Sr Susan Connelly: Closed trial seeks to 'conceal govt wrongdoing' against Timor Leste
Channel: Green Left
Date: 2020-05-25

Canberra, May 25: “This is the politicisation of a legal process to conceal government wrongdoing,” Sister Susan Connelly from the East Timor Justice Forum told Green Left’s Paul Oboohov outside yet another closed hearing in the trial of Bernard Collaery, lawyer for “Witness K”, a former Australian spy.  Witness K blew the whistle on Australia’s bugging of Timor Leste’s cabinet offices during a critical stage in the poor and newly independent country’s negotiations with multinational oil companies in 2004. Now Witness K and his lawyer are being persecuted. 

“That wrongdoing was the illegal, fraudulent attempt to swindle the Timorese people over the Timor Sea [oil and gas fields],” explained Sr Connelly.

“Imagine the outcry in Australia if anybody had done to Australia what Australia has done to Timor Leste. We’d be screaming blue murder. But we do it to the little brown people. There’s so much racism tied up in this."

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