Pardon = impunity

Those (few) convicted of crimes related to the violence of 2006 are to be pardoned. Sergio Paulo Pinheiro and the team who conducted the UN Commission of Inquiry must feel like their work was a complete waste. Good luck, Timor, ever asking for another international inquiry again.

How can Timor complain that Indonesia freed Eurico? And when the Truth and Friendship releases its whitewash report soon?

If those accused of shooting Ramos Horta are brought to trial and not given a pardon, then surely the little people will figure out that justice is only for the big people.

Old as Adam and Angie

So Angie Pires gave Alfredo the apple. She brought evil to Timor.

We watched as Susar, an admitted member of the party which attacked President Ramos Horta, made his victory lap around Dili and gave a press conference. He was received by the Prime Minister, by the head of the military.

We watched Ramos Horta pardon the deceased Alfredo Reinado.

This after Angie Pires was arrested/questioned for suspicion of conspiracy in relation to Alfredo’s attacks.

The Australian media initially covered this story quite fairly. Explaining that Angie Pires grew up in the Timorese diaspora in Darwin, never really finding direction, until she made it big when she moved back to Timor and got work with the UN. (But then so did many other crazy malais.)

Angie Pires was known for her indiscrete relationships with a number of extremely powerful members of the political elite. I do not want to rumor monger — this is widely known information. She did not deny that she had a liaison with Alfredo, nor that she was in contact with Alfredo, nor that she visited him in Ermera the weekend prior than the attacks.

Recently, Ramos Horta, the man who pardoned Alfredo, labelled Angie Pires tarada em todos os sentidos which I would translate as “perverted in all senses.” Ramos Horta explained his analysis of the motives for the attack to Público newspaper [my translation]

Information points to alcohol, drugs and his enormous irritation with the Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão for having advanced with a resolution of the case of the petitioners and thinking that in the end I was in sync with the Prime Minister’s wish to isolate the petitioners. Influenced by a pervert (in all senses) of the name Angie Pires whom he was in bed with, he decided to act against my person.

I am not saying Angie Pires’ behavior is defensible. It could have very well been criminal. But the point is that there is a very cynical, sexist attempt to heap the blame on her.

So the man who went to attack the President with attack rifles takes a victory lap. And Angie Pires is impugned for her morality. After all, she is an easy scapegoat: a light-skinned, diaspora Timorese who will garner no sympathy in the mountains and among angry urban youth who idolize Alfredo and are the key to future peace in Timor.

And after all, she came from Adam’s rib.