Australia wants refugees freed from W. Timorese camps
Australia wants refugees freed from W. Timorese camps
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP): Australia will push for the return of East Timorese refugees held against their will in West Timor at UN-led talks in Jakarta on Friday, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Wednesday.
Australian officials will attend the talks at which Jakarta is expected to decide if it will withdraw aid to the tens of thousands of refugees still living in West Timor after fleeing militia violence in East Timor last September.
He said a reasonably large percentage would want to stay in Indonesia rather than be part of an independent East Timor.
"But some of them will want to go back and there are a number of reasons why they haven't all gone back yet and one of them is that there has been ongoing harassment by militia," he said.
Downer said the refugees still needed assistance and Canberra believed those who wanted to return to East Timor should not be prevented from doing so by pro-Indonesian militia still active in the refugee camps.
"We obviously don't want to let the refugees who are still in West Timor -- and there are perhaps around 100,000 of them there -- end up in the situation where they're plunged into total poverty," he told reporters here.
"It is not entirely clear what path the Indonesians are following. They have in place a policy which is to phase out aid to the refugees in West Timor by the end of this month, but they haven't made any final decisions on that."
Downer said Australian representatives would take part in Friday's Jakarta-based meeting organized by the UN Office for the Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs.
They would be joined by representatives from several other countries and various aid agencies.
"I don't want to see there be no aid for the refugees in West Timor, there must be continuing support for these people," he said. "How aid is going to be managed to those people is something that is being discussed this week."
Further discussions would follow the meeting, he said. A member of the UN inquiry into Human Rights Violations in East Timor meantime warned that the world was in danger of forgetting about bringing to justice those who committed the atrocities.
German parliamentarian Sabine Leutheusser also criticized the United Nations for failing to set up an international human rights tribunal for East Timor as had been recommended by the inquiry.
"At this moment, three months after we submitted our report to the United Nations, we've got no answer and I think something must have happened there," she told ABC radio.
"I think that the Indonesian government will not allow very deep investigations concerning these serious violations on human rights which happened in the last year in East Timor before and after the referendum on Aug. 30."