DILI - With its political and security
institutions in shambles, East Timor, also known
as Timor Leste, is now emerging as a soft landing
spot for regional organized crime syndicates. In
early January, United Nations Police (UNPOL) and
their Timorese counterparts launched a series of
raids in the capital Dili aimed at disrupting
growing narcotics and human trafficking operations
in the country.
Two Chinese-run bars were
targeted where 15 Chinese females and a handful of
suspected ringleaders were detained on
prostitution and immigration violations. On
interrogation it became apparent to the
authorities that some of the Chinese women were
likely misled to Timor on false offers of
legitimate jobs and forced into the sex trade once
in the country. The recovery during
the
raids
of a Taser electroshock weapon and the fact that
the women's passports were found in the possession
of the alleged gang leader suggested to police
authorities that the Chinese women were being held
against their will.
During the same police
operation, seven Indonesian and one Timorese
female were also detained on suspicion of being
prostitutes and immigration violations. The
presence of Chinese and Indonesian women indicated
to authorities the wider links of the Chinese
crime syndicates now operating in Dili.
Interrogation of the various Timorese detained
during the crackdown revealed that Chinese crime
syndicates are also increasingly spreading to the
rural areas, mainly in search of young Timorese
girls for the sex trade.
In early December
2007 members of a self-proclaimed French-run
non-governmental organization (NGO) were detained
by the local police in the remote Timor town of
Bastugade near the border with Indonesia while
attempting to cross the border with 18
undocumented Timorese girls. The Bastugade case
notably came just a week after members of another
French pseudo-charity were sentenced in the
African state of Chad for allegedly trying to
smuggle 100 children out of that country.
In the second week of January, Timorese
police also detained another group of individuals
who had tried to smuggle an unspecified number of
young Timorese girls to Indonesia. An undisclosed
number of foreigners, including a Nigerian
national, had their requests to adopt young
Timorese girls denied on suspicion they could end
up in the sex trade.
The police raids also
seized unspecified quantities of narcotics,
including amphetamines, "ice" and several
opium-derived drugs. While there is no reliable
data available about the depth and dimensions of
Timor's illegal drug trade, authorities believe it
is growing rapidly and is beginning to undermine
the already delicate law and order situation in
this politically unstable nation.
The
fast-growing trade in amphetamines and the
crystallized methamphetamine "ice" has reportedly
led to more violence among Timor's youth, while at
the same time brings some of the most dangerous
criminal elements in the region, including Chinese
triads, into the country.
UNPOL and
Timorese security personnel have expressed their
concerns that ice and amphetamine use is spiking
among local martial arts gangs, which often engage
in criminal activities and are routinely used as
thugs-for-hire by political groups. For instance,
during the May 2006 crisis various political
figures were known to have distributed upper
narcotics, particularly ice, to local youths to
lure them into acts of violence on their behalf.
The January raids on the Chinese-run bars
showed to police officials how deeply organized
Chinese crime syndicates have over the past three
years taken root in Timor. They are not alone,
however. Indonesian crime rings, engaged primarily
in smuggling, are also said to be increasingly
active. Knowing that Timor has only two aging
gunboats - one of which has been in repair in
Indonesia for the past six months, to cover 870
kilometers of coastline - Indonesian smugglers
have increased their operations in Timor's
maritime area.
Criminal
profits As a result, Timor is losing
an estimated US$45 million annually from smuggling
and poaching activities, equivalent to 11% of the
government's current annual budget or more than
the entire police and defense budget combined,
according to official estimates. That figure, of
course, may be much higher if the true scale of
the problem was better known.
Meanwhile,
Timor's lack of naval assets has allowed for the
indiscriminate plunder of its fisheries, with as
many as 100 vessels from Indonesia, China,
Thailand and South Korea believed to be illegally
operating in Timorese waters at any given time.
The recent police raids no doubt revealed
only the tip of the organized crime iceberg and
the revelations from those operations represent
the latest jarring development for the country's
already battered and bruised political
establishment. Some in Dili note that while the
authorities targeted several Chinese-run bars,
several other suspected underground establishments
were left unmolested, allegedly due to their close
ties with senior politicians and police officials.
A month after the Moonlight and Mona Lisa were
raided, both now are for unknown reasons back in
business.
A joke now doing the rounds in
Dili is that certain establishments were not
raided because UNPOL feared that it may have to
arrest half of the government in the process and
that early elections would have to be called as a
result. There is also growing evidence of
expanding protection rackets, allegedly run by
local thugs with powerful political and police
backers. The local heavies hail primarily from the
various martial arts gangs active in Dili and prey
on everyone from small street sellers to major
commercial establishments.
All of this
points to major corruption in Timor's already
fragile security institutions and is fast
infecting other sectors of Prime Minister Xanana
Gusmao's multiparty coalition government. For
instance, a leader of the so-called "petitioners",
the group of army soldiers who to disastrous
effect deserted from the defense forces in
February 2006 on complaints of unfair treatment,
was recently caught with an entire truckload of
sandalwood he had attempted to smuggle out to
Indonesia using a military vehicle.
There
is also emerging evidence that organized crime
elements, in association with local political
actors, played a role in the February
assassination attempts against President Jose
Ramos Horta and Gusmao. An autopsy conducted on
Alfredo Reinado, the rebel leader who shot Horta
and was killed during the melee, showed that he
was on ice at the time.
In any country
plagued by the presence of strong crime syndicates
alongside a weak state apparatus basic law and
order comes under threat. In a country as
politically and economically fragile as Timor, if
left to fester without sweeping reforms, it could
prove fatal to national survival.
Loro
Horta is a research associate fellow at
Singapore's S Rajartnam School of International
Studies at Nanyang Technology University. He also
served as a former advisor to the Timorese Defense
Department.
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