East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, is an island country only 400 kilometres north of Darwin, but you wouldn’t be the only Australian who may never have heard of it.
East Timor is a nation on a fault line, comprising rugged mountain regions and headlands. It’s also a part of the Coral Triangle, hosting reefs that house more than twelve hundred reef fish species. Multilingualism is the norm, with the two official languages of Tetum and Portuguese, as well as English and Indonesian, as working languages, plus an estimated thirty-two Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken. Despite this uniqueness and natural beauty, Timor Leste is not well woven into the Australian public consciousness. It receives little media attention, and unlike Indonesia and other neighbouring Pacific countries, its languages and history are remarkably absent in the Australian education system, despite Australian and East Timorese relations spanning decades, and continuing today.
A Brief History
The land that now constitutes East Timor was inhabited by hunter-gatherer communities in the Neolithic period as far back as thirty five thousand years ago. Defined societies emerged, with complex social hierarchies, cultural traditions, and laws, as well as strategic alliances between communities.
Portuguese colonialists established a port on Timor Island in the 17th century, but lost half the island to the Dutch in 1749, maintaining the Eastern half, hence ‘Timor-Leste’, or East Timor.
The Japanese regime conquered many territories in the Asia Pacific, including Timor Leste in 1942. East Timorese guerilla fighters, aided by Allied soldiers, resisted the Japanese in a long campaign, which resulted in the death of up to seventy thousand civilians. Japan occupied the territory until the end of WWII, when control was restored back to the Portuguese.
In 1975, Portugal withdrew from the territory and after a civil war, the left-wing Fretilin Party took control of Timor Leste, the first independent government of the new country. Indonesian forces then invaded the territory, claiming to be fighting against the communist threat, and annexed a portion of the country. A quarter of the East Timorese population, more than two hundred thousand people, were killed, either from direct involvement in the conflict or from resulting famine and disease.
In 1999, a vote was held for independence, in which 78% of the country voted to separate from Indonesia. Anti-independence militias, supported by the Indonesian government, attempt to violently suppress the move to independence, triggering UN and Australian peacekeeping forces to become involved. In 2002, East Timor formally achieved independence.
Youth and Development
Timor-Leste has one of the youngest populations in the world, with 57% of people under 25 years of age. In most cases, their quality of life is bleak.
There are many levels of poverty in East Timorese society. The country has the highest rate of monetary poverty in Southeast Asia. More than 40% of the population lived below the poverty line in 2022. There is also limited access to quality education, with overcrowded schools and lack of access in regional and remote areas. There are significant social and welfare barriers as well, including access to essential healthcare.
Most solutions regarding poverty and under-utalised human capital in East Timor focus purely on economic terms. Every report seems to include a variation of the following: ‘If only we invest more financially, if only we add more youth programs, if only we can encourage more young people to work in the agricultural sector’. There is rarely a questioning of why systemic issues exist and persist. In fact, examinations of the ongoing impacts of colonial rule are notably absent when attempting to solve why young people don’t want to work in agricultural or oil production industries that they or their country rarely see the benefits from.
Following independence, there was no clear maritime boundary set between East Timor and Australia, a situation which Australia exploited for its own financial gain. It was only in 2018 that a deal was reached, in which East Timor is still only guaranteed 70% of profits from the largest oil field in the area. In 2013, it was revealed that the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) had planted espionage listening devices in governmental offices in East Timor to listen to closed-door discussions relating to the maritime boundary with Australia. After Witness K, the secret agent, came forward, the East Timorese government was eventually able to negotiate a better deal for oil and the maritime boundaries. But the scandal begs the question: why is Australia able to take so much from a nation that is clearly in more need?
In fact, Timor-Leste, under international law, has claim to all of the oil and resources in their maritime border, but requires infrastructure and investment money to capitalise on the resources. Australian corporation Woodside Energy Group takes advantage of East Timor’s predicament. In 2002, the company announced delays to projects in the oil and gas fields at the same time Australia and East Timor were negotiating on an agreed maritime border, a clear move warning the Timorese government that development would only continue under Australia’s terms.
Questions are also being raised about the sustainability of the current economic development plan for East Timor. As oil reserves begin to diminish, there is no current answer for how the government will continue to finance services, as it currently relies on petrol funds. Economic diversification of markets is a popular suggested solution, but how East Timor would be able to develop such markets and make them competitive against other already strong agricultural and tourist markets in the region is unclear.
Although East Timor continues to face unemployment and labour challenges, one way young people are improving their economic prospects despite their country’s uncertain future is moving and working overseas. There are two migration schemes that assist Timorese people to come to Australia as workers. The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme connects Australian employers to Timorese workers, and is used to fill labour gaps in regional and remote areas and the Pacific Engagement Visa offers the possibility of permanent residency for workers and their families.
Remote agricultural work has an increased risk of exploitation and forced labour practices, of which migrants with no prior connection to the country and reduced working rights, and in some cases, facing linguistic barriers. Debt bondage is a common example, where employees are tricked into believing they owe their employer debt and must work, without pay, to resolve it. There are numerous reports and stories of workers from the Pacific being exploited. In 2022, a group of Pacific workers in rural Queensland spoke to lawyers and the media regarding their treatment, detailing how their personal lives outside of working hours were restricted by employers and how conditions were significantly different to what was advertised.
The defection of many Pacific workers formerly part of the PALM scheme indicates issues, with many applying for permanent protection visas instead. Permanent protection visas offer unrestricted working rights and greater security, as the PALM scheme only offers work for up to four years. Permanent protection visas thereby reduce the exploitation of Pacific workers, but farmers are not happy, with some even calling for penalties for those who attempt to switch visas.
Where to from here?
The future of East Timor, like many countries labelled ‘developing’, is an uncertain one. Despite mainstream economic investments and promises of developmental projects, the situation for young people and workers is not improving. The question of development is an ongoing one, but current trends indicate that this may need to be analysed less through economic considerations such as markets, but how the country’s social fabric can be restored and become truly self-sufficient following decades of colonial rule and economic exploitation.
