Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – At least 5,700 East Timorese who have chosen to stay in Indonesia threatened on Tuesday to snub the 2004 general election to protest the government's failure to heed their demand for compensation.
Representatives of the former East Timorese refugees told a media conference here that since 1999 they had demanded the government compensate them for the assets they left behind in the former Indonesian province after the violence that followed the independence vote.
"We refuse to participate in the 2004 election unless the government pays compensation for our assets," coordinator of East Timorese claimants I.M. Ndoen said as he read the group's joint statement.
Ndoen valued the assets at about Rp 1 trillion (US$111.1 million), a sum that could increase, as some 5,000 claimants and their families had not registered their assets previously.
"We have written to the House of Representatives 12 times and the House forwarded the letters to the government, but the latter appears not to have responded," Ndoen said. "Perhaps the central government is ignoring our potential impact in the upcoming election. But with some of our family members becoming eligible to vote in two years' time, there will be over 10,000 of us."
Some 30 people, mostly women, accompanied Ndoen during the conference. They represent some 20,000 East Timorese natives and former East Timor residents.
Separately, East Timor Hope (HATI) foundation denied allegations that it had traded East Timorese children from the refugee camps in East Nusa Tenggara.
Secretary-general of the foundation Octavio A.J.O. Soares clarified reports that it had sold East Timorese child refugees overseas and had received donations from foreign institutions and the government to send 169 child refugees to schools in Java.
"All the children were voluntarily surrendered by their families and we funded them to study in Java. They were placed in orphanages or dormitories," he told a media conference. Octavio said that the HATI foundation had used its own money to pay the tuition fees and living costs of the children.
Of 169 children, many are still in Java; only eight have been sent home to East Timor by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to follow their parents and 10 were returned to East Nusa Tenggara, he added.
Octavio's statement was supported by 45 parents, whose children's education was funded by the foundation.
The allegation over trading in East Timorese child refugees emerged when a refugee service asked the local army to provide a security guarantee for some 10 children who returned from Java to East Nusa Tenggara.