Robert Mugabe, the guerrilla leader who led Zimbabwe to independence in 1980 and ruled with an iron fist until his own army ended his almost four decade rule, has died. He was 95.

Mugabe died in Singapore, where he has often received medical treatment in recent years, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

His death was confirmed by Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President, Cde Robert Mugabe (1/2)

— President of Zimbabwe (@edmnangagwa) September 6, 2019

On leading Zimbabwe to independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero and champion of racial reconciliation.

But later, many at home and abroad denounced him as a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control.

Mugabe was forced to resign in November 2017 after an army coup.

His resignation triggered wild celebrations across the country of 13 million. Mugabe denounced his removal as an “unconstitutional and humiliating” act of betrayal by his party and people, and it left him a broken man.

In November, Mnangagwa said Mugabe was no longer able to walk when he had been admitted to a hospital in Singapore, without saying what treatment Mugabe had been undergoing.

Officials often said he was being treated for a cataract, denying frequent private media reports that he had prostate cancer.

…

An American woman who attempted to carry a 6-day-old baby out of the Philippines hidden inside a sling bag has been arrested at Manila’s airport and charged with human trafficking, officials said Thursday.

They said Jennifer Erin Talbot was able to pass through the airport immigration counter on Wednesday without declaring the baby boy but was intercepted at the boarding gate by airline personnel.

Talbot, from Ohio, was unable to produce any passport, boarding pass or government permits for the baby, airport officials said.

Clad in an orange detainee shirt and in handcuffs, Talbot, 43, was presented to reporters in Manila on Thursday. She kept her head low and appeared at times to be on the verge of tears. She did not issue any statement.

Talbot had planned to board a Delta Air Lines flight to the United States with the baby, airport officials said.

“There was really an intention to hide the baby,” immigration official Grifton Medina said by telephone.

After discovering the baby, airline staff called immigration personnel, who arrested Talbot at the airport. She was later turned over to the National Bureau of Investigation and the baby was given to government welfare personnel.

The investigation bureau said Talbot presented an affidavit at the airport, allegedly from the baby’s mother, giving consent for the baby to travel to the U.S., but it had not been signed by the mother.

Officials said no government travel approval had been issued for the baby, prompting them to file human trafficking charges against her. The charges carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

U.S. Embassy officials have been notified of her arrest.

Officials are searching for the baby’s parents, who have been charged under a child protection law.

…

Like whisperers in a tempest, conservative-minded officials across the breadth of Donald Trump’s government are letting it be known what they think of him, and some of it isn’t pretty.

But they are speaking oh so softly, in a kind of code, to a country that may only hear shouting.

Jim Mattis is just the latest in a string of leading lights from the conservative establishment to throw shade at Trump. As with others — the chief justice, a special counsel, various Republican lawmakers who hope to have a political future — the ex-Pentagon chief’s words are subtle, filtered through notions of duty, decorum, deference to history, the greater good.

Crack the code and you can sometimes see deep discomfort with Trump, the contours of a searing repudiation. In the view of many institutionalists of the right as well as the left, he is bulldozing values that America holds dear.

Yet the negativity is couched in words of moderation and caution. What effect does that have in Trump’s America?

These are sober, restrained players in a fracas produced, directed and dominated by an in-your-face president.

“The well-informed public understands what they’re saying and how deeply concerned they are,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor and historian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “The rest of the public might not get it.”

Says Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management specialist who has studied Trump’s rise in business and politics: “In a fight between crassness and discretion in the new millennium, crassness will win every time.”

Washington’s well-known partisan fever coexists with a more decorous tradition in some quarters — of raising eyebrows instead of raising hell, of saying things in so many words without actually using the words. People such as Mattis, former special counsel Robert Mueller and Chief Justice John Roberts are steeped in those ways.

When certain people let down their guard, history can happen. So it was when Joseph Nye Welch, a lawyer representing the buttoned-up U.S. Army, assailed Sen. Joseph McCarthy in a 1954 congressional hearing remembered for his putdown of the senator’s scorched-earth pursuit of men and women he deemed communist sympathizers in government and society:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

In the McCarthy and Richard Nixon eras, “it took a long time for congressional leaders for the Republican Party to see the damage to their party and step in,” Jillson said, and no such tipping point has been reached in Republican ranks. If it comes, he said, “that’s when they’ll talk and then everybody will hear them.”

