Jakarta – Former pro-Indonesia militia leaders from East Timor's Baucau district are preparing for a one-day visit to their homeland to see whether it's safe enough to bring 6,000 refugees home, their leader said Wednesday.
"Fourteen Baucau leaders now living in West Timor will fly to Batugade on the border tonight, then on to Baucau for one day on Thursday," Baucau's former militia head, Joanico Cesario, told AFP. Cesario said the visit was to determine how East Timorese in Baucau were responding to efforts at reconciliation between pro-integration and pro-independence supporters.
Baucau, 115 kilometers east of the capital Dili, was one of the cities least damaged during a rampage of destruction, looting, rape and killing by anti-independence militias following the half-island territory's vote for independence last year.
Cesario said the delegation of 14 – made up of village heads, Indonesian police force members and civil servants – would hold discussions with Baucau residents and assess conditions there. They would also invite local independence leaders to visit refugee camps in West Timor.
"We also want to guarantee the safety of any students who wish to come and study in West Timor," Cesario said by phone from West Timor's capital Kupang. "We want an end to rumours that if pro-independence East Timorese come to West Timor they will be killed. That's not true."
Cesario, viewed as a moderate among anti-independence militia leaders, commanded the PPI (Pro-Integration Forces) in Baucau, during the run-up to a ballot on autonomy in August 1999.
East Timorese voted overwhelmingly in the ballot to end 24 years of Indonesian rule, with 78.5 percent rejecting the option of autonomy under Indonesia.
Cesario said he would bring home 6,000 former Baucau residents living in refugee camps in West Timor only if it could be guaranteed that they would not be attacked.
"I am always ready to bring them home, but we have to see first and discuss reconciliation. Their safety needs to be really guaranteed first," he said.
"What they are all worried about is their safety." "We're still searching for the best path, the best solution. The final decision is in the hands of the refugees themselves."
Another pro-Indonesia leader, Joao Corbafu from the enclave of Oecussi, vowed on Monday to encourage refugees under his control to return home, a UN spokesman in East Timor said.
After a week-long "come and see" visit to Dili, Corbafu told chief UN administrator Sergio Vieira de Mello that he rated East Timor "safe and secure" and would persuade refugees in West Timor to return. Corbafu stated that some 10,000 refugees from Oecussi would be willing to come back to their homes, given assurances of their safety.
The visits by Corbafu and the ex-Baucau leaders are taking place against a backdrop of high-level reconciliation talks in Bali between chief independence and integration leaders, and Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab.
Some 250,000 East Timorese fled or were forced over the border into West Timor during the post-ballot violence. Tens of thousands remain there in squalid camps, with estimates ranging from 60,000 to almost 130,000. The UN's refugee agency has been unable to conduct an official count.