UN official at SEAG to muster support for E. Timor's athletes
UN official at SEAG to muster support for E. Timor's athletes
KUALA LUMPUR (AP): A UN official is at the Southeast Asia
Games soliciting support for East Timor's bid to become a member
of the International Olympic Committee from the fledgling
nation's closest neighbors.
Frank Fowlie, the United Nation's sports officer in East
Timor, said the Olympic spirit among athletes in the UN
protectorate is high, but there is no money for sports
development.
Most of East Timor's sporting facilities were destroyed along
with other infrastructure in an orgy of violence that followed a
vote in 1999 to break away from Jakarta rule. East Timor was
incorporated into Indonesia 24 years earlier when its Portuguese
colonizers of 450 years left.
Peace was only restored when an Australian-led international
force, Interfet, entered the capital, Dili, and took control of
the territory.
"When Interfet forces entered Dili and took the boxing
gymnasium, human flesh was found on the walls, blood was on the
floor," Fowlie told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the
21st SEA Games.
"Most of the equipment was burnt indiscriminately," Fowlie
said. "The UNHCR has documented that the boxing gymnasium was the
site of the disappearance of 80 people."
Now, too poor to afford weights, athletes lift plastic buckets
full of cement suspended on wooden poles as part of their
training routines.
Fowlie says East Timor, a half-island territory between the
Indonesian provinces of West Timor and Irian Jaya and Australia
to the south, needs help from its neighbors to reach the
Olympics.
The Timorese need help with coaching and equipment. They also
need international experience.
Before 1999, East Timorese athletes competed in the SEA Games
as Indonesians. Now they want to compete under their own flag.
"If it meets the constitutional requirements of the SEA Games
federation I'm sure they would allow East Timor to participate,"
Fowlie said.
Support has already come from Indra Kartasasmita, Indonesia's
delegate on the SEA Games body, who has vowed to vote in favor of
admitting East Timor to the games, he said.