East Timor has returned home to Australia for medical treatment, friends said Monday, May 8.
Voice Of the Martyrs Australia (VOMA), which supports Christians in need, said Margaret Smith was expected to be released from hospital Tuesday, May 9 and return later for tests on Friday, May 12. Details of her medical condition were not immediately available.
Her husband, Chris, remained in East Timor Monday, May 8, along with several other Christians and foreign missionary workers, despite fears of more violence in East Timor, where at least five and possible 20 people died in recent fighting between the army and rebels, including sacked soldiers.
Nearly 600 soldiers from the country’s west were dismissed after they protested against alleged favored treatment given to troops from the east, a key center of resistance to the Indonesian occupation before East Timor became independent in 2002. They had threatened to launch a guerilla war if their demands were not met.
In a statement obtained by BosNewsLife, Chris Smith said that despite the dangers he wants to stay in Dili, the capital of East Timor. “I am quiet calm and assured that this is where God would have me for now, “ he said. “I praise and thank God for [my wife] Margie [or Margareth] being where she is. He never burdens us with more than we can bear," Smith added.
ENCOURAGING CHURCHES
He is involved in encouraging the local church and has two young Christian men living with him, with more believers expected if they feel threatened. Other evangelicals and missionaries, including Ferdie and Jeannie Flores, were among other Christians impacted by the upheaval, but are now safe in the town of Manatuto, VOMA said.
However VOMA cautioned that the “original military problem is not yet resolved,” and that the Australian Embassy has issued “two warnings” of more violence towards its citizens.
“The Government is talking about a commission [that will investigate for three months] and until then there will be no finality. Also people will continue to sleep in the refuge areas in Dili until the matter is resolved, even if it takes three months or more, [as they] feel not safe in their homes because through their violent history many people were murdered in their beds as they slept,” VOMA added.
On Monday, May 8, East Timor’s Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri reportedly said his country will soon have its internal unrest under control and played down the need for Australian intervention.
RESIDENTS "RETURN"
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) quoted him as saying that most of the 21,000 residents that left Dili after the deadly riots 10 days ago started returning to their homes.
Alkatiri said he is keeping open the option of Australian troops but stressed that at the moment his country does “not need this kind of assistance, although I would like to make sure that as soon as we feel that we need this kind of assistance we will do it, we will request [it]." Australian Prime Minister John Howard said last week that he would be willing to help if asked, ABC reported.
East Timor has asked the United Nations to deploy an international police force ahead of next year’s elections. Evangelicals have expressed concern however of new bloodshed in East Timor which still recovers from previous civil war.
Between the referendum on independence and the arrival of international peacekeepers in late 1999, anti-independence Timorese militias backed by the Indonesian military "commenced a large-scale, scorched-earth campaign of retribution," the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said recently
MANY KILLED
The militias killed about 1,400 Timorese and forcibly pushed 300,000 people into West Timor as refugees, according to US officials.
As a minority, evangelicals and foreign missionaries have made clear they would like to spread what they see as the love and peace of Christ in the nation.
Evangelicals and traditional Protestants are estimated to comprise up to three percent of East Timor’s predominantly Catholic population of roughly one million people. (With BosNewsLife’d Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research, and reports from East Timor and Australia).
