Cristiano da Costa

Cristiano da Costa

Cristiano da Costa is an East Timorese diplomat and politician. From 2014 to 2019 Costa is East Timor’s Ambassador to New Zealand .

Career

Costa comes from the municipality of Baucau . In 1975 East Timor was occupied by Indonesia . In August 1983, Costa was arrested by the Indonesian military district command in Baucau (Kodim-1628). For the next 14 days, he was beaten and shocked with electric batons to extract information about the resistance. He was then transferred to Comarca Prison in Dili , where the prisoners received insufficient food and drink. Since Costa did not sign a confession, he was eventually released. After working for a village cooperative, Costa finally fled East Timor in 1987. Abroad he worked for the East Timorese resistance, gave interviews and appeared at events in Düsseldorf in May 1988 on the occasion of the meeting of foreign ministers of ASEAN and the EEC .

In 1999 Costa was one of the founders and spokesman for several years of the Conselho Popular pela Defesa da República Democrática de Timor-Leste (CPD-RDTL), a veterans' organization of East Timorese independence fighters. The CPD-RDTL questioned the legitimacy of the new constitution and the governments of the republic, which was again granted independence in 2002, and was in opposition to all major parties in the country. At the same time he called for better care for the veterans. In 2014, the CPD-RDTL was effectively declared illegal.

Costa has meanwhile become the spokesman for the União Nacional Democrática de Resistência Timorense (UNDERTIM) party, which was founded in 2005 and also relied on veterans. The party succeeded in entering parliament in 2007 , and UNDERTIM had been part of the Aliança da Maioria parliamentary coalition since 2008 .

Costa, who had now graduated from Massey University in New Zealand, worked during this time as a lecturer at the Universidade da Paz in Dili . On March 18, 2009, Costa succeeded Rui Manuel Hanjam as Vice Minister for Economy and Development . Before the parliamentary elections in 2012 , UNDERTIM showed a divided picture and ultimately failed because of the three percent hurdle. Costa resigned from office on August 8, 2012 when the new cabinet was sworn in .

Since May 1, 2014, Cristiano da Costa was the first East Timorese ambassador to Wellington . The East Timorese ambassador to Australia was previously jointly responsible for New Zealand. Costa was replaced by Lisualdo Gaspar as Ambassador to New Zealand in 2019 .

Web links

Commons : Cristiano da Costa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Timor Link: Issue Number 14, July 1988 , ISSN  1010-1888 , accessed June 24, 2015.
2. ^ Pat Walsh : East Timor's political parties and groupings - Briefing Notes. timoraid.org, Australian Council for Overseas Aid, April 2001, Yale University. Retrieved June 24, 2015.
3. ↑ Electoral lists of the parliamentary elections 2012 ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Massey University: Massey link to nation building in Timor-Leste , accessed June 23, 2015
5. ↑ ^{a b} Scoop Politics: New envoys to present their credentials , April 30, 2014 , accessed June 23, 2015.
6. ^ Presidential Decree ( Memento March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed March 15, 2014.
7. ^ President of East Timor: PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC DOES NOT WANT TO STAND IN THE WAY OF THE NEW AMBASSADORS BEING SWORN IN , September 21, 2019 , accessed on September 21, 2019.