| Subject: Washington Post: E.
Timor's Men Return to Find Families Gone Washington Post Tuesday, October 19, 1999
E. Timor's Men Return to Find Families Gone
Militias Believed to Be Holding Women, Children Across
Border
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Staff Writer
MALIANA, East Timor—As scores of weary, bedraggled
Timorese men trudge down from the verdant hills that surround Maliana after a month in
hiding, they are asking the same anguished question: Where are our families?
The men, many of them supporters of independence for East
Timor, had fled to the mountains early last month, seeking to escape anti-independence
militias pillaging the countryside. They camped out in caves and makeshift bamboo tents,
fearful that they--but not their wives, mothers and children--would be targeted by the
militiamen.
But now, as these men walk down to their ransacked homes,
to their church and then to the burned-out town center, they are discovering an eerie
desolation. No squealing children. No smell of cooking fires. Nobody. Anywhere.
In another cruel twist to the conflict that has engulfed
this poor island since residents overwhelmingly voted on Aug. 30 to secede from Indonesia,
peacekeepers and human rights observers believe that, in a final act of retribution, most
women, children and older men from this town and dozens of others were herded by militias
across the nearby border into Indonesian-controlled western Timor, where they are being
held against their will. And now it is the men here who are voicing the same wrenching
grief as mothers and wives have in so many other military conflicts, when their sons and
husbands were carted off to prison camps.
"All I can think about is my family," said
Roberto Soares, 20, who last saw his mother, two sisters and six other relatives on Sept.
4, the day he ran into the hills with dozens of other young men.
He thinks his family is being held at a refugee camp near
Atambua, a town about 20 miles away in western Timor, which is still part of Indonesia and
is under control of the central government in Jakarta.
"I'm worried," he whispered, his voice choking
up. "I hear they are killing people in Atambua."
Although allegations of widespread murders or forcible
detentions in the camps have not been independently confirmed, human rights workers say
the militias have intimidated the women and children, warning them that if they return,
their husbands and sons will be attacked.
"They're using threats, not fences," said Richard
Ragan, an emergency officer with the U.N. World Food Program, which has flown more than 10
tons of high-protein biscuits to Maliana.
Peacekeepers anticipate that many of the 260,000 people who
are believed to be in the camps might return to East Timor on foot, through this town. If
and when that might happen, though, is unclear. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) still has not been able to enter the camps near Atambua, where as many as 150,000
people--including 25,000 from the Maliana area--are believed to be held.
"The border is sealed, locked, shut," said
Jacques Franquin, a UNHCR spokesman. "We believe they will be allowed to return one
day, but when and how is anybody's guess."
That uncertainty defines Roberto Alves's life. A university
student, he came home from the Indonesian city of Surabaya in late August to vote and
subsequently fled into the mountains with his father after being threatened by militias.
When Alves returned home Saturday, he discovered his mother and sister gone.
"Without my family, it doesn't feel like I have
returned," said Alves, 24.
Since his family's house was burned down during the
rampage, he sleeps in one of the few intact dwellings in his neighborhood--one that used
to belong to a militiaman. With his mother and sister gone, Alves said he has no desire to
clean out the family house and rebuild it.
"I just don't feel like doing anything now but wait
for them," he said.
Wearing a blue sweat shirt and camouflage cutoffs, he has
spent much of the last two days surveying the damage in Maliana, which used to be a
vibrant town surrounded by coffee plantations and corn fields near the border with western
Timor and about 40 miles southwest of Dili, the East Timorese capital.
>From the air, the community appears as if it were hit
by a powerful hurricane. Roofs are gone. Windows have been shattered. Smashed furniture
sits outside houses.
Walking through the neighborhoods, which are patrolled by
Australian soldiers and a regiment of Nepalese Gurkhas, the thoroughness of the
destruction is evident. Water pipes have been hacked open; cars are blackened shells.
When the men first began descending from the hills, the
multinational peacekeeping troops wondered whether many of the women were staying behind,
waiting for a signal that the town was safe. And they questioned whether the families had
taken refuge in other places.
"It quickly became clear that wasn't the case,"
said Maj. Mark Ogilvie of the New Zealand Army. "These guys have a good bush
telegraph. If their families were in the hills, they'd know about it."
Even if their families return, many of the men know life
will take months, if not years, to return to normal. The turmoil prevented people from
planting crops before the rainy season, which begins in the next week or two, meaning that
a food shortage likely will continue into next year. Then there is the matter of
reconstructing homes, schools and other elements of life as they knew it.
Soares, who sleeps in an Indonesian state television
transmission facility, one of a handful of buildings left intact by the militias, said he
does not intend to return to the University of East Timor, where he had been studying
economics.
"There is a lot of work to do in Maliana," he
said. "We may have our independence, but we are starting from nothing."
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