Around five hundred people, including international and Timorese staff of UNTAET and UNHCR, attended a memorial service today at the Dili Cathedral in honor of the three UNHCR staff members killed last week in Atambua, Indonesia.
In his speech, SRSG Sergio Vieira de Mello said that it is our obligation to keep alive the spirit for which the UNHCR staff members died for.
“That means we are obliged to keep on living, to keep believing in the fact that most human beings are good and that it is within our power to make a difference.”
UNHCR Chief of Operations, Bernard Kerblat, said that although the deaths were a tragic loss for everybody, his colleagues had not died in vain. “They died for an ideal. They died for justice. And justice will prevail one day.”
“We also have to think of the refugees,” he continued. “There are still hundreds of thousands of East Timorese who are prisoners in the hands of the same people who have taken away the lives of our friends.”
CNRT President Xanana Gusmão could not return on time from New York to attend the service.
SRSG MEETS WITH INDONESIAN MINISTER
SRSG Sergio Vieira de Mello and CNRT President Xanana Gusmão are meeting General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Political, Social and Security Affairs tomorrow in Denpasar, Indonesia.
The meeting will focus on the situation in West Timor and the SRSG is expected to reiterate his outrage with the murders of three UNHCR staff in Atambua last week. He will emphasize the need for immediate action, that militias must be disarmed and that those responsible for the killings be brought to justice.
Francois Fouinat, director of UNHCR for Asia, Peter Galbraith, Cabinet Member for Foreign Affairs, the Deputy Force Commander General Michael Smith and the Chief Military Observer, Brigadier Louis Gardner, will also take part in the meeting.
