Tais: Superintendent Rodney Walker, Australian Federal Police

Multi-coloured fringed traditional East Timorese tais with two wide maroon stripes and finer stripes of yellow, green, red, white, pink, blue and orange. In the centre is a 30mm blue and yellow band with 'TIMOR LESTE' in yellow.

Ceremonial cloths, known as tais has been woven within Timorese society for generations. An important part of their cultural heritage, tais weavings are used for ceremonial adornment, decoration, and clothing. This East Timorese tais was presented to Superintendent Rodney Walker by Bishop Carlos Belo for the formers contribution in October 1999 to a discussion about law and order in Timor, where the older generation wanted to revert to Portuguese but the general populace didn’t want Indonesian law imposed. The conversation took place outside Belos’ residence with UN Police Commissioner Alan Mills. Walker suggested to Belo that the Ten Commandments became the law during the interim. This tais was presented to Rod as a sign of gratitude for his work in these discussions.

Superintendent Rodney Walker operated as the Chief Civilian Police Personnel Officer between September-December 1999 during the UNAMET and UNTAET deployments to East Timor. In this position he coordinated the deployment of 340 civilian police personnel from 27 countries and liaised with individual contributing country Contingent Commanders. Walker also co-managed (on behalf of the United Nations) with Northern Territory Police the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Darwin.