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Home | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEFGoing cross-border to help the refugeesBy Mark Thomas Dili - In mid-September, as violence and anarchy reigned on the streets of East Timor's capital, UNICEF Officer Gregorius "Greg" Fernandez traveled back into this city to retrieve sorely-needed relief supplies for the thousands of refugees who had been forced to flee. When he arrived in Dili on September 12, Fernandez, who was Officer-in-Charge of UNICEF's Dili Office when it was evacuated a week earlier on September 4, found that the office had been looted and burned and that most of the relief supplies had been destroyed.
But he managed to salvage 1.5 metric tons of Vitadele, a complementary food for young children, and 500 kilos of essential drugs, which turned out to be some of the first humanitarian assistance to reach the refugees who had fled from East Timor to neighboring West Timor. Fernandez, a soft-spoken 46-year-old who helped open the Dili Office when he joined UNICEF in May 1998, says that when he saw that the UNICEF office had been burned he cried. "I couldn't understand why anyone would want to do something like that to UNICEF," says Fernandez. "All UNICEF has ever done in East Timor is help children and their families." Fernandez and five other UNICEF staff members were evacuated from Dili to West Timor when the results of an August 30 independence referendum were announced and the streets of Dili exploded with violence. Once in West Timor, they began assessing the needs of the refugees. After meeting with local government and church officials in the West Timor town of Atambua, Fernandez realized they did not have sufficient supplies to cope with the refugee influx. "I knew we had 7.5 metric tons of Vitadele stored in warehouses in Dili that would help feed a lot of children," says Fernandez. "So I decided on my own that I had to go [back]." Fernandez hired two 4-ton trucks, drivers and six members of the Indonesian military (known as TNI) to provide security. "I was scared, the driver was scared, and even the soldiers were scared," says Fernandez of the 130 kilometre drive from Atambua back to Dili. During the trip they passed thousands of East Timorese fleeing in the opposite direction. They also encountered TNI and militia roadblocks, but were not stopped due to the presence of the TNI soldiers on the truck. In Dili, they found the streets filled with rampaging gangs still in the process of looting and burning the city. After visiting the charred remains of the UNICEF office, Fernandez discovered that the warehouse holding six metric tons of baby food had also been destroyed by a fire. In a second warehouse he found the 1.5 tons of remaining food items and in a third the drugs. After loading the supplies, he returned with the truck and soldiers to West Timor. On September 16, a UNICEF Liaison Office was established in Atambua with support from UNICEF's headquarters for Indonesia, based in Jakarta, and UNICEF began delivering relief assistance to some of the 140,000 refugees living in and around the city. UNICEF provided the baby food, several large water tanks for the refugee settlements, and thousands of small jerry cans, kitchen utensils and various basic hygiene supplies. UNICEF also set up two mobile teams of doctors, nurses and midwives from among the refugees to treat malaria, respiratory infections, diarrhoea and other illnesses in the camps. Fernandez returned to Dili via an aid flight on September 20, the day the first United Nations forces moved into the capital, and together with Buddy Tillet, a UNICEF Emergency Operations Officer, re-established UNICEF's presence in East Timor. On September 22, they opened a temporary UNICEF office in the UN compound, which also serves as living quarters for eight UNICEF staff. The son of an East Timorese father and West Timorese mother, Fernandez has been working in East Timor for various organizations for 10 years. A public health specialist, he played a key role in a July immunisation campaign organized in East Timor and helped hammer out the agreement between pro-independence and autonomy factions to guarantee "weeks of tranquility" so that children and their families could safely access vaccination centres. Although the first two rounds of the campaign proceeded peacefully, it was interrupted by the violence that followed the referendum. Return to feature stories index What UNICEF Is Doing | Feature Stories | Press Releases | How You Can Help | LinksHome | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF |
