Interviews with Constâncio Pinto

The religious organizations were very crucial at that time. And I’m speaking about the Catholic Church, at that time, and the Protestant Church also in Timor. They played a very important role. Because these were the only organization that people trust. And that people can go and complain what happened to them. And these were the institution that spoke about human rights violations in Timor Leste.

And these were the credible organizations that the world can listen to. So they play a very important role, right in the beginning to the end. So there’s no – in Timor, at that time, there’s not any single day that people didn’t complain their difficulties to the church. And there’s no – and not any moment that the church didn’t speak out about human rights situation there.

Well, the Indonesian government was not happy at that time with the church. Because the Indonesians, since 1975 up to 1983, basically closed Timor Leste to the world. I mean, they didn’t want to have any information out of Timor Leste about what happened there.

And when the church began to speak out of the situation there, then it was a problem for the Indonesians. So they were not happy with the Indonesians. And I think the reason why the Indonesian government invited Pope John Paul II to visit Timor Leste in 1986 was to tell the world basically that nothing happened in Timor Leste. But it was for Timor Leste, the resistance movement, was also a window of opportunity for us to tell the world of what happened in Timor Leste at that time.

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.