Abbott and Modi’s Nuclear Pact Augurs Well for Australia-India Ties

TONY Abbott will sign a nuclear safeguards agreement tomorrow with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi that will pave the way for Australia to export uranium to India.

Although exports on any significant scale are still some time off, this is a big moment in one of Australia’s most important foreign relationships.

It is a significant sign of strategic trust. It marks a moment of new maturity in the Australia-India relationship. It is a vote of confidence by Abbott in Modi’s new government.

Abbott has worked hard to get to India as soon as possible after Modi’s election. India is a big, complex and always challenging nation.

Getting something like a head of government visit organised is always full of complications and delays. Abbott’s visit is the first to Modi by a foreign leader to receive official head of government designation.

A sign of India’s growing centrality to regional and global power equations is that Modi is just back from Japan and an important exchange with his (and Abbott’s) friend Shinzo Abe. Shortly after Abbott leaves, Modi will receive China’s President Xi Jinping, and shortly after that Modi will go to the US to visit President Barack Obama.

In November, Modi will visit Australia for the G20 summit. It will be the first visit to Australia by an Indian prime minister in 28 years, a fact that is a shocking indictment of Australian diplomacy towards India. On that trip, Modi will make a full bilateral visit to Australia as well.

India is a nation that punishes the impatient. Abbott is not impatient with India but he sees its strategic, economic and cultural importance, and he wants to upgrade the relationship substantially. India is one big Asian country where the Centre-Right of Australian politics has an infinitely better story to tell than the Centre-Left.

In 2007, John Howard overturned the longstanding ban on Australia selling uranium to India. This was in the wake of the US-India nuclear co-operation deal, which was ratified by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Howard did this in the face of some opposition from his cabinet and some entrenched resistance from within the bureaucracy. It was a classic case of a prime minister seeing the big strategic picture.

As soon as the Rudd government was elected, it reversed Howard’s decision. This, along with a later decision to suspend the export of live cattle to Indonesia, was one of the two dumbest, most counterproductive foreign policy decisions made in the life of the Rudd-Gillard governments.

It was an insult to the Indians. And let me say this as an unabashed lover of India: the Indian government is typically not that slow to take offence.

It became a strategic roadblock in the relationship, one consequence of which was that Manmohan Singh did not attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth.

And it achieved absolutely nothing for Australia. It was such spectacular bad policy that there was not a single Labor minister concerned with it who would defend it in private or who did not accept that eventually it must change.

It remains one of the minor mysteries of diplomatic history why Kevin Rudd did not use his massive authority as the newly minted Labor saviour to change the policy unilaterally.

Perhaps it was an early case of Rudd trying to have it both ways — gaining applause from anti-nuclear lefties for a bit of wretched symbolism while giving the wink to pro-Indian folks that the policy would change in time.

Eventually Julia Gillard, a prime minister in a much weaker position than Rudd when he won office, reversed the policy. The gothic distrust within the Labor government was evident in her not telling Rudd, who was then the foreign minister, that she was doing this before announcing it.

Rudd himself never took India seriously. In his entire prime ministership, he spent exactly one day there.

He made no serious intellectual effort to engage India and as a result we had anaemic institutional engagement, dreadfully marred by the then Victorian government’s shocking mishandling of the assaults on Indian students in Melbourne.

All that is now water under the bridge.

Abbott spent a couple of months in India as a young man. He has a natural affinity for its political values, its magnificent use of the English language and its food.

More seriously, he understands that India is already a kind of superpower in information technology and in culture.

There is a new global Indian elite, which is evident everywhere from Silicon Valley to Booker Prize shortlists.

The people-to-people relationship between Australia and India has been growing apace. With China, India is typically our biggest or second biggest source of foreign students and the first or second biggest source of immigrants.

Its economic growth rate has declined in the past couple of years but it is still a big economy growing much faster than most other economies.

On the admittedly ridiculous purchasing power parity measure, it is already the world’s third largest economy. Measured by real dollars, its economy is a lot further behind the leaders than that, but it is big in absolute terms and rapidly getting bigger.

