Timor gangs promise mayhem on East Timor's streets

CANBERRA Mar 6 (Reuters) With names like ''Cold Blooded Killers'', ''Provoke me and I'll Smash You'' and ''Beaten Black and Blue'', East Timor's youth gangs promise mayhem on streets which not so long ago offered hope.

The groups hurling stones and setting roadblocks in Dili's volatile outskirts borrow names from Indonesian rock bands or Hollywood action films, and their bravado swings between hit-and-run attacks to just playing guitars and drinking.

But as East Timor's streets convulsed again this week after a failed bid by international troops to capture rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, an Australian report on East Timor's gangs reveals the deep-seated problems facing the young nation.

''The one common thread is the involvement of large numbers of young, marginalised males,'' said the recent report on East Timor's myriad gangs and youth groups by Australia's aid agency AusAID and obtained by Reuters.

From bases in burnt and abandoned houses in the bairos, or neighbourhoods, the gangs' roots lie in long-standing ethnic tensions over control of trade and markets, post-independence property disputes and rivalries within the fledgling security forces set up after separation from Indonesia in 1999, said the report.

Those roots find fertile soil in chronic unemployment, lack of access to education and political instability blamed on opposition parties.

Even under former Portuguese colonial rule, prior to Indonesia's 1975 invasion, gangs or ''moradores'' were tools of repression, said the reporting citing 2001 battles between martial arts groups in Olobai and Boramatan villages.

''For much of the past six years gangs have also made parts of the eastern city of Baucau a virtual no-go zone after dark, setting up barricades and extorting motorists,'' the report said.

INFILTRATION The infiltration into security forces of martial arts groups counting 20,000 members worsened the situation and helped fuel clashes last May in which the ''western'' army killed 12 ''eastern'' police as ethnic gangs took to Dili's streets, it said.

The report said many gangs were led by former resistance figures with long-standing grudges, including some disgruntled because they missed jobs in the new army or police force.

There were several broad gang types, including young men disillusioned by the ruling political party, those who were members of martial arts gangs and others who belonged to ''kakalok'' mystical groups identified by body scars.

Not all were dangerous, the report said, with many gangs performing social work in their impoverished communities and carrying out welfare work the government was incapable of.

The report said jobs were the key to ending gang violence among bored young men, but also called for the construction of youth centres in each village to foster a sense of community.

Small scale business ideas such as motorcycle maintenance should also receive start-up funding, while in the medium term East Timor needed a Youth Fund to support projects by young people in local areas.

''If given the support now to fulfill their fairly modest objectives and aspirations, these groups could play a vital unifying role,'' the report said.

Reuters BDP DB