Maliana – Returning East Timorese refugees on Friday said militia in West Timor had seized their belongings and forced them to pay to cross the border.
Constantino Marquez crossed the frontier at a stony river bed near the town of Maliana with his family of seven. They carried a mattress and a few green vegetables.
The man and his wife broke down in tears when they saw journalists, who gave them candy and water. "They took our belongings and jewellery and money," he said after returning from more than a month in West Timor.
Marquez was among 416 refugees who trudged along the dry river bed that divides East Timor from West Timor after the Indonesian miltiary opened the border for a hour. Friday's influx was the first significant flow in many days. Lieutenant Colonel Nick Welch, the commanding officer of the Australian troops in the area, said militia were preventing people from returning and voiced his frustration at the complicity of the Indonesian military (TNI).
"We are hearing stories about militia keeping people from crossing. The TNI are there and don't appear to be doing anything," he said.
He also expressed concern that militia were extracting between 50,000 rupiah and 200,000 rupiah from returnees. "You've got to address the issue ... some with no money have had to hand over cattle, or anything that is made in Indonesia," he said.
Welch said that the regular flow of between 1,000 and 1,500 refugees returning per day had dried up, frustrating the efforts of relief workers.
"We want to put some pressure on Indonesia," said a field officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "It has become more serious in the past five days. Things have deteriorated. It's as if sombody has shattered the pattern," she said, adding that the militia were splitting some families at the border.
Only four people crossed on Thursday, a girl and her three cousins. She said her parents and brother had been kept behind.
The aid workers said delay of the returning refugees was putting at risk the season's rice crop, which needs to be planted before the onset of the monsoons.
"They will lose a year of their lives. That has a big impact on the local economy and whatever rebuilding of East Timor is needed," the field officer said.
Welch also said there were disturbing reports of intimidation inside West Timor, including "stories of sexual intimidation and rape by the militia."
The delays have also caused anxiety among hundreds of family members who daily await the return of the refugees, camped with their belongings on the eastern bank of the riverbed about 100 meters from a wooden sign reading "Stop. Frontera."
The growing concerns over militia violence in West Timor were echoed by a UN official in Jakarta and the UNHCR.
The official in Jakarta said on Thursday militiamen had forced two refugees off a UN-organised ferry taking some 1,000 East Timorese home from the West Timor port of Atapupu.
"We are particularly worried about this because we thought the militias were not active in this area," the International Office of Migrationofficial told AFP.
In Geneva the UNHCR said militiamen had opened fire with automatic weapons in front of a UNHCR office in Atambua on Thursday, and again near a truck convoy carrying 200 refugees. No injuries were reported.
The action was "apparently aimed at disrupting UNHCR's repatriation program to East Timor," it said, and urged Indonesia to take action.
An estimated 260,000 refugees fled or were forced into West Timor after pro-Jakarta militias unleashed a campaign of terror in the aftermath of East Timor's independence vote on August 30.
The IOM says only about 37,000 refugees, most from West Timor, have returned to East Timor of which about 12,500 had made their own way home.