India offers enormous export opportunities to Australia in resources, education and virtually all services. It is already our fifth largest export market.

Abbott is also keen to substantially upgrade defence co-operation. This has a big regional context in the Indian Ocean, where Australia and India have such obvious common interests, but also flows from India’s enhanced engagement with East and Southeast Asia.

There is also a purely bilateral element, however. Australian and Indian forces fought side by side at Gallipoli. They have a great common heritage.

Though not formal allies, the two nations share profound geo-strategic values and points of view, though of course there are differences.

Our two defence forces should do a lot more training and exercising together.

The time has come to upgrade this relationship in every way. Greg Sheridan The Australian

 

Australia May Buy ‘Off-The-Shelf’ Japanese Subs in Precedent-setting Deal

Although a risky sale in Australia, the benefits may be too great for either side to pass up.

After signing what in many respects was a landmark agreement for Japan with Australia to transfer (i.e. sell) defense technology and hardware in July, more news has emerged this week about the potential sale of Japanese Soryu-class diesel submarines. Japan passed legislation in April allowing for the export of defense-related items, previously prohibited. Since Japan failed to reach an agreement with India during a bilateral summit on Monday over the sale of Japanese US-2 amphibious rescue aircraft, a potential deal with Australia as early as next January would constitute Japan’s first sale of any military hardware to an ally other than the U.S.

As my colleague Zach noted in July before the initial agreement was signed, any submarine deal between Japan and Australia would likely come in one of three forms: The use of Japan’s existing Soryu design, a modified Soryu design, or an evolved Collins-class sub that incorporated some of Japan’s superior technology. Sources who spoke with Reuters that are familiar with the ongoing negotiations have said that Canberra is now favoring the off-the-shelf version of Japan’s submarine, albeit in a scaled-down format, despite the political backlash such a decision would likely create given that Australia has its own large naval defense industry employs 3,000 people.

The sources said buying the finished subs from Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Kawasaki Heavy Industries “is the best option out there.” For Japan, it would reduce procurement costs for a military already making record budget requests, while for Australia the purchase price of $500 million each for twelve Soryu subs (plus maintenance fees likely to equal production costs for the life of the vessel) would still be significantly cheaper than the A$40 billion ($37 billion) estimate Defense Minister David Johnston balked at in June for a domestically produced sub.

Aside from the much larger production costs, a domestic version based on an upgraded Collins-class sub may not have been a viable option because of the Australian vessel’s notoriously noisy design. In contrast, the Soryu is much quieter, and the Japanese ministry is already looking to purchase upgraded versions that could submerge for up to two weeks. The decision is far from settled, with potential domestic blow-back from Australia likely to be an issue. However, the savings may be too much to resist. While the economic benefits of such a deal to Japan’s defense industry alone would be remarkable, the precedent it would set would be even more important, as it “would mark the first time since at least the end of World War Two that Japan had sold a complete weapons platform overseas,” The Diplomat.

 

No More Dams on the Mekong

The Mekong River runs more than 4,000 kilometers, from China into Myanmar and then through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, where it empties into the sea. Traditionally a major transport route and food source, it is also increasingly becoming a supply of energy — at its own peril and at the cost of instability among states in the region.

Several large dams already straddle the Mekong in China, and construction on more dams downstream is underway. Hydropower is a well-established source of renewable energy, and the countries of the lower Mekong see it as an attractive way to help meet their exploding energy demand while diversifying their energy portfolio. Over 80 percent of Thailand’s total energy consumption, for example, is satisfied with fossil fuels.

And so Thai, Malaysian, Chinese and Vietnamese developers and investors in the private sector have set out to build 11 dams on the Mekong’s main stem in Laos and Cambodia. Only about one-tenth of the power to be produced will go to the two host countries; the bulk will serve energy-hungry Thailand and Vietnam. Laos, the location of nine of these dams, is tapping the river, one of its few natural resources, to generate needed export revenues.

