Timorese 'threatened' over return home

East Timor refugees fear to return home, says an aid worker

By staff and wire reports

UNITED NATIONS -- Pro-Jakarta militias are threatening and intimidating East Timorese refugees as they decide whether to stay in squalid West Timor camps or return home, an aid worker says.

Indonesian authorities this week held two days of registration during which tens of thousands of East Timorese refugees would determine their future.

"The civilian refugees are threatened with murder or kidnapping if they choose repatriation," Winston Neil Rondo, an Indonesian who leads the Center for Internally Displaced People's Services in West Timor, was reported as saying.

The militia gang herded the refugees into squalid camps in Indonesia's West Timor following the United Nations-organized independence referendum in East Timor in 1999.

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Militia commanders living in the same camps, still angry over the vote, "will use any means including intimidation and violence to achieve their ends", said Rondo, who has worked in the camps since mid-1999.

Militia rampage

However, Indonesia denied accusations of the wide-spread intimidation by the pro-Jakarta gangs.

Johanis Pake Pani, chairman of the registration's organizing committee, told Antara news agency that Indonesia does not have any interests in keeping the refugees because they have become a big burden to the people in the area.

"We have minimized the threat of intimidation as much as possible," Amin Rianom, chief organizer of the registration, told Reuters news agency by telephone from West Timor.

"To get rid of it all is difficult. But we have done the registration as transparently as possible," he added.

The militia went on a rampage after the 1999 ballot, burning, looting and raping. They herded tens of thousands of East Timorese over the border to West Timor.

Refugees also feared losing their food aid, which the hard-pressed Indonesian authorities had been slow to deliver, Rondo told a news conference on Thursday.

This week's registration is in advance of August 30 elections for a new governing assembly before the territory, now under U.N. administration, becomes independent next year.

Rondo said registration irregularities went largely undetected because there were only 12 international observers monitoring 507 registration sites. He urged the U.N. to reject the results.

The registration process was completed late Thursday, but Indonesian officials said it could take up to 14 days to tally the preferences set out in some 130,000 registration forms.

But they said a partial count of some 42,000 refugees polled showed that 38,000 wanted to remain in West Timor.

Indonesia counts some 130,000 refugees registered, compared with U.N. estimates of 80,000 to 100,000 people in the camps.

"Up to now, there's a large number who have registered to stay compared to the few who opted to return to East Timor," Rianom told Reuters.

Lack of health care

Rondo said the refugees suffered from a lack of food, drinking water and health care. Three to five refugees die in the camps per day, most from malaria, diarrhea, respiratory infections and childbirth.

He estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the refugees actually wanted to go home to East Timor.

"But with the intimidation and the undemocratic process, I don't think this is going to happen," he said.

"Because of this climate of fear, the refugees have no other choice but to be resettled in Indonesia. There may be a small number who choose to be repatriated, but the risks they are taking would be too great," Rondo said.

Unemployment and poverty are common in East Timor as locals scratch to make ends meet amid a huge economic gap between them and dollar-salaried U.N. workers.

"I choose to stay here. Even if I returned to East Timor, the government there couldn't guarantee my safety. I don't lack anything here, we have enough food and education for our children," refugee Phillipe Parada told Reuters.

Reuters contributed to this report.