Refugees find a home on another island
The Age/Sydney Morning Herald
January 16 2003
By Matthew Moore
Indonesia Correspondent
Jakarta
Some of the 28,000 East Timorese who remain in West Timor after fleeing
the
carnage that followed East Timor's 1999 vote for independence will soon
be
leaving the island altogether.
In the next few months, the first of 300 East Timorese families will
be moved
to the nearby Indonesian island of Sumba in an experiment by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Indonesian Government intended
to permanently resolve the Timorese refugee issue.
Announcing the plan yesterday, UNHCR officials said it would be quite
different to the transmigration policies of the Suharto government, where
millions of farmers were relocated from densely populated parts of Indonesia
to remote areas such as Papua and Kalimantan.
UNHCR's assistant regional representative, Fernando Protti-Alvarado,
said the
first group of 70 refugee farming families would soon move to the village
of
Denduka in western Sumba. In negotiations with villagers in Denduka last
month, agreement was reached for refugees to farm common land and to have
access to water and other necessities.
Asked why villagers wanted the settlers, Mr Protti-Alvarado said: "They
want
to show solidarity with the refugees and to get access to the community
development fund."
Money from Jakarta and the UNHCR will fund new houses in the village
not just
for refugees but also for locals, with the likelihood of more money for
schools and other government services.
Villagers on Sumba, a mainly Christian island, have made it clear they
do not
want to be outnumbered by the refugees and they are only willing to accept
other Christians.
The UNHCR said the refugees would move only when they and the host villagers
agreed to the plan and the Timorese had had a chance to inspect their
new
homes and meet their new neighbours.
The UNHCR's regional representative, Robert Ashe, said the plan to relocate
refugees would appeal to some, but most refugees still in West Timor would
stay there permanently. Nearly 90 per cent of the 250,000 refugees who
flooded into West Timor have returned home, but most of those remaining
have
roots in Indonesian Timor.
Mr Ashe said that of 9000 East Timorese families still in West Timor,
5600
have a family member employed in the Indonesian civil service, the army
or
the police and have opted to stay.
People who had fled to West Timor lost their right to official refugee
status
and United Nations protection on December 31 last year when the UN decided
they no longer qualified as refugees.
The UNHCR has also drawn up a two-year plan to resolve 819 cases of East
Timorese children still separated from their families.
About 350 of these children are in West Timor and others are scattered
around
Indonesia. In some cases, their guardians refuse to allow the UNHCR to
have
contact with the children or to allow contact with their families, Mr
Ashe
said.
"We have a number of difficult cases where the caretaker is unwilling
to
release the child or allow them to establish some contact... through letters
or photographs," he said.