Kirsty Sword Gusmão

Kirsty Sword Gusmão (born 1966) is married to Xanana Gusmão, Prime Minister and former President of the Democratic Republic of East Timor.

Kirsty was born in Melbourne, Australia, to schoolteachers Brian and Rosalie Sword [http://www.etan.org/et2003/november/01-2/10years.htm] and raised there and in Bendigo. She was a promising ballet dancer, but decided not to pursue it as a career. She attended Melbourne University where she completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours), majoring in Indonesian and Italian, and a Diploma of Education. [http://www.vvvnt2006.com.au/Registration.pdf]

Kirsty Sword worked as an administrative secretary with the Overseas Service Bureau (now Australian Volunteers International) until 1991, when she joined the Refugee Studies Program at Oxford University in England as assistant to the development coordinator. Later that year, she travelled to East Timor as a researcher and interpreter for a Yorkshire Television documentary film called "In Cold Blood: The massacre of East Timor", about political and social developments in the territory.

From 1992 to 1996, Kirsty Sword lived and worked in Jakarta, Indonesia, as an English teacher, humanitarian aid worker and human rights campaigner. At the same time, she became a clandestine activist and spy for the East Timorese resistance to Indonesian rule. Her resistance code name was Ruby Blade, later changed to Mukia by Xanana Gusmão.

Regarding the eventual media revelation that a member of a supposedly neutral organisation was spying against a host country, whether any lasting damage was done to the capacity of humanitarian aid and human rights organisations to work freely in Indonesia is difficult to assess, as none of the relevant agencies have been willing to make official statements, however there has been some open criticism of her conduct that pointed out the lives of aid workers in Indonesia may have been endangered by the spying activities. Kirsty Sword-Gusmao has deflected these criticisms by stating she did not consider herself bound by the codes of conduct applicable to aid workers [http://www.etan.org/et2002c/august/18-24/18kristy.htm]

She met Xanana in 1994 while he was serving a 20-year sentence in Jakarta's Cipinang prison for leading the East Timorese resistance. Their first contact came when she taught him English via correspondence, then bluffed her way into the prison at Christmas on the pretence of visiting an uncle. [http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1417333.htm]

Xanana was released in 1999 and the couple married the following year in Dili, where they now live in the newly independent East Timor. They have three sons, Alexandre, Kay Olok, and Daniel.

Kirsty Sword Gusmão is the founder and chairwoman of the Alola Foundation [http://www.alolafoundation.org/] , which seeks to improve the lives of women in East Timor, the nation with the world's lowest per capita GDP.

In 2003, she published an autobiography entitled "A Woman of Independence" (Pan Macmillan Australia, ISBN 0732911974).

During the 2006 East Timor crisis, she conducted media interviews and met Australian troops on behalf of her husband, who was said to be immobile due to back pain. [http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1648107.htm]

External links

* [photo] [http://www.unisa.edu.au/news/2005/images/KSGusmao.jpg]
* [http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1417333.htm ABC "Enough Rope" interview with Xanana Gusmão and Kirsty Sword Gusmão]
* [http://www.abc.net.au/austory/transcripts/s485784.htm ABC "Australian Story" episode "Dangerous Liaison"]
* [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/31/1067566068590.html "Sydney Morning Herald" book review of "A Woman of Independence"]