Timor Lorosae: a tour of duty

by Doddy Samperuru | October 7th 2009 | kategori: Travel & Lifestyle, Works

Sunday, June 10, 2001
The Jatayu Air B-737 took off at 0700 from Cengkareng bound to Yogya-Denpasar-Dili. Denpasar-Dili took 01:30hrs. The plane arrived in Dilli at 1400 (1200 WIB) with only 15 passengers. In Comoro airport, you can notice strongly the presence of UN as I saw three Mi-8 & two Mi-26 Russian made giant helicopters & a C-130 Hercules painted in white. The blue UN flag is catching attention as well.

Off the plane, we have to take a walk for about 200 meters into the departure terminal. Tall grass & bushes along the side walk is telling you that the airport was abandoned before. The immigration warning signs are hand written by black paint on a pressed wood boards. There are two immigration desks & the officers are Timorese supervised by an old white man with a Portuguese flag & UNTAET (United Nations Transition Administrations for East Timor) immigration sign on his shoulder. The immigration officer was nice & he speaks Bahasa Indonesia fluently. After a couple of questions, he just stamped the UNTAET visa on my passport. There’s a conveyor belt in the terminal but it was not working at all. Some native youngsters have to use their muscle to carry all the passengers’ luggages from the plane down to the claim-baggage area.
Get out the building, I took a “taxi”: used Japanese sedan shipped directly from S’pore & driven by young Timorese. You can find plenty of them cruising down the Dilli streets looking for customers. Lot of these sedans are still carrying S’pore license plate as the country doesn’t have the license plate system yet. The taxi fare was Rp 50,000 with the tip. Eventhough UNTAET has decided to use USD as the official currency for the whole country, but you can tell that IDR is still the favorite one for the people.
Along the streets what you see is a different world. The city is very quiet (compared with Jakarta). Most of the burned buildings are restored but some are left as the way they are. Like Bali, you can find foreigners everywhere as well as all white different types of UN vehicles. A couple of times I was passing by the UN peace keeping force convoy lead by a white Humvee with some foreigners army wearing UN blue beret & black sunglasses ready aiming his machine gun. You can see that these “foreign-legion” never smile. Some local people even said these soldiers are mean & to be avoided, especially the special-force from Portugal.
I was staying in a KM-Rinjani-size ship that was furbished into a 4-star hotel owned by a Thai company & tug nearby Dilli port; the Central Maritime Hotel. All the occupants are foreigners. Half part of it is rent by Pentagon for its soldiers. They’re about 40 US soldiers from all four forces. Meanwhile all other soldiers live in military camps throughout the island, these US soldiers live in a 4-star hotel with serviced rooms & continental breakfast every morning. They even hire a special security company to guard the hotel for them. What a country !

Monday, June 11, 2001
We had interviews of 15 young Timorese which took all day long. In the afternoon we took a walk down to the headquarter of UNTAET, the formerly known as the East Timor governor office. This building was pretty safe during the bailout by the militia. In the parking lot, what you can see is different kind of white UN vehicles. These CBU vehicles are imported directly from Manila, S’pore, Bangkok & other countries. By the building you can find two Restoran Padang. On the other side there’s a store called “Hello Mister”, the only supermarket in Dilli owned by an Indonesian. The price is in Aus $ & very expensive. Nearby the supermarket by the streets you can see a lot of young Timorese selling & buying currency, just like the Dollar Jockey in Jalan Kwitang, Jakarta.

UNTAET has about 3000 staffs from 20 nations & the peace-keeping force has around 6000 personnels lead by Aussie. Timor Lorosae is the UN first experience ever running a country from a scratch. The way they run the country is somewhat not efficient, which is very typical for a UN body. A CNRT activist once told me that he can’t imagine how much money they spend to run the administration but none goes to Timorese people directly. When he visits the UNTAET office, what he sees only a bunch of foreigners spend hours in front of computers sending email to their homes, but UNATIL, for example, does not even have a single computer. I agree with him as I can imagine how much money to buy hundreds of brand new vehicles, bring them in & to pay thousands of expatriates !

Tuesday, June 12, 2001
We visited UNATIL (Universidade Nacional de Timor Leste), the ex UNTIM (Universitas Timor-Timur). The current rector was the former rector of UNTIM. From the outside, he served as an Indonesian civilian employee for 25 years, member of KORPRI, Golkar & attended Lemhanas course. From inside, deep in his heart he’s a truly Fretilin & was a clandestine activist. The dean of Engineering Faculty was an alumnus of POLMAN Bandung (PMS). All other staffs are generally graduated from Indonesian universities.
We made a presentation in front of staffs of the university & students. The attendants were about 130 people. One student came to the front of the class & was protesting that he refused if this visit has something to do with politics. I was using Bahasa Indonesia as it’s the only language that most of the students can understand. The other languages are Portuguese (only for old people) & Tetun (the local). English is still not common.

Wednesday, June 13, 2001
We had a sight-seeing tour of Dilli, accompanied by a CNRT activist. We also visited the famous Santa Cruz cemetery which now has become a national monument for them. That was back in Nov 12, 1992, when Indonesian army from Korem Dilli was reported killing hundreds of East Timorese. Unfortunatelly there were some reporters from Australia & they taped the “massacre”. The day which now has become the heroism day, was the turning point for the independent movement. One Fretilin activist told me that if the Santa Cruz massacre did not happen, most likely East Timor is still part of Indonesia until today.
Contrary of Santa Cruz cemetery, right in front of it cross the street, the Taman Makam Pahlawan has turned into a jungle, as trees & bushes growing uncontrolled & nobody takes care of it. To them it is a place where all Indonesian killers are buried.

I left Dili by Merpati which together with Jatayu Air they serve Dilli-Denpasar back to back everyday. In the plane while taking off & saw the island from above, I was grateful to have a chance to visit Timor Lorosae, an ex 27th province. Hopefully Timor Lorosae will be better after the election in August & has its own government. I hope the civil war back in 1975 won’t happen again so they can use the opportunities to build the nation for the prosperity of its people.
Prens, if you have a chance, Dilli is worth to be visited.

Catatan:

Copy-paste dari imel yg dikirim ke milis M89 tanggal 19 Juni 2001 (message #1082)

Beberapa Minggu kemudian, penulis kembali mengunjungi Dili dalam acara yg mirip.