Fears of Starvation in E Timor

by Sonny Inbaraj

Indonesian authorities in West Timor have said that after March 31, feeding and caring for the refugees will be the responsibility of the international community. In the meantime Jakarta wants the refugees to decide whether to return to East Timor or opt for permanent resettlement in Indonesia.

On Wednesday Indonesia's human rights minister Hasballah Saad warned about a looming humanitarian disaster for the East Timorese refugees if the government halted food distributions next week.

"Indonesia gave warning that as of April 1, it will stop the food distributions," said Saad who toured refugee camps in and around Kupang, West Timor last weekend. "Very soon the food distribution will stop. If it does it will be a very big problem."

East Timor's Nobel Peace Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta called the situation of East Timorese refugees in Indonesia "a criminal matter," and urged the international community to help return them home fast.

"International aid workers must be sent in to the camps, to shine the light of international attention on what our people are facing on a daily basis," he said.

Up till now the camps in West Timor -- which are government-run camps, not UN refugee camps -- have been receiving medical aid, some water supplies and rice in partnership with major aid programs from UN agencies and international organizations.

About 260,000 people were either deported to West Timor or fled there to escape the militia violence in East Timor which erupted after the announcement, on Sept. 4, of the UN-sponsored Aug 30 referendum. The outcome of the poll favored East Timor's separation from Indonesia by an overwhelming 78.5 per cent, against 21.5 per cent opting to remain with Indonesia but with broad autonomy.

"There is still intimidation going on (in West Timor). On Monday we had a convoy and there was a militia who stoned the convoy smashing the windscreen of one of the aid vehicles," said UNHCR's public information officer Fernando del Mundo who returned recently from West Timor.

"The militias are still active in two camps," he told IPS.

In recent cases, UNHCR staff members themselves have been the target of militia violence. UNHCR has been denied unrestrained access to refugee camps in West Timor, and their efforts to extract refugees from the camps and return them to East Timor are often done under extremely risky circumstances.

In late February a convoy of trucks, transporting 1,000 refugees and UNHCR officials was attacked by militias. As a result, one truck was damaged, and only 179 refugees were eventually repatriated.

"The basic problem is, these people (militia) are allowed to do whatever they are doing. They are allowed to harass. They are allowed to intimidate. That is the issue," Jessen-Peterson, UN Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees, said recently.

Similarly, while the International Red Cross has been able to conduct humanitarian operations in East and West Timor, they too have been largely unable to gain access to refugee camps in West Timor, rife with malnutrition and disease.

Sari Kendar, a Unicef representative in the West Timor border town of Atambua said the world body was paying special attention to deadly malaria. She said Unicef had not expected malaria to strike.

"The number of medical doctors is inadequate and the increasing incidences of malaria were unmonitored," she said.

UNHCR, according to del Mundo, expects that of the reported over 100,000 people in West Timor about 50,000 want to go back to East Timor. "These people still haven't gone back to East Timor because they're still ambivalent about conditions back home besides fearing the militias," said del Mundo.

Humanitarian workers are troubled by reports that militias, in particular the Union of Timor Warriors (UNTAS), a pro-integration umbrella group, are placing advertisements in newspapers to scare refugees from returning to East Timor.

One recent advertisement suggested that those who return to East Timor will be doused in gasoline and burned alive. Others threaten torture and shooting. Although UNHCR has attempted to refute these advertisements, many refugees in West Timor do not believe the counter-ads.

A Jakarta Post article on March 19 quoted Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare and Poverty Eradication Basri Hasanuddin as saying some 10,000 East Timorese repatriated by international agencies have returned to neighboring West Timor over the past month.

The Indonesian minister told the paper East Timorese were streaming back to refugee camps in Indonesia because of uncertainties at home, including food shortages.

But del Mundo, who was at the East Timor-Indonesia border last weekend, said there was no evidence of such large numbers of people coming back into West Timor. "We are seeking clarification from the Indonesian government on when this happened and over what period of time."

On the contrary, del Mundo said the number of refugees returning from West Timor has been rising in the last several weeks. "On Monday 450 people crossed the border overland, yesterday some 800 people returned, 500 of whom left Kupang aboard a ship."

The Portugal-based East Timor Observatory, however, said there is still strong concern that not enough refugees are returning home fast enough with the Indonesian deadline just a week away.

"The average repatriation rate was 2,100 per day between Oct. 8 and the end of November. However, the rate fell sharply in December to 400 per day," said the Observatory in a briefing paper circulated to aid agencies.

"The most likely explanation for the drop, according to aid workers, is that most of the early returnees had been living in places to which international agencies had access (through civil and religious organizations), while the others had to get out of the 'refugee camps' that were controlled by militias opposed to the repatriation process," said the monitoring group.