A sister's search for beloved brother
A sister's search for beloved brother
By Stephen Collinson
DILI, East Timor (AFP): Amalia Rodrigues walks the ruined streets of Dili day after day, desperately searching for the young brother she fears was cut down in a hail of militia bullets.
Behind her wide smile of welcome lies an agony of family separation, death and uncertainty that aid workers say thousands of East Timorese are living with.
"I think he must be dead," she says, blinking quickly as tears well up in her eyes. "But I keep looking for him every day. I heard he may have gone to Tibar," a small town close to Dili, she said.
Amalia, 23, was separated from her 15-year-old brother Marcello when militia fighters fired on a crowd in early September, turning the seafront near the home of Bishop Carlos Belo into a shooting range after East Timor voted for independence.
With her parents and three sisters, Amalia then spent several nights huddling in their Dili home before they were finally discovered by members of the militias bent on emptying the city of its population and destroying everything in their way.
As the family fled in terror, Amalia's sister-in-law Marcella was shot dead.
"I try to sleep at night but I have the picture of my sister- in-law in my head," she says. "We pray for her and my brother every night."
As she struggles to cope with her own emotions, Amalia has had to assume the burden of responsibility for the family.
Her traumatized parents spend day after day weeping for their lost son.
After Marcella's death, the family joined the exodus of refugees leaving Dili. In Baucau, East Timor's second city, they escaped death again when gunmen fired into a crowd, killing two people.
It was only when international peacekeepers drove militias out of the capital that the family returned to their wrecked home.
"We are happy they came but we fear that the militias are still hiding," Amalia said.
She is still haunted by visions of the frenzied, bloodshot eyes of the gunmen that fired at her and her brother. "They had bad blood in their eyes."
Despite her grief, Amalia's spirit has not been crushed. When she speaks of her hopes for the nation East Timor is soon to become, her eyes light up with hope and determination.
"We will have independence. We voted for it, we must have it," she says defiantly.
Amalia's suffering is mirrored all over East Timor. At the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Dili, more than 250 people queue every morning at a tracing center for missing people.
They write their names on a small form and a message telling missing relatives how to contact them.
Batches of cards are taken to camps in West Timor, where around 250,000 East Timorese fled.
"This is one of our classic activities," said ICRC delegate Ruth Kottmann.
"Refugees who reach the center are allowed a few minutes on a satellite telephone to tell relatives in other parts of Indonesia that they are alive.
Amalia says she will contact the center in case they can help her find her missing brother.
She looks forward to the day when she can go back to her final year of English studies at Dili university and become a teacher. "I will look for him until I know whether he is dead or alive."