It's the media, stupid!

The TV footage showing teenage louts smashing windows and torching homes in Dili fills me with disgust - for the TV crews, because it is patently for their benefit that much of the bravado is laid on. The same goes for those Australian on-camera 'interviews' with purported 'rebel leaders' while the guns are blazing.

Strangely. the pictures resemble the ugly scenes in 1999 when Indonesian militia goons performed similarly for the world's media.

It is hard to resist the temptation to believe that international media organisations instigate - by their mere camera presence - and fan excesses of this kind! (A shocking thing to say, for a former Reuters correspondent, I know...)

It may well still be documented that the civil unrest ist stirred up remotely by Indonazis; I am yet to be convinced that the allegedly pro-Australian Major Reinado, who hails from the border region like many of his sacked renegade soldiers, isn't in cahoots with both Jakarta AND Canberra. After all, Howard and Downer were dead set AGAINST intervening in Timor Leste after the referendum, and were dragged into the multilateral protection effort kicking and screaming by the popular opinion in Australia at the time...

Wouldn't it be just so convenient, and serve Australia's long-standing appeasement policy towards Indonesia so well at a critical time (vide West Papuan embroilments), if Canberra could help lay the groundwork for a 'popular' East Timorese uprising to restore Indonesian rule? The half-hearted efforts by a hastily despatched army force that can hardly walk in their heavy gear are not a good sign:

if the troops, instead of directing traffic and kicking aside a few machetes on the roads of Dili, were to shoot a couple of the rampaging teenagers (and perhaps a camera man or two) the bulk of the 'civil uprising' would collapse like a souffle suddenly exposed to the mistral.

Ainda bem que eu sou demasiado velho...

Ate logo,

Carioca