Hope born anew for exiles in tent city

By Greg Ansley

DARWIN - As New Zealand, Australian and British Army Gurkha troops relieved the besieged town of Dare yesterday, hope began to dawn among East Timorese living under canvas in Darwin.

That morning their president-elect, Xanana Gusmao, had come out of hiding to hold a press conference in Darwin with a message of reconciliation and rebuilding for the tiny nation-in-waiting.

Indonesia would grant independence, he promised, and the new republic of East Timor would have no time for vengeance against the militias that had devastated it, nor the "rogue elements" of the Indonesian Army that had joined the destruction.

Mr Gusmao, who fled Timor after death threats which followed his release from house arrest in Jakarta, was wrapped in a powerful welcome of song, dance and tears by more than 1000 refugees who had left before him.

He told them that it might have been Timor's destiny to suffer for 24 years, but "you must be strong to finish."

Among the audience was Sebastiao Guterres, a 26-year-old Dili man whose family was decimated in the slaughter and who arrived too late to save a fellow United Nations worker knifed by militias during the August 30 referendum.

"They may kill our body," he said, "but they cannot kill the spirit."

Mr Guterres was trapped in the United Nations compound as militiamen besieged it with automatic rifle fire.

Outside, his aunt, Agostina Guterres, and her five children, aged from 4 to 12, were butchered with machetes.

Another uncle was shot dead as he drove from Dare to Dili seeking food and medicine for the hundreds of refugees who had fled the sacked capital. His body was burned with the vehicle.

A friend in the Darwin refugee camp is still waiting in equal measures of hope and dread for news of his wife and 2-month-old son.

But yesterday Mr Guterres was looking to the future. "We have to recover and be strong to go back."

That strength received a boost as news of the first convoy of peacekeepers to reach Dare - and of the cheering throng of survivors that emerged to greet them - flashed through the camp.

Graeme Atherton, who has been at the camp since it was set up three weeks ago, has watched a change he described as "quite miraculous."

Hundreds of distressed, confused and frightened evacuees, mostly women and children, huddled at first in a strange world of Army tents and community halls provided by Darwin's Greek, Cypriot and Portuguese Timorese communities.

Yesterday, children laughed as they poured water over one another or hitched rides on a fire truck; small groups talked or sang together.

The only tears in the main community centre were those of children being inoculated after a measles outbreak.

It may be small, but hope has at last returned.