/** reg.easttimor: 3550.0 **/
** Topic: Militias ordered to kill all males above the age of 10 -report **
** Written 6:54 PM Sep 13, 1999 by Joyo@aol.com in cdp:reg.easttimor **
Subject: Militias ordered to kill all males above the age of 10 -report
Excerpt: The head of the East Timorese Relief Association in Australia said sources had said militias had orders to kill all males above the age of 10 in refugee camps at Atambua and Kupang in West Timor.
South China Morning Post Tuesday, September 14, 1999
EAST TIMOR
Danger delays airdrop to starving refugees
Photo: Feeding the homeless: soldiers stir food at a refugee camp in Kupang, West Timor, where thousands have fled the violence. Associated Press photo
AGENCIES
A race has begun to get food and water to hundreds of thousands of East Timorese facing death from starvation and thirst after fleeing murderous militia gangs, as more reports of atrocities in the territory emerge.
Two planeloads of supplies were ready to leave Darwin, northern Australia, for East Timor's devastated capital, Dili, United Nations officials said yesterday.
But Australian Defence Minister John Moore warned airdrops could not start until international peacekeepers had secured East Timor - and that might take 10 days.
UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said yesterday Indonesia has given permission for the UN to begin an airdrop.
She said the airdrop operation was expected to begin as early as today and would involve the United States. Australia might also take part, she added.
In Darwin the Australian Government's aid agency AusAid's UN liaison officer Ralph Kennedy said Australia was liaising with the United Nations, adding the initial supplies would be of water and temporary shelter.
Emergency supplies were being flown to Darwin today.
UN spokesman David Wimhurst, in Darwin, said the refugees were "without adequate food or with no food at all, living on roots, on whatever they can scavenge".
The UN believes 100,000 refugees are scattered around East Timor. Resistance leader Jose Ramos Horta gave a figure of 200,000.
Aid group the East Timor International Support Centre (ETISC) estimated 300,000 to 400,000 fled to the hills after voting for independence on August 30 and now faced death by starvation.
An ETISC spokesman said 200,000 to 250,000 were estimated to have been deported and tens of thousands had probably been murdered.
"There's no doubt the Indonesian army is engaged in an attempted genocide, a final solution against the people of East Timor. We don't use these words lightly.
Pro-Jakarta militiamen in Dili and the West Timor capital, Kupang, were reported to be donning looted UN clothing and loading people on to boats and aircraft bound for unknown destinations, said Mr Kelly.
"We have reports that ships have left Dili and come back empty within hours and there's a suspicion that the people on board have been killed," he said.
The head of the East Timorese Relief Association in Australia said sources had said militias had orders to kill all males above the age of 10 in refugee camps at Atambua and Kupang in West Timor.
Reverend John Barr, the Uniting Church in Australia's spokesman on Indonesia, said: "I have spoken to people in Kupang who have been to the camps and said the militias are searching for pro-independence people.
"I asked them, 'What are they doing with the people, taking them away and killing them?' They said yes."
Mr Kelly said he had also heard accounts that suggested the Indonesian military was planning "a concerted sweep" of refugee camps to take out all the young men.
** End of text from cdp:reg.easttimor **