AUCKLAND (Pacific Scoop/Pacific Media Watch): When Timor-Leste opens its lawsuit against Australia in a United Nations courtroom spy drama in The Hague this week with the economic survival of this Asia-Pacific country on the line, a small but feisty non-government organisation will be closely monitoring proceedings.
Renegotiation of the great Australian “rip-off” maritime treaty – as some critics have branded it – is at stake in the ultimate end game of the Timorese action against the Canberra government.
La’o Hamutuk, the Dili-based Timor-Leste Institute for Development Monitoring and Analysis, has been a public watchdog on the oil and gas industry and other vulnerable resources since independence was restored from Indonesia more than a decade ago.
It has waged a public education campaign on the fledgling country’s annual budgets and an eagle-eyed surveillance of how the Timor Sea oil riches are being spent.
La’o Hamutuk has been committed to a strategy of public information and transparency in an attempt to help Timor-Leste sidestep the ravages of the so-called “resource curse”.
La’o Hamutuk has been committed to a strategy of public information and transparency in an attempt to help Timor-Leste sidestep the ravages of the so-called “resource curse”.
This phenomenon is based on the notion that nations that have an abundance of natural resources such as petroleum or mining tend to perform economically worse than countries that are not so blessed.
“We publish the truth, we don’t care what the global banks or the government think,” says advocate Juvinal Dias, one of the campaigners leading La’o Hamutuk’s strategic education programme.
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David Robie
