Hungry season in Timor-Leste: after the Portuguese and the Indonesians has come an invasion of aid donors and free-market blueprints. Ben Moxham wonders why people in newly liberated Timor-Leste (East Timor), who have endured so much, should now be starving.

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Hungry season in Timor-Leste: after the Portuguese and the Indonesians has come an invasion of aid donors and free-market blueprints. Ben Moxham wonders why people in newly liberated Timor-Leste (East Timor), who have endured so much, should now be starving.

On 7 February 2005 the Timor-Leste newspaper Suara Timor Loro Sa'e reported that since October 2004 at least 53 people had died of starvation in the village of Hatabuilico. 'There is absolutely nothing to eat,' Domingos de Araujo, the sub-district secretary was reported as saying, and 'those still alive are looking for wild potatoes in the forest'.

The Government denied the report, with the suggestion that they had died of disease over a longer period of time, albeit exacerbated by malnutrition and lack of access to medical care. Angered at the airi...

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