The price of freedom — East Timor faces social unrest

“They see nothing coming. They have no material to reconstruct theirhouses and there is no work in sight. “The whole world promised money, huge amounts of money. But none is coming and the main problem is bureaucracy in the UN,” the 1996 Nobel peace prize laureate said. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Chief administrator of the UN transitional administration in East Timor (UNTAT), is impatient with the criticism. He stresses the speed and extent of the international response to rebuild this former Portuguese colony occupied for 25 years by Indonesia, and systematically destroyed by the Indonesians when they withdrew. Some 525 million dollars was pledged to reconstruct East Timor by a meeting of donors in Tokyo last December but the framework under which the aid will be distributed is just now being set up.

Only this week did the territory get an official currency the US dollar, which was chosen over the Portuguese escudo as well as a legal framework for Financial institutions. The lack of skilled East Timorese is such that the only way to get the future central bank up andgoing quickly will be to look for outside help, said Jean-Christian Cady, UNTAET’s Chief of public administration. Almost 90 per cent of the population of Dili or some 139,000 people according to the latest UN count have returned to the destroyed and burned out capital.