Immediate help urged for Buton refugees, orphans

JAKARTA (JP): Medical doctors, students and witnesses of religious unrest in the Maluku towns of Ambon and Tual, which have up to 100,000 people displaced, are appealing for immediate assistance for refugees now living in so squalid a condition many could die of disease.

A team of medical students from the University of Indonesia and doctors from Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital interviewed on the sidelines of a fund-raiser on Sunday, spoke of recent visits to the riot-torn areas and refugee centers in Buton, Southeast Sulawesi, which are in dire need of medical service, food and clean water.

The students and doctors spent nearly two weeks in early April in Tual, and a week in Buton, whose original population of 500,000 now has to accommodate up to 80,000 refugees including "thousands of orphans".

Student Bona Akhad described how in Tual, some 500 kilometers southeast of Ambon, thousands of refugees are crammed into the unfinished building of Tual market. Three to four families were put into each kiosk of the market.

"They need food badly, but it can never reach them fast enough," he said.

Bona added the food supplies being shipped by his university in cooperation with state-owned shipping company Pelni would never reach on time the areas which needed immediate help.

"The most recent shipment arrived at its destination on May 10, despite the ship actually departing from Jakarta on April 20," he said. "Children there have not had milk for months. They need nutrition badly."

Another student, Dani, described how thousands of people who fled Maluku to Buton's capital of Bau-Bau were immediately asked by local officials whether they still remembered certain places in the province. Most of the refugees were actually from Southeast Sulawesi and who migrated to Maluku.

"Some refugees remembered their ancestors lived in the Lasalimu district... some remembered their mother was born in a village in Buton, and according to what they remembered, they were placed there," Dani said.

"In actuality, none of them had living relatives in those villages," he said.

Dani explained how a number of Buton locals took pity on the refugees and took them in. The largest traditional rumah panggung (elevated houses on stilts or pillars) in Lasalimu district, for instance, was an 8-meter by 6-meter shack which now had to accommodate up to five families of refugees.

The villagers there made it a practice of collecting a monthly fee of Rp 5,000 (US 12 cents) from the refugees for food supplies.

"Tell me, how much can that help?" Dani said.

He also said the refugees faced three kinds of water problems. The first concerned those who were located in villages over a kilometer away from puddles of water; they had to walk that distance to scoop water with cans.

"Secondly, there are those who live close by to ponds with very green, filthy water. They bath, wash and drink from there. Third, there are those who live by the beach. You can imagine the water situation there," he said.

Basuki Supartono, a member of the team of doctors sent to Tual, recounted how they had to face a closed-down hospital upon arriving at the city by a Navy plane from Ambon.

"All of the doctors in that hospital had left it and Tual. My team were so shocked we could just stand there," said Basuki, an orthopedic surgeon who together with his team and the students performed 29 operations in their 12-day visit in Tual.

"We were informed that Tual hospital was closed because of security reasons. Doctors are supposed to be given a guarantee of safety from the state if they serve during the war... and we faced that situation," he said.

Basuki explained the priority was to operate on patients with blast wounds, gunshot wounds and wounds from sharp weapons resulting from the war between Muslims and Christians that had so far killed more than 300 people in the province.

With the help of doctors from the Indonesian Military (TNI), the hospital was reopened.

"While the hospital was being guarded by one-tenth of the Army battalion, we doctors mopped the floors and got its operating rooms ready," Basuki said.

Among injuries they operated on were wounds caused by the accidental blasting of hand-made "bazookas", a perforated colon from an arrow and the rupturing of a major blood artery near the chest by arrows and gun-shot wounds.

When asked whether it would be possible for the elections to be held in the refugee zones in Maluku, Dani said the situations in Tual and Ambon were still prone to rioting.

"Christians there are pro-Christian political parties and Muslims, pro-Muslim parties. If a Muslim party wins, riots could break out again," Dani said.

"Problems will mainly arise, I think, during the campaigning activities and ballot counting."

Eri Sudewo, head of the Dompet Dhuafa relief non-governmental organization, described how once a Muslim political party held a campaigning rally near refugee centers in Buton totally ignored them.

"The campaigners were as far as 600 meters from those refugees. They didn't bother to come and do anything for the refugees," Eri said. (ylt)