Well, what can you say ? News reports suggest that at least 2 people were killed in fighting near the airport. The airport is closed. Blackhawk choppers working all night Tuesday night and a lot of Wednesday – always a key indicator of trouble. Roadblocks setup near the Comorro River bridge severely impacting on movement. Attacks and threats on the Ministry of Education building in another part of town (near the UN Obrigado barracks). Continuing tense atmosphere in the vicinity of the national hospital in the east of town.

You try to piece together the details from various sources as all sorts of people hear slightly different takes on what is happening. Maybe 4 were killed. A friend at one of the medical facilities said 3 deaths occured at their workplace. A shot to the head and a couple of arrows. A lot of the day trying to transport the bodies to the main hospital and/or returning the bodies to the families. The families in a heightened state and angry. Guns carried by civilians now reported as being seen in a number of places.

And you know that after this lot, there will be the inevitable attempts to exact revenge.

This report seems to have distilled most of what I have heard from various sources here :

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/timor-in-chaos-as-leader-murdered/2006/10/25/1161749189170.html

Today in Baucau, the Timorese army (ie F-FDTL) are holding some sort of public meeting to talk about their response to the recent UN report and may well have a response to yesterday’s events. Some of their command were referred to in the UN report. This meeting will be watched with keen interest as so far, they have kept out of the action and out of Dili.

Sundays are usually fairly quiet.  Most shops are closed and if you see large groups, they are usually going to and from church.  The expat supermarkets are always open and I had decided to do a big shop, mainly as I had run out of breakfast cereal but also because the other half was slaving over the cooktop doing something substantial for dinner.

Mid-afternoon I went to Landmark supermarket and noticed the streets extremely quiet if not deserted.  There were a couple of police vehicles with small crowds around them but otherwise nothing.  I thought something must be “going down” (a phrase often used here) when I saw (& heard) the Blackhawk doing quite small circling in an area of Fatuhada only a couple of hundred metres away.

As is quite common, Landmark could not satisfy the full requirements of the shopping list so it was off to Cold Storage at the other end of town.  Still deathly quiet and I thought “this is just what it was like back in May/June”.  Something feels wrong.

And so it was.  Later in the day, Radio Australia reported trouble following the discovery of 2 human torsos in the Comorro market area.  RA reported that 100 foreign police were called in.  Even later in the day, I noticed very slow response when texting on my mobile – 20 minutes before actual delivery of messages.  This was reminiscent of the mobile phone meltdown several months back when everyone was sharing the news on whats going on.

So even though things are generally under control, the tensions in the community are incredibly high and one wonders what can be done to bring it down.  Certainly not  job creation for the major construction works going on in town – landscaping work in the carpark and on the beachfront outside the Palacio do Governo.

Yesterday afternoon, I was visiting a colleague at his residence which is a 1 bedroom unit in a bit of a mish-mash of buildings all contained within a walled compound.

There are quite a few walled compounds in Dili but most are just a fence with a gate and one or two guards. Some may have razor wire or equivalent but this one is just normal fences. (Like septic tank cleaning services, razor wire supplies are a booming industry here.) The compound has guards, gardeners and room cleaning staff like a serviced apartment and rents to foreigners.

Anyway, apart from the consequences of the recent UN report, we were actually discussing job creation and how this was perhaps the biggest reason for much of the recent trouble. As we spoke, there was a commotion outside over the fence. The guards and other staff in the compound were running about the place. It was clear there was a rock fight or similar going on – lots of yelling. One of the guards appeared with blood streaming from his head. He had been walking back to work after collecting his pay and was attacked just outside. He was an easterner (lorosae).

Within minutes, the police (ie UN police) arrived and broke it up. I could see the tops of police vehicles passing by over the easily scalable fence. It was all over in 10 minutes.  When I left, I found myself between 2 police road blocks. As I was on the inside, I was asked if I was OK. They told me that they had used tear gas and rubber bullets. There were rocks all over the road and broken glass from the car or cars that unfortunately were passing at the wrong time.

I pondered just what might have happened if I had decided to leave 30 minutes earlier. However, I still remain confident that a non uniform-wearing white face is not a rock target – as long as they can see your face !

The “Report of the United Nations Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste” was released on 17 October. I note it is dated 2 October and I think it was initially expected about 8 October but I believe the UN wanted to be prepared for any security backlash.

Although the actual release date always seemed to be a rumour to me, most of the locals seemed to be prepared for it as of Sunday. Shops started closing on Sunday and Monday was very quiet. It seems not much happened and things have almost returned to “normal” (relative to recent times).

I have yet to read the 79 page report which can be downloaded in PDF format (440 kbytes) from the the UN web site at http://www.ohchr.org/english/docs/ColReport-English.pdf and leave it up to the reader to come to a conclusion.

I still expect a bit of discomfort over the coming weeks, not just for the people who have been named (and their supporters) but also for those disappointed that that some other names did not appear in the report.

And no, there is no suggestion of a foreign-initiated coup, something I have never heard seriously mentioned here. On 16 June, I mentioned some of the possibilities doing the rounds (http://wombathole.com/dili-gence/?p=115) and maybe I will have to mark the report card on who came closest to getting it right.

Today, the International Crisis Group (whatever that is) released a report called “Resolving East Timor’s Crisis”. I will get around to reading it a bit more carefully soon but basically it seems to cover a lot of the issues related to the current problems.

The report (36 page PDF document and 860kb in size) is available here at crisisgroup.org

I am not sure where it fits into the big picture as the UN report on the recent troubles is due before the end of October. This is often talked about around town as it is supposed to name names and provide a starting point for prosecution of people who have done the wrong thing (whatever that is).

Some information on this special commission of inquiry is available at reliefweb

There has been a lot of conjecture about town whether the details of the UN report will cause trouble. At the very least, there will be a lot of squirming but I would assume that all the potentially guilty parties already have a good idea of what to expect. At the same time, I am fairly certain the foreign military and police forces already know the names of those who will be named. So I think there may be a lid on any really bad stuff but one would have to expect some issues coming out of left field somewhere.

I know the day the report is released will be a good day to plan for a nice meal at home and some stiff gin and tonics just to be on the safe side.

Well, the theory goes that a break away recharges batteries and provides renewed enthusiasm.  Then I try to rationalise my emails (by modem) after the break.  Apparently my biggest friend I have in the world is called “Junk” and to top off my 97% of all emails from “Junk”, the spam farms have successfully found dili-gence.  (I curse the “real money up-front” ISP who “claims” to have spam filters on my incoming mail.)
I may be forced to insist on registration for those keen enough to want to post to dili-gence.  I may even have to study up on how to reduce spam on blog sites.  Maybe I’ll get over it.
Some mates have already told me that everything has pretty much been business as usual – the odd fire, the odd rock fight, the odd canister of tear gas.  It seems I didn’t miss a thing.