Kirsty Sword Gusmão

Kirsty Sword Gusmão ( born April 19, 1966 in Melbourne / Australia) is the wife of East Timorese politician Xanana Gusmão. She speaks fluent English Bahasa Indonesia, Portuguese and Tetum.

Life

Kirsty Sword is the daughter of Brian and Rosalie Sword teachers and grew up in Melbourne and Bendigo. She was a promising ballet dancer, but decided against that career. The University of Melbourne concluded Sword in 1987 with a Bachelor of Arts ( Honours) with a major in Bahasa Indonesia and Italian. They also received in 1988 a Diploma of Education.

Sword worked until 1991 as an administrative secretary in the Overseas Service Bureau (now Australian Volunteers International ). Then she went to the Refugee Studies Program of the British Oxford University as assistant to the development coordinator. In the same year she traveled to East Timor as a researcher and interpreter for the documentary film In Cold Blood: The massacre of East Timor of the Yorkshire Television, which reports on the political and social developments in the occupied country.

From 1992 to 1996 Kirsty Sword lived in Jakarta / Indonesia as an English teacher, development worker and human rights activist. At the same time she began secretly to get involved as an activist and a spy for the East Timorese resistance. Your code name in the resistance movement was Ruby Blade ( Rubin blade), later renamed by Xanana Gusmão in Mukia.

Sword Gusmão met for the first time in 1994 during his six-year captivity in Cipinang prison in Jakarta. The first contact was when she taught him English letters, for Christmas she was able to smuggle into jail by claiming that she would visit an uncle. She smuggled messages, documents and phones Gusmão and offered the East Timorese resistance fighters shelter in Jakarta.

Xanana Gusmão was released in 1999 and the two married in Dili, where they live since a year later. By becoming aware of their activities in the East Timorese resistance, Kirsty was 2002, the Australian authorization is withdrawn as an aid worker. Overall, Kirsty and Xanana Gusmão have three sons: Alexandre, Kay Olok and Daniel. From 2002 to 2007, Xanana Gusmão was president of the newly independent East Timor. Since 2007 he has been prime minister of the country.

Kirsty Sword Gusmão is the founder and chairman of the Alola Foundation, which advocates for women in East Timor. In 2003, she published her autobiography A Woman of Independence.

During the riots in East Timor 2006, she gave interviews and attended in place of her husband, who could not move because of a back injury, Australian troops in East Timor.

2007 Sword Gusmão was sworn in by President Ramos -Horta as an ambassador for education in the Democratic Republic of Timor -Leste. She believes in this honorary position now East Timor at international events on the topic of education and should facilitate the dialogue between the different stakeholders on the subject of education, such as state, church, international, national and non-governmental organizations.

2013 Sword Gusmão was a breast cancer. You will also be used for cancer detection and fighting in East Timor.