Precedence: bulk Militia suspects among Timor refugees in Darwin, police say DARWIN, Australia, Sept 15 (AFP) - Police said Wednesday a small group of East Timorese flown in here Tuesday were suspected of being members of the Indonesian military or militia. More than 1,500 refugees and UN staff were airlifted to Darwin on Tuesday from Dili in the wake of violence involving anti-independence militia and Indonesian soldiers. Northern Territory police spokeswoman Jane Munday said the group under suspicion was being kept at a secret location away from other refugees, who were being housed in a tent camp in Darwin. "We have had to separate a small group of people that have been pointed out to us as either militia or military," Munday said. "For their own security we have separated them and they are not being held at this camp. "We are now establishing exactly who they are." She would not say how many were in the group. Many of those who arrived Tuesday were pro-independence supporters who had been sheltering in a UN compound in Dili, fearing they would be killed by militiamen or soldiers. The militia and the Indonesian army have been on an orgy of death and destruction since an August 30 ballot in which East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence. Australian police said of the 1,533 people who arrived in Darwin from Dili on 11 Hercules flights on Tuesday, 1,460 were refugees from the violence. A number were East Timorese UN staff, who are being put up in hotels. Militia disappearing from the streets of Dili: UN official JAKARTA, Sept 15 (AFP) - Fewer militia have been roaming the streets of Dili in the past few days and they seem to be joining an exodus from the territory to Indonesian West Timor, a UN official there said. "We have seen the continuation of a trend over a number of days, a general westward flow of traffic, trucks laden with goods," said Colin Stewart. "Their numbers seem to be much lower," said Stewart, one of 12 people who stayed behind in the Australian consulate after the pullout of the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) early Tuesday. "It is fairly safe to say that is what the trend is," he told AFP by phone. He said the observations of UN personnel, moving around Dili with Indonesian army escorts, seemed to dovetail with reports from Indonesian West Timor that more and more miltia were arriving there. "I think they are pulling out with the looted stuff. The numbers of milita seem to be decreasing ... their numbers seem to be much lower. That is not a change today, it has been the trend." In the West Timor capital of Kupang Wednesday morning an AFP reporter said an Indonesian navy ship and a freighter, both "with every inch covered in people" had pulled in from East Timor, adding to the more than 140,000 East Timorese already there. Refugee sources and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) say many were forced out by the militias who set their homes ablaze, then rounded them up and forced them to board ships and planes for the West. Stewart also said that while large fires had burned around the UNAMET compound on Tuesday after the evacuation of the bulk of the UN staff and the 1,400 refugees staying there, the compound was basically intact. But radios had been looted from the UN vehicles there, he said. Separately, UNHCR spokesman Fernando del Mundo said in Jakarta that its representative in Dili, one of the 12 staying behind until the UN troops arrive, had been allowed to visit the town of Dare where some 30,000 refugees are holed up, resisting attempts at deportation. That the representaive had been allowed to visit Dare was "a positive sign," del Mundo said. "But they are living on roots and leaves, and many have spread throughout the surrounding hills," for fear of brutal militia attacks which left one woman killed and another injured over the weekend, he said. ---------- SiaR WEBSITE: http://apchr.murdoch.edu.au/minihub/siarlist/maillist.html
