FRETILIN exige jornalista australianu sira retira sira nia akuzasaun falsu

Demand for retraction

To Mr. Chris Mitchell,
The Editor, The Australian

Dear Editor,

In today's Australian (Feb 19, 2008), your reporters Paul Toohey and Mark McKenna repeat the defamation of FRETILIN which we complained about in last Friday's edition, by wrongly linking FRETILIN to the attempted murder of President Jose Ramos Horta. In today's paper on page 6, your reporters asserted; "Ms Pires is also linked to the opposition FRETILIN party, which was until recently Reinado's enemy".

Ms Angelita Pires, now a suspect in the attempted assassination of the President, has never been associated with FRETILIN, is a known supporter of the Democratic Party and campaigned hard against FRETILIN during the upheaval of 2006 and the elections of 2007. These facts are very well known in Dili and your reporters have no excuse for such writing such a gross untruth.

As an example of Ms. Pires' non links to FRETILIN is the following. The only time Dr. Alkatiri ever met with Ms Pires was in 1998, at the request of Mr. Xanana Gusmao, when he was still imprisoned in Cipinang
Jail in Jakarta.  He had requested Dr. Alkatiri as the CNRT nominated negotiator for the Timor Sea Oil and Gas negotiations, to include her in the technical team supporting him as the head negotiator.  After having met with her on one occasion in Darwin in 1998, Dr. Alkatiri came to the conclusion the person concerned did not have any technical expertise to offer the process, and informed Mr. Gusmao of this. Dr. Alkatiri subsequently never had any contact with her to this day, other than a very casual and courtesy greeting in public places.  It is known to us that Dr. Alkatiri's refusal to integrate her into the team had resulted in extreme personal and political resentment by her of Dr. Alkatiri and FRETILIN.

As the vice president of FRETILIN, I can also say that Mr. Antonio Pires has never been involved with FRETILIN's campaigns or other activities.  I say confidently he is not an active supporter of FRETILIN either.

One major and grave concern for us is also that Mr. Toohey has never bothered in the least to contact either Dr. Alkatiri or any of the regular FRETILIN spokespersons who are well known and accessible in Dili for a comment on this matter.  We expected at least that as a question of balance and good faith.

We can only conclude that these assertions continue to be made in your paper as a deliberate smear against FRETILIN and we are deeply concerned that this could provoke violent attacks on our leaders and members, as occurred in 2006. This would only further destabilize our country.

As we did in relation to the February 15 report, we demand a full retraction of this lie in your next edition.

Yours sincerely

Arsenio Paixao Bano
Vice-President, Fretilin
Dili, East Timor