Energy security and economic development are legitimate goals, of course, but these main-stem dams were conceived with little regard for their environmental consequences and socioeconomic repercussions. The proposed dams will prevent sediment from the upper stretches of the Mekong River from reaching its delta, depriving rice fields in lower Vietnam of essential nutrients. They will also disrupt the migratory patterns of fish, which will endanger the stocks on which Cambodians, especially, rely for much of their protein intake.

Such prospects have already caused tensions, and have even strained relations among some governments in the region. Laos, for example, has proceeded with construction on the Xayaburi dam, the first in the main-stem series, over objections from the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam, which are concerned about the project’s impact on the environment and food security.

Formal mechanisms already exist to foster regional cooperation on this issue. The most prominent is the Mekong River Commission, which since 1995 has served as an important forum for the four countries of the lower Mekong to discuss how best to develop the river basin. The organization has also carried out extensive technical studies to advise policy makers. But with no real enforcement mechanism, it has so far been unable to resolve boundary disputes, including those over Xayaburi. The commission stands little chance of influencing the other dam projects.

It will not be possible to stop or even slow down construction of these main-stem dams without coming up with alternative sources of energy. Fortunately, there are other, and better, ways to generate power for the region.

Existing dams could be retooled to increase their efficiency and limit their environmental impact. Other options include developing small-scale hydro- power in Vietnam and solar power in Vietnam and Thailand. In fact, according to a recent study by the International Center for Environmental Management, an NGO, developing a thoughtful combination of renewables could supply several times as much energy by 2025 as the amount expected to be generated by the proposed dams. And improving energy efficiency and implementing conservation measures — say, to cut electricity consumption in large commercial buildings throughout Thailand — could mean substantial savings and help curb demand.

Yet innovative energy projects rarely seem attractive, or competitive, against large hydropower projects, partly for lack of substantial financial backing up front. And the mega-dams tend to attract too much support. They are capital-intensive, which means that they boost foreign direct investment and stimulate G.D.P. growth (at least temporarily). They also allow host governments to collect money quickly by granting construction rights to private developers. And in countries where the rule of law is weak, they provide opportunities for skimming and cronyism.

But proponents of large dams almost always underestimate the environmental costs while overestimating the rates of return. And such projects can spur get-developed-quick schemes at the expense of broad social and economic progress.

A better approach — one that recognizes both the legitimate energy needs of the lower Mekong countries and the environmental and social costs of Big Hydro — would be to create an investment fund to finance the large-scale development of alternative forms of energy.

This sustainable-energy fund could be partly modeled after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Like the Global Fund, it would pool resources among governments, foundations and the private sector. But unlike the Global Fund, which gives grants to various types of actors, this fund would finance only public-private joint ventures. The government partners would grant the necessary concessions and regulatory authorizations; the private partners would handle the implementation of the energy projects, including the construction of infrastructure.

Access to the fund would be conditional on the government partners’ willingness to adopt sustainable-development guidelines akin to the Equator Principles. As an incentive for governments to undertake such wide-ranging commitments (and abandon some lucrative deals), the fund should give out major grants; thus it must be endowed with several hundred million dollars. Big start-up grants could also be leveraged by the joint ventures to secure even bigger loans, allowing them to rapidly gain a foothold in the market and so stand a chance against main-stem hydropower projects.

On the other hand, the fund would exist only for a limited time — long enough to set the energy policy of the lower Mekong countries on a more sustainable path, but not so long that its grants would eventually distort the regional market by suppressing the price of certain renewable sources of energy.

Where would the money come from? Potential contributors include multilateral banks like the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank, and the United States, Australia, Japan and major European states. After all, these actors are already spending millions of dollars to mitigate environmental damage and promote resource management in the lower Mekong. Contributions could also come from private actors with a strategic interest in creating new energy markets.

This sustainable-energy fund could be administered by a multilateral bank, such as the A.D.B., which already has expertise and connections to governments. Or, better yet, it could be like the Global Fund, a stand-alone organization whose stakeholders, be they public or private, all share in the decision-making.

