The Wire

An East Timorese NGO has learned its lesson the hard way: if you are hoping to receive aid from Australia, don’t criticise Australian government policies. The Australian government’s aid agency, AusAid, has withdrawn the Human Rights grant it awarded to an NGO in East Timor, Forum Tau Matan (Mat-an), last December. Forum Tau Matan or FTM received the grant to fund a project which would monitor prison conditions and promote legal rights in East Timor (also now known as Timor Leste). In June, AusAid wrote to FTM saying that the grant had been revoked because of a change in its own internal policies. In late July the NGO was informed by AusAid’s Counsellor in Dili that the decision had actually been taken because FTM had added its name to a press release that expressed political views contrary to Australian policy. FTM had joined eight other NGOs last September to ask Australia to respect Timor-Leste’s sovereignty and negotiate a fair and legal maritime boundary. La’o Hamutuk, the East Timor Institute for Reconstruction, Monitoring and Analysis, an independent NGO, has released a statement describing AusAid’s decision as ‘arbitrary and punitive’ and claiming that the withdrawal of the Human Rights grant constitutes an attack on the right to free speech. Sarah Greenlees asked Alex Grainger of La’o Hamutuk why he thought the Australian government shouldn’t object to political criticism from its aid recipients. Tim Anderson, lecturer in Political Economy at Sydney University and volunteer at AidWatch also spoke with Sarah Greenlees.