Don Greenlees, Dili – Francisco Alves voted in favour of East Timor remaining a part of Indonesia in the 1999 referendum on independence. When the vote went the other way, 10 families from the small coastal village of Ulmera, including his own, decided to flee across the border into West Timor.
Two days ago, the 30-year-old farmer returned home. Fears of retribution, kept alive by rumours that returnees were mistreated, kept Alves and his family in a camp near the border for 19 months. Alves dates his change of heart to an April 4 visit to West Timor by East Timor's president-elect Xanana Gusmao.
"In the visit Xanana said, 'Just come back to East Timor, I will receive you with open arms'," says Alves as he waits in a refugee transit camp outside the capital, Dili. "Xanana is a very good man for East Timor and we were impressed by what he said. We kept his message in our hearts, that is why we came back."
On Monday, the day Alves crossed the border with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 469 other exiled East Timorese joined him on the trip home – one of the biggest single-day returns for some time.
In the first five months of this year, 14,000 people have come back from the West Timor camps, not far short of the total for 2001. Just days before East Timor formally gains its independence, the sudden upsurge in refugee returns has raised hopes among UNHCR officials and East Timorese leaders that an end to the refugee problem is in sight. "There is definitely a new dynamic on the other side of the border," says Dili-based UNHCR official Jake Moreland.
The pool of refugees has dwindled from 260,000 soon after the independence vote unleashed a wave of revenge killings and destruction in September 1999 to about 55,000 today. Nearly half of these people came back in the first three months.
But resolving the refugee problem has been one of the most intractable issues in relations between East Timor and its former occupier, Indonesia.
Although the Indonesian security forces have won recent praise for improving co-operation, Moreland says many refugees are still discouraged. "There are stories spread that couples will be separated and wives raped," he says.
Despite these hindrances, the UNHCR is banking on the May 20 declaration of independence and retreat of the UN drawing many of the undecided home. During Gusmao's April 4 visit, UNHCR distributed thousands of postcards printed with the phrase "come home before 20 May". It is hoped hundreds, possibly thousands, will accept the invitation.
Migi Barreto, 17, is one of those who decided he wanted to witness for himself the foundation of a new country. He too came home on Monday. Awaiting transport to his village of Holarua, Marreto says: "We heard in West Timor that East Timor would be independent on the 20th of May and we would have felt very bad if we didn't come back in time."