“Republicans will not do it while they think there are still gains to be made through the Trump presidency,” he said. But if the fear that was stirred by 2018 losses and Trump’s behavior since then “consolidates into wide-eyed terror,” that’s “when they cut their people loose,” loyalty fractures and more in the GOP abandon the president.

For now, censure comes in coded form from power players in the nonpartisan world — as well as frontally from a few Republican lawmakers as they exit their careers and from, predictably, Democrats.

“Mattis, Mueller and others have lived in a world of consequences which, combined with their natures, has made them discreet,” says Dezenhall, the crisis-management specialist. “They’re not about to blast Trump because they view it as dishonorable.” But they hint at what they think.

When The Associated Press asked the chief justice last fall to address Trump’s criticism of judges who had ruled against his wishes — like the “Obama judge” who had just rejected his migrant asylum policy — it did not really expect an answer. It got one.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” the Republican-nominated Roberts responded in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.” He added: “The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

His words were both startling and circumspect, no more provocative on the surface than a civics lesson, yet a rare engagement by the high court in the fray.

Roberts had never addressed Trump’s past personal criticisms, whether as president or pundit (“Congratulations to John Roberts for making Americans hate the Supreme Court because of his BS,” Trump tweeted in 2012). But when Trump rhetorically charged through the firewall of the independent judiciary, the chief justice subtly called him out.

Among the elites, those without robes also maintain stoicism through slings and arrows, to a point.

Trump-nominated Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell bites his lip in silence when the president, upset that interest rates aren’t lower, takes on a target that past presidents only jousted with obliquely. “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powel or Chairman Xi?” Trump demanded in a tweet misspelling the Fed chairman’s name and referring to China’s president.

Mueller’s mastery of restraint drove Trump’s opponents batty in hours of congressional testimony about his special counsel investigation of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election and its contacts with the Trump campaign. Democrats pressed him to say what they wanted to hear, but he talked the code.

“Problematic is an understatement,” is how the longtime Republican characterized his view of Trump’s 2016 encouragement of Russia to find missing emails of his political opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“I hope this is not the new normal, but I fear it is,” Mueller said of the idea of a U.S. campaign embracing help from a foreign government. “It is not a witch hunt,” he said of a probe that Trump repeatedly attacked as just that. He was no more animated than the stone statues of the Capitol.

Through the two years of his investigation, Mueller never responded to any of Trump’s attacks, never updated the public on his work and certainly never offered a glimpse of any personal view of the president. Yet his final report had damning detail, wrapped in legalese, about Trump’s efforts to get Mueller fired, to get aides to lie on his behalf, to get an attorney general he perceived as a loyalist to take control of the investigation — all while stopping short of accusing Trump of a crime.

Mueller’s fellow Marine, Mattis, quit as defense secretary before Trump assigned him an insulting nickname, though the president came close in branding Mattis “sort of a Democrat.” Mattis resigned over differences with Trump on Syria and the fight over the Islamic State and is known to have objected to Trump’s disparagement of traditional allies.

Months later, Mattis is promoting his new book, “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead,” which is not a tell-all about Trump despite the title. And, for now, he’s speaking the code.

“He’s an unusual president, our president is,” he said blandly in an interview for “CBS Sunday Morning,” adding elliptically, “just the rabid nature of politics today, we’ve got to be careful.”

Then there was this exchange on “PBS NewsHour” this week when Mattis was asked whether he would say so if he thought Trump or any president wasn’t fit for office.

“Yes.”

So he thinks Trump is fit to be president?

“No, I’m not saying that. I don’t make political assessments one way or the other.  I come from the Defense Department.”

In interviews for an article in The Atlantic magazine, Mattis, a student of history, cited the French concept of “the duty of silence” to explain why he won’t say whether he thinks Trump is fit to be in charge.

“I may not like a commander in chief one fricking bit,” he said. But: “When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country.”

Yet it seems that the man with the Marine-flavored nickname Trump once loved — Mad Dog — will someday break his leash and growl.

“There is a period in which I owe my silence,” he told the magazine. “It’s not eternal. It’s not going to be forever.”

