Peacekeepers deployed to East Timor amid gun battles
Peacekeepers from Australia and New Zealand were deployed to East Timor today to help restore calm after gun battles between the tiny nation’s military and disgruntled ex-soldiers killed two people and injured nine.
About 60 police and military forces from New Zealand boarded flights to Dili, hours after East Timor's government requested foreign assistance in quelling an uprising by renegade soldiers, camped out in the hills surrounding the city.
East Timor’s foreign minister, Jose Ramos Horta, said the country’s own forces “can’t control the situation,” and that peacekeepers would also be called in from Malaysia and Portugal to “disarm renegade troops and police rebelling against the state”.
East Timor, the world’s newest nation, has been plagued by unrest since nearly 600 soldiers were fired earlier this year after going on strike to protest alleged discrimination in the military.
Some hard-liners fled Dili after participating in deadly riots last month which killed five, threatening guerrilla warfare if they were not reinstated.
At least two people were killed and nine were wounded in clashes in the past two days, doctors and government officials said, prompting the United States and Australia to order the evacuation of non-essential personnel.
Australia, which led a UN-military force into East Timor after its bloody push for independence from Indonesia in 1999, began evacuating nonessential Australian public servants, acting prime minister Peter Costello told Parliament.
The US government ordered embassy family members and non-emergency American employees to leave East Timor and advised American citizens still in the country to leave.
Gun battles erupted between disgruntled ex-soldiers and the military on the outskirts of East Timor’s capital for a second day today, seriously wounding a marine officer in the neck.
Earlier, President Xanana Gusmao vowed to capture those responsible for the violence as the police and military fanned out into the capital city’s outskirts.
Gusmao said he had given orders to bring in the ex-soldiers and “hunt down” their alleged ringleader, Maj. Alfredo Reinado.
“We have to stop them, so the people of East Timor are not living in fear and panic,” the president said.
Yesterday, ex-soldiers ambushed troops on the outskirts of the capital – some as they headed to a bank to pick up their pay, and others at a military outpost. At least two people were killed and eight wounded, most of them government forces.
Clashes began again early today on the west side of Dili, spreading later to the south, near the home of the top military chief, Brig. Gen. Taur Matan Ruak, official and witnesses said.
At the heart of the conflict are the former soldiers’ claims that they were being discriminated against because they came from the west of the small country, while the military leadership originates from the east.
A government commission was established this month to investigate the ex-soldiers’ allegations of discrimination, but has yet to release results.
East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999 after 24 years of brutal occupation that human rights groups say left as many as 200,000 dead.
