(Abridged post sent to Little Darwin by longtime East Timor supporter, Rob Wesley-Smith , in Darwin .)
Anxiety has plagued East Timor in recent weeks after national police moved in on
two groups led by ex-freedom fighters accused of fomenting political
instability.
On March 3, 2014, the Timorese parliament unanimously
approved a measure
that authorized national police to put an end to the activities of the Maubere
Revolutionary Council (KRM) and the Popular Democratic Council of the People's
Democratic Republic of Timor Leste, commonly known as CPD-RDTL or
CPD.
KRM members had been spotted marching in uniforms with military
symbols on a football pitch in Laga in the Baucau District in November 2013, provoking
a wave of unease among Timorese and the political class.
Ex-guerrilla Mauk Moruk (nom de guerre of Paulo Gama),
leader of the recently created KRM, had only returned to East Timor a month
earlier after living for a long time in Holland. Moruk had fought in the
resistance movement against Indonesia's 24-year-long occupation of East Timor
from 1975 to 1999. A referendum in 1999 lead to the country's independence, and
the first democratic government was elected in 2002.
But Moruk was
expelled from resistance forces in 1984 after a power struggle with current
Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão.In statements to the media upon his
return, Moruk said that he wanted to lead a revolution in order to pull the
Timorese people out of poverty. He called for the resignation of the government,
the dissolution of parliament and the reestablishment of the 1975 constitution
(the first unilateral declaration of independence).
Following
parliament's approval of action against the KRM and CPD-RDTL, Moruk and fellow
KRM leader Labarik Maia, accompanied by L7 (nom de guerre of Cornélio Gama,
Moruk's brother), negotiated their surrender to police over the course of
several hours in the group's general headquarters in Dili on March 14. At the
end of negotiations, L7 declared to the media that the group would cooperate
with the government to guarantee the peace and well-being of the people, but
warned that if he wished, “All of Dili would burn”.
Moruk and Maia were
detained and not released on bail, while L7 was held under house
arrest. Days before, a police operation in Lalulai, a village in Baucau
District where KRM members were living, resulted in a shoot-out between police
and the revolutionaries. One officer was wounded by a Molotov cocktail. A video
circulated by newspaper Tempo Semanal, which appears to show police burning
homes as well as shooting into a house where seconds afterward a woman carrying
a child is seen leaving, alarmed many Timorese.
CPD-RDTL leader and
ex-freedom fighter António Ai-Tahan Matak turned himself in to authorities and
is also being held under house arrest.The CPD-RDTL is an organization
founded in 1999 by a dissident faction of opposition party FRETILIN (Revolutionary
Front for an Independent East Timor). Over the years, this organization has been
accused of using military uniforms and illegally occupying land for communal
farming against the will of local populations.
Both organizations are
linked to the group Sagrada Familia, a clandestine resistance group created in
the 1990s by L7. Cornélio Gama, L7 s real name, is a well-known ex-guerrilla and
benefits from a considerable base of popular support, having been elected to
parliament for one term by his party UNDERTIM. In spite of his brother Moruk's
relative lack of popularity in the country, some
analysts see in his kinship with L7 potential for him to drum up a
stronger support.
Shortly after his return to the country, Morak had
challenged Prime Minister Gusmão to a debate on the history of the armed
struggle against the Indonesian
occupation. The debate took place on November 11, 2013 at a convention
center in the country's capital of Dili, but Moruk didn't show up. Gusmão and
other ex-members of the resistance debated
events and divisions among the guerrilla forces in the 1980s, and this was transmitted live on public
television.
Historian Matheos Messakh explained the origin of the
conflict between Prime Minister Gusmão and Moruk in a post on the blog Satutimor .
According to his analysis, KRM's actions are an attempt to capitalize on the
growing discontentment with the lack of economic development, especially among
young people:
It is likely that Mauk Moruk's strategy is to captivate young people who
feel increasingly marginalized and who can be easily taken advantage of. Moruk
is trying to fill a void left by the prohibition of martial arts groups that
were created during the clandestine resistance and involved in the violence of
2006 [editor's note: a conflict that started between elements of the military
and expanded to general gang violence throughout the country, leaving dozens of
people dead and thousands displaced. The crisis of
2006 led to the resignation of the then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri
(FRETILIN). Read Global Voices post " Riots in
East Timor" (April 2006).]
Meanwhile on social media,
Timorese have expressed a total lack of sympathy with the illegal character of
KRM's and CPD-RDTL's activities and defended democracy and respect for the
law. In spite of this, corruption and growing inequality between elites
and the rest of the population are issues dogging the current political
establishment. Gani Uruwatu, a member of the Facebook group “Emerging Leadership
in Democracy“, wrote on March 19:
- Ask parliament to pass another resolution against the corrupt!!! Only those who wear [military-style] uniforms provoke fast resolutions, but those who steal millions and millions get no resolution??
The return of Moruk
to the country nearly 30 years after his surrender to the Indonesian military
is, according to some, an attempt to gain recognition for his historical role in
the Timorese resistance and to win a position of power in the political
arena. Recent events show that actors from the resistance generation
still dominate the contemporary political game in East Timor.
