As Spying Row Intensifies, Protesters in East Timor Stone Australian Embassy
Over 100 protesters threw stones at the Australian embassy in Dili as they assembled outside the complex to express outrage over reports that Australian spies had bugged the East Timorese cabinet office in capital Dili in 2004 during negotiations on an oil and gas revenue-sharing deal between the two countries.
With the spying row intensifying, East Timor has approached the approached the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands seeking to nullify the CMATS ('certain maritime arrangements in the Timor Sea'), which it entered into with Australia in 2006, to equally share the billions of dollars revenue from the exploration of undersea oil and gas reserves, in the Greater Sunrise field over which both nations are claiming sovereign right.
Reports say, the protesters, calling themselves the Movement Against Timor Sea Occupation were mostly students and young Timorese rights activists, carried banners reading "Australia is a thief" and "Australia has no morals."
The protest in Dili followed Tuesday raid, by secret service agents from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) on the home/office of a lawyer and a former spy of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) in Canberra after it was revealed that they intended to approach an international court in The Hague, backing East Timor's case aganist Australia.
The protestors shouted slogans terming Australia as an "imperialist and capitalist" power, and calling it "thief of world oil."
"The Australian leaders do not respect the people of Timor-Leste because it's very small, very poor," the group's spokesman Juvinal Dias is reported to have said.
East Timor Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao had on Wednesday described the raid on the lawyer's office as "aggressive" and "unconscionable."
The country's Deputy Prime Minister Fernando La Sama de Araujo had demanded the "Australian government stops spying on the lawyer representing Timor-Leste.'
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott defended the raid saying it was to 'protect national security'.
