USAID Teaching Lanka How To Become An East Timor
By Hela Puwath
Referencing an article which examines the U.S. Government taking Sri Lankan officials on land study tour to Timor-Leste.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is taking 13 government officials from central and provincial ministries on a 7-day study tour to learn how land ownership issues are being resolved in Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor), a country recovering from conflict.
USAID, the development agency of the U.S. Embassy, supports efforts to address land ownership issues in areas of Sri Lanka affected by the conflict.
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Why is the American embassy (USAID) taking Sri Lankan provincial governments (East & North) to East Timor “to learn how to resolve land ownership issues?”
Are responsible officials in our cabinet aware of the details of this seven “study tour?”
Is this “study tour” any different from the “study tour” of the LTTE and government officials who took the LTTE to some European countries including Norway during Ranil Wickremasinghe’s “Peace Deal” to study Federalism? In other words, “how to divide Sri Lanka between Velupillai Prabakaran and Ranil Wickremasinghe?”
What relevance has East Timor to Sri Lanka’s land issues?
Background On East Timor
Portuguese and Dutch traders made the first Western contact with East Timor in the early 16th century.
Timor, an Indonesian island like Goa in India, was occupied by Portugal until 1975 when Indonesia re-established its sovereignty over the island. However, 2,500 regular Portuguese troops and another 17,000 who had some military training went underground and started the terrorist movement known as FALINTIL.
In 1988, FALINTIL was unified with various other terrorist groups to form (CNRM), the National Council of Maubere Resistance; exactly the way various Tamil terrorist factions formed the LTTE.
In April 1998, during the National Convention of East Timorese Living Abroad, held in Portugal, the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), was formed, replacing CNRM (similar to Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran’s Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam [TGTE] replacing LTTE, formed in the USA with the blessing of Robert O’Blake,).
Until 1975, the US, UK, and Australia overtly backed Indonesia’s military regime because of their free access to Indonesia’s vast mineral resources, and supported Indonesia’s re-establishment of sovereignty over Timor, but covertly backed the Portuguese CNRT.
Throughout the Portuguese occupation – just like in Ceylon then – the indigenous populations of Timor were converted to Roman Catholicism by means of “discrimination,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “genocide.”
There is evidence that the West, through USAID, was heavily involved in supporting CNRT in the terrorist campaign against the Indonesian military, and the non-catholic Timor population. It is noteworthy that before East Timor declared independence (2002), in 1996 Norway gave the Nobel Peace Price to the former rebel fighter, José Ramos-Horta. Horta later became president in 2006. And ever since 2002, when East Timor declared independence, there has been nothing but chaos in East Timor:
1. In 1999, (after the formation of CNRT), it had been reported, that as many as 300,000 people were forcibly relocated to West Timor as refugees. The current population of East Timor is around 1 million.
2. In 2006, there was fighting between the police and the army that toppled the government. The police are said to be pro-Indonesian while the army is pro-Portuguese.
3. In 2006, 130,000 fled their homes to West Timor because of violence.
4. Then, as recently as February 2008, President Jose Ramos-Horta was nearly killed by a rebel ambush.
5. Also, in later 2008, in an attempted coup, Prime Minister Gusmão’s motorcade was attacked.
6. An Australian parliamentary study group says land issues in East Timor have a significant potential for political and economic instability.
That being the case, why is the US embassy in Colombo (USAID) trying to “educate” Tamil officials in the East and North about land disputes in East Timor? Unlike in East Timor where government institutions and legal professions are virtually nonexistent, Sri Lanka has a stable government with a robust administrative establishment, and a strong independent judiciary.
What relevance is East Timor’s land disputes to Sri Lanka?
The irony is that it is the Anglo-Saxon land grabbers, Crusaders, and Vikings who were responsible for “genocide” the world over; they were responsible for the “ethnic cleansing” of half the world’s original indigenous populations from their rightful lands; it is they who are now, again, invading and robbing the world’s resources while pretending to right the world of “crimes against humanity” that is of their own making.
How dare the Anglo Saxons, (British, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, and Canadians), the Crusading Conquistadors (Portuguese and Spanish), and the Viking Norwegians now go around proclaiming that they are the saviors of the world?
Why doesn’t Madam Ambassador Butenis and USAID send these Tamil officials to America to study how the land ownership issues of the NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES have been resolved in America over the past 300 years?
Originally published on March 2, 2010 on LankaWeb.
Click here to access the original article.