The diplaces want to return but wory of safety

The Jakarta Post, Atambua, East Nusa Tenggara

Esperansa Maia is considered wealthy at Haliwel refugee camp.

Hailing from Tunubibi in Maliana, East Timor's main rice producer, she brought along her family's fortune when fleeing the 1999 bloody riots.

While everybody had to fight for every inch of land to erect a tent, she managed to secure a space large enough to tie up her 17 buffaloes and a cow. The family is also raising a large gray swine that roams freely around the complex.

In her flimsy shack is a Rp 17 million tractor she bought in Kupang, the provincial capital, to plow the farm she hires from a local resident. She can support the whole family of seven with corn, rice and tuber from the farm.

But all the wealth has been a bondage to some extent.

"We are dying to live a normal life back in our hometown in Maliana but who can guarantee our safety? Can I take all the cattle back home? I don't want to lose any of them," she said.

When reminded of home, she falls silent and then recalls memories about the village she left almost three years ago.

About 15 meters from her shack in the overcrowded camp, Filomena Tavares, 24, was making flour by crushing corn in a wooden pot. Her 18-month old daughter Teresa Mango was strapped to her back.

Like almost all children in the camp, Teresa is obviously malnourished. The staple food is corn and Teresa - like other kids under six - receives a ration of milk, sugar and mungbean from an international voluntary group.

"Of course we want to go home to our home village in East Timor but only if our personal safety is assured by the government there," said Filomena, whose husband works as an ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver.

"We know there is no future here. Our children do not go to school because it is too expensive for us," she said pointing at a school building across the road, which charges Rp 180,000 a year.

Thousands of children have been the most affected of the victims in the armed conflict that resulted in the displacement of an estimated two-thirds of East Timor's 800,000 population.

Personal safety has become the refugees' main concern but it is as strong as their desire to voluntarily return as President of East Timor Xanana Gusmao has called for. Besides, the Indonesian government has been increasing pressure for them to leave.

Most of the remaining displaced people -- their numbers are estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000 -- are understood to be families of the pro-Indonesia militias who spearheaded the destruction of an estimated 80 percent of East Timor in 1999.

They fear reprisals by pro-independence Timorese.

"Everybody wants to leave the camp and resume a new life but we want a guarantee for our personal safety from the East Timor government," said Esperanso Lopes, who, like her husband Jasinto Lopes, retains her job as a teacher and now they teach in a local state elementary school.

"We don't want to be harassed in any way if and when we return."

Esperanso lives in the camp with her husband and four children.

As teachers, the couple is a respected family in the neighborhood. Their best piece of furniture is a green sofa, which they said was among the few things they managed to take along with them when fleeing home three years ago.

The Timorese in the Indonesian and East Timor halves of the island look at each other with suspicion. Residents of Tunubibi, which is separated by a river from a refugee camp in the Indonesian territory, still talk about the threat of militias striking again once the UN Peace-Keeping Force leaves.

The ex-militias, on their part, are scared not only by possible reprisals by their former enemies but also by the prospect of being taken to court for violating human rights.

"I have heard the maximum penalty is death," said Joakim, a camp neighborhood chief, who like other refugees, refused to say whether he was a former militia or not. --Pandaya