East Timor Legal News 2006 - 2008

Legal issues dominate political and social life in East Timor and there is always a robust public discourse about the legal problems that the country is facing – particularly since the disintegration of the rule of law in 2006 and the armed attacks on the country’s leaders on 11 February 2008.

There is, in fact, a vast array of legal information in East Timor that was streamed into ETLIS as a central and easily accessible point. It is reviewed for relevancy by a lawyer expert in the law of East Timor, catalogued and archived in a coherent manner.

East Timor Legal News (ETLN) is an archive of legal news reports from East Timor from April 2006 until May 2008. ETLN is a reconstruction of the legal news archive originally published on the East Timor Legal Information Site (ETLIS) which has been re-published here.

Since 2008, legal news from Timor-Leste has been published on the East Timor Law and Justice Bulletin

Sources of Legal News The primary sources of legal news that were the basis of ETLIS (now ETLN) were:

1. United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor Daily Media Reviews;
2. Press releases from the National Parliament of East Timor;
3. Press releases from the East Timor Council of Ministers;
4. Security Reports from the United Nations Police in East Timor ;
5. Press releases from the Office of the President of the Republic ;
6. Press Releases from National and International Law and Justice NGO’s;
7. International Media Reports.

For more detailed and scholarly analyses of legal issues in East Timor, the East Timor Law Journal is an open-access online journal that published articles on the laws and legal policy in East Timor.

Media Source Abbreviations

TP – Timor Post
STL – Suara Timor Lorosae
DN – Diario Nacional
JSMP – Judicial System Monitoring Program
UNMIT – United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor