TIMOR SEA JUSTICE CAMPAIGN, Melbourne.
Media Release - Embargoed until: 6am, Tuesday, 5 July 2005.
www.timorseajustice.org

ANTI WAR AND TIMOR SEA PROTESTERS TARGET DOWNER OVER OIL AND GAS THEFT

The Timor Sea Justice Campaign (TSJC) will today join a range of groups protesting against both the oil motivated occupation of Iraq and the oil and gas motivated occupation of the Timor Sea, outside a lecture being given by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer at 4:45pm, 401 Collins St, Melbourne.

Co-ordinator of the Melbourne TSJC, Tom Clarke, said the group was calling on the Australian Government to follow up its 'miserly deal' over the Greater Sunrise gas field, by committing to negotiate a permanent maritime boundary with East Timor in accordance with International Law.

"Although the Australian Government is set to short-change East Timor with the recently proposed resource sharing deal, the dispute about maritime boundaries is far from over. There's a lot of unfinished business and Mr Downer needs to stop stalling and instead put his head down and get the job done. If drawing a line halfway between two coastlines is too hard for him or his department, they should simply take the matter to the International Court of Justice and let the independent umpire settle the dispute once and for all," Mr Clarke said.

The Foreign Minister's address will be based on the theme, "The World According to Bush: Australia, United States and the world - a foreign policy perspective" and is also being targeted by the Melbourne Stop the War Coalition.

Organisers from the two groups feel there are similarities between the two issues and hope that the joint action will highlight the importance of following international guidelines to resolve such disputes.

"In the case of the Timor Sea dispute, it's a matter of a powerful nation shunning multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and blatantly ignoring International Law to profit from the theft of petroleum resources, so obviously we have similar concerns to the Stop the War Coalition about the Australian Government's behaviour," Mr Clarke said.

Since 1999, the Australian Government has taken more than $2 billion dollars in gas and oil royalties that are likely to belong to East Timor if permanent maritime boundaries were drawn between the two countries in accordance with principles of current International Law.

However, East Timor has no legal avenue to challenge the Australian Government's actions as two months before East Timor's independence, the Howard Government secretly and pre-emptively withdrew recognition of the maritime boundary jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

In March this year, members of the US Senate and House of Representatives wrote to Prime Minister Howard urging him to rapidly negotiate in good faith a permanent maritime boundary with East Timor in accordance with International Law.

For further comments and information about the protest, please contact:

Tom Clarke, Timor Sea Justice Campaign, Melbourne.
tom@timorseajustice.org , 0422 545 763.

or for comments from the Melbourne Stop the War Coalition, please contact:
Tim Doughney on 0413 756 808

Click here to view the letter to PM Howard from members of the US Senate and House of Representatives.

Click here to view Peter Nicholson's cartoon on East Timor Gas and Iraq Oil explotation.

www.timorseajustice.org

<< BACK