| Subject: East
Timor's Muslim minority assured of safe haven
East Timor's Muslim minority assured of
safe haven
DILI, East Timor, Dec 9 (AFP) - A small
group of Muslims in this majority Roman Catholic territory will begin the
fasting month of Ramadan on Thursday night after independence leader
Xanana Gusmao said they were welcome to stay.
Gusmao signed the guest book at the Annur
mosque on Wednesday when he met with the group of about 200 Muslims, said
Imam Hadji Amirrudin, a prayer leader at the mosque.
The people wanted to remain here in East
Timor and there was a question about their citizenship.
"Xanana's reply was that it will
depend on the immigration laws," said Ines Almeida, a spokesman for
Gusmao.
"He invited them to stay," she
said.
Unlike other Indonesians who fled East
Timor in the last months of their rule here, the small Islamic community
has vowed to remain despite some threats.
"'Why don't you go home?' They were
told," said Imam Shahid, 29, another prayer leader.
But Shahid is already home.
He said he was born in the East Timor
town of Viqueque.
He and the others have been living in the
mosque since they, like East Timorese, became victims of the militia
violence backed by Indonesian armed forces that destroyed this city, East
Timor's capital, in September.
They lived in the relatively well off
airport district of Delta Comoro, where houses were burned and damaged
just as they were everywhere else.
"We've already been here a long
time. We'll fix our houses. If we leave here, we start from nothing,"
said Shahid.
The Annur mosque, in Dili's west central
part, is the largest and the oldest in East Timor, which is on its way to
becoming a new country after voting in August to split from Jakarta during
a UN-administered ballot.
"This is about 500 years old,"
said Mohammad Jamil, 28.
He said Arab traders reached East Timor
even before the Portuguese who colonized the area for hundreds of years
before Indonesia invaded in 1975.
Almost all the people living at the Annur
mosque are originally from various parts of Indonesia and have been in
East Timor for several years.
"We want to stay here," said
prayer leader Amirrudin, a native of West Java.
"Some local people don't like us
here. But we gave them an explanation that our community is not interested
in politics. We would like to develop and join together with you,"
said Jamil, who moved here eight months ago from Mecca, Saudi Arabia,
where he worked at a Hilton hotel.
He said his uncle told him East Timor
would be a good place to do business.
Jamil, whose son was born in East Timor
in July, ran a coffee wholesale business.
Amirrudin operated a restaurant in Dili.
Jose Ramos-Horta, another independence
leader, met the Muslim community shortly after he returned to East Timor
earlier this month.
The Catholic Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Carlos Ximenes Felipe Belo also recently visited the mosque.
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