November 21, 2000
UN Security Council envoys who visited squalid East Timorese refugee camps in Indonesia last week have told the council in New York that anti-independence militiamen continue to impede resolution of the refugee problem. In its report back to the Security Council, a copy of which was obtained by AFP here Tuesday, the delegation said Indonesia's chief political and security affairs minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, had acknowledged the East Timorese refugees continued to be intimidated by militia in the West Timor camps. Yudhoyono described them "as ex-militia elements, present in and around the refugee camps."
"The continued presence of militia, in whatever form, continues to be an impediment to the implementation of Security Council resolution 1319," which called for the militia to be disbanded, the report said. The delegation's chief, Martin Andjaba, introduced the report to a meeting of the Security Council at UN headquarters in New York on Monday.
The UN visitors came to Indonesia to assess Jakarta's implementation of resolution 1319, passed in response to the killing of three UN refugee workers in the border town of Atambua on September 6. The resolution demanded that Indonesia immediately disarm and disband the militia, accelerate the repatriation or resettlement of up to 120,000 refugees still in the camps, and restore security to allow the return of aid workers who fled West Timor after the killings.
The delegation report stressed the "need for decisive action to deal with the remaining militias, in particular the leaders." It recommended "ongoing" disarmament operations, and that the militia leaders and "those engaging in intimidation" be separated from the refugees.
Indonesia insists it disbanded the pro-integration militias in December last year. Military and police in West Timor claim that 90 percent of all militia arms have been confiscated. A pile of confiscated weapons were destroyed in front of the visiting envoys. The report also states that Indonesian officials asserted that the militia had been disbanded "...in the sense that they no longer trained or operated in an organised fahsion and that their structures and organisations had been disabled in 1999." The report says that Yudhoyono vowed to take steps to eradicate the intimidation and to report to the Security Council on the government's plans for doing so.
The delegation also visited East Timor where they heard complaints by recently-returned refugees of ongoing intimidation by militia leaders in the West Timor camps, who told returnees they would be killed if they went home and spread "misinformation" about the state of the camps.
The delegation described the camps as "truly depressing" and riddled with misinformation. "The mission was struck by the lack of information on the conditions in East Timor, the extent of misinformation inside the camps and the clear potential for intimidation," it stated. It urged Indonesia to develop an "impartial" information strategy for the refugees. The information campaign, it said, should "bring home to them that the result of the referendum on independence must be accepted."
Many of the refugees in the Haliwen camp visited by the delegation were adamant that the referendum was rigged and said they did not accept its result. "Some refugees openly stated to the Mission that they would go back to East Timor only 'with the red-and-white flag,' implying Indonesian rule," the report states.
The report made no judgement on security levels in West Timor, but recommended the dispatch of a team of UN security experts to West Timor to assess the situation. It welcomed Jakarta's intention to hold talks on "arrangements to facilitate an assessment" of West Timor by experts from the Office of the UN Security Coordinator. Western diplomats said last week that the delegation had reached an impasse with Jakarta over access for the UN security experts.
Some 250,000 East Timorese fled or were forced from their homes after the territory's vote for independence on August 30 last year. Up to 120,000 remain.
