| Subject: SMH: Activists call on Timor PM to
resign
Activists call on Timor PM to resign
By Jill Jolliffe in Dili
April 21, 2005
About 5000 East Timorese protesters calling for the Prime Minister to
resign were camped in Dili yesterday under banners reading "End the
Dictatorship".
The demonstrators, backed by the Catholic Church,
have been prevented by riot police from entering the capital's main
square, but have remained in a side street.
They are refusing to budge until Mari Alkatiri quits and his majority
Fretilin party appoints a new government.
"The people and the Catholic Church have joined peacefully for an
end to this extremist government," said Domingos Soares, a
nationalist priest and a hero of East Timor's 24-year liberation struggle
against Indonesia who is leading the demonstration.
"We want the Alkatiri Government to step down and for Fretilin to
choose another."
However, Fretilin's central committee held an extraordinary meeting
yesterday morning and made it clear that Mr Alkatiri's position was
non-negotiable.
East Timor's parliamentary Speaker and Fretilin's president, Francisco
Guterres-Lu Olo, said in a communique that the party rejected "the
profoundly political and pre-insurrectional demonstration organised by the
church hierarchy". AdvertisementAdvertisement
The United Nations and the US embassy have issued warnings to staff
that there could be trouble.
Catholic leaders have taken an increasingly militant stand against the
Government since it withdrew support for religious instruction in primary
schools this year.
But its leaders have struck a popular chord in opposing a deal made
with Indonesia by President Xanana Gusmao and Mr Alkatiri that paves the
way for pardons for war crimes committed in 1999 by departing Indonesian
soldiers and their Timorese allies.
A statement on April 9 by the bishops of Dili and Baucau said impunity
for war criminals was a matter of grave concern.
They said the people of East Timor could not "condone impunity for
crimes against humanity".
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