atambua, West Timor – Outside the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office here, charred chairs and melted computers are heaped in a pile, marking the spot where three UN workers were killed in September.
The office has been empty since a machete-wielding mob ransacked the building and hacked to death the refugee workers, then set their bodies on fire.
Indonesian security officials say the attack was the work of East Timorese refugees disgruntled with the UN. “They were angry with the UNHCR officials. They were not fed,” said Made M Pastika, the police chief in charge of the camps that still shelter nearly 100,000 refugees.
But the UN has a different explanation for the attack: Militia members opposed to East Timorese independence slaughtered the three to stop the agency from helping refugees return home to East Timor.
A majority of East Timorese voted for independence in August 1999, but a powerful minority remains committed to overturning that vote by force. Elements of those forces, observers say, still hold considerable influence over the refugee population in Atambua.
While the refugee population includes those who oppose East Timor’s independence, it also includes those who were forced to West Timor in late 1999 and who want to return home but are too afraid to do so, UN officials say.
The refugees have become pawns in a violent political drama that has become increasingly common throughout the world as huge civilian populations are sent into neighboring countries by war and civil unrest.
For Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of the UN mission to East Timor, the obvious parallel is Cambodia.
“What worries me,” said Vieira de Mello, who headed Unhcr’s repatriation efforts in Cambodia from 1991 to 1993, “is to see in West Timor the situation we had in Thailand, of a civilian population of genuine refugees controlled by unscrupulous leaders and militia.”
Like the Khmer Rouge and other Cambodian factions on the Thai border, the militias in West Timor have used the refugee population to add support to their anti-independence platform, relying on propaganda, misinformation and intimidation to deter refugees from returning to East Timor, Vieira de Mello said.
By the early 1980s, Thailand had become home to some 350,000 Cambodians who had either fled Vietnam-controlled Cambodia or were forced to the border by retreating Khmer Rouge forces.
Reports soon emerged of the refugee camps becoming recruitment grounds for the factions and rear bases for troop activities inside Cambodia.
As in East Timor, many of the refugees from Cambodia fled to the border in search of food, shelter and security. While the camps offered these benefits, the factions running the camps required in return the military conscription of the able bodied to fight or work as military porters.
John B Farvolden, who is in charge of Unhcr’s Cambodia office, was at the Thai border in 1979 as ragged refugees from Pol Pot’s Cambodia poured into Thailand. He also worked at the border in 1993, when the last refugees returned to Cambodia.
While the main task for Unhcr is getting refugees home, there is also the equally important work of ensuring their health, protection and safety before that takes place.
That is being made more difficult. As recent conflicts from Kosovo to East Timor have shown, refugees are becoming not only a by-product of conflict, but part of the strategy of warring sides, Farvolden said.
“The whole area of refugee assistance is becoming more complicated in the post-Cold War era,” he said.
Semi-captive refugee populations are easily exploited by those who are in a position to exert power through intimidation and violence, or through more subtle means such as misinformation or simply controlling access to scare food supplies and medicine, Farvolden said.
To keep refugees from being used by militias, warlords or politicians, the refugees must be confident that a neutral broker is looking after their interests, he said.
Unhcr confronted this during its 1998-1999 repatriation of 46,000 refugees who fled to the Thai border following fighting between the government, Khmer Rouge and Funcinpec forces in 1997 and 1998.
Leaders representing 19,000 refugees from the Samlot district of Battambang province were discouraging people who wanted to return home from the refugee camps.
They feared that without the refugee population, they would lose their bargaining chip in negotiating concessions with the government for a mass return of the people.
“I confronted the leadership and told them that the refugees were free to go anywhere in Cambodia,” Fervolden said. “And if they continued to obstruct voluntary repatriation, we would have to reconsider helping them.”
Weighing the loss of assistance by Unhcr, the obstructions against the refugees ceased and voluntary repatriation began.
But while Unhcr can provide humanitarian assistance and monitor the conditions of refugee populations and repatriation, it is the responsibility of the host country to ensure that refugee camps are demilitarized, and free of intimidation and violence against occupants.
