Pressure is building on Indonesia to return 124 East Timorese children taken from their parents in West Timor refugee camps following East Timor's 1999 independence vote.
East Timor's acting foreign minister, Nobel Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta, intends to bring the issue to the United Nations Security Council in New York later this month, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is insisting Indonesia let the children go.
'This is one of the most outrageous, scandalous situations, where the abducting of children and holding of children against the will of the parents is going on under the eyes of Indonesia, by a well-known thug, and no one does anything,' Mr Ramos-Horta said yesterday.
The so-called 'thug' in question is Octavio Soares, nephew of a former Indonesian-appointed governor of East Timor, Abilio Soares, and a member of a family with ties to former special forces commander Prabowo Subianto and the family of ousted strongman Suharto.
'He's a lunatic, a stupid idiot, who thinks he can abduct these children and eventually turn them into Indonesian patriots to regain East Timor,' Mr Ramos-Horta said. 'He and his family have done enough harm to East Timor - the abuse of authority, cronyism, corruption. Time and again we have offered reconciliation but I am afraid for some, there will be no reconciliation.'
Mr Soares says his only concern has been the welfare of children, whose parents gave them up willingly for the chance of a better life in Indonesia. Some parents admit they gave their children up voluntarily, but others say any notion of choice in the militia-controlled camps of West Timor was impossible.
