ENFADO

Timor ba nafatin

Dis­tinct lan­gua­ges con­vey dif­fe­rent ways of unders­tan­ding and explai­ning the world. In this sense, East Timor’s past and recent his­tory is one of indu­bi­ta­ble rich­ness. Sadly for the Timo­rese, the axiom repre­sents a pro­blem in itself. Due to its geo­graphy and his­tory, East Timor is an island between worlds where peo­ple from many dif­fe­rent nati­o­na­li­ties have recen­tly added to the cul­tu­ral mel­ting pot that alre­ady existed.

An island strug­gling both inter­nally and exter­nally, East Timor poses an ethi­cal chal­lenge. As a Por­tu­guese rese­ar­cher wor­king in Can­berra, I try to look at it from a non post-colonial pers­pec­tive. I am well aware, though, of the obvi­ous rea­sons why I have deci­ded to work there and not in Sulawesi or the Philippines.

I am also aware that des­pite being the fifth most spo­ken lan­guage in the world, Por­tu­guese is very much inac­ces­si­ble to a wide com­mu­nity of peo­ple wor­king in East Timor or inte­res­ted in East Timo­rese issues. For that rea­son, and because I stron­gly beli­eve that much infor­ma­tion published in this lan­guage is highly rele­vant to unders­tand its past and pre­sent situ­a­tion, I have cre­a­ted a blog where I will be regu­larly trans­la­ting to English docu­ments and news, ori­gi­nally published in Portuguese.

Sozi­nho e angus­ti­ado, cer­cado por can­gu­rus, o Nuno tem um ponto de vista único sobre este con­flito. É visitá-lo.

8 Junho 2006

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