In West Timor, Vieira de Mello said, the key to demilitarizing the camps is to stop the supplying arms to the militias. Without outside support, they will fall apart, he said, allowing tens of thousands of refugees to return to East Timor.
“If we could tackle the Khmer Rouge camp situation in Thailand, surely we can tackle the militia control over the population in West Timor,” he said.
Indonesian officials in West Timor say the militias already have been disarmed and disbanded and are no longer exerting control in the camps. The refugees, they say, prefer to stay in the camps in West Timor, choosing life under Indonesian control to the uncertainties of an independent East Timor.
“You ask them [the refugees]. You ask them. If I answer your question, maybe you will not believe me,” said Indonesian two-star General Kiki Syahnakiri. “So it is better you ask them,”
“In the past, the militia still intimidate [refugees] but now, I think not. They have no more power,” he said. “Many of [the refugees] want to go back to their home towns in East Timor. But many of them still doubt the conditions and situation in East Timor.”
While East Timor’s infrastructure and institutions are still in shambles, the conditions in the refugee camps are bleak as well. As Kiki Syahnakiri spoke, dozens of young children played nearby on hard-packed earth outside rows of cramped wooden houses, while women lined up around a water well to wash clothes and cook food, provided by Indonesia authorities. Many camp inhabitants have only sheets of plastic as roofing to protect them.
One group of male refugees were unequivocal when asked if they wanted to return to an independent East Timor.
“We will only return under the red and white [flag of Indonesia],” one said.
That is the only way they would feel safe, the men said.
But others, like Jose de Jesus Vaz, want nothing more than to leave the camps. Now a Dili, East Timor resident, de Jesus Vaz spent three months living in a refugee camp after pro-Indonesia militias marched into his village in September 1999, torching houses and killing nine people.
“I ran into the mountains but the militia attacked us again. They shot my nephew,” he said.
He and his family headed for Indonesian-controlled West Timor to escape the anti-independence backlash.
But when they arrived at the camp, militia members picked through the thousands of refugees, singling out those they suspected of supporting independence. De Jesus Vaz’s 39-year-old brother, Joao, was one of those taken away by the militia.
Jose de Jesus Vaz has not seen his brother since. He hopes he is only being ordered to stay in a refugee camp by militia members who will not let him return to East Timor.
“The big difficulty,” said one aid worker, “is that there are certain elements within Indonesia which, although they will not re-invade the country, they do not want [independence] to work and will continue for the foreseeable future to try to exert a destabilizing influence on East Timor.”
These days, the Indonesian government shows signs of cooperating with the UN on the West Timor refugee issue, Vieira de Mello says.
The cooperation was forced, in part, by international pressure after militia members killed the three Unhcr workers and, in separate incidents, shot dead two peacekeepers who were patrolling near the West Timor border. Six men are currently on trial for the Unhcr killings, which was the worst-ever attack on the UN’s refugee workers.
A UN Security Council committee inspected the Atambua camps in November, flanked by heavily armed Indonesian military and border police, during the first UN visit since the killings.
Namibian Ambassador to the UN Martin Andjaba, who led the UN security council mission to West Timor, said intimidation of refugees and humanitarian organizations must stop.
“All stages of the return process must be carried out in safety and security,” he said. “East Timorese leaders are anxious to welcome the refugees back and ready to pursue reconciliation.”
At a reception for the visiting UN team, where Indonesian military generals sang and danced with the East Timorese refugees dressed in bright traditional costumes, camp representatives and Indonesian officials said violence and intimidation have ended and camp inhabitants are free to go where they please.
And the militias, said Police Chief Made M Pastika, no longer exist.
“They are ex-militia,” he said. “There is no militia any more. They disbanded themselves a long time ago. The ex-militia are now ordinary citizens. They are ordinary refugees.”
The UN is not so sure. Five months after the attack, the Unhcr office is vacant and UN officials say security conditions have not improved enough for aid workers to be sent back.
