Refugees lash out at governor's ultimatum

Refugees lash out at governor's ultimatum

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan, North Sumatra

Thousands of people who claim to be Acehnese refugees ignored
North Sumatra governor T. Rizal Nurdin's ultimatum to leave the
provincial legislative council building, saying they would
continue occupying the compound until they obtained resettlement
funds.

Nano, a protest coordinator, called on the governor to account
for the distribution of a total of Rp 106 billion disbursed by
the central government for the resettlement of the refugees.

"We know that some of the funds has been distributed to the
majority of the refugees, but the remainder is still being kept
by the provincial administration, and is being embezzled by
unauthorized officers. The provincial legislature should ask the
governor to account for this embezzlement of funds," he said.

A group of the protesters visited public broadcaster TVRI
demanding that it arrange a teleconference between them and
Minister of Social Affairs Bachtiar Chamsyah. The TV station
rejected the protesters' demands due to the financial
difficulties it was facing.

On Thursday, the refugees held the governor and a number of
councillors hostage for eight hours in the legislative building
as they saw no sign that the governor was willing to distribute
the funds.

The governor threatened to deploy security personnel to evict
them by force from the compound but the protesters still refused
to return to their refuge camps scattered across several areas of
the city, Binjai and Langkat.

Bachtiar has accused a number of non-governmental
organizations and students' associations of trying to exploit the
refugee issue to make money. He believed that some of the people
occupying the legislative building were not refugees as they were
not registered with the local social affairs office.

Governor Rizal also suspected that several NGOs were provoking
poor people in the city to join in the protest.

"It would be better for the protesters to return to their
refugee camps so that the provincial administration can re-
register them and ascertain the exact number of refugees who have
yet to obtain the resettlement funds," he said.

Last December, the government decided to provide financial
assistance to refugees in an attempt to resolve the refugee
problem nationwide. It was decided that refugees in the province
would receive Rp 8,750,000 per family to build modest homes in
their resettlement areas.

Of a total of 12,000 families forced to flee due to the Aceh
conflict, 7,000 have already been resettled while the remaining
5,000 are still languishing in refugee camps.

Ikhwaluddin Simatupang, a member of a team of lawyers
providing support to the refugees, denied that a number of NGOs
and students associations were exploiting the refugee issue to
make money.

"We are here to help the refugees obtain their rights," he
said.

So far, the police have detained 20 officers of the provincial
administration for embezzling a total of Rp 2.5 billion from the
resettlement funds.

Syamsul Bachri, chief of the social affairs office in Binjai,
was sentenced to three years imprisonment after he was found
guilty of embezzling a part of the resettlement funds earmarked
for refugees in the regency.