East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta said yesterday he supports in principle an Australian plan to turn his country into a regional center for processing asylum seekers but does not want his tiny, impoverished nation to become an “island prison.”
Ramos-Horta said that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard had raised the proposal with him but that there were few details so far.
He told Australian Broadcasting Corp television he supported the plan in principle, but only if East Timor’s government agrees and if the facility were a temporary stop for people who would be resettled in other countries.
Ramos-Horta, awarded the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for helping end Indonesia’s brutal rule of East Timor, serves in the largely ceremonial role of president, while the government is led by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.
“I would never turn my back on people who flee violence in Afghanistan, or whatever,” Ramos-Horta said. “But on a temporary basis, so that they can be sent to a third country where they can start life with dignity and with promise of a better future.”
“I wouldn’t want Timor-Leste [East Timor] to become an island prison for displaced persons fleeing violence,” Ramos-Horta said, using the country’s official name.
East Timor, with a population of just 1 million, has faced political turmoil and chronic unemployment since gaining independence in 2002 after nearly four centuries of foreign domination.
The half-island nation would need financial help to manage a center. It would also need assistance to feed, house and clothe asylum seekers and give them medical care and jobs in the community.
East Timorese Deputy Prime Minister Jose Luis Guterres said on Tuesday he doubted his country had the capacity to run such a center.
Gillard on Tuesday proposed that East Timor would become a UN-approved processing hub for asylum seekers as a way to stem a recent influx of boat people trying to reach Australia from Afghanistan and other countries. The asylum seekers have become an issue in elections expected to be held within months.
Yesterday, Gillard announced a A$25 million (US$21 million) package to help Asian countries combat people-smuggling. Indonesia will get patrol boats and planes, while police in Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will get surveillance and other equipment.
The new policy brings Gillard’s government closer into line with the conservative opposition by keeping asylum seekers out of the country while their applications are processed, though it retains humanitarian protections sought by the UN.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS