East Timor's Roman Catholic bishops yesterday each received a "Timor" saloon car as a gift from the owner of Indonesia's "national" car company, President Suharto's son, Mr Hutomo Mandala Putra, according to the Indonesian news agency.
The Bishop of Dili, the Nobel Peace laureate Dr Carlos Ximenes Filipe Belo, and the Bishop of Baucau, Dr Basilio do Nascimento, and the head of the East Timor's Council of Ulema, Mr Abdullah Muhammad Sagran, each received a Timor car in a brief ceremony in Dili, the Antara news agency said.
The Timor cars, presented by a local company official yesterday, were given by Mr Mandala Putra as "an assistance to facilitate their duties," Mr Dias Ximenes, regional administration spokesman in the territory's capital of Dili said, quoted in the Indonesian Observer daily.
Dr Belo was co-winner with the exiled independence activist, Dr Jose Ramos Horta, of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in finding a peaceful solution in the former Portuguese colony.
The bishop has been outspoken about human rights abuses against the East Timorese people mainly by Indonesian security personnel.
Mr Mandala Putra controls PT Timor Putra Nasional, whose cars received special tax and tariff breaks under a decree from President Suharto in February 1996, which makes it possible for it to sell its cars at around half the price of other vehicles sold in Indonesia. But the company has been importing cars from South Korea until its own factory can be built. The tax breaks for the imports have drawn the ire of Japan, the EU, and the US, which have brought the case to the World Trade Organisation. In addition to the controversy over the firm's exclusive privileges, observers have highlighted the choice of the company's name of Timor, which the company says stands for the Indonesian acronym of "the technology of the people's car industry."
The name immediately calls people's attention to the troubled territory of East Timor.
Bishop Belo is regarded by many observers as the most important figure in East Timor, where more than 90 per cent of the 800,000 people are Roman Catholic.
The rest are mostly "transmigrants" - Muslim traders from Indonesia's vast archipelago of about 14,000 islands. Almost 90 per cent of Indonesia's 200 million citizens are Muslim.