Refugee repatriation gets top priority

Yemris Fointuna, The Jakarta Post, Kupang

In handling the remaining 290,000 East Timorese refugees in East Nusa Tenggara, the provincial government will give priority to those who want to go back to their homeland.

J.B. Kosapilawan, spokesman for the provincial government, said local authorities would again make an inventory of East Timorese refugees who wanted to go home, to help deal with the refugee issue immediately.

"The government will give priority to the repatriation program, instead of the resettlement program, and those who have chosen to go back to their homeland will be given priority in solving the problem and we will persuade them to join the repatriation program," he said here on Friday.

He added the policy was in line with the central government's instruction to give priority to refugees who had chosen to go back to East Timor.

Asked what the government would do if the refugees decided to stay in Indonesia, Kosapilawan said the government would ask them to join in the resettlement program both inside and outside the province.

Yoseph Setyohadi, chief of the local manpower and transmigration ministry office, conceded the government had slowed the resettlement program in the hope that a majority of refugees would follow the lead of those who had already decided to return to their homeland.

"The resettlement program will be offered to refugees should they decline to join the repatriation program," he said.

Meanwhile, most refugees criticized the government's policy, which they said would prolong their suffering. According to them, they should be given an equal opportunity to either return home or accept the resettlement program.

"The government should be committed to its previous policy that those who have chosen to stay in Indonesia will be resettled to other areas in the country while those who have chosen to go back to East Timor will be repatriated," Abel de Jesus, a refugee from the East Timor regency of Ainaro, said.

Simon Salmona, a refugee from Bobonaro currently living in a refugee camp in Tuapukan, said the government should resettle those who had decided to stay in Indonesia, in light of the upcoming rainy season.

"Numerous contagious diseases will flare in the refugee camps during the upcoming rainy season unless the government takes the initiative to resettle the refugees," he said.