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Family: Slain U.S. aid worker was left exposed to danger in Timor |
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September 9, 2000
SAN JUAN, SEPT 8 (AP) - Their son is dead - and the family of the American relief worker slain in a militia-led rampage in West Timor wants answers from the United Nations and Indonesia: Why was Carlos Caceres allowed to work without protection even after he received a death threat? "They should have got him out of there," the victim's father, Gregorio Caceres, told The Associated Press from his home in Jacksonville, Florida, on Thursday. A mob led by militiamen stormed the U.N. office Wednesday in Atambua, West Timor, and killed three U.N. aid workers - including Caceres, 33, who was born in San Juan. Witnesses said militiamen beat and stabbed the three foreign men before mutilating their bodies and burning them in the street. Other U.N. workers were cut by machetes and axes but escaped. Earlier Wednesday, Caceres sent an e-mail to a friend, a U.N. security official in Macedonia, saying he had heard that "a wave of violence would soon pound Atambua. ... "We sit here like bait, unarmed," he wrote. "We are waiting for the enemy." Caceres had expected to be evacuated weeks before, said his father, who last saw his son on a Christmas visit in Florida. Caceres last telephoned his father Aug. 26. "I was in fear for him. He told me, 'Dad, as we speak there is danger. ... He told me he was going to evacuate himself and his co-workers from that location to another location because of the danger," Gregorio Caceres said. "One of the questions I have for the United Nations - and I spoke to them yesterday and today - I asked: He knew he was in danger and he told me he was going to be evacuated. What happened?" The father said a Geneva official of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees told him the United Nations had evacuated its workers two weeks earlier and only sent them back after the Indonesian government promised its soldiers would ensure their safety. UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski noted the aid operation has been repeatedly shut down after attacks by militia gangs on its staff and buildings in recent months and that several workers received death threats. "There's always, for us, the dilemma of striking the right balance between helping the people in need and putting our own staff at risk," Janowski said. "In Atambua on Wednesday this balance was upset and we suffered the worst incident in UNHCR's history." The UNHCR had received warning of possible trouble and was assured by Indonesian security forces that agency staff would be protected. But witnesses said Indonesian troops stood by during the attack. World leaders at the Millennium Summit at the United Nations castigated Indonesia, an embarrassment to visiting Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid. Carlos Caceres had told his family that he knew some militia leaders were close to Indonesian army commanders. He said he once saw a militia leader giving an order to Indonesian troops, called TNI. He also said that the Indonesian military had ignored him when he said he had received a death threat from a militia leader. "Despite the fact that over 70 TNI and police personnel were present at the scene, it is known that one refugee was beaten ... by militia elements," Caceres told his family. When Caceres tried to protect the refugee - his job as a protection officer - a militia leader he identified as Manek told Indonesian troops to escort him away. "It was clear that Manek had authority over the TNI and that any order he made was going to be followed," Caceres wrote. A month ago, Caceres sent an e-mail to his sister Elba, in Miami, noting, "The militia, by the way, hate me." He implied he was not getting much help in the last message received by his family four days ago. "Here things are difficult, but one keeps working, with or without international support." Caceres' grieving parents are puzzled by what lured their eldest child and only son so far from home. His mother, Josefa Collazo, said she once asked him why he didn't work as a lawyer in Miami, where she lives. "He said, 'I like what I am doing: to see how other people are living, to see what they need, and to be able to help them." Caceres' family moved to Miami in the 1970s. Caceres studied journalism at the University of Florida, then law at Cornell and went to Britain's Oxford University. He earned three doctorates and spoke five languages, including Czech and Russian, which he learned on assignment with the UNHCR in Moscow. In East Timor, he wrote to sister Elba, he was the only foreigner for miles around Betun, a jungle village near the border. "I became an instant celebrity. Flocks of people follow me wherever I go, everyone screams 'hello mister" when they see me," he said. "I attempted jogging once, and didn't do it again. "I couldn't get a second of solitude and everyone started running after me. It was scary because I thought the militia was trying to get me!"
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