Jakarta – Deadlocks are looming between Indonesia and the United Nations, as a UN Security Council mission reports to headquarters on Monday on the situation in camps in West Timor holding tens of thousand of East Timorese refugees.
The mission's visit last week garnered a raft of promises and assurances from Jakarta about future security for the refugees, and the international aid workers needed to help them. But two crucial logistical steps are proving difficult to negotiate.
Jakarta, diplomats say, is putting up barriers to a reconnaisance trip to West Timor by UN security experts to assess whether it is safe for staff to return two months after militia murdered three of their colleagues there. In addition, the removal of militia leaders has yet to be assured by Indonesia, because authorities here insist the militias no longer exist.
UNSC Mission chief, Martin Andjaba, pointed repeatedly to intimidation and misinformation by militia leaders, cited by returning refugees, as barriers to repatriating the refugees. "The intimidation must be stopped," he declared before departing Indonesia on Friday. "Decisive action is necessary to deal with remaining militias."
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)'s Peter Kessler said that meant removing the militia leaders. "Removed means they must not be there, not intimidating, not distorting information," he told AFP. "Refugee camps are not a refuge for militia intimidators."
Police and military commanders accompanying the delegation through West Timor's Haliwen refugee camp on Wednesday insisted that all militia gangs had been dissolved.
"As you can see for yourself, there are no militias here. They were all disbanded on December 12, 1999," Belu district commander Lieutenant Colonel Joko Subandrio told AFP at Haliwen, 25 kilometers from the border with East Timor. "What we have here is former militias, they are now living among the refugees," West Timor police chief Brigadier General I Made Mangku Pastika said. "They are only refugees, they have no privileges."
Andjaba said the refugees had complained about security, saying they did not have free choices about their future, and that security in the camps was uncertain. The presence of militia leaders, former or otherwise, also poses a threat to humanitarian workers.
UN refugee workers who escaped the fatal attack on their office in the border town of Atambua on September 6 said the attackers wore the T-shirts and insignia of militia gangs. The attack prompted the exodus of 400 aid workers from the region, bringing the registration and repatriation of refugees to a halt.
As the mission departed on Friday, Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab highlighted the "need for the resumption of international assistance to the refugees" to support Indonesia's efforts at restarting registration.
Two UN security officers were in West Timor assessing security for this week's 'one-off' repatriation of the families of former Indonesian military personnel. But permission for more experts to go in and gauge the wider picture is yet to be granted, Kessler said.
Pro-integration refugees at Haliwen cited fears of revenge by their former rivals as reasons for not going home, pleading with the officials to "neutralise" tensions between East Timorese groups and guarantee reconciliation.
"Which leaders can take us back, in peace, with reconciliation?" asked pro-integrationist Celestino Gonzales, 65. Both sides have done bad things, not just the pro-integration side." Andjaba said "the twin tracks of justice and reconciliation" were the key to solving the problem.
But over the border, an under-resourced justice system has released 56 prisoners suspected of serious crimes in last year's anti-independence violence, undermining efforts at reconciliation. "How are we meant to have reconciliation, when the people who committed crimes are living freely in the community here?" a resident of the shattered town of Suai asked the delegation.
In breaking voice, Gonzales spoke for the group of refugees from Dili's Kaikolo neighbourhood now shetlering in Haliwen. "We had jobs and postions before. Who can take responsibility for our fate now? Who can guarantee our future?"