Reinado cont'd

Hello again :) It's Monday, December 24 - my intention this morning
was to post more about Reinado and other stuff as well. Anyhow,
I'm a little distracted. Someone (not a Timorese - just to be clear)
was just quite rude to me - someone I don't know. So I feel like I
might find it a bit hard to concentrate. Anyhow, having said that,
I think I'll be OK.

So, where to begin? I had a long conversation with someone the
other day about Reinado and the situation here in general. I feel
like what I posted the other day was...misleading? Anyhow, there's
more to say.

I haven't spoken to any Timorese person who isn't sympathetic to the
cause of Reinado and the petitioners. Of course, I don't speak to
every Timorese person I know about it - in fact I don't speak to most
people about it. So I'm only talking about a handful of people. But
generally well-educated (Timorese) people whose opinions I respect.

The article from The Australian is interesting. When I was first told
(by an Australian) that the Australian army had been asked to
"go after" Alfredo, my reaction was.....? Why is the Australian army
getting involved in this situation? And why is Reinado being treated
like a criminal?

I know the article says he's wanted on murder charges...but I know
that a lot of people respected the petitioners restraint when they
were asking that the issue be looked into (back in 2006). They
demonstrated peacefully for days. From what I can tell, the long
and the short of it is that their claims have never been sincerely
dealt with. The people from the 'west' are accused by (some of) those
from the 'east' of having been pro-Indonesian, but the majority of
people everywhere voted for Independence. Also, according to one
person I was talking to, the "east" is three provinces (I'm using
Canadian terms, obviously), and the "west" is ten provinces. So
according to that, the "west" is the majority of the country.

During the crisis, FRETILIN (or a high-level FRETILIN official) is
accused of distributing weapons to civilians. Nice. He has since left
the country. (Rogerio Lobato) I've found another link to a short
article about the crisis. The link I posted before (to the International
Crisis Group article) unfortunately requires you to sign up - just a
bit more difficult to get to.

The link is http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20284&Cr=timor&Cr1=inquiry

Merry Christmas! love to everyone ~
Nyree.