popular assembly was fixed for the third Sunday of October 1976. That assembly would be responsible for determining the political and administrative status of the territory. The formal termination of Portuguese sovereignty was to be signed in Dili on the third Sunday in October 1978.¹³ This belated plan, virtually unknown in Timor, was overtaken by events and never implemented.

Portuguese Timor 1974: the emergence of political parties

Until the passage of the 1975 legislation, political parties in Timor remained technically illegal. But during May 1974, within a month of the Carnation Revolution, three significant Timorese political ‘associations’ formed: UDT (União Democrática Timorense); ASDT (Associação Social Democrática Timor)—which in September 1974 was renamed Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária de Timor Leste Independente); and the much smaller Apodeti (Associação Popular Democrática Timorense). A number of smaller associations also formed, including KOTA and Trabalhista.

UDT’s leadership included inner circle ‘establishment’ local elite, among them administrators, plantation owners and traditional rulers (liurai). Francisco Lopes da Cruz, a customs official, was appointed president, and Domingos Oliveira, a fellow customs official, secretary-general. Other senior members of UDT included the Mayor of Dili César Mouzinho, Director of Agriculture Mário Viegas Carrascalão and his younger brother João Viegas Carrascalão.

ASDT/Fretilin’s founders were also from the local elite, but on the whole they were younger and had more modest prospects. The party found much of its support in Dili, especially among the urban youth.¹⁴ Senior members included Nicolau dos Reis Lobato, Mari Alkatiri and José Ramos-Horta. José Ramos-Horta (whose sister Rosa was married to João Carrascalão) had taken part in UDT’s first meeting, but moved on to become a founder member of ASDT. ASDT appointed as its president Francisco Xavier do Amaral, who provided gravitas and seniority to the party leadership. Xavier do Amaral was a liurai from Turiskai, who had trained—but had not been ordained—as a Jesuit priest in Macau.

The third major political association, Apodeti, had started out as a faction of AITI (Assoçiação para a Integração de Timor na Indonésia) which advocated integration with Indonesia, but it had evolved and adopted some nationalist ideas.¹⁵ Several of Apodeti’s founders were returned political exiles associated with the 1959 so-called Vikeke rebellion, and its leaders in...