Life on the other side

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)