Hello from East Timor
Displaced people and the ramshackle camps that house them can be seen along many streets of Dili, the small and poor capital of the newest country in Asia. On Sunday we went for an early morning walk along the beach to the downtown, and saw and heard a very lively mass in an overflowing church. Outside in the churchyard, was row after row of tents where Internally Displaced People (IDPs) driven out of their homes by violence in 2006, have been living. (As a result of intercommunity conflicts in 2006, over 100,000 people were internally displaced, hundreds of homes and businesses were torched and 30,000 people have been living in camps in the capital.) The tents that face the church are fairly presentable and well kept, but one row back, they and their residents drop into the disorderly chaos where each family struggles to survive.
Recently, the government introduced a new recovery strategy – Hamutuk Hari’I Futuru – a component of which is to assist IDPs to return to their communities. To facilitate returns, the Ministry of Social Solidarity recruited a cadre of Community Dialogue Facilitators to conduct talks between returnees and host communities. But their job is not easy. They mediate truces, conditions for return, de-escalation of inter-gang conflicts and conditions for returnees to repossess their houses and property. To do their job well, they need a range of conflict resolution skills, and that where CDR comes in. With the support of the Asia Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme, we have conducted a rapid situation assessment and designed and presented a customized and culturally appropriate seminar for Community Dialogue Facilitators on mediation of community and land and property disputes, and developed a comprehensive long term capacity building training plan for them. Our current work complements CDR’s previous initiatives in the country – training Legal Aid lawyers in mediation procedures, and consulting on dispute resolution systems design with the government’s National Land and Property Directorate to develop a new system to resolve land disputes arising from years of Portuguese and Indonesian colonial rule and the violence at the time of Independence. In spite of the difficult situation we can see progress. People are going home, receiving small payments from the government to rebuild their lives and homes, reconciling with their neighbors and property ownership issues are gradually being sorted out.
Beyond work, what is it like to be in East Timor? It is a lot like being in an Asian Latin American country – probably due to 400 years of Portuguese influence. East Timorese are very vivo and upbeat. It’s really fun to be with them. Dili, is somewhat run down, but there is lots of construction going on, and at certain times of the day, significant traffic. The Chinese government is making a big footprint here, having built the new Foreign Ministry building, and are in the process of constructing the National Land and Property Directorate and the President’s Office. There is also much more traffic – UN SUVs everywhere, which race up and down the street with great abandon.
As there are many military and police here, there are also lots of guns. Coming from a society where armed forces and law enforcement personnel are both lower in numbers and profile, and keep arms more hidden, it is always a shock to see so many of them. Two days ago, a woman soldier at our hotel brought her automatic rifle to dinner, laid it at her feet in the dining room while she ate and later took it to the veranda for an after dinner drink!
Our hotel is a small and very simple two-story affair, built in a tropical style with rather small rooms but a spectacular second-story deck. It is the home of a contingent of New Zealand United Nations’ soldiers and police. Each evening, the New Zealanders engage in Maori (the local indigenous people of NZ) martial arts. They jump around like Maori warriors, shake make-believe spears, make faces, stick out their tongues, make loud grunting noises and stamp and hit the ground with their feet and hands. Very impressive. We bet that in the past this ritual would really scare the heck out of an enemy force! It is great to watch.
Well that is all for now. Will write more next week. Hugs to all, Chris and Susan