The rush to build big dams along the lower Mekong reflects an outdated vision of energy policy; it is a throwback to the environmentally irresponsible hydropower ambitions of the 1960s. Setting up a bold and generous start-up funding mechanism that promotes other ways of meeting the region’s energy demand is a much better approach: It would stabilize relations among the states that share the Mekong, even as it protected that mighty river.

David Roberts was regional strategic adviser of USAID-Asia from 2012 to 2014.

 

Looking Beyond Old Alliances to Forge a Safer Indo-Pacific Region

 

WHEN Tony Abbott arrives in New Delhi, his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi will be just off the plane from Tokyo. Their flight paths say a lot about the new geometry of Asian security. Australia and Japan are steadfast US allies, but in a changing region they are not putting all their strategic eggs in the alliance basket.

Amid a rising China’s assertiveness and uncertainties about US responses, it is time for regional powers to embark on new and creative ways to keep stability in Asia. This is not a replacement for partnership with the US or efforts to engage with China, but a complement to both; many countries are looking beyond traditional approaches to security: US alliances, non-alignment and multilateral institutions such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Coercive behaviour against Vietnam, The Philippines and Japan have alarmed security establishments, making them ponder whether this is the template for how a powerful China will behave. Meanwhile relations between China and the US have been on a troubled trajectory. Moments of co-operation, such as China’s involvement in multi-nation naval exercises off Hawaii, cannot mask mistrust or escalation of risk, such as the midair incident involving Chinese and US military aircraft.

Many governments in the region weigh the possibilities of US-China confrontation and conflict. But they must also be pondering a very different long-run scenario, a US accommodation of China that subordinates the interests of many countries in between. Thus, it should be no surprise that India, Japan, Australia and several substantial Southeast Asian countries are quietly expanding security cooperation, as well as with the US.

But this has been tentative and the time has come for a step change. In a recent research paper, we have proposed the creation of “middle power coalitions”: informal arrangements where regional players co-operate with one another on strategic issues, working in self-selecting groups that do not include China or the US.

Areas of co-operation could be security dialogues, intelligence exchanges, military capacity-building, technology-sharing, agenda-setting for regional forums and co-ordinated diplomatic initiatives to influence US and Chinese strategic calculations. This would build resilience against the vagaries of US-China relations, including against the extremes of conflict or collusion.

This new kind of regional self-help also would reinforce the multipolar quality of the emerging Indo-Pacific order, encouraging continued US engagement without unduly provoking China. It would promote prudent mutual assistance among regional nations and thus could hardly be caricatured as US-led “containment”.

How to begin? One promising option would be to build on the strategic partnership between India and Australia. These two countries may seem an unlikely couple: two democracies very different in economic development, population and diplomatic trad­itions. Yet Delhi and Canberra have drawn much closer in the past decade. Historical mistrust over nuclear matters has been surmounted, while their strategic interests have converged on issues such as maritime security, counter-terrorism and a regional order not domin­ated by any one power.

Australia and India have their own substantial capabilities, the benefits of their strategic geography close to vital sea lanes and the potential to engage and mobilise a wide range of partners between them: a mix of US allies and notionally non-aligned states.

The Prime Minister’s visit to India reportedly will involve the signing of a nuclear safeguards agreement, allowing Australian uranium to be sold to India for civilian energy purposes. This will erase an old obstacle of political mistrust and ease the way for Australia and India to pursue deeper security co-operation.

Part of their coalition-building could focus on Indonesia, an emerging maritime power that fellow multicultural Indo-Pacific democracies need to respect and cultivate. India and Australia would stand a good chance of involving Indonesia in a three-way security dialogue, and perhaps a maritime surveillance regime focused on the approaches to the strategically vital Malacca, Sunda, Lombok and Makassar straits.

India could use its ties with Vietnam, and Australia its defence links with Singapore and Malaysia, to encourage those states towards a more region-wide approach to security co-operation.

For its part, a more confident Japan is integral, not as the leader but as a valued partner. India and Australia could encourage Tokyo to continue its defence “normalisation” while helping it find ways to separate present policy from historical baggage. India, Australia and other middle players could form a ready-made grouping to work with the Chinese navy on issues such as disaster relief, search and rescue and counter-piracy.

