When Sister Margaret arrived in Kupang yesterday after a 30- minute flight from East Timor's capital Dili, she suddenly realised how lucky she was to be a nun. "I was able to go off with the other sisters and priests to the bishop's house. I was not herded into a truck like an animal and driven off to a camp. We managed to retain some dignity."

For most of the tens of thousands of refugees now in West Timor, dignity is in short supply. Whether they have arrived from East Timor by land, sea or air, the welcome is the same. They are whisked off by police and soldiers to camps guarded by pro-Indonesian militiamen and dumped there for processing.

The first stage is political identification, according to Manuel, an East Timorese who was able to get into the Noelbaki camp eight miles outside Kupang. He said when people arrived their names were checked off against a list of 20,000 known pro-Jakarta supporters. If they were on it, or could demonstrate support for Indonesia, they were put to one side.

All the others were taken to another part of the camp. Here the conditions are much worse, with people squashed together with little food and water.

"Many of the men are then 'taken away for questioning'," said Manuel. "The women have no idea what happens to their husbands. Many have not returned."

One woman said a militia camp guard told her: "You may have got your country but it will be a land full of widows." The woman had arrived in Noelbaki with her husband and two children on Monday.

She has not seen her husband since. Contact with the outside world is all but cut off. People deemed to be pro-independence are not allowed to leave the camps and no foreigners are welcome.

Foreign journalists and members of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees have been stoned, attacked and harassed whenever they have tried to get near the refugees.

In a highly unusual move, no international aid agencies have been asked to provide relief, even though an estimated 100,000 refugees have entered West Timor in the last week.

"Everywhere else in Indonesia – the government is desperate for our assistance," said the head of one European aid organisation's Kupang office. "But here it is as if they have something to hide."

That something is the forcible eviction and relocation of tens of thousands of people – supposedly to remove them from the violence, but clearly designed to disrupt the move towards East Timorese independence.

Piet A. Tallo, the provincial governor in West Timor, denies there is any deliberate relocation of the population. "We anticipated a crisis like this and we are doing our best to handle it," he said. "However it is clear that the refugees cannot stay in the camps forever so we have to move them on."

Resentment against the refugees is rising among the local population. An Australian aid worker living in West Timor said the new arrivals would find it very hard to settle. "It appears the government is trying to make life as hard as possible for them."