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Independent Timor-Leste
- Between Coercion and Consent
- Douglas Kammen
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- Published online:
- 19 March 2019
- Print publication:
- 11 April 2019
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- Element
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This Element explores the primary modes by which rulers have exercised power and shaped political relations in Timor-Leste across four distinct periods. The contrast between coercion under colonial rule and consent expressed through the 1999 referendum on independence exerted a powerful influence on scholarship on Timor-Leste's politics and future. Since the restoration of independence in 2002, however, politics in Timor-Leste are best understood in terms of powerful economic constraints during the first Fretilin government (2002–6), and thereafter, thanks to revenue from the country's petroleum reserves, a ruling strategy based on a wide range of inducements (rather than genuine consent).
11 - Timor-Leste and ASEAN
- from SECTION II - COUNTRY ANALYSES
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- By Douglas Kammen, National University of Singapore
- Edited in consultation with Kee Beng Ooi, Sanchita Basu Das, Terence Chong, Malcolm Cook, Cassey Lee, Michael Chai Ming Yeo
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- Book:
- The 3rd ASEAN Reader
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 22 June 2017
- Print publication:
- 17 August 2015, pp 54-58
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Summary
The popular referendum held on the future of East Timor in August 1999 presented a novel challenge for ASEAN and its members. During the twenty-four-year Indonesian occupation of the territory ASEAN had studiously upheld its policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states, despite the fact that the 1975 invasion was a violation of international law and despite the ongoing abuses of human rights. For this reason, ASEAN was ill-prepared to play a constructive role at the time of the referendum and East Timorese leaders had little reason to view ASEAN with much sympathy. Nevertheless, when the UN called for regional participation in the peacekeeping force tasked with maintaining security in the territory until the restoration of independence in May 2002, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore all agreed to contribute military personnel.
With the achievement of independence, East Timorese elites began to discuss foreign policy issues, including application for membership in regional associations. These early discussions were coloured by concern about negotiating the maritime boundary with Australia and production-sharing agreements from offshore oil and gas fields, but also included consideration of cultural affinities with states in the Pacific Islands Forum and the potential economic and security benefits of orientation toward ASEAN. Further afield, the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries offered historic and linguistic succor, while China loomed as a potential benefactor.
Timor-Leste thus enjoyed a range of options in the international arena, but it faced pressing issues on the domestic front. Physical infrastructure had been devastated by the Indonesian military and its militias in 1999, tens of thousands of people remained displaced from their homes (some still in Indonesian West Timor), agricultural output was well below domestic needs, basic health care was limited, and the education system needed to be rebuilt from scratch. The United Nations and a host of international agencies provided technical assistance and aid, but much of the focus was on building new state institutions, not the provision of services or job creation. With meager annual state budgets, the Fretilin government led by Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri prioritized the repair of basic infrastructure, health care (with Cuba providing doctors to serve in rural clinics and medical training for East Timorese students), and primary education (with Portugal providing several hundred volunteer language teachers).
6 - Between Violence and Negotiation: Rethinking the Indonesian Occupation and the East Timorese Resistance
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- By Douglas Kammen, Cornell University
- Edited by Michelle Ann Miller
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- Book:
- Autonomy and Armed Separatism in South and Southeast Asia
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 July 2012, pp 93-112
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Summary
At first glance East Timor appears to be an awkward fit in a volume on armed separatism and autonomy. The reasons for this are quite straightforward, one stemming from the definition of separatism, the other reflecting the ultimate outcome of the conflict. The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975 was a violation of international law and Jakarta's act of “integration” in 1976 was never recognized by the United Nations or the vast majority of member states. The resistance explicitly justified its use of arms in terms of the right to self-determination and the illegality of the Indonesian occupation. Hence, the twenty-four year occupation was technically never a case of separatism. Second, while both sides periodically made proposals for peace (including calls for autonomy), these were readily dismissed by the other party to the conflict. Viewing “integration” as final and irrevocable, Jakarta rightly suspected that the resistance's proposals for autonomy were disingenuous ploys to open the door to eventual independence. The one exception to this arose in 1999 when President Soeharto's chosen successor, B.J. Habibie, agreed to a United Nations-sponsored referendum in which the people of East Timor were given the opportunity to support or oppose “special autonomy” within Indonesia. With the vote overwhelmingly opposed to Jakarta's offer, the referendum led to the opposite outcome — Indonesia relinquishing its claim over the territory and international recognition of East Timor's independence.
Despite these objections, the theme of this volume provides a useful opportunity to rethink the dynamics of the twenty-four year conflict and the reasons for the success of the East Timorese resistance. Most scholarship on the conflict in East Timor has focused on either the heroic resistance to the illegal occupation or the horrific human rights abuses committed by the Indonesian military/state. Curiously, far less attention has been paid to the long-term logic of the occupying power, including fluctuations in the use of violence and periodic efforts to employ negotiation. And yet, careful scrutiny reveals that the twenty-four year conflict in East Timor was punctuated like clock-work by something entirely exogenous to East Timor: the Indonesian electoral cycle. Corresponding to the national electoral cycle, at regular five year intervals the regime of occupation withdrew troops from the territory, reduced or altogether ceased combat operations, and attempted in one way or another to “normalize” the status of the territory.
