Sam de Silva on Mon, 3 Jan 2000 04:28:41 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> dili report |
The 31st of December in Dili (sam de silva - 01/01/00) --------------------------------------- The official public New Years Eve celebrations organised by UNTAET and held outside the old Governors Palace was disrupted last night. The celebrations commenced at about 6pm with performers, musicians and pre-recorded music. The interruption occurred around 10:30pm. A man had jumped on to the stage and according to a witness, he yelled in Portuguese, "This is the fault of CNRT - why aren't people in church - people should be in church". Church ceremonies commenced at about 10pm - and the music, which was being played loudly, could probably be heard inside local churches. It is unknown whether UNTAET organisers were aware of the local traditions - but after the interruption - the music was turned down for a while and the crowd outside the old Governor's Palace reduced significantly. But as midnight approached people started to gather again. The CNRT party was going on at the same time and it was held at a local stadium - very close to the old Governors Palace. This was a less public event, and most of the media who weren't taking the night off seemed to be in attendance. Xanana distributed presents to children, and the whole event appeared to be quite formal. It was thought that at 11:15pm, the CNRT party would take the short walk to the old Governors Palace and that Xanana would be involved in counting down to the new century. But as midnight struck, there was no Xanana in front of the public - and UNTAET staff initiated the count down from the stage. Later, Xanana did attend the public celebrations briefly. He made a speech and at the conclusion of it began to walk away but stopped and viva'ed Timor Loro Sae. Then he was quickly taken away. The crowd was kept well out of his reach - but other than the foreigners, there didn't seem to be many people overly enthusiastic to approach him. In the late afternoon of the 31st, there was another incident. Military helicopters hovered low over a house in the Parol neighbourhood in Dili. It is unclear at this time what exactly happened. Apparently the helicopters were part of an INTERFET operation to arrest a suspected militia man. But there are differing stories as to the true background of the arrested person. We will have to get the real story from INTERFET. At an INTERFET press conference earlier in the week, many journalists asked General Crosgrove whether trouble was expected. His response was that INTERFET will be on a high state of alert during the 31st night to ensure that the East Timorese people can peacefully celebrate the Indonesia-free New Year. It is difficult to say how the East Timorese feel. At the public party, most watched the dancing but some did take part. They certainly seemed curious in what was going. Everyone wished each other when the New Year hit.. There are other interesting aspects about the public party. Falintil members appeared to be responsible for crowd control and they spent a lot of time keeping the local East Timorese from getting too close to dancing spaces mostly occupied by foreigners. CIVPOL and INTERFET were also around - but their presense was not that obvious. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net