Life on the other side

DILI, East Timor: A prointegration leader said yesterday that local youths seeking political asylum abroad are being used by self-exiled resistance leader Ramos Horta for his own political gain.

Manuel Macedo, chief of the Portugal-Indonesia Friendship Association, claimed that the East Timorese youths who clambered over foreign embassies' fences and flew to Portugal were unaware that they were victims of Ramos Horta's anti-Indonesia campaign, he said.

"Ramos Horta gets money for fooling East Timorese youths into flying free of charge to Portugal," Macedo said as quoted by the Antara news agency.

Dozens of anti-integration East Timorese youths were granted asylum in Portugal after they forcibly entered various foreign missions in Jakarta over the past year.

Macedo, who claimed to have spent most of his life in Portugal, said East Timorese live in misery in Portugal because they cannot get employment and can hardly survive on the subsidy offered by the government.

"Up to 10 East Timorese are put in one room and there is no way they can get jobs," he said. (pan)