| Subject: Transcript: Rains
and militia hamper Timor aid effort Australian Broadcasting Corporation The World Today Thursday, October
14, 1999 12:32
Rains and militia hamper Timor aid effort
COMPERE: The first rains of the wet season have
started falling on East Timor today - a blessing to some who want to see gardens of food
sprouting again, but a problem for aid workers trying to get around the country on already
poor and battle-damaged roads. There's an additional hazard of course today - the creeping
return of militiamen, determined to make a show, challenging INTERFET troops to find them
as once again they seek to intimidate villagers, coming and going in a cowardly fashion.
Well, late this morning when Dr Andrew McNaughton of
Timor Aid joined me on the satellite in Dili, I asked him for a reaction to this show of
bravado by Eurico Guterres and his hirelings in Liquica.
ANDREW MC NAUGHTON: I'm not that surprised. Assuming
that it is correct and that they really are in the area west of Liquica, it would be what
we're been expecting - that the militias, backed by the Indonesian army, would continue to
sort of nag and irritate as much as possible. I think that's pretty much what everyone has
expected them to do. In fact if anything, I think people are surprised that they've made
less - less of a problem up to now than was expected. It was expected that they would
continue to sort of try and harass or bother the INTERFET operation and the UN operation
to bring humanitarian assistance here.
COMPERE: Would you put it though at any higher
sinister level than just being an aggravation?
ANDREW MC NAUGHTON: I think there's - in my mind
there's no doubt that some sections of the Indonesian army, particularly the Kopassus
intelligence kind of group who still have ambitions to destabilise and continue a war in
East Timor, it's not clear whether this is fully backed by the whole army, and whether it
- this initiative could be snuffed out by international diplomatic pressure. But there are
certainly some very powerful people who want to continue making major problems, and of
course these kind of intrusions, if they get their way, would just be the thin end of the
wedge, you know. You'd expect the problems to continue, if they're able to continue and
they're not stopped by their own - by other forces that may bring a halt to this kind of
activity.
COMPERE: We have had some evidence of reconciliation
going on in various places though, including out in the west of East Timor there, where
these militia people, largely illiterate people from villages - these young men who have
no prospects of job or income, have been promised a lot by way of material goods, are now
turning back and saying they want to come back and join the East Timorese in rebuilding
their country.
ANDREW MC NAUGHTON: They've realised probably now that
they don't have a future with the Indonesian army. The Indonesian army was simply using
them for its own purposes. Maybe the penny has finally dropped - the extent to which
they've been used, and they've realised they don't want to be forced to live elsewhere in
Indonesia and be pariahs in their homeland, they'd like to be able to return to their
homeland. They probably also realise that an independent East Timor might be better
governed than it was previously and they'd like to live here. Some of them I think, if
they've committed a lot of crimes, may have burnt their bridges. But to me, they were
never the driving force behind this process, it was always the army, and these people were
always the pawns of the Indonesian army. And that's why it doesn't really surprise us that
some of them now want to come back.
COMPERE: On another matter, you've been getting out
and about looking at what aid can be given and what needs to be done. The first rains have
fallen of the wet season today. Is that a good or a bad thing?
ANDREW MC NAUGHTON: I think obviously the wet coming
in generally would be a good thing. But it's come I would say far too early for the aid
effort. There are probably some hundreds of thousands of people still up in the mountains
with no shelter. The mountains are very cold, particularly if you get rained on and you
get wet, and the roads are in a bad state, and a lot of food, shelter, seed and other
medical care - in other words, vital humanitarian assistance - has yet to arrive to 80 or
90 per cent of the population probably. So, rain - heavy rain at this stage is a big
problem in fact and may be disastrous.
COMPERE: So, what's your assessment at this stage for
things? Do you believe that you are starting to win the battle to help the people, or are
you still in a stalemate situation with insufficient resources?
ANDREW MC NAUGHTON: Well, a bit of both. I think a lot
of progress has occurred. Significant chunks of East Timor are safe enough for
humanitarian organisations to work in. INTERFET has done a reasonably good job in that
respect, although some people think they may have been slower than they should have been.
The humanitarian aid is getting out there, but I would say - I don't know - at a guess,
60, 70, 80 per cent of the population has not yet been touched by it. So it's a bit of
both. A lot of progress has occurred. That's great. But on the other hand, particularly
with the rain coming, we really are behind the 8-ball, and there's a risk that there's
going to be epidemics of things like cholera and people dying from pneumonia because
they'll be up in the mountains getting rained on, they'll have no shelter to go to, be
insufficient food to eat, no medical care able to get to them, and people could well start
dying in very large numbers if the rain sets in now.
COMPERE: Dr Andrew McNaughton of Timor Aid, speaking
to me form Dili.
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