Looking for Loved Ones Amid East Timor Ruins

Marcelino Gutteres has been on the run longer than he can remember. Two weeks, or is it three? He’s lost track. He feels as though he’s seen the world: Dili. Up into the mountains. Out to the western coast. Back to Dili. Where next? he asks. And he answers his own question: “Maybe home.”

For Gutteres, 22, home is Dili. But his family is scattered somewhere. Maybe in West Timor. Maybe hiding in the mountains. Everything a maybe. He thinks his family is safe someplace, but as he searched among the refugees huddled near Dili’s port Saturday, seeing no familiar faces, maybe . . .

No, he said. That was something he would not think about.

Gutteres, a small, frail man, walked on, peering under the blue canvas shelters that refugees had pitched for protection from the burning sun. He moved among children sitting in looted executive office chairs, among women cooking rice over a few smoldering sticks, among piles of mattresses and tattered suitcases, malaria everywhere, foul smells rising everywhere, but nowhere the face of his mother, father, brother or sister.

“So if I don’t find them, I will get some rice and go back to the mountains, to Dare,” he said. “Three hours by foot, maybe a little more. I will stay until Falintil [the pro-independence guerrillas] says it is safe to return. Maybe a week. Maybe more. But soon Dili will no longer belong to the militias.”

Gutteres--whose Dili home was burned in a rampage by anti-independence militias after East Timor’s vote for independence Aug. 30--is part of a massive tide of people displaced from a land that has been virtually destroyed and emptied of its population, except for those hiding in forests and mountains.

One relief worker, Sanjay Sojwal of World Vision, who flew over East Timor in a helicopter late last week, said: “We looked for clusters of people but didn’t see any. We looked for vehicles on roads, but there weren’t any. The only people we saw were occasional groups of twos and threes. Almost everything was burned.

“The extent of the arson was extremely shocking. It is quite evident this was the result of a scorched-earth policy, a plan that was carefully executed and orchestrated. They burned everything they could get their hands on.”

Once security returns, relief organizations will launch a huge humanitarian mission. As a prelude, a U.N. convoy with food and medicine headed for Baukau, 70 miles east of Dili, on Saturday to link up with Philippine soldiers who were to provide additional security in East Timor’s second-largest city. World Vision, working with the U.N. World Food Program, already has distributed 19 tons of rice in East Timor, enough to feed 10,400 people for a week.

Like the countryside Sojwal inspected, Dili too has been largely destroyed and emptied, with only a few thousand displaced people left from a population of 200,000. But after Australian-led peacekeepers launched a massive show of force Friday--with neighborhoods cordoned off and searched, helicopter gunships crisscrossing the city and increased foot patrols and armor on the streets--Dili had regained an atmosphere of uneasy calm this morning, and many refugees began contemplating a return to the roofless shells of what had once been their homes.

“I want to wait a few more days to see what happens, but I’m feeling a lot better today that the militias can’t run crazy anymore,” said Laurenca Belo, 40. As he spoke, a neighbor moved off down the deserted street toward his burned-out home, pushing a homemade cart loaded with rice, two mattresses, two cartons of drinking water, pots and pans, suitcases and a stolen electric fan.

The commander of Australian land troops in the U.N.-sanctioned peacekeeping force, Brig. Gen. Mark Evans, said Saturday that the show of force he launched was designed “to build confidence in Dili” and that security was returning.

At a briefing for journalists, Col. Marcus Fielding, a senior Australian staff officer, said it was too early to declare that the militias had been broken.

“Dili is still a dangerous place,” he said. “It is going to take a little while to ensure that people are safe. But remember, we are a maneuver force and we will strike at the militias and we will strike at a time of our choosing.”

So far, the Australians have not fired a shot since the peacekeeping mission began Monday. They have secured the core of Dili and early today were moving into the nearby district of Becora, a pro-independence stronghold devastated by militias working in conjunction with the Indonesian military. A Dutch journalist was fatally shot in Becora last week. Two other journalists were ambushed there by Indonesian soldiers and had to be rescued by Australian helicopters.