East Timor:
UN team attacked

by Peter Mac

Attacks on United nations team members this week have illustrated the 
futility of trying to organise a referendum on independence while the 
territory is controlled by anti-independence militia and the Indonesian 
military.

Last week the United Nations regional office in the town of Maliana was 
attacked and armed intruders entered the residence of UN personnel at 
Viqueque. Death threats were received by UN staff at other locations in 
East Timor.

On Sunday a convoy of UN aid workers returning from delivering aid to 
starving refugees in the town of Maubara was attacked by a militia group 
armed with guns and machetes at Liquica, 30km west of Dili.

A driver was shot and three other members of the convoy team are either 
dead or missing. (The police advised that they had been taken to hospital 
but they were not found there.) Several other members of the team were 
injured, and one of the cars was destroyed.

In recent weeks UN and other aid workers have experienced increasing 
difficulty in gaining access to East Timorese communities, especially those 
in more remote areas.

The Catholic aid organisation Caritas has documented evidence of more than 
58,000 people being forced to flee their homes as a result of militia or 
military attacks.

Five thousand nine hundred of these people reached Dili and are being cared 
for, but the majority are in remote areas, and many are reported to be 
starving because of attacks on food convoys by militia groups.

The Indonesian police, who were recently formed from units of the Army, 
told one aid organiser that they did not have the resources to provide 
escorts for the convoys. At the moment the UN itself cannot provide 
protection because their mandate only enables UN forces to assist the 
police.

The South Australian group Campaign for an Independent East Timor (CIET) 
has called for the following steps to be taken as a precondition for the 
referendum:

* a UN peace-making mission to be placed in East Timor with the capacity to 
control the Indonesian military and its militias;

* the UN mission to be maintained in place until after the referendum and 
the disbanding of the militias and the withdrawal of Indonesian Army and 
police forces;

* the international community to place pressure on Indonesia to disarm and 
disband the militia, to withdraw military forces, to release resistance 
leader Xanana Gusmao and allow Gusmao and Jose Ramos Horta to visit the 
territory to consult with the East Timorese people on independence.

The pressure to be exerted to include the cessation of military co-
operation with the Indonesian Government, and the cessation of IMF, World 
Bank and government-to-government loans, with the exception of humanitarian 
aid to needy communities in Indonesia.

* all Indonesian soldiers and police to leave East Timor prior to the 
referendum taking place;

* an international crimes tribunal to be conducted for the prosecution of 
Indonesian military and political leaders suspected of crimes against 
humanity in East Timor, West Papua and parts of Indonesia itself.

The attacks on its personnel have given the UN team a taste of what the 
East Timorese people have suffered for 24 years. Any person or organisation 
supporting independence, or even supporting a choice for the East Timorese 
on this question, will be harassed, attacked and if necessary killed.

The attacks prove conclusively that a free and fair referendum on 
independence cannot take place until the militia and the Indonesian 
military are withdrawn.