| Subject: IPS: What
Happened to the Timorese? EAST
TIMOR: What Happened to the Timorese?
By Farhan Haq
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15 (IPS) - International troops and UN
officials, striving to restore order to East Timor, faced the disturbing problem Friday of
where were the hundreds of thousands of Timorese, missing since last month.
Prior to the Aug. 30 vote in which the East Timorese
overwhelmingly opted for independence from Indonesia, the population of the territory was
estimated to be as high as 890,000.
When pro-Indonesia militias - supported by the Indonesian
military - responded to the pro-independence vote with burning, looting and massacres, the
East Timorese fled in their thousands.
Now that Australian-led troops are in control of the
territory, many East Timorese have returned from hiding places in the forests and
mountains and the 200,000, who were expelled to the Indonesian province of West Timor,
slowly are being returned.
Even so, say UN officials, thousands of East Timorese -
perhaps as many as 300,000 - remain missing.
Whether they are still in hiding, or whether many were
killed during last month's violence, is now the subject of controversy at the United
nations.
On the one hand, the disappearance of so many Timorese has
sparked concern here that Indonesian forces may have massacred them.
Some human rights groups have mentioned reports that,
besides the approximately 230,000 East Timorese who were forced into West Timor last
month, thousands more may have been shipped to other islands in Indonesia, or even killed
and dumped into the Pacific Ocean.
One South American diplomat told the UN Security Council
last week about reports of the ''harassment, even killing, of 6000 Timorese in Java and
other Indonesian islands.''
A former UN official in East Timor cited reports that
Indonesian boats which had ferried East Timorese to West Timor's capital, Kupang, returned
in less time than it would take to travel to Kupang and back.
Such reports have led to accusations by Timorese leaders
like Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta, who said of the Indonesians, ''They threw people off
helicopters into the ocean.''
On the other hand, only a few bodies have been uncovered by
the International Force in East Timor (Interfet), leading Indonesia to deny angrily that
there was ''any shred of evidence'' of massacres.
In a statement this week, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry
argued that there had been no evidence to support claims either of mass killings on land
or of bodies dumped offshore.
Indonesia's supporters have argued that there is no truth
in the ''myths'' of wide-scale massacres.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammed said several
reports of killings - such as the rumoured murder of the father of East Timor's
independence leader, Xanana Gusmao - later proved to be false.
''Indonesia has been vilified,'' Mahathir contended.
Yet UN officials argued privately that the September
violence clearly was organised by Indonesian officials. One UN official, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said that officials from both the Indonesian military and the
civilian government had been witnessed coordinating militia activity during the worst
phase of the violence.
That wave of violence clearly included killings, as
Interfet has shown as it has discovered bodies in several suspected massacre sites -
although not as many bodies as previously believed.
And even the 4,000 East Timorese who worked as local
staffers for the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) have not been fully accounted for,
admitted Ian Martin, head of UNAMET.
''It is going to be a long time before we are able to know
the fate of all of those people, as distinct from the core staff who worked at the
headquarters in Dili and at the (UN) regional offices on a longer-term basis,'' Martin
said Thursday.
''We are extremely anxious to do that (find out where they
are), and obviously we have the kind of records to enable us to do that, but it is going
to be part of the general process of discovering who have come back from the hills, who
comes back from Kupang or Atambua (in West Timor),'' he added.
UN officials have organised flights for hundreds of East
Timorese who want to return home from West Timor, but more than 200,000 remain in camps
there - many of which are under the control of the militias, according to the UN High
Commission for Refugees. (END/IPS/fah/mk/99)
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