Such initiatives would fit well with Canberra’s efforts to deepen Asian partnerships, and confirm that being a US ally is no impediment to an adaptable and independent foreign policy.

Rory Medcalf is the director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute. C. Raja Mohan is head of strategic studies at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

 

Malaysian Govt Nails Opponents with Sedition Act

Facing an internal crisis and weakened from scandal, UMNO seeks to silence opponents

The Sept. 2 decision by Malaysian authorities to charge Universiti Malaya law professor Azmi Sharom with sedition represents the latest development in a new front as the government seeks to hamstring its opponents using the law, critics say.

Eight top opposition figures have been charged with sedition in the past few weeks, with some of the charges relating to speeches made as long as two years ago. Sharom was told he would be charged over an article he wrote on Aug. 14 dealing with the continuing succession crisis in Selangor, Malaysia’s biggest and richest state, where the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition is squabbling over naming a new chief minister.

While Sharom is not known to be an opposition figure or a party member, he is the latest to face the sedition threat, apparently because something in the paper he wrote offended the powerful. This despite Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s promise to do away with the sedition law in 2012. Najib also promised to do away with the country’s draconian Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial, only to shepherd a bill through Parliament that retained many of the act’s provisions.

However, the feeling among legal sources in Kuala Lumpur is that an injured United Malays National Organization, dogged by a long list of corruption scandals and faced by an attack on Najib by the octogenarian former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, has adopted the strategy to attempt to cripple the opposition as a political force as much as possible.

In coming weeks, the controversial reorganization of badly wounded Malaysian Airlines will be on the cards, along with the possible passage of a goods and services tax that is expected to be unpopular with the general public. In the meantime, a massive scandal is said to be bubbling under the 1MDB sovereign fund that Najib helped to create. Mahathir, in a private letter to Najib, demanded that the prime minister do something about the fund.

“Some people are genuinely frightened by this, they liken it to Operation Lalang [in which 106 NGO activists, opposition politicians, intellectuals, students, artists, scientists and others were jailed under the Internal Security Act in 1987],” said a prominent lawyer in Kuala Lumpur.

The spate of charges come as opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim awaits a decision from the Federal Court, the country’s highest tribunal, on his appeal of a decision by a lower court to reverse his January 2012 acquittal on charges of sodomy with a former aide. The trial, which began in 2010, resulted from charges brought by the government in 2008. A trial court exonerated him in 2012, saying the evidence was irrevocably tainted.

Sources close to Anwar say the opposition leader is dejected and fully expects to be imprisoned, despite the fact that independent observers said the evidence was badly flawed and that the case appeared to be trumped up to drive him from politics. Political leaders in the United States, Australia and other countries have condemned the case as politically motivated and damaging to the country’s reputation.

Both the ruling Barisan Nasional and the opposition Pakatan Rakyat are reeling from internal political crises that are causing widespread disgust and outrage in the wider population. The opposition crisis is largely due to Anwar’s attempts to replace Selangor Chief Minister Khalid Ibrahim and with his wife, Wan Azizah Ismail, over a variety of concerns. Khalid has refused to go for weeks. The mess has paralyzed the state government, with residents complaining that a wide range of services have been interrupted from garbage collection to doing something about a drought, one of the longest in recent Malaysian history,

The crisis marks a dramatic comedown from the opposition coalition’s performance in the May 2013 general election, in which it won the popular vote for the first time since 1969 but didn’t gain control of the parliament due to the country’s first-past-the-post electoral system and widespread gerrymandering.

