Headline : China’s Presence in Timor-Leste Is Unseen, but Unmissable

Read more from the original article on here at time.com.

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No. of Paragraph 40

“It was not really an assassination attempt,” says José Ramos-Horta. Timor-Leste’s President is sitting on the breezy veranda of Galeria Memoria Viva, the seafront bungalow in capital city Dili that now serves as his personal museum. The walls are festooned with memorabilia spanning half-a-century of activism and politics: a watercolor by an incarcerated former comrade; a plaque commemorating his 1996 Nobel Peace Prize; photos of an Australian journalist slain during his nation’s tumultuous birth pangs.

But when asked about that fateful morning of Feb. 11, 2008, Ramos-Horta tears up the history book. It was during his previous stint as president that rebel leader Alfredo Reinado entered his home at 6 a.m. with a dozen heavily armed men. Ramos-Horta was out jogging on the beach and returned to a firefight between the intruders and his security staff, during which he was shot at least twice (the rebels used banned “dum-dum” bullets that fracture on impact, so the exact number remains a mystery.)

Ramos-Horta was airlifted to the Australian city of Darwin for medical treatment and nearly lost his life; one shrapnel fragment was lodged just 2 mm from his spine. When he eventually recovered, Ramos-Horta from his hospital thanked “all who prayed for me, who looked after me, who cared for me following the assassination attempt on me by Mr. Alfredo Reinado.”

Sixteen years later, Ramos-Horta has a different view. “The guy came to my house trying to talk to me,” he says. “He had full trust in me. He said I was the only leader in the country he trusted. But he was already renegade and so my security people shot him, because what the hell is he doing here? I heard the shooting, go home, and one of his [companions] shot me because he thought I was involved.”

Read more from the original article on here at time.com.

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