Keith Loveard, Vaudine England and Agencies – The United Nations said 20 people were killed in renewed fighting in Indonesian West Timor yesterday, two days after the murder of four aid workers.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the East Timor capital, Dili, said the latest clashes occurred at the refugee camp of Betun, which had been taken over by pro-Jakarta East Timorese militias the night before. The identity of the dead – and the number of wounded – was unknown, UNHCR operations manager Bernard Kerblat said. Near Betun, the Indonesian army recovered the charred bodies of 11 West Timorese killed on Wednesday hours before the UN workers were murdered.
Betun is a stronghold of the militias which razed East Timor after it voted in August last year to end Indonesia's military rule and which fear returning to their homeland now under UN rule. The camp is 55km south of Atambua, where militias butchered three foreign UNHCR workers on Wednesday, mutilating their bodies before killing a local UN staffer.
In a show of force, about 1,000 militiamen in army uniforms attended the funeral in Betun yesterday of a militia leader whose murder on Tuesday was believed to have triggered the violence. "The funeral was tense because the mob, mostly in trucks and motorcycles, roamed the town first, forcing shops to close and residents to stay inside," an army intelligence officer said in Atambua. But he denied there had been any clashes. "Many of the militias walk around with guns and machetes," a West Timorese government official said.
Outside Atambua, armed gang members set up roadblocks and extorted money and cigarettes from passing motorists. Others scoured the countryside for foreigners.
The UN pulled more than 240 workers and dependants out of West Timor after Wednesday's killings and pulled out a further 90 yesterday. Nine crossed the southern border from Betun to Suai late on Thursday.
The UN withdrawal leaves more than 120,000 East Timorese living in refugee camps in West Timor without outside help. Mr Kerblat said: "There are 120,000 individuals in a hostage-like situation." The refugees were among more than 300,000 people the militias forced across the border from their homes in East Timor in a rampage that followed the territory's independence vote. Authorities have arrested 15 people over the murders.
Provincial military chief Colonel Jurefar said a company of reinforcements – about 90 men – had arrived in West Timor and the rest of the battalion was due yesterday.
Colonel Jurefar said UN staff in Atambua had been warned twice by police and military officers to evacuate their office before Wednesday's attack. After the first warning, 13 staff had stayed behind and after the second – when a demonstration began to take shape in front of the regional government office nearby – three had insisted they must stay to continue their work, he said. Those were the three who died.
Yesterday, security forces guarded the gutted office where the three UN staff – from Puerto Rico, Croatia and Ethiopia – were murdered while officials checked files in the office. At a local hotel that had housed many of the aid workers, blood was splattered on the ground where the UN staffer was cut down.
Colonel Jurefar reiterated the Indonesian authorities' claim that Tuesday's death of militia leader Olivio Moruk was the result of a local West Timorese trying to extort money from Moruk's driver. A rumour spread that Moruk had kidnapped local residents, and he was taken away by a group of people who stabbed him to death and mutilated his body.
The day after the killing of Moruk, refugees mounted a reprisal attack at 3am on a local village and six villagers were killed. Later that day Moruk's family and supporters carried his headless corpse to the local government building at Atambua.
The majority of the 3,000 in the crowd then talked to government officials, but a part of the crowd on the edge of the gathering broke off and rushed to attack the UNHCR building, Colonel Jurefar said. He "could not comment" on witnesses' claims police failed to intervene.
He said the military had made efforts to disarm militia groups but added: "Our problem is that most of our troops have been busy patrolling the border."
The colonel said it would not be easy to stop refugees believing that violence was the way to solve their problems. "Our difficulty is that we now have a risk of conflict between the refugees and local people. We are trying to persuade the locals not to be provoked," he said.