East Timor refugees face new threat of violence

A United Nations refugee chief warned today that violence could spill into squalid camps where tens of thousands of East Timorese tried to escape chaos in the capital, as the prime minister blamed former members of pro-Indonesia militias for some attacks.

East Timor’s Nobel laureate and foreign minister, Jose Ramos Horta, took over duties as the tiny nation’s top security minister in a bid to end the unrest that has virtually paralysed the government.

At least 30 people have died since fighting erupted last month between military factions and rival gangs.

Aid workers estimate 100,000 residents have fled to more than 30 camps in Dili, or have abandoned the city altogether. Those people face new threats to their security amid reports of growing tension and fighting at the squalid shelters, said Gregory Garras, head of the UN refugee agency’s emergency team in East Timor.

“We see these camps as a major flashpoint,” Garras said, citing rumours that weapons were filtering into some of the sprawling camps. “People are living in a desperate situation, cheek to jowl. There’s no privacy, it’s hot, there’s insufficient water. The conditions are absolutely untenable.”

He said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees planned to bring tents, plastic sheeting and other supplies into Dili tomorrow.

Alkatiri said some of the recent violence was carried out by former members of pro-Indonesian militias that devastated East Timor in 1999 after its people voted to break away from Indonesia, which had occupied the former Portuguese colony for 24 years.

“I was told that some actions – the burning of houses and other violence, civil unrest – some ex-militias are involved, militias of 1999,” Alkatiri said.

He also said a mob’s recent attack on the attorney-general’s office and theft of evidence on massacres and other crimes in the 1999 upheaval was targeted, not random.

“There’s no coincidence in this kind of thing,” Alkatiri said.

The missing files implicate Indonesian military and police commanders in the violence nearly seven years ago, according to East Timorese authorities.

Alkatiri said he expected foreign forces who have arrived to restore order would stay for months. More than 2,000 peacekeepers from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Portugal are in East Timor, and the United Nations is assessing ways to help, four years after it ended a nation-building program and East Timor became independent.

Alkatiri also defended the decision in March to sack soldiers who were protesting against alleged discrimination, an act that led to fighting between the rebels and loyalist forces.

“In every country in the world, if soldiers abandon their barracks, they have to be sacked,” he said.

President Xanana Gusmao, a former rebel chief and independence hero, had opposed the sacking of about one-third of the army and he has been trying to break a political deadlock with Alkatiri, who has rejected calls to resign from many East Timorese.

Alkatiri’s allies, the interior and defence ministers, stepped down as part of a compromise aimed at defusing the crisis. Ramos Horta, who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign to highlight atrocities carried out by East Timor’s Indonesian rulers, will now take over their security roles.

The unrest has eased with the presence of foreign troops, but flare-ups continue daily.

Much of the antagonism on the streets is between East Timorese from the “east” – perceived to be pro-independence – and those from the “west”, believed to be sympathetic to Indonesia. Poverty also fuels the chaos.