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No change in West Timor security situation, UN refugee agency reports
25 August -- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today that the situation in West Timor remained "alarming," with no change in the security conditions in the camps for East Timorese refugees or along the repatriation route between East Timor and Indonesia.

Describing the camps as "tense," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva that aid workers involved in health, water, sanitation and community services had stayed away from the area, in accordance with the agency's suspension of all relief activities after a brutal attack on Wednesday against its staff. In that incident, three UNHCR workers were severely beaten while distributing plastic sheeting at a camp outside Kefamenanu.

According to the agency, Piet Tallo, the Governor of West Timor, said that an East Timor man had been detained for questioning in connection with the attack. Mr. Tallo has also instructed his vice-governor to participate in an investigation into the incident to be conducted with a senior UNHCR official from Jakarta.

"Our office in Atambua, however, continues to receive threats from the militias," Mr. Redmond said. "Followers in West Timor of the captured militia leader, identified as Pedro Pereiro, have said they would mount protests against UNHCR unless he is released by UN peacekeeping authorities in East Timor."

Although repatriation activities in the camps have ceased, UNHCR is helping refugees who have made it on their own to a transit center in Kupang, the spokesman said. A group of such refugees will be transported to Dili next week by boat due to the danger along the usual return route from West to East Timor, where roadblocks have yet to be lifted despite pleas by UNHCR to Indonesian military officials in Atambua.

Meanwhile in Dili, the newly independent territory has handed down its first criminal sentence, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) said today.

Delivering a 15-year murder sentence in the same courtroom where resistance leader Xanana Gusmao had received his sentence in 1993, the Dili District Court sentenced a 28-year old man for the murder of a 12-year old child in March 2000. The case, which had been heard in four court proceedings since 26 July, included four witnesses by the prosecution, and none by the defence, which has the right to appeal to the Courts of Appeal within the next 14 days.