…

Arguments over a Texas law requiring that health care clinics bury or cremate fetal remains from abortions and miscarriages are set for a federal appeals court in New Orleans.

A Texas judge blocked the law last year. U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled that many clinics would be unable to meet the law’s requirements, thus creating unconstitutional obstacles for women seeking abortions. He also found that violated constitutional equal protection requirements by exempting in-vitro fertilization clinics and some laboratories.
 
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments Thursday.
 
The Supreme Court has upheld similar law in Indiana. But opponents of the Texas law note that the Indiana ruling case did not address the issue of whether the law created an unconstitutional burden on abortion rights.

 

 

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Britain’s political turmoil is again making headlines across the English Channel, with a number of European commentators criticizing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of Brexit.

But others, like conservative French lawmaker Nicolas Bay, saluted Johnson for standing firm, and honoring Britain’s 2016 referendum to leave the European Union.

In Brussels, European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said the EU’s position toward Brexit has not changed.

“There may be twists and turns in political developments in London right now, but our position is stable,” she said. “We are willing to work constructively with Prime Minister Johnson and to look at any concrete proposals as long as they’re compatible with the withdrawal agreement.”

The commission is freeing up millions of dollars in disaster funds for farmers, workers and companies to cope with a potentially chaotic or hard Brexit — although governments and the EU parliament must sign off on the plan. It also published a checklist for European businesses trading with Britain to prepare for Brexit — and a citizens’ hotline.

Europeans have been preparing for months for a potentially chaotic Brexit. In France, where roughly 20,000 businesses export to Britain, the key port city of Calais is conducting simulations to prepare for both deal and no-deal scenarios. France, along with Belgium and the Netherlands, has hired hundreds more customs agents to cope with expected backlogs.

Experts predict Brexit will deal an economic blow to the EU as well as Britain — at a time when countries like Germany and Italy are braced for economic slowdowns. 

…

Illegal drug use is on the rise around the world according to a new UN report. How bad is it and what is being done to stop the spread of dangerous and increasingly deadly drugs? Former US “Drug Czar” Gil Kerlikowske and Ben Westhoff, author of “Fentanyl Inc.” weigh in with Greta Van Susteren. Recorded September 4, 2019 

 

…

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Burundi said Wednesday that the country, following years of political turmoil, was primed for a genocide.  
 
The commission’s warning, contained in its latest report on human rights in Burundi, was based on an analysis developed by the U.N. Office for the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect.   
 
The three-member panel found that eight common risk factors for criminal atrocities leading to a possible genocide were present in Burundi. 
 
Factors included an unstable political, economic and social environment; a climate of impunity for human rights violations; a weak judicial system; and the absence of an independent press and freedom of expression. 
 
Commission member Francoise Hampson said the criteria identified by the Genocide Prevention Committee indicated that in countries where these factors were present, there was a risk the situation could deteriorate.  
 
“On top of that, our own report shows the continuation of violations of human rights law based on human security,” she said. “So, things like arbitrary killings, torture, arbitrary detention.  And this year, a deterioration … freedom of expression, freedom of association.  Now that is actually already getting worse compared to last year.” 

Nkurunziza campaign
 
Burundi has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term in 2015, defying critics who said he was violating constitutional term limits. Violence prompted more than 300,000 to flee the country. 
 
Hampson said the crisis in Burundi was essentially a political one.  She noted that targeting people because of their political affiliation does not come within the definition of genocide, according to the Genocide Conventions. 

However, she said, “There are elements on occasion where there is an ethnic dimension. There are sometimes taunts of people in detention.  And, there have in the past been the chants of the Imbonerakure [the youth wing of the ruling party] when they have been gathering, which have got hateful content.”    
 
The U.N. report documented widespread human rights violations by the Imbonerakure, including intimidation and harassment of political opponents, activists, journalists and human rights defenders. 
 
After the report’s release on Wednesday, Willy Nyamitwe, a senior adviser to Nkurunziza, tweeted a message that said, “Burundi is no longer interested in responding to lies and manipulation of opinion on the part of some Westerners whose aim is to destabilize Burundi.”

