Situation Deteriorating in East Timor

It looks like the East Timorese government is currently having a hard time keeping important areas under tight security, let alone the capital and its surroundings, as armed mobs and gangs are seemingly taking over control.

According to an AFP reporter, the on going fighting left homes and buildings in flames near the presidential palace in Dili on Tuesday. Many have been taken to the hospital but there are no official accounts to report the exact number of people who have been seriously injured. It is known though that 20 people have been killed so far in street riots, more than 40,000 thousand people have fled their homes (according to Red Cross reports) and dozens of houses and buildings have been burnt.

An armed mob looted the attorney general's office and also tampered with official documents in an area where evidence about the massacres of 1999 were stored. This caused major concern among government officials that secret information might be made public. Moreover, gangs from the eastern and western parts of the country are defying international peacekeeping military units sent in by Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia.

In the meantime, officials are due to meet today for another round of talks on how to solve the crisis.

So far, the methods employed by them in order to tone the situation down have failed lamentably, is the opinion of Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, who stated today in an interview with Nine Network television from Australia that, "In some areas, particularly in political dialogue in embracing everybody, in resolving problems as they arise, well the government has failed miserably. We have failed to embrace people who disagree with the government; we have failed in addressing the problems in the military and in the police, even though we knew about them."

Photo Credits:Turkish Daily News