Subject: WP: East Timor Refugees Terrorized in Camps
[horrifying report]
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 12:24:21 -0400The Washington Post Saturday, September 25, 1999
East Timor Refugees Terrorized in Camps
Militias Hold Many as Virtual Hostages
By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service
KUPANG, Indonesia, Sept. 24—They fled here in abject retreat, packed onto trucks
scrawled with the names of their militia gangs and bringing with them their assault
rifles, machetes and dreams of revenge.
But as East Timor's militias have settled here, across the border in western Timor--now
riding around the streets of Kupang in open-backed trucks and wearing their characteristic
black T-shirts--they have brought their reign of terror and intimidation, this time
against tens of thousands of displaced East Timorese living in sprawling refugee camps as
virtual hostages, according to relief workers, human rights monitors and others.
There are now more than 200,000 East Timorese scattered throughout as many as three
dozen camps--some of them in churches, government buildings and a stadium and some along
the road with people living in tents and under tarps. Relief agencies say many, if not
most, of those camps are controlled by the pro-Indonesian militias, who deny access to
most Westerners.
There have been repeated reports of militia members entering camps at night and taking
away suspected supporters of independence for East Timor. Young men are also being forced
to join the militias. This is thought to be a regrouping, a swelling of the ranks, for a
possible incursion into East Timor, where an Australian-led multinational peacekeeping
force is gradually wresting control of the capital, Dili, from the armed gangs and
departing Indonesian soldiers.
"Right now our job is to protect the refugees, but, like it or not, there will be
war," said a 26-year-old militia member named Binto, who spoke at a camp located at a
provincial sports stadium here. "We will return to East Timor, but we have to fight
for it."
And relief agencies say they are alarmed that the Indonesian government has announced
plans to begin relocating the refugees farther away from East Timor--part of what aid
groups here fear could be a forced removal of people as a prelude to the eventual
partitioning of East Timor.
"They've got between 150,000 and 200,000 people hostage here," a foreign
relief worker said. "They're not refugees; they're hostages."
"What's happening here is horrible," he said, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "They're burning houses on this side of the border. We hear reports of
pregnant women being killed and their bellies split open. Boats leave with 'X' number of
people and arrive with less." He added: "The militia and military--you can't
make a difference anymore--are in control of this city. And the government can't do
anything."
Khin Sandi Lwin, senior program coordinator for the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) in
Jakarta, just returned from a trip to the refugee camps at Atambua, near the border
between East Timor and western Timor, and she said she saw militia members brandishing
their automatic weapons inside the camps she visited. "This is a very strong
militia-controlled area," she said. She was able to go into the camps only because
she is Burmese; Westerners, and particularly "white faces," are generally not
allowed.
She estimated that 127,000 refugees are living in the district around Atambua. Asked
how many are there voluntarily, and how many are being held against their will, she said,
"With the militia all around, we wouldn't want to ask them."
The New York-based Human Rights Watch also said in a statement: "Militias in West
Timor are terrorizing the East Timorese, infiltrating the camps, and systematically
attempting to identify and retaliate against independence supporters. They have also
assaulted, 'disappeared,' and killed those attempting to aid and shelter refugees."
On Aug. 30, nearly four-fifths of East Timorese defied militia intimidation and voted
overwhelmingly to separate from Indonesia and become an independent state in a U.N.-backed
referendum. But the anti-independence militias retaliated with a vengeance, engaging in
murder and destruction that provoked intense international pressure on Indonesia to accept
foreign peacekeepers in East Timor.
As they embarked on their rampage, the militias were seen herding thousands of East
Timorese toward the border. Relief workers said they fear that many--particularly young
men, anyone associated with the United Nations or working for foreigners, or anyone
suspected of being an independence supporter--may have been executed along the way.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, for example, had about 70 East Timorese
staff members in Dili. When militiamen raided the Red Cross compound, the expatriate
staffers were loaded onto a truck and eventually taken to the airport to leave. About
2,000 refugees, and some staff members at the compound, were last seen being marched along
the beach. Today, Red Cross officials said only 11 of their local staff members have
arrived in western Timor; the others are missing.
Not all of the refugees here are considered "hostages." Some are the
relocated families of military personnel, others the families of the militias. They are
kept in military camps, like the Noelbaki camp about nine miles from here, where most of
the men wear military uniforms.
The militia campaign of terror has extended beyond western Timor, and is said to reach
as far away as Bali, and even Jakarta, where suspected independence supporters have
received death threats and are being hunted down. Some East Timorese university students,
and Red Cross staff members, have been moved several times because of death threats, with
some being relocated to Darwin, in northern Australia.
"There's militia in Jakarta, there's militia in Surabaya," said an aid worker
here. "They know who they're looking for. They have names."
"The carefully-planned campaign of violence and terror carried out by the
Indonesian security forces and their militia surrogates in East Timor and in west Timor
over the past several weeks has spread throughout Indonesia," said the Atlanta-based
Carter Center, which sent monitors to observe the East Timor referendum and still has
observers scattered around the archipelago.
"Armed militias [continue] to harass and terrorize refugees from East Timor who
have taken refuge in Bali and several cities on the island of Java, including the
Indonesian capital of Jakarta," the center said in a report.
No one seems certain of the motive for holding tens of thousands of people hostage. But
some relief groups and human rights officials have suggested the militias may have been
trying to empty East Timor of its pro-independence population as a prelude to demanding
that the western half of the territory be allowed to remain a part of Indonesia. The
western half, with its coffee plantations, is the most economically viable part of
otherwise poor East Timor, and many prominent Indonesians are said to have business links
there.
An aerial survey of the western side of East Timor done Thursday by the United Nations
found "very few people living there," according to David Wimhurst, a U.N.
spokesman in Darwin.
The government has announced plans to relocate as many as 100,000 East Timor refugees
away from the border areas and into semi-permanent settlements elsewhere in East Timor, as
well as on neighboring islands.
Special correspondent Atika Shubert in Kupang contributed to this report.
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