Timor Media - Interview with Jose Belo


46.3 Mb.  51 minutes
Jose Belo is a Timorese man who perhaps represents the highest values of journalism. Active in the Timorese resistance movement against the Indonesian occupation, he was a critical factor in enabling those few independent Australian journalists who contrived to work in Timor Leste (legendary journalists like John Martinkus, Max Stahl, and others) to gather critical information about the Indonesian occupation, and to get that information out.  He was captured and tortured by the Indonesians 7 times, continuing to work in Timor even though he had the opportunity to live in exile in Australia.
After Timorese independence he became a journalist, still maintaining a critical and independent attitude to successive governments of Timor Leste. One year he was threatened with house arrest when he accused a government minister of corruption. He is currently the editor of "Tempo Semanal", a weekly publication that is one of the most influential in the country, still attacking the government on issues of corruption and misspending of state finances.
He was involved in the making of the film Balibo, and more recently, the subject of a more recent film ('Breaking the news') about to be released exposing the behaviour and role of some foreign journalists working in Timor Leste whose ethical and professional standards do not perhaps, match up to Jose's own.
In this interview he talks about his values as a journalist, why he became a journalist, how he became a journalist, and the values that inform his work.
Note: This is a raw, unedited sound file. The sound quality is generally adequate for reproduction, but another shortened edited and contextualised version of this interview will be posted soon.
Direct download: JoseBeloHotelDiliThin05_09_12.mp3
Category:Latin Radical -- posted at: 1:54 AM

Timorese Police Chief under pressure. NGO watchdog backgrounds him. Interview with Fundasaun Mahein

8.2 Mb. 8 minutes 45 seconds (stereo)
Head of the PNTL (Timorese National Police), Longhuino Monteiro has been called on to resign for a series of incidents involving 'missing' weapons over several years. The most recent is the disappearance of a high powered automatic weapon, with 60 rounds of ammunition from the car of the head of Police Intelligence while it was parked outside a brothel. Longuino dismissed this as 'not a problem  - a single weapon is not a threat to public security'. But this, and other weapons that have gone missing over the years is, according to the NGO Fundasaun Mahein a flaw in the PNTL that Monteiro has not addressed.
Fundasaun Mahein (Guardian Foundation) is an NGO that evolved as a watchdog research organisation concerned with issues of public security out of the destabilising conflicts of 2006 and 2007, that involved elements of both the Timorese Police and the the Timorese Armed Forces, who at times were involved in armed conflict against each other.
Direct download: NelsonBeloFM.mp3
Category:Latin Radical -- posted at: 6:57 AM