Seashore shots

Music

00:00

BORMANN:  It was the darling new nation, born from the ravages of occupation.

East Timor had become the world’s newest country after a quarter of a century of resistance to Indonesia.

00:17

Choppers/city shots

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00:33

BORMANN:   But six years after independence, it remains a volatile place, propped up by thousands of visiting foreigners and their false economy.

00:39

UN vehicles/police

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00:48

BORMANN: In Dili there are traffic snarls of United Nations vehicles, police from 39 nations flood the streets, dozens of aid agencies clamour to do good.

00:51

Music

01:02

Young men/gangs

BORMANN:   But despite all the good intention in the world, this is not the new nation most of these people had hoped for.

The level of suspicion and distrust on the streets is extraordinary. It’s hard to be happy in your homeland  when you don’t have a home.

01:05

Camp squalor

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01:21

BORMANN:   This is what’s become of the new democracy.

One tenth of the total population of one million people has been chased out of house and home by their own countrymen.

This is the story of the part played by a new generation of East Timorese youth.

And how rather than building their nation, they seem hell bent on destroying the country their fathers created.  

01:30

Young men practising silat

Music

01:55

Alex

BORMANN:   After eight years abroad in Portugal and Australia, Alex de Sousa is home and with mates again.

His passion is silat, a martial arts introduced here during Indonesian times.

02:10

Alex practising silat

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02:23

ALEX:   I came to East Timor and I seen a different kind of martial arts,

02:28

Alex.

and I went to assist one of the trainings, and I liked it.

02:32

Music

02:36

Alex and his mates

BORMANN:   Alex is one of thirty thousand East Timorese devotees of  P-S-H-T , an organisation that binds its members beyond sporting ties.

02:42

P-S-H-T  has been at war -- it’s one of number of groups involved in an ongoing battle for recruits, land and influence in this fledgling country.

02:52

ALEX:  If you kill one of them, you’ll get revenge that’s for sure.

03:06

Alex. Super: 
Alex de Sousa
Member PSHT

It’s a Timorese way to solve the problem.

03:11

Youth in streets

Music

03:16

BORMANN:   This is fertile recruiting ground for the gangs.

There’s not much to do here.

Almost half of young people don’t have a job, and the UN and aid agencies provide about the only work anyway.

03:23

It’s hardly surprising that seven out of 10 young men find their way to various clubs and gangs.

03:41

JOSE:  It’s above family ties,

03:49

Jose.

so they’ll kill for their brothers.

03:51

Jose talking to mates

BORMANN:   Jose Luis Sousa Santos also has  returned from abroad to help rebuild his country.

The one time intelligence adviser to the  Australian Defence Force has worked with his prime minister and also the United Nations on the gang problem.

03:54

Jose. Super:
Jose Luis Sousa Santos
Youth advisor

JOSE:  If political parties require support in regards to demonstrations or in regards to defending themselves or attacking enemies they utilise martial arts groups.

04:12

Silat bouts at youth club

Out of all the groups in Timor Leste that probably would be the most influential group politically at a high level, P-S-H-T.

04:26

BORMANN: It could be any youth club, but these young people have joined an organisation which infiltrates the police and army, the public service and high echelons of government.

04:34

JOSE:  Intimidation, burning of houses, violent attacks on individuals. Having such a large number of PSHT masters inside the police force and in the police special groups

04:47

Jose

means they’ve got access to weapons and ammunition, where most of the population don’t.

04:57

Archive footage. 2006 violence

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05:05

BORMANN:  To find out how these gangs operate and what they do, you need only to go back to the violence of 2006.

05:17

Six thousand homes were destroyed when those who saw themselves as  ‘westerners’ of East Timor tried to remove those who regarded themselves ‘easterners’.

The gangs played a central role as enforcers.

05:26

Music

05:41

Aftermath of violence. Destroyed houses

BORMANN:   It was a mad scramble to stake a claim, a demonstration that owning a house in East Timor can be a very tenuous proposition.

Neighbours can simply burn each other out here, and nothing much can be done about it.

That’s because the land tenure situation is a mess.

There’s traditional title, title from Portuguese times, from Indonesian occupation.

But in the end, once you get hold of a place, you hang onto it.

05:52

Displacement camps

This is what became of Dili’s  so called ‘easterners’.

They lives in tents -- one third of the city’s population, surviving on hand outs the government can’t afford.

06:24

The displacement camps spill into hospitals, into the sanctuary of church grounds and even into Dili’s fire station.

06:39

RESKE-NEILSEN:  What we are doing here is to create if you like a nation of beggars.

06:50

Reske-Neilsen. Super:
Finn Reske-Neilsen
UN Deputy Head of Mission

We need to get away from this dependency on handouts and move back to a situation where people can actually fend for themselves.

06:54

Estanislao and family in camp

BORMANN:   For almost two years this single tent has been home to Estanislao Soares, his wife and their seven children.

