UN investigative team visits Baucau detention center

JAKARTA (JP): Members of the United Nations investigative team called the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on Wednesday visited the Baucau detention center in East Timor.

Antara reported from Baucau that the four-member team also visited the nearby Armed Forces local intelligence headquarters known as Rumah Merah (Red House).

The team under the UN Commission of Human Rights, led by Louis Joinet, has also visited authorities in Jakarta, including the National Police. The team, which also included Osama Rajkha, Roberto Garreton, and Markus Schmidt, was accompanied in East Timor by two interpreters from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Joinet told the head of the Baucau detention center, Capt. Sahono that their visit was to observe whether the detention procedures of convicts and detainees was in line with Indonesian law. The results of the visit would be reported to the UN Commission on Human Rights, Joinet said.

"We aim to find out if the detention procedures are legal... not to investigate the conditions of detention or treatment of prisoners," Antara quoted him as saying.

The visit, from Tuesday to Thursday, is in response to a resolution reached at last year's Commission meeting when the Indonesian government said the working group could visit East Timor.

The agency quoted Joinet as saying the visit included the intelligence headquarters because of reports that it was also once used as a detention center.

The team also visited pro-independence and pro-integration groups and others, including Dili Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo.

Sahono said that since July 1998 the Red House was only used for intelligence activities.

"There used to be a detention center in this house for rebels," he said. "The people would be guided and investigated, and if crimes were involved we immediately made reports and presented them to police." If not, the rebels would be returned to their families after "a one-month guidance" to reform them, the agency quoted him as saying.

"Detention at the Red House involved normal and humane guidance; all was in line with procedures" involving village, district and security authorities, the captain told Joinet and the other team members.

Meanwhile in Dili hundreds of people are still taking shelter at the house of former governor Manuel Viegas Carrascalao, saying they felt intimidated by pro-integration groups in their villages. The refugees first came last month.

Carrascalao, head of the East Timor Movement for Reconciliation and People's Unity (GRPRTT), said Wednesday that some 500 refugees at his home in east Dili included those from the regencies of Liquisa, Ainaro, Manufahi, and Covalima.

"They were forced to come to Dili because they could not stand the terror and intimidation from the military and pro-integration groups," Carrascalao said. He added a larger number of refugees were living with their relatives elsewhere in Dili.

He added that the Falintil resistance group had told him they wanted to take up arms in response, but their leaders were against a military solution.

Carrascalao said he asked them to be patient.

Falintil has demanded he military confiscate all arms distributed to para-military groups, which were impeding a peaceful solution to the province's troubles.

Meanwhile refugees were continuing to leave East Timor by air, land and sea. (33/anr)