Deakin Speaking

On Sunday 20 May, East Timor will celebrate ten years of independence. As a nation born from the ashes of destruction, its first decade has been marked by problems and set-backs. Many in East Timor, not least its outgoing president, Jose Ramos-Horta, lament a lack of development since independence. Ramos-Horta notes that the international community has spent billions of dollars in East Timor, yet most East Timorese remain amongst the world’s poorest people. But a little over a year ago, Ramos-Horta said that the country had never been better. The question is, in part, whether the metaphorical glass is half empty or half full. It is also, in part, whether the speaker – in this case Ramos-Horta – had a political score to settle. In early 2011, Ramos-Horta was still firmly in Gusmao’s political tent. A year later, he is an ex-president outside that tent. Many East Timorese have also been disappointed with independence.

(unknown) 1937 – 6 March 2012. East Timor’s first president, for just 9 days ahead of Indonesia’s invasion in 1975, Francisco Xavier do Amaral, has died in Dili at the age of 74 of complications caused by advanced cancer. Do Amaral, affectionately known in East Timor as ‘Grandfather’, was born in Turiscai in the Mambai-speaking mountainous central region of East Timor. The son of a liurai, or local ‘king’, he was educated at St Jose Jesuit seminary in Macao where he qualified for the priesthood. However, do Amaral chose instead to work in the Dili Customs House where he became a popular, politically active intellectual. With Nicolau Lobato and current president, Jose Ramos-Horta, on 20 May 1974, do Amaral founded the broad-based anti-colonial Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT), at Ramos-Horta’s urging becoming its president.

Aceh independence leader

25-8-1925 – 3-6-2010

The death of Aceh independence leader Teungku (Lord) Hasan Muhammad di Tiro has put a final stamp on the peace that has descended on the long-troubled Indonesian province of Aceh. Di Tiro, 84, died from complications caused by leukemia. He had previously suffered two strokes which limited his activity in the final years of the Aceh separatist rebellion which he initiated in 1976.

Hasan di Tiro was born in the village of Tiro, near Pidie, Aceh from a long line of influential Muslim religious scholars. Notably, di Tiro was the grandson of Cik di Tiro, who was killed in 1899 leading Acehnese resistance to Dutch colonial forces which had invaded Aceh in 1873.