07:04

Their home was destroyed as ‘westerners’ moved in. Now a cut in the rice handout is about to make life even more difficult.

07:14

ESTANISLAO: It’s very hard for us here.

07:23

It rains heavily and it’s hot living under this tent.

07:28

BORMANN:   Most people don’t have the means to return to their homes. And they have genuine fears about what they will happen if they try to go back.

07:38

Estanislao at former home

Estanislao agreed to leave camp to show me his old home, just a few kilometres up the road.

07:47

Estanislao with new occupier of house

He had three houses here, and only one still stands. The new occupier, he recognises.

This man’s son was the one who attacked Estanislao and destroyed his houses.

But like every other land dispute here, nothing is clear cut.

07:55

It turns out that Estanislao  himself had taken over the house years before, when its occupants fled unrest in 1999.

Both men had been squatters at some stage in this house, neither have any paperwork to prove ownership anyway.

08:14

It seems to be have been an affable meeting, but Estanislao leaves with a threat ringing in his ear.

He’s been told it will be the youth of the street who will sort this one out.

08:34

Estanislao in car

Our guide to the gangs Jose Luis Sousa Santos says he knows what this means.

08:49

JOSE:  When he tries to go to back to claim his house, there could be a violent reaction from the youth.

He’ll either get burned out again or they’ll kill him.

08:55

Gang members will back each other up, almost to the death, other cells will come into it.

09:07

Jose. Super:
Jose Luis Sousa Santos
Youth advisor

Within 24 hours it’s turned into a street battle of fifteen hundred people.

09:14

Displacement camp

BORMANN:   So fragile is the peace here that even unrealistic fears can ignite a new spiral of violence. East Timor has democracy, but the very prospect of elections can send people packing.

09:21

After last year’s poll, the gangs were at it on the streets again. This time it was the so called ‘westerners’ who fled to safety outside of Dili.

09:38

Dos Santos and family in camp

Jose Dos Santos and his family of eight were among them.

09:51

DOS SANTOS:  During the Indonesian occupation, we did not live like this. We ask for self determination and we got our independence, but look at our lives now.

09:55

We have our freedom but now we fight against our own brothers.

10:09

BORMANN:   He’s never had a paying job in his life he says, and he’s not going to get one rotting away here.

10:14

DOS SANTOS:  There’s no space to sleep. Clothes are scattered everywhere.

10:20

I ask our leaders; please don’t let us live like this. Don’t shut your eyes from our problems.

10:27

Music

10:34

Gang members in camp

BORMANN:   The gangs aren’t just on the outside, they prosper within the refugee camps.

10:43

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10:48

BORMANN:  When the government halved rice rations, gang leaders protested, and against the wishes of most tent dwellers they refused to allow any food in at all.

10:50

Reske-Neilsen. Super:
Finn Reske-Neilsen
UN Deputy Head of Mission

RESKE-NEILSEN:  If martial arts groups would just be martial arts groups that would do their sports, and practice their martial arts, I don’t think there would be any problem, in fact it would be very, very constructive and therein lies perhaps the challenge of helping to move these groups into channel their energies into something constructive, rather than engaging in warfare amongst themselves.

11:04

Olderico praying

11:27

Music

11:31

BORMANN:   Olderico Campos prays to the Virgin Mary, but he also worships the dead and believes he has the power to deflect bullets.

11:36

Music

11:44

BORMANN: He’s a member of the ritualistic ‘77’ gang, a clandestine group that once supported the Falantil fighters who fought Indonesia.

11:47

Olderico shows scars

There are twelve thousand followers who each bear the seven scars.

Olderico wears a crocodile tooth for divine protection, 

11:59

and this armband.

12:08

OLDERICO:  This can protect us from the black magic,

12:12

Olderico

so the black magic cannot harm you.

12:15

Olderico. Super: 
Olderico Campos
77 Gang member

BORMANN:   I dug deeper and Olderico Campos told me more about the black magic gangs, and some more sinister practices.

OLDERICO:  They are the people who eat the meat from the human, human meat.

BORMANN:    Really, that happens in Timor Leste?

OLDERICO:  Yeah (laugh) here we have that.

12:18

Olderico with gang members

JOSE:  The current incarnation of 77 is a corruption of East Timorese culture. The use of almost voodoo rituals is troubling, because a lot of these kids do believe that once they’ve joined 77 their life force is now tied to the group,

12:39

Jose. Super:
Jose Luis Sousa Santos
Youth advisor

so that whenever their master decides to cut them loose, they’ll die, so it’s a very good way to keep control over unruly kids.

12:56

BORMANN:   There are those in East Timor determined to stay straight and contribute something positive to their new country.

13:09

Fabio driving

Like others in our story, Fabio de Assis spent time abroad during the turbulent years before nationhood.

Fabio escaped the gangs of Los Angeles, now he’s trying to stay clear of them here.

13:16

FABIO:   I just saw a bunch of people sitting around doing nothing, with all this work to be done.

13:31