The province of Aceh, where the UN estimates that 100,000 people have been displaced as a result of fighting there, is without any foreign aid workers because Indonesia has refused to give them permits, say officials with the UN and other organizations.
A World Health Organization worker, who left Aceh on Friday because his permit was about to expire, was the last international aid worker in the province, UN officials said.
The Indonesian government has justified the virtual ban by saying that foreigners are in danger of being kidnapped by the separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement.
The government insists that it is capable of distributing food and health supplies to civilians who have fled their homes. Many are living in government camps.
The US Agency for International Development, which ran a small program in Aceh, no longer has any American workers in the province, a US official said.
The International Committee for the Red Cross has suspended its efforts to visit detainees held by both sides in the conflict after the government refused to issue permits to Red Cross workers that would allow them to travel in the province.
The government's closed door is relatively unusual in a country that has received substantial development aid over many years from leading donors -- the US, the EU, Japan, the UN and the World Bank.
Soon after the government imposed martial law in