At the same time, however, the Barisan Nasional, led by UMNO, is split over Mahathir’s attack on Najib, whom Mahathir helped to put into office after leading the charge to oust Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. It is questionable how much clout the 89-year-old Mahathir still has. Although UMNO chieftains have rallied around the prime minister, sources have told Asia Sentinel that party rebels are preparing to go after Najib’s allies with anonymous charges of corruption. UMNO’s annual general meeting, to be held later this year, is expected to be a focus of the squabble

Among those charged in the past two weeks are Rafizi Ramli, the vice president of Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat, who was cited over remarks he made seven months ago alleging political attempts by radical Malay superiority groups to create racial and religious discord in Selangor. Another is N. Surendran, also from Parti Keadilan, who earlier this year criticized the court decision renewing the charges against Anwar. Others are Khalid Samad, a parliamentarian from PAS, the Islamic opposition party, who was accused of insulting the Sultan of Selangor, and R.S.N. Rayer of the opposition Democratic Action Party who was arrested for “insulting the feelings” of UMNO members in a speech in Penang in May.

Teresa Kok of the DAP, who made a video that allegedly insulted Malay women, and Tian Chua of Parti Keadilan also face charges. Former Perak MP Nizar Jamaluddin of PAS has been charged with criminal defamation for a statement he allegedly made two years ago.

Lawyers for Liberty executive director Eric Paulsen told Malaysian Insider that it would seem that one is only "safe if you keep silent or support the government.” He said it appeared as though Malaysia was a totalitarian state where no dissenting views were tolerated.

“The manner in which the Sedition Act has been misused to target all and sundry is unprecedented,” Paulsen said. "What we are witnessing now is Ops Lalang II and sedition is the new ISA, a catch all offence that the authorities can use with impunity against anyone who disagrees with them.” by John Berthelsen Asia Sentinel

 

Singapore: A Geriatric Society

Singapore needs more parental leave and a better work-life balance to stem population decline.

A falling birthrate and an aging population threaten the social fabric of the city-state of Singapore. In a competitive country, population growth is important to sustain the future development of the economy.

The declining birthrate can be partially explained by an increase in working hours and a lack of work-life balance. If this is not addressed, then the problem will continue, as the declining birthrate will cause fiscal problems for the island. When the increase in the aging population and the decrease in the labor force are factored in, the added fiscal constraints of increased subsidies, taxes and pensions could eventually become a serious burden.

One explanation put forward, in Singapore and elsewhere, is that the decline in the fertility rate is related to the high cost of living, which in Singapore is certainly an issue, but not to the extent that it should be considered the most important factor. The primary reason for the decline in fertility is partly due to an absence of work-life balance, followed by a lack of leisure activities geared towards creating an environment that is conducive for raising children.

To counter these issues, the Ministry of Manpower and the Ministry of Finance, in consultation with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, should create a sustainable model for basic wages that is in line with the current inflation rate, pursuant to a yearly review that should be included in the national budget. Moreover, the government should look into reviewing the current five-and-a-half-day work week, by piloting a cross sectional study of a three-day working week, or by reducing the maximum number of hours per week that people can work.

Some countries are using financial incentives as well as parental leave programs in an attempt to stem the decline in the rate of fertility. For instance, the Lithuanian model of increasing birthrates for parents is to offer a generous period of fully paid parental leave. Germany provides both parents with the option of taking paid leave, with the state defraying the costs. The state pays the parent who stays home with the child 65 percent of that parent’s current net income for a year. If both parents decide to take time off, then the total number of months increases from 12 to 14 months.

Even with such an attractive scheme in place, both Lithuania and Germany still suffer from low fertility rates. Germany at least offsets this somewhat with its immigrant friendly policies; however, merely relying on benefits seems to be doing very little to increase population growth for either country.

Still, having the state defray the opportunity costs of lost income at least helps to engender a vision of a child-friendly society. In Singapore, apart from instituting paid parental leave, it would be beneficial for the government to sponsor social activities that give people a chance to meet others outside of their own network.

At present the total fertility rate is dangerously low (1.3 in 2012), and if it stays at that level, drastic measures will be required to prevent economic stagnation. For instance, the government would need to increase the retirement age to prevent the labor force from shrinking further. It might also choose to invest in new technologies such as robotics, and to find a way to fuse them with labor intensive industries as a means of replacing the labor force. This sort of investment would of course be extremely costly, with a long wait to see any return on investment. As an alternative, then, the government could repeal its current immigration policy, aiming for a massive influx of immigrants to keep the economy going. That, however, could sow social discord.

