"Don't steal our future!"
East Timor independence celebrations
overshadowed by resource theft

Bob Briton

Last Thursday was the second anniversary of the declaration of 
independence of the Democratic Republic of East Timor (or Timor 
Leste). The occasion was marked with a ceremony at the UN 
helicopter compound in the capital of Dili, where military and 
policing control over the country was handed over to the East 
Timor Government. Judging by the speeches and the displays put on 
for senior UN officials, diplomats and government 
representatives, everything would appear to be in order and going 
to plan.

However, in major Australian cities and in Dili itself the 
occasion was most notable for the protests against the actions of 
the Australian Government in denying the poorest country in the 
region its proper share of the income from its offshore oil and 
gas resources.

"Under current revenue sharing arrangements, Australia takes 60 
percent of revenues from oil and gas resources closer to East 
Timor than to Australia — resources which under international 
law should belong entirely to East Timor", Dan Nicholson of the 
Timor Sea Justice Campaign, told the Melbourne gathering.

Mr Nicholson concluded, "Today, instead of celebrating East 
Timor's independence, we are protesting against an Australian 
government that is stealing East Timor's future".

Since the middle of April there have been protests outside the 
Australian Embassy in Dili involving thousands of East Timorese. 
Their regular chants have included: "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie — 
Oil Oil Oil!" and "Don't steal our future!"

Relations between the governments of the two countries are now 
strained. Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has 
accused the East Timorese government of stirring up sympathy in 
Australia for the economic plight of the new nation and its 
position on the disputed maritime border between the countries. A 
leaked transcript of a meeting between Downer and East Timor PM 
Mari Alkitiri records the Foreign Minister laying down the law in 
his best deputy sheriff style:

"We are very tough. We will not care if you give information to 
the media. Let me give you a tutorial in politics!"

The pressures are causing cracks to appear in the government of 
East Timor. The more pro-globalisation Foreign Minister Ramos 
Horta has had an open disagreement with President Xanana Gusmao 
over an interview the head of state did with a Portuguese 
newspaper. In the piece, Gusmao criticised Australia's behaviour 
in usurping control of most of East Timor's offshore oil and gas 
resources. "I have told him I do not agree with what has been 
said publicly. I do not believe in demagogic statements whipping 
up people's sentiments in relation to Australia", Horta told the 
media.

Gusmao is on record as saying that Timor's control of the 
oilfields means the difference between a future of self-
sufficiency or as a beggar state. So far, the republic is in the 
latter category. A meeting in Dili of 26 donor nations agreed 
last week to reduce East Timor's budget deficit of $43.8 million. 
Even with this deficit, the Government was making scarcely any 
progress in the task of overcoming poverty, the rebuilding of 
destroyed infrastructure or the provision of basic services in 
the country.

Japan is East Timor's largest donor followed by Australia. In 
last week's Federal Budget, $40 million was earmarked for aid to 
our northern neighbour from tax monies contributed mostly by 
Australia's wage and salary earners. Since 1999, $234 million has 
been given in aid in total.

However, at issue in the maritime border dispute are royalties 
estimated at between $10 billion and $20 billion over the next 30 
years. Australia has sucked in roughly $2.1 billion from 
royalties on the oil and gas in question since 1999. With its 
fair share of these funds, East Timor could meet the needs of its 
people and build some financial security. Without it, as Oxfam's 
policy director James Ensor points out, the country runs the risk 
of joining the ranks of "failed states" in the region.

In its treatment of East Timor, Australia appears to be following 
its pattern of behaviour of setting its less powerful neighbours 
up for "failure" and then intervening to "rescue" them on terms 
that are advantageous to the interests of Australian 
corporations.

The current dispute has its origins in Australia's relations with 
and support for the brutal Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. In 
1972, Australia obtained an agreement from Indonesia that the end 
of the continental shelf to our north west would be the boundary 
between Australia and Timor even though the border is only 60 km 
from the coast of East Timor.

On the eve of Indonesia's invasion in 1975, Australia's then 
ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcroft, advised the Whitlam 
Government that Indonesia would be easier to deal with over the 
natural resources in the Timor Sea than the government of the 
newly-independent, former Portuguese colony of East Timor. 
Australia stood by and 24 years of genocidal occupation by 
Indonesia's military followed.

In 1989 Labor Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and Indonesian 
Foreign Minister Ali Alitas toasted a deal to share out the oil 
and gas resources off the coast of Timor from the comfort of a 
jet flying high above the stolen territory.

In 2002, the Australian Government withdrew from UN Convention of 
the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) negotiations in the International 
Court of Justice. In circumstances like those involving Australia 
and East Timor, UNCLOS lays down that the border of the states 
should be the median line drawn halfway between them.

Such an arrangement would see East Timor in charge of 90 per cent 
of the Sea's oil and gas. As it stands, it gets 90 per cent of 
the royalties from the Bayu Undan field within the Joint 
Petroleum Development Area (JPDA) described in the Timor Sea 
Treaty of 2002. However, the largest fields by far — Laminaria 
and Greater Sunrise — are located outside the JPDA and from 
these East Timor will only get 20 percent of the royalties on the 
Greater Sunrise gas field. It should be noted that the Laminaria 
field is totally within East Timor's half of the Timor Sea as are 
most of the Sunrise and Troubador fields.

East Timor has refused to ratify the Timor Sea Treaty. It wants 
Australia to return to the jurisdiction of the International 
Court of Justice and UNCLOS for the adjudication of the maritime 
boundary. It wants the royalties from the fields outside the JPDA 
to be held in trust (escrow) until the dispute is finalised. The 
East Timorese are also seeking monthly meetings with Australian 
Government representatives to move the issues along. At present 
Australia will only agree to meetings every six months.

The international solidarity movement with East Timor supports 
these calls. In Australia, we could add the demand that Mark 
Latham and the Parliamentary Labor Party should drop its support 
for the government's bullying stand and its endorsement of the 
renewed military co-operation with KOPASSUS — the "elite" 
section of the Indonesian military which is surely the biggest 
terrorist organisation in the region.