Pro-Jakarta militia operating out of refugee camps and other bases in West Timor show no sign of scaling down their attacks upon refugees or United Nations soldiers and humanitarian staff. The increasing number of clashes between the militia and UN patrols is further delaying East Timorese refugees return home and fuelling fears that security in the border region will continue to deteriorate.
The fatal August 10 firefight between Nepalese UN soldiers and militia near the town of Suai, 30 kilometres inside East Timor's territory, followed a spate of militia incursions along the West Timor border over the last two months.
While UN representatives in East Timor believe they can "contain" militia activity, they have also stressed that they cannot totally secure the border and expect further attacks to take place. "There could well be some militias who have already infiltrated ... and who might be lying low to hit some pre-designated targets on certain dates. But what those targets are we don't know", warned General Mike Smith, the deputy chief of UN forces in East Timor.
Senior Indonesian government officials have also said they are unable to halt militia activity or secure the Indonesian side of the border, primarily because of the direct support the militia gangs receive from the Indonesian military (TNI). Indonesian defence minister Juwono Sudarsono told Deutsche Presse-Agentur on August 11 that "rogue" Indonesian soldiers are "possibly" supporting the militias, "but I can say for certain it's not the formal commander, General Kiki Syahnakri. There may be problems below him, especially in the camps."
Despite recent promises by Syahnakri, not one of the refugee camps which were ordered shut at the end of July by President Abdurrahman Wahid have closed.
Increasing intimidation of staff from the International Office of Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has resulted in an indefinite halt to repatriation of East Timorese refugees from the camps. In an incident on August 11, 50 machete wielding members of the Aitarak militia surrounded the IOM office in Atambua, not far from where some of the largest refugee camps are located. The staff were under siege for several hours before TNI soldiers and police intervened.
Similar attacks and protests by militia members have occurred in recent weeks outside the main IOM and UNHCR offices in West Timor and the UN offices in Jakarta.
"The militia terror campaign in West Timor and along East Timor's border mirror those attacks launched by the TNI and militia more than a year ago across East Timor in the lead-up to the referendum on independence", said Max Lane, national coordinator of Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor. "The militia gangs are well armed and trained, and they appear just as brazen and dangerous as they did last year when they carried out their 'scorched earth' policy after the vote", he told Green Left Weekly.
Much more needs to be done to halt the terror: "There is a lack of consistent political and diplomatic pressure from the UN and Western governments upon the Indonesian government and military to end the militias' activities", Lane said.
Lane added that the admission by Indonesian government officials that they could not control the militia gangs in West Timor makes it "even less likely that militia leaders and TNI officers and soldiers responsible for mass murder in East Timor will be punished as a result of the Indonesian government investigations under way at the moment".
BY JON LAND