Over 1000 refugees return to East Timor from Kupang: UNHCR
14 March -- The United Nations refugee agency today reported that more than 1,000 East Timorese had moved out of three major refugee encampments in West Timor's Kupang area, in the largest movement from these camps since the repatriation programme began last October.
According to a spokesman for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the returnees are now at a transit centre in Kupang, awaiting arrangements for their final destinations from the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and the CNRT, the umbrella organization for East Timorese political groups.
UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said 450 of the refugees were scheduled to leave for Dili later today on a boat chartered by the UN International Organization for Migration. The group included 20 former Indonesian soldiers who had decommissioned from the army. The refugees' final destination was Los Palos in the east of the territory.
The remainder of the 1,000-strong group currently in UNHCR's transit centre came from Ailieu, a town in the southern outskirts of Dili regarded as a stronghold of the Falintil, the National Liberation Armed Forces of East Timor. UNHCR said it wanted assurances from the East Timorese political leaders and UNTAET that the refugees would be able to return in safety before taking them back.
UNHCR also reported that more than 150,000 of the estimated 250,000 people who came to West Timor in the aftermath of last September's violence had returned home. The agency hoped that the safe return of this group now at the Kupang transit centre would give momentum to the repatriation programme, which had slowed since late December.
In other news from Dili, UNTAET today reported that autopsies had been performed on the bodies of two men who had been shot last September in a massacre near the town of Los Palos. The killings by the Team Alpha militia claimed a total of eight victims -- two nuns, three seminarians, one journalist and other people.
The UN mission reported that four bodies had been exhumed from local cemeteries to date and autopsies on these four were expected to be completed by tomorrow. The location of the remaining four bodies was known and permission was being sought from the victims' families to complete exhumations, UNTAET said, adding that one of the alleged perpetrators of the massacre was in custody in Dili.
