Mark Dodd, Atambua – Ringed with fading yellow police tape, the smashed office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is an eerie deserted shell – a house of death.
The double-fronted white concrete residence lies in the town centre. Only a radio antenna and peeling UNHCR poster is evidence of its former official use. Piled in front of the office is a jumble of fire-blackened furniture. It was here the mutilated bodies of three UNHCR international staff murdered by a frenzied militia mob on September 6 were dragged and burnt.
A delegation from the UN Security Council made a rare visit to Atambua yesterday to decide whether conditions were safe for the refugee agency to return.
Indonesian authorities believe security has been restored and have urged the UN to resume humanitarian operations to an estimated 120,000 refugees, stopped after the Atambua attack.
"We understand without humanitarian aid these problems are going to go on and on," said the provincial police chief, Brigadier-General Made Pastika.
He said six former militiamen had been arrested over the murders, and 600 police commandos, reinforced by army and local police, would remain to ensure security for all refugees wanting to return home to East Timor – a guarantee reiterated by his army counterpart, Major-General Kiki Syahnakri.
The 15-kilometre road leading from the Indonesian border checkpoint of Motain to the border town of Atambua passes several settlements of East Timorese refugees.
An Indonesian police escort bus led the way as a group of journalists were driven there for the first time since the violence yesterday. Red and white flags fluttered outside the thatched roof dwellings while women and children waved to the convoy. In the shadows, groups of young men wearing dark sunglasses and baseball caps looked at the convoy without smiling.
The Haliwen refugee camp just outside Atambua occupies a disused soccer field. About 2,000 refugees live here and so do hundreds of surly young men still opposed to East Timor's independence from Indonesia.
An elderly man said his son and daughter lived across the border in the East Timor town of Bobonaro. "I hope to join them soon. I'm feeling desperate. I'm so alone here," he said before the young men swarmed around him and he stopped talking.
Graciana Sampaio, in her late-20s, stood under a plastic awning leading to her squalid dwelling. "All of my family are back in East Timor but I'll stay here until things get better," she said.
At the Haliwen camp, Mr Martin Andjava, the Namibian diplomat leading the 21-strong UN delegation to Atambua, said he welcomed an announcement on Tuesday by the main militia group known as Untas renouncing violence and condemning the September 6 killings. But he said it was too soon to say whether it was safe enough for UNHCR to resume humanitarian operations.