By GEOFF CUMMING and GREG ANSLEY
"The children look up at visitors with a curious mixture of doubt and hope. Some seem distant, thinking of a time when things were better in their former homes in East Timor.
"The adults are suspicious, even abrasive, towards strangers in their midst. But they have nowhere to go and nothing pressing to do."
So reported one Christian relief worker who spent time a few months ago in one of dozens of camps housing East Timorese refugees in West Timor. He saw an air of resignation in the women and small children queuing daily for food rations from aid workers.
Clothes were washed at a tap at the side of the big blue water tanks.
But in recent weeks, the slow rhythm of camp life has given way to volatility as the resurgent militias applied a choke-hold to the international relief effort.
Now that 400 aid workers have abandoned the camps, those who remain are suddenly extremely vulnerable.
The pro-Indonesia militias behind this week's bloody rampage at Atambua could next turn on the refugees, say aid workers. Unless intense international pressure is brought to bear on the Indonesian Government to confront the militia, another Rwanda could unfold.
Up to 120,000 East Timorese remain in the camps nearly a year after crossing the border to escape the bloody aftermath of the independence vote.
Although many are thought to be militia sympathisers or pro-Indonesian integration, a good proportion still want to go home. Many have stayed because of misinformation about their fate should they return to East Timor.
The camps range in size from a handful of families to several thousand people. They are concentrated around Atambua near the border, and the capital, Kupang.
They vary considerably - a bus station, a school or just open fields sprouting blue or khaki tents provided by the United Nations. Some are more like shanty towns cobbled together from scraps of rusty iron and timber. Everywhere there is a feeling of dirt and squalor.
The World Health Organisation says 230 people died in the camps in the first five months of this year - 79 of them children under 5.
Such conditions have proven fertile recruiting ground for the militia, under the complicit eye of Indonesian authorities.
Some reports claim the militias have swelled from an estimated 2000 to around 7000. Since April, it has stepped up intimidation and violence towards United Nations peacekeepers and relief workers, and slowed the repatriation programme.
The aid agencies have been the most exposed, working against constant threats and violence with scant protection from Indonesian security forces, which have yet to make any arrests in connection with the long list of attacks on UN staff.
Last month, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees suspended operations in West Timor after one of its workers was severely beaten, violence broke out in the large refugee camp near Kupang and machete-wielding militiamen threatened staff at Atambua before setting up roadblocks and attacking aid workers.
The most notorious militia commanders are alleged to be responsible for some of the worst atrocities last year in East Timor.
The death of militia leader Olivio Mendosa Moruk on Tuesday came almost a year to the day after the Suai cathedral massacre, of which he is said to have been an instigator.
Save the Children senior field officer Donna Holden, who was evacuated to Jakarta yesterday, says the pattern of events has disturbing echoes of the leadup to last year's atrocities.
The militias first targeted the United Nations effort and international relief agencies, then local agencies, she says. "Then, when everyone is evacuated they start to go for the general population."
Without the security apparatus and the eyes of the international field workers on them, the militias could run rampant through the population of West Timor.
"People have been talking about this being reminiscent of Rwanda."
Andre Sutikopranopo of the Jesuit Relief Service in Dili says the fear now is that food supplies to the camps around Atambua will be cut off. While some camps have access to rice and fish, many do not.
"Pressure must be put on the Indonesian Government about their humanitarian responsibility to protect these people from the militia."
Herald Online feature: the Timor mission
UN Transitional Administration in E Timor
Timorese exiles caught in camps of despair
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