Interviews with Constâncio Pinto

Well, when someone is arrested, we often go to the church, to the Catholic Church, to the International Red Cross. Because these are the only institutions we can go and seek for assistance. Government? No one, no one would dare to go to the government asking for the support, unless maybe Mario Carrascalao, the former governor of Timor-Leste. But he also had very limited power at that time. So for us, if someone arrested, we have to continue on. He will be in jail and we know that. And possibly killed. But that doesn’t mean that we have to give up. We have to continue, carry on the struggle.

Constâncio Pinto is the ambassador of East Timor to the United States. Still a child when the Indonesian military occupied the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975, he fled to the mountains with his parents. The family remained in hiding for several years before returning to Dili, the capital, where Pinto attended high school and college. While still in school, Pinto became a leader of the underground movement for self-determination. In 1991 he was arrested, detained, and tortured for several days. The military authorities released him on the condition that he serve as an informant, but instead he escaped from Timor and eventually from Indonesia. After his escape, Ambassador Pinto studied at Brown University and served as the Timorese self-determination movement’s representative in the United States. He developed close working relationships with members of Congress and other U.S. human rights advocates and, when Timor achieved independence in 2002, he became a diplomat. He was appointed ambassador in 2009.