Eight years on from East Timor's bloody split from Indonesia, one of the world's youngest democracies is being ravaged by widespread gang violence and disorder as an Australian-led UN force tries desperately to keep the peace.
Unreported World reveals that elements of the rebel group who spent more than 20 years fighting the Indonesian army are threatening to restart their armed resistance, putting the future viability of the fledgling state of Timor into doubt.
Reporter Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and producer Nick Sturdee arrive in Timor just as the presidential elections are hotting up. Busloads of youths supporting the various parties are careering round the island, and police clad in full combat gear are trying to keep them apart. The Unreported World team is on hand as two groups of youths clash, stoning each other before the army manage to separate them.
Election-campaigning in East Timor reveals more serious threats to the UN plan. A shooting in downtown Dili, the capital, ruffles the contingent of UN police, who worry this may be part of a plan to disrupt elections. The team travels to an Indonesian border police camp where they are told that a cache of weapons recently stolen from a police station were allegedly seized by a group of renegade soldiers, which the Australian military has sworn, and failed, to capture. Obaid-Chinoy and Sturdee run the gauntlet of checkpoints and Black Hawks to reach the mountain heartland of the rebels. Their leader has fled to Indonesia, but the soldiers on the ground say they are willing to wage a guerrilla war against the government who they see as having betrayed the victory of independence and the interests of the Timorese people, and against the international forces keeping the peace.
Back in Dili, it's Easter Sunday, and at the Catholic Cathedral priests are calling for calm. Their fears of the effects of the violence are well founded. Obaid-Chinoy visits a camp for internally displaced people beside the cathedral. Scores of aid agencies serve the needs of the astonishing 50% of Dili's population that have fled their homes. Most of them are now living in camps for internally displaced people. Those in the camps tell the team that they've been forced out by turf wars between the numerous gangs controlling the various neighbourhoods in the capital. Anyone connected with an opposing gang can be beaten, slashed with a machete or killed when they're caught.
In the absence of a national police force, life on the street in Dili is ruled by jobless young men, caught up in turf wars between neighbourhood gangs and two 'super gangs' - 7/7 and Sacred Heart. Obaid-Chinoy is taken on a clandestine drive throughout Dili to meet up with the 'master' of 7/7, Salomea. He admits his gang have been involved in killings, and tells her that his men use magic to make themselves invisible and invincible.
The UN is aware of the problems, and has been here before. But for the mission chief Atul Khare, the very fact of an election is proof enough that progress has been made. People who have experienced the terror of eviction and machete attacks tell Unreported World that they believe otherwise. The scene of another shooting, to which the team travels with Khare, emphasises the point. The police chief then hunts down gang members, brandishing his shotgun as he sweeps through a banana plantation. But, as with much of the international community's effort, the results seem to be intangible. As Obaid-Chinoy is told by a 7/7 gang-member on the scene, they can gather their weapons for the next attack regardless.
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