Chapter 11 - Policy, Financing and Implementation
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- By Catherine Mitchell, Janet L. Sawin, Govind R. Pokharel, Daniel Kammen, Zhongying Wang, Solomone Fifita, Mark Jaccard, Ole Langniss, Hugo Lucas, Alain Nadai, Ramiro Trujillo Blanco, Eric Usher, Aviel Verbruggen, Rolf Wüstenhagen, Kaoru Yamaguchi, Douglas Arent, Greg Arrowsmith, Morgan Bazilian, Lori Bird, Thomas Boermans, Alex Bowen, Sylvia Breukers, Thomas Bruckner, Sebastian Busch, Elisabeth Clemens, Peter Connor, Felix Creutzig, Peter Droege, Karin Ericsson, Chris Greacen, Renata Grisoli, Erik Haites, Kirsty Hamilton, Jochen Harnisch, Cameron Hepburn, Suzanne Hunt, Matthias Kalkuhl, Heleen de Koninck, Patrick Lamers, Birger Madsen, Gregory Nemet, Lars J. Nilsson, Supachai Panitchpakdi, David Popp, Anis Radzi, Gustav Resch, Sven Schimschar, Kristin Seyboth, Sergio Trindade, Bernhard Truffer, Sarah Truitt, Dan van der Horst, Saskia Vermeylen, Charles Wilson, Ryan Wiser, David de Jager, Antonina Ivanova Boncheva
- Edited by Ottmar Edenhofer, Ramón Pichs-Madruga, Youba Sokona, Kristin Seyboth, Susanne Kadner, Timm Zwickel, Patrick Eickemeier, Gerrit Hansen, Steffen Schlömer, Christoph von Stechow, Patrick Matschoss
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- Book:
- Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation
- Published online:
- 05 December 2011
- Print publication:
- 21 November 2011, pp 865-950
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Summary
Executive Summary
Renewable energy can provide a host of benefits to society. In addition to the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, governments have enacted renewable energy (RE) policies to meet a number of objectives including the creation of local environmental and health benefits; facilitation of energy access, particularly for rural areas; advancement of energy security goals by diversifying the portfolio of energy technologies and resources; and improving social and economic development through potential employment opportunities. Energy access and social and economic development have been the primary drivers in developing countries whereas ensuring a secure energy supply and environmental concerns have been most important in developed countries.
An increasing number and variety of RE policies–motivated by a variety of factors–have driven substantial growth of RE technologies in recent years. Government policies have played a crucial role in accelerating the deployment of RE technologies. At the same time, not all RE policies have proven effective and efficient in rapidly or substantially increasing RE deployment. The focus of policies is broadening from a concentration almost entirely on RE electricity to include RE heating and cooling and transportation.
RE policies have promoted an increase in RE capacity installations by helping to overcome various barriers. Barriers specific to RE policymaking (e.g., a lack of information and awareness), to implementation (e.g., a lack of an educated and trained workforce to match developing RE technologies) and to financing (e.g., market failures) may further impede deployment of RE.
Fragments of utopia: Popular yearnings in East Timor
- Douglas Kammen
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- Journal:
- Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 40 / Issue 2 / June 2009
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 29 April 2009, pp. 385-408
- Print publication:
- June 2009
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Six months after the historic August 1999 referendum in which the people of East Timor voted to reject Indonesia's offer of broad autonomy, the newly appointed chief of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor, Sérgio Vieira de Mello, commented to CNN on the enormous challenge of setting the territory on the road to independence: ‘It is a test case, therefore it is even a laboratory case where we can transform utopia into reality. But I think we can try and get it right in the case of Timor.’ After 24 years of brutal military occupation, the suggestion that East Timor was to be a laboratory case for the United Nations might have seemed insulting, the notion of utopia absurd. Hundreds of thousands of people were without housing. Basic infrastructure lay in ruins. Commodities were scarce and those goods available were sold at grossly inflated prices. Eleven thousand foreign troops had arrived to restore security. Tens of thousands of refugees were still living in squalid camps across the border in Indonesian West Timor, many against their will. Nevertheless, Vieira de Mello's statement neatly captured the twin aspirations of the time — the independence long-dreamed of by East Timorese and the opportunity for the United Nations literally to build a state from the ground up. In the same CNN report, East Timorese Nobel Laureate José Ramos-Horta emphasised precisely this point: ‘This is the first instance in the history of the UN that the UN has managed completely an entire country; and they have a [Timorese pro-independence] movement that is very cooperative, they have an exceptional people that's cooperating with them, so they cannot fail. They are condemned to succeed because failure would be disastrous for the credibility of the UN, so they simply cannot afford to fail.’ Utopia, it seems, had become a necessity.
Generating Reforms and Reforming Generations: Military Politics in Indonesia's Democratic Transition and Consolidation
- Siddharth Chandra, Douglas Kammen
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- Journal:
- World Politics / Volume 55 / Issue 1 / October 2002
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 June 2011, pp. 96-136
- Print publication:
- October 2002
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- Article
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This article examines the importance of the internal structural dynamics of the military in the analysis of transitions from nondemocratic rule and in democratic consolidation. The authors argues that factors endogenous to the military—including variations in the size of the officer corps, solidarity among graduating classes from the military academy, and promotional prospects—are important determinants of the political behavior of militaries. As a case study, military structure and politics during Indonesia's recent transition from nondemocratic rule and current consolidation of democracy are explored in detail. While the ongoing interaction between civilians and the military is acknowledged, systematic structural features are identified as being important for understanding the behavior of the Indonesian military between 1998 and 2001. The authors compare and contrast the study of Indonesia with other cases in the literature on transitions—including Ghana, Nigeria, Portugal, and Thailand—and discuss resulting implications for the study of transitions and consolidations.