U.N. Evacuates Relief Staff in W. Timor

Fearing more attacks after the mob killing of three foreign aid workers, the United Nations evacuated its remaining relief staff from West Timor on Thursday, leaving about 90,000 refugees without international assistance.

The Indonesian government, pledging to assert control in the troubled region, said 15 people had been arrested in Wednesday’s slayings of the aid workers.

More than 2,000 Indonesian soldiers were on their way to bolster the ranks of soldiers who stood by while the crowd of militia members and their supporters killed the humanitarian aid workers and torched the U.N. office in the town of Atambua.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which had been feeding refugees in the Indonesian province, shut down its operation and evacuated 171 foreign and Indonesian aid workers to Bali and East Timor. It was unclear whether all of the aid workers who fled the mob had been rescued.

Jake Moreland, with the U.N. agency in Kupang, the provincial capital, said violence in West Timor was in danger of worsening. There were reports that nearly 70 houses had been burned Thursday in clashes between locals and refugees, he said.

“I think what we can foresee is a security meltdown here in West Timor,” Moreland told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “This will affect both locals and refugees. The situation has deteriorated to such a level now that we cannot even envision staying here.”

The island of Timor was torn apart by fighting last year after the people of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, voted to secede from Indonesia. Anti-independence militias closely allied with the Indonesian military slaughtered hundreds of people, destroyed buildings and drove an estimated 280,000 refugees across the border into West Timor. East Timor is now administered by the U.N.

In West Timor, the militia members in effect have taken control of the refugee camps near the border. Violence against the U.N. flared up after the death Tuesday of a notorious anti-independence militia leader, who last week was named by the Indonesian government as a suspect in East Timor human rights violations.

According to one account, militia leader Olivio Mendosa Murok was killed because of a gambling debt. Others speculate that he was slain to keep him from testifying and implicating other militia and Indonesian military leaders in last year’s atrocities.

Indonesian Atty. Gen. Marzuki Darusman, who is bringing the case against 18 additional army and militia leaders for the East Timor atrocities, said Thursday that the government will provide protection for two other militia leaders who have been named as suspects.

Some believe that violence reaching across Indonesia from Sumatra in the west to Irian Jaya in the east is part of a plan to destabilize the government of President Abdurrahman Wahid, who took office last year after Indonesia’s first free presidential election process in decades, and pave the way for a return to military dictatorship.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s chief politics and security minister, said the government was investigating whether the killing of the three U.N. workers was “caused by political motives to discredit the government.”

Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of the U.N. mission in East Timor, said the militias pose more of a danger to the stability of Indonesia than to that of East Timor.

He called on Wahid’s government to restore Indonesian control over West Timor by arresting, disarming and disbanding the militias. Until then, he said, U.N. relief workers are unlikely to go back.