…

Facebook said Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would be violating the company’s rules if agents create fake profiles to monitor the social media of foreigners seeking to enter the country.

“Law enforcement authorities, like everyone else, are required to use their real names on Facebook and we make this policy clear,” Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Pollack told The Associated Press in a statement Tuesday. “Operating fake accounts is not allowed, and we will act on any violating accounts.”

Pollack said the company has communicated its concerns and its policies on the use of fake accounts to DHS. She said the company will shut down fake accounts, including those belonging to undercover law enforcement, when they are reported.

The company’s statement followed the AP’s report Friday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had authorized its officers to use fake social media accounts in a reversal of a previous ban on the practice.

Homeland Security explained the change to the AP in a statement Friday, stating that fake accounts would make it easier for agents reviewing visa, green card and citizenship applications to search for fraud or security threats. The department didn’t provide comment when asked Tuesday.

The plan would also be a violation of Twitter’s rules. Twitter said Friday that it’s still reviewing the new Homeland Security practice. It did not provide further comment.

The change in policy was preceded by other steps taken by the State Department, which began requiring applicants for U.S. visas to submit their social media usernames this past June, a vast expansion of the Trump administration’s enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors.

Such a review of social media would be conducted by officers in the agency’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate on cases flagged as requiring more investigation. The privacy assessment notes that officers can only review publicly available social media available to all users on the platform — they cannot “friend” or “follow” an individual — and must undergo annual training.

The officers are also not allowed to interact with users on the social media sites and can only passively review information, according to the DHS document.

While lots of social media activity can be viewed without an account, many platforms limit access without one.

Facebook said it has improved the ability to spot fake accounts through automation, blocking and removing millions of fake accounts daily.

Twitter and Facebook both recently shut down numerous accounts believed to be operated by the Chinese government using their platforms under false identities for information operations.

…

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday challenged her rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to commit to transition the United States fully to clean energy over the next decade for electricity, vehicles and buildings.

Warren, one of 20 Democrats vying to take on President Donald Trump in November 2020, issued the challenge in a comprehensive clean energy plan released ahead of a 7-hour CNN Town Hall on Wednesday at which 10 candidates will discuss how they would tackle climate change.

Her climate strategy weaves together several policies she has sprinkled into other proposals she has rolled out, from agriculture to tribal lands to manufacturing. It also incorporates a clean energy plan she adopted from Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who made climate change the centerpiece of his White House bid before dropping out of the race late last month.

Inslee’s clean energy strategy — which had been billed as the gold standard by environmental advocates — set a 10-year plan to achieve 100% clean energy by slashing carbon emissions from U.S. electricity generation, vehicles and buildings.

“While his presidential campaign may be over, his ideas should remain at the center of the agenda,” Warren wrote in a post for the website Medium.

“Today I’m embracing that goal by committing to adopt and build on Governor Inslee’s 10-year action plan to achieve 100% clean energy …  and I’m challenging every other candidate for President to do the same,” she wrote.

All of Warren’s Democratic rivals who will participate in the climate change town hall have at least committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But each advocates different steps to get there.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, calls for the electricity and transportation sectors to be fueled by 100% percent renewable energy by 2030. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s climate plan calls for 500,000 more electric vehicle charging stations nationwide by the end of 2030.

Warren’s proposal would commit $3 trillion over 10 years, in part paid for by reversing Republican tax cuts passed in 2017 that largely benefit businesses and the wealthy. It aims to bolster efforts to reach 100% zero-carbon pollution for all new buildings by 2028, 100% zero emissions for most new vehicles by 2030 and 100% zero emissions in electricity generation by 2035.

Jamal Reed, a spokesman for Inslee, said the governor’s staff had advised Warren’s campaign and others on climate issues and Inslee is “particularly impressed that Senator Warren is adopting his aggressive targets.”

Warren, a Massachusetts senator, noted that her push to transition to clean energy would require retrofitting buildings, re-engineering the electrical grid and adapting manufacturing.

“For too long, there has been a tension between transitioning to a green economy and creating good, middle class, union jobs,” she wrote.

Warren said her administration would not ask coal and other workers to make the “impossible choice” between jobs with good wages and benefits and “green economy” jobs that pay less, with fewer benefits. The jobs created by her climate plan would be unionized, and training, early retirement benefits and other protections would be provided to current coal workers.

