Govt needs Willem's help for refugee repatriation
Govt needs Willem's help for refugee repatriation
Yemris Fointuna, The Jakarta Post, Kupang
Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Yusuf Kalla has
officially requested the Indonesian Military (TNI) leadership to
allow Maj. Gen. Willem T. da Costa, chief of Udayana Military
Command to participate in the government's endeavor to repatriate
East Timorese refugees.
Kalla made the request in an official letter he delivered to
Indonesian Military Commander Admiral Widodo A.S. on Nov. 6,
2001.
He explained in the letter that he had lodged the request
after witnessing the repatriation of 138 East Timorese families
at Willem's good initiative.
According to The Jakarta Post's monitoring, conflicts among
East Timorese refugees have been reduced significantly following
Willem's appointment as the military command's chief (to replace
his predecessor Lt. Gen. Kiki Syahnakri, now deputy chief of the
Army) in January 2000.
Willem has so far held several talks between conflicting
refugees in their barracks in which he has encouraged refugees to
return to their homeland. Of 143 East Timorese refugees
registered last June, 8,000, including 1,200 former members of
the pro-Jakarta East Timor militias, have gone back to their home
villages in East Timor.
Meanwhile, some 50 tribal chiefs of the Ermera district in
East Timor, who are also refugees and 125 coordinators of refugee
barracks held a preliminary meeting in Atambua on Friday to
prepare a reconciliatory meeting scheduled for Nov. 17, 2001 in a
free zone between the settlements of Batu Gade in East Timor and
Mota Ain in East Nusa Tenggara.
Claudio de Jesus Lay, a tribal chief from Ermera who is also a
refugee in Belu, said the meeting of the two sides was important
to make preliminary preparations for the planned reconciliation
among refugees and for the government-sponsored repatriation
program.
"We are all meeting here to reach agreement on the planned
reconciliation and repatriation of refugees," Antara news agency
quoted him as saying.
The agreement on reconciliation was reached in the meeting
between figures of East Timor's Ermera district and refugees in
Belu on Oct. 24.
A majority of 16,000 Ermera refugees in the province are
former members of the former prointegration force (PPI), which
was widely known to be repressive and hardline before the 1999
poll in East Timor.
Claudio said the reconciliatory meeting would be a golden
opportunity to encourage Ermera refugees to go home.
"Most of us will likely return home should Ermera's figures be
ready to accept us as their brothers," he said.
He said he understood the demands made by people from Ermera
for the trial of ex-fighters who were involved in mass killings
in the district following the East Timor ballot.
"But, most participants of the meeting want the people of
Ermera and refugees to put all the bloody incidents behind them
to enable reconciliation to take place in East Timor," he said.