NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      DILI, East Timor (CWNews.com) - The Nobel Peace Prize-winning bishop of East Timor on Thursday called for a delay in any referendum on independence for the former Portugese colony and accused the Indonesian government of arming paramilitary groups.

      Bishop Carlos Belo of Dili said any vote on sovereignty should be delayed between 10 and 15 years to allow for reconciliation between rival pro- and anti-Indonesian groups. Indonesian officials said last month that the province might be allowed a referendum on independence in a turnabout from decades of rigid control of the Catholic region, which included accusations of human rights violations by government troops.

      Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world, invaded East Timor in 1975 and annexed it the following year in a move not recognized by the United Nations. Following the announcement of a possible referendum, tension between rival groups ignited in open violence, causing hundreds to seek refuge. Bishop Belo accused pro-Indonesian paramilitary groups of initiating the attacks, and cited sources who told him that the Indonesian military was arming the groups. "Naturally, it is coming from the army," he said. "There are some civilians who have arms to threaten the people."

      In a related story, an Ireland-based Internet company said computer hackers had succeeded in shutting down East Timor's top-level domain -- .tp -- which countries are granted as their basis for Internet addresses.

      ISP Connect Ireland, which administers the domain for the mainly Catholic, former Portugese colony occupied by Indonesia since 1975 and hosts a Web site critical of Indonesia, said they had been subjected to nine months of computer attacks which eventually forced the domain off the Internet. East Timor was granted the right to a top-level domain by Internet operating agencies, asserting the country's sovereignty in the face of the Indonesian government's occupation. The United Nations does not recognize Indonesia's claims of sovereignty over East Timor and still views Portugal as the administering power.

      "We noticed that the East Timor domain was available and assumed that the Indonesians would not wish to register it for political reasons," said Connect Project Director Martin Maguire. "We made a suggestion to the East Timor Campaign and they were interested," he said. "So we set up the first virtual country on the Web as a platform for the East Timorese."

      "We can only guess at where the attacks are coming from, but it's not the Vatican or the UN," Maguire said. "The Indonesian government is known to be extremely antagonistic to this display of virtual sovereignty." The Indonesian Embassy in London denied any involvement in the attacks.