She would also overhaul the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the U.S. electrical grid, replacing it with a Federal Renewable Energy Commission charged with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Also on Tuesday, presidential candidate Julian Castro, a former housing chief for President Barack Obama, released a $10 trillion climate plan to transition to clean energy and create 10 million jobs. Castro, among the candidates participating in Wednesday’s town hall, also seeks to guarantee health care and pensions for coal miners.

…

“Harry Potter” actor David Thewlis plays a father desperate to understand his adult daughter’s choices in “Guest of Honour,” an exploration of a family relationship with hidden secrets.

The movie, directed by Atom Egoyan, begins with Veronica, a former high school music teacher recently released from jail, meeting a priest to discuss her father’s funeral.

Over the course of the meeting, the priest (Luke Wilson), asks Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira) to describe her father Jim and she looks back on his life.

A widowed restaurant inspector with particular attention to detail, Thewlis’s Jim is frustrated by Veronica’s decision to go to jail after a failed hoax sees her falsely convicted of abusing her position towards a student.

The young teacher, however, feels the need to be punished for an earlier crime from her past. Her determination to stay in jail soon begins to impact Jim’s work.

The drama, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, sees both father and daughter conduct their own investigations about each other at different times.

“There is the investigation that his daughter is conducting in the present day but there are several investigations that are happening at different points that he’s conducting while he was alive, that she’s conducting as she remembered it and that he’s positioning it as it actually happened,” Egoyan said.

“It sounds complicated … even though there is five different periods I think it’s very clear at all times where you are in the film,” he added, speaking at a news conference.

“Guest of Honour,” which Egoyan also wrote, addresses suspicion and guilt as both father and daughter try to understand each other better.

“She’s very influenced by the experiences she’s had growing up,” De Oliveira said of her character, Veronica.

“There’s loss there, and so she carries that guilt … or that darkness with her for most of her life and so which leads her to do something that she ultimately feels is right for herself.”

The movie is one of 21 competing for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, which runs until Sept. 7.

…

People in the Bahamas experienced another hellish night as the center of powerful Hurricane Dorian sat stationary on the northern edge of Grand Bahama Island and pounded the area with fierce winds and the flooding effects of heavy rains and storm surge.

Dorian made landfall on the island late Sunday night and barely moved throughout the day Monday. Forecasters expect the storm to finally move away during the day Tuesday and threaten the U.S. state of Florida.

“We are in the midst of a historic tragedy in parts of northern Bahamas,” said Prime Minister Hubert Minnis. “Our mission and focus now is search, rescue, and recovery. I ask for your prayers in those in affected areas and for our first responders.”

He told reporters at a Monday news conference there were five confirmed deaths on Abaco Island, where Dorian struck before moving to Grand Bahama. Minnis said initial reports from Abaco were of devastation that is “unprecedented and extensive.”

What the storm did to Grand Bahama will become more clear as it moves away and authorities are able to survey the island.

“We know that there are a number of people in Grand Bahama who are in serious distress and we will provide relief and assistance as soon as possible after the Met (Meteorology) Department has given the all clear. I strongly urge the residents of Grand Bahama to remain indoors and be as safe as possible until the all clear is given by the appropriate authorities,” Minnis said.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Dorian had weakened from its peak strength, but remained a extremely powerful storm with maximum sustained winds of 205 kilometers per hour early Tuesday.

Forecasters expect Dorian to drift “dangerously close” to the east coast of Florida by late Tuesday and the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina on Wednesday and Thursday.

Hurricane warnings are posted from just north of Miami to the Florida-Georgia border. Millions from Florida to South Carolina have been ordered to evacuate.

A National Guard spokesman says there has been almost no resistance from people being told they have to get out.

“People do understand that Dorian is nothing to mess around with,” he said.

Even if Dorian does not make landfall on the Atlantic Coast, the storm’s hurricane-force winds extend 56 kilometers to the west. Towns and cities can still expect up to 25 centimeters of rain, life-threatening flash floods, and some tornadoes.

Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management Jared Moskowitz says “Hurricane Dorian is the strongest storm to ever threaten the state of Florida on the East Coast. No matter what path this storm takes, our state will be impacted.”

