Precedence: bulk Pro-Jakarta militia turn back aid mission to East Timor refugees 07/24/1999 Deutsche Presse-Agentur Copyright (c) 1999, dpa Dili, East Timor (dpa) - Pro-Jakarta militiamen in East Timor on Saturday turned back a group of aid workers and journalists on a mission to find 3,000 refugees fleeing from earlier militia violence. The incident happened in troubled Liquica district about 80 kilometers west f the provincial capital Dili. Two vehicles were stopped at a roadblock on the way to Sare village when the militia recognised one of the passengers, an East Timorese aid worker. A second attempt to pass the roadblock was abandoned when one of the militiamen waved a machete at an approaching vehicle carrying a Reuters news team. The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates some 7,500 refugees are sheltering in two locations in foothills around Sare village in Liquica. They are in urgent need of food and medicine. Altogether, some 60,000 people are believed to have been displaced by militia violence since January. Most of the victims used to live in Liquica and Maubara on the coast west of Dili but have been forced to flee into the mountains or have escaped to Dili. The Catholic relief service Caritas claims there are at least 12,000 refugees in Dili alone. Sergio Nunnez, 26, said he fled to Dili from Maubara last month to escape the militia but even in Dili he did not feel safe. ``In Dili we don't feel secure because the militia have intelligence (agents) to try and find what we are doing,'' he said. ``We do not travel by ourselves, otherwise we could get kidnapped or killed. In Maubara we lost everything - our house and our animals, so we're unemployed. ``Once a week my sister comes to Dili and gives me information about the situation in Maubara,'' Nunnez said. On Saturday, a group of Dili refugees gave the Sunday Age a letter to pass on to the United Nations mission in East Timor (Unamet) and requesting urgent supplies of food, medicine and plastic sheeting. They also requested identity cards and clothing. The U.N. is still trying to work out how to register the refugees to enable them to take part in the August referendum on self-determination. East Timorese will be offered a choice of either special autonomy within Indonesia or independence, considered the most likely outcome. Voter registration is proceeding better than expectations, one senior U.N. official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur He said more than 180,000 people had been registered so far and projections for almost 500,000 were not unrealistic. ---------- SiaR WEBSITE: http://apchr.murdoch.edu.au/minihub/siarlist/maillist.html