The problem Singapore faces is that if it chooses to continue the same path, then in a generation or two it could be a society of geriatrics. On the other hand, if it elects to change its current policies then the country will face an uncertain future, as social experiments rarely turn out as expected.

Suhith Sitharthan has worked as a Maritime Security Analyst as well as a Southeast and Northeast Asian research analyst for a top think tank in Australia.

Online Photos Show an Ex-Militia Leader Wanted for Crimes Against Humanity Quietly Returned to Timor-Leste

photo: Jorge Tavares at a Baucau pool in Timor Leste in August 2014 in a photo widely circulated on social media.

Last month, a man named Jorge Tavares went on holiday in Timor-Leste. He visited the country's two largest cities, Dili and Baucau in Timor-Leste, and photos of him smiling during the trip soon began circulating on social media.

But this wasn't just any ordinary tourist. Tavares, who currently lives in Indonesia, hasn't been seen in Timor-Leste since September 1999 because during the Indonesian occupation of the Southeast Asian country he was a senior pro-Indonesian politician cum militia leader and is wanted for crimes against humanity, including the systematic murder of people who supported independence.

Tavares is the younger brother of now deceased Joao Tavares, who formed and lead Halilintar, an important pro-Indonesian militia. Halilintar played key roles in the 1975 Indonesian invasion of former Portuguese colony Timor-Leste, the subsequent 24-year occupation as well as the 1999 scorched earth operation of destruction ordered by the Indonesian military during the Timorese independence referendum.

During this period, Jorge Tavares was an important lieutenant to his older brother Joao, but also a leader of pro-Indonesian militias in his own right. During the Indonesian occupation, Jorge Tavares was a member of the Bobonaro local council known as the DPRD, and in 1999 was a leader of the pro-Indonesia advocacy group the FPDK. His son Ruben is also indicted for crimes against humanity as a pro-Indonesian militia leader. His nephew, Jose Tavares (son of Joao), is currently Indonesia's ambassador to New Zealand.

In 2003 Tavares and numerous others were indicted by the United Nations’ Serious Crimes Unit and the Court of Dili District for crimes against humanity. In 2004 he and others were indicted by the Court of Dili District's Special Panel for Serious Crimes for further crimes against humanity for their part in organising and implementing the campaign of violence in Bobonaro District in 1999.

These indictments are still valid according to Timor-Leste law. However, it appears Timorese authorities either did not know Tavares was on an extended visit to Timor-Leste, or they chose to look the other way and not arrest him. In recent days, family members of Tavares’ victims were told that the prosecutors could not find the documents relating to Tavares indictments for crimes against humanity.

In 2009 Maternus Bere, another ex-militia leader also indicted for crimes against humanity, was arrested in Cova Lima when found to have entered Timor-Leste. Even though Bere was considerably junior to Tavares in the militia hierarchy, it caused a diplomatic incident with Indonesia. In controversial circumstances Indonesia successfully pressured Timorese authorities to release Bere and allow him to return to West Timor, Indonesia.

Significantly, his visit to Timor-Leste immediately preceded or coincided with Indonesian President Yudhoyono’s state visit to Dili from 25-27 August. Both visits coincided with the 15th anniversary of the referendum resulting in Timor-Leste independence from Indonesian occupation; 8 and 9 September mark the 15th anniversary commemorations for the Maliana Police Station and Mulau massacres, in which Tavares played a role.

One has to question if Tavares’ visit proceeded without incident due to the authorities’ incompetence or their connivance. It also leaves one wondering if Tavares is still in Timor-Leste or not. Furthermore, it is well known that dozens of other indictees are poised to return to Dili, as these days the grass is greener in Timor-Leste than it is in Indonesia. The petroleum-fueled economy holds the promise of US dollars for well-connected Timorese elites irrespective of what side of the political equation they were on in 1999.

In 2010, this author wrote about some of Tavares’ victims in 1999, and its clear no progress in getting justice has been made since. What tales would Tavares tell if he was forced to have his day in court?