…

East Timor is marking the 20th anniversary of a referendum that ended 24 years of Indonesian occupation and delivered independence, but that also sparked a bloody rampage by pro-Jakarta militias who killed 1,500 people and pushed another half-a-million out of their homes.

The capital has been sprucing up with freshly painted structures, newly paved streets and manicured gardens for the arrival of foreign dignitaries for celebrations that will last until the end of the month.

But beneath the cheery facade is a lingering anger.

Joao Borras, now 37, was forced to flee as militias rampaged through the capital, Dili, shot dead his two best friends, and razed his home.

He said the killings were not just in the open but also behind closed doors by a government apparatus backed by militias that watched every move.

“It’s a horrible life actually,” Borras said. “There’s a lot of people killed, but you didn’t see because they took you in the night time. They said ‘let’s go for interviews’ – and you will not come back the next morning.”

The struggle since independence

United Nations peacekeepers landed three weeks after the August 30, 1999 referendum and restored order. Independence followed on May 20, 2002, with the election of resistance leader Xanana Gusmao as president.

But East Timor has struggled to develop its democracy and rebuild an economy shattered by conflict and ongoing internal fighting, which hampered its ability to attract much needed investment dollars.

In 2006, the United Nations sent in security forces to restore order after 155,000 people fled their homes to escape factional fighting. Then, in early 2008, President Jose Ramos-Horta was critically wounded in an assassination attempt.

The presence of peacekeeping forces helped buoy the economy but since that ended in 2012, East Timor’s Gross Domestic Product has crashed by half to less than $3 billion. Other financial figures are sketchy. An official unemployment rate of 3.5% is scoffed at even by the country’s leaders.

“Unemployment is a constant concern,” President Francisco Guterres said during a speech to commemorate the independence vote. “Our economy has been in recession since 2017, which has had an impact on the job market.”

He said 60% of East Timorese are of working age but only 19% of them are in the job market.

Of that, just 8% work in the private or public sectors while the rest work in the informal market, which Guterres said, “offers workers no security because it’s based on low wages, no contracts, irregular employment and poor working conditions.”

The bright side

Compounding these challenges is East Timor’s fickle foreign relations with much larger regional powers like Australia, China and Indonesia. Anticipated foreign aid, revenues from the sale of oil and gas and the construction of infrastructure projects have fallen far short of expectations.

However, East Timor is pushing for membership to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its long running feud with Australia over sea boundaries and revenue from offshore oil and gas claims appears to be over.

A settlement over its shared maritime border with Australia will entitle East Timor to a bigger share of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas fields, which has reserves estimated at $50 billion.

Australia will also refurbish a naval base and bolster high-speed Internet traffic, widely seen as an effort by Canberra to further its influence in the region.

“This is a new chapter for Australia and Timor-Leste that is based on our shared respect, interests and values,” Morrison said in Dili.

Filmmaker Lyndal Barry, producer of Viva Timor Lorosae, has covered this country since the early 1990s and said Dili deserves recognition for rebuilding its security sector with an effective police force and military.

“There needs to be more done maybe in tourism, there needs to be more done in the countryside and to help people to rebuild there and be able to stand on their own two feet,” Barry said.

China is also investing heavily, financing a deep water port, an electricity grid, and a four lane highway. The China Railway Construction Corporation has signed a $943 million contract with state-owned Timor Gap to help run a liquid natural gas (LNG) plant.

Michael Maley worked for the Australian Electoral Commission as part of an international team that prepared the logistics for the referendum on self-determination. He said two big changes were taking place in East Timor.

“One is the effect of independence and they’re being a self-governing country, meeting their long term aspirations. But the other thing that has happened at the same time is they’ve been hit by globalization,” he said. “The young people from the time when they were almost totally isolated from the world are now incredibly connected. Everyone has a mobile phone, everybody is using Facebook and social media to communicate.”

His sentiments were backed by Borras who said life in East Timor 20 years after the slaughter had improved dramatically, despite the poverty, particularly in the countryside.

“Right now is clearly safe and secure, economic things are up and down but our life is great, better and I feel free and I’m enjoying my life, and my family and my friends – we are working and it’s nice.”

…