Asia Times: End to refugees' ordeal is in sight



	October 05, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

End to refugees' ordeal is in sight
By Sonny Inbaraj

DARWIN, Australia - The ordeal of tens of thousands of East Timorese refugees suffering appalling conditions in West Timor may soon be over, as Indonesia has agreed to let them return home.

''The government has agreed to begin repatriation,'' United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Fernando del Mundo said in Dili, the East Timorese capital.

The decision, reached after intense negotiations between the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Indonesian government, will enable up to an estimated 250,000 East Timorese to return home nearly a month after large-scale violence forced them to flee their homes. Many of them were forcibly taken to West Timor by Indonesian-backed militias who had launched a campaign of terror after the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence from Jakarta.

The plight of the displaced East Timorese in camps in West Timor is dire. The UN reports limited available shelter, but that may be only half the story, since many camps are simply closed to UN inspectors by Indonesian authorities. Other aid agencies have reported gross human rights abuses carried out against the East Timorese refugees by Indonesian military-controlled militia groups.

Spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (Unamet) David Wimhurst said over the weekend the UNHCR representatives described conditions in three camps as appalling, but that access to other camps had been prevented by Indonesian officials.

Wimhurst told reporters in Dili that UNHCR officials had visited six refugee camps in the West Timor border town of Atambua. At three, he said, there was no shelter and people were forced to live in the open.

Julia V Taft, an assistant secretary in the US State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said in report released on September 30 that there may be as many as 230,000 displaced East Timorese, out of a population of 850,000, in camps located in West Timor as well as in churches, community facilities and host families.

''These innocent people sought refuge - or were forced to leave East Timor - as a result of a brutal anti-independence campaign of intimidation and a scorched earth policy perpetrated by militia gangs which the government of Indonesia did not or could not contain,'' she told the US Congress' International Relations Committee subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. ''In fact, there are credible reports that in many instances the militias were acting in concert with Indonesian Army forces. Conditions in these makeshift camps in West Timor are very difficult.''

Unamet's Wimhurst said UNHCR has asked for unfettered access to all refugee camps in West Timor. ''At present they are only allowed to visit these sites if accompanied by Indonesian officials,'' he said. He said there were still militia forces located around refugee camps in West Timor and that meant there were difficulties in determining if people really wanted to return home. ''They [UNHCR] are requesting free access so they can talk to the refugees without being accompanied by Indonesian officials.''

On September 15, the UN Security Council endorsed ''all necessary measures'' to halt the orgy of killing and destruction in the former Portuguese colony by pro-Jakarta and anti-independence militias. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that at least 7,000 people died in the violence and that between 300,000 and 400,000 of the territory's people fled their homes or were forced into neighboring West Timor by the militias.

Aid workers warn that outbreaks of malaria and measles are on the rise, and health officials fear the situation will only worsen with the onset of the monsoon this month. ''Cooking tables and open latrines are side by side in the camps. There is no water. Black exhaust from passing trucks hangs in the air,'' said a health worker who returned to Darwin from West Timor's capital Kupang.

Dr Hendra Wajaya, an Indonesian who works inside the camps, said that up to half the number of children in Tuapukan camp, nine miles east of Kupang, are suffering from diarrhea, which already has proved fatal there. Tuberculosis is another concern. Local health officials say a lack of sanitation is speeding the spread of disease through Tuapukan. One nurse expressed concern for 10 newborns, who were delivered healthy but are now at serious risk of infection.

According to aid workers only Indonesians and Asians are allowed into the camps. ''Westerners, and particularly 'white faces' are generally not allowed,'' said Khin Sandi Lwin, senior program coordinator for the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) in Jakarta. She had just returned from a trip to the refugee camps at Atambua, near the border between East and West Timor and said she was only able to go into the camps because she is Burmese.

But what is garnering the most international attention are claims of gross human rights abuses in the camps - from decapitations to repeated rapes. A five page report released by the Darwin-based East Timor International Support Center documented reports from what it claims are first-hand sources in Kupang.

One report said militias took 12 pregnant East Timorese women from the camps, slit them from their throats to their abdomens, removed the fetuses and used large rocks to smash the heads of the unborn babies. The women's bodies, the center said, were then decapitated and their heads displayed on sticks in the ground.

The center, quoting church sources, claimed East Timorese men and women are separated once they reach the camps. ''The women are turned into sex-slaves by the Indonesia military-controlled militias. Teenage boys are also taken away in thousands to be trained as unwilling militias to fight against the multinational UN forces across the border in East Timor. If they refuse, they are killed,'' said the report.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, said she was taking very seriously the extent of the violations and the repeated allegations of Indonesian military complicity and close involvement with the militias. ''I heard very alarming allegations - I stress at this stage these are allegations,'' she told reporters at the UN.

But, she added, she was extremely concerned about allegations that some women had been raped ''constantly, frequently, even on boats taking them out of East Timor'', and that in three camps in West Timor there was a pattern of sexual assault.

(Inter Press Service)

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