Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, East Timor's top Catholic leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, called on the world to pressure Jakarta to relocate Indonesian army-backed militias still operating with impunity in West Timor and outlined the current state of the reconciliation and reconstruction process in his homeland.
"The U.N., U.S., Europe and Japan have to keep pressuring Indonesia to arrest the militias or move them to another part of Indonesia, so that the refugees in West Timor can return home freely," he said, speaking last week as part of an international forum on refugees and migrants organized by the Catholic Bishops Conference of Japan and at a meeting with local nongovernmental organizations.
"The Indonesian government has promised many times to disarm the militias, but so far nothing has been done," he said at a church in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.
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