Starving refugees denied food aid

Starving refugees denied food aid

Yemris Fointuna, The Jakarta Post, Kupang

Pleading financial difficulties, the provincial government in
East Nusa Tenggara insisted on Friday it would not resume the
supply of food assistance to some 128,000 East Timorese refugees
currently facing starvation in camps across the province.

Stanis Tefa, welfare bureau chief of the provincial
secretariat, said that despite suffering from hunger, the
refugees would not receive food relief from the Indonesian
government.

However, the government would supply medicines and health
services for those who were experiencing emergency conditions,
including those suffering from diarrhea and other diseases, as
well as the effects of flooding and other natural disasters in
their camps, he added.

"We no longer have the money to provide rice and a food
allowance to the refugees. The government will only give them
assistance if they are faced with extraordinary circumstances or
emergencies," Tefa told The Jakarta Post.

"But this will only be in the form of healthcare, not food,
assistance," he added.

Meanwhile, Uni Timor Aswaian (Untas), an umbrella organization
dealing with the affairs of East Timorese refugees, said on
Friday that the Indonesian government should not allow them to
die from starvation as its international image would be further
tarnished.

Joao Bosco, the organization's monitoring and evaluation
section head, urged the central government to continue to help
the suffering refugees survive in their camps.

"The Indonesian government should immediately take emergency
measures to counter the threat of starvation being faced by the
refugees in West Timor," he told journalists in Kupang, East Nusa
Tenggara.

Bosco argued that Decree No. 5/1999 issued by the People's
Consultative Assembly (MPR) clearly stipulated that the
Indonesian government was responsible for protecting the East
Timorese refugees and guaranteeing their welfare.

"Now the government is no longer providing food aid to the
refugees even though they are currently facing the threat of
hunger. It's a violation of the law," he said. "The government
must take emergency action to tackle the problem."

The cash-strapped government halted the supply of food
assistance on Jan. 1 and instead offered the refugees the choice
of staying in Indonesia under a resettlement program or returning
to East Timor.

The refugees are the last of the some 250,000 others who fled
the carnage unleashed by pro-Jakarta militias in East Timor after
it voted to secede from Indonesia in August 1999. Many of the
other refugees have since returned to their homeland.

However, the estimated 128,000 refugees currently languishing
in West Timor and Kupang have refused to leave the camps until
after East Timor officially becomes an independent state on May
20, 2002.

Many of them have said they are running out of food, last
provided by the Indonesian government in December, and have begun
to eat cassava in place of rice, or are eating rice only twice a
day.

Residents in the villages of Noelbaki, Tuapukan and Naibonat
in Kupang, meanwhile, have complained of violence and terror
perpetrated by refugees who steal and rob from them for food.

Udayana Military Commander Maj. Gen. Wellem T. da Costa on
Thursday ordered soldiers to shoot East Timor any refugees found
committing violence against villagers living near the refugee
camps.

He said he could understand the difficulties the refugees
faced as they struggled to survive after the aid was stopped, but
added that despite the scarcity of food it was intolerable that
they be allowed to freely terrorize, intimidate and blackmail
local villagers.

Many of the refugees that remain in West Timor are linked to
the former Indonesian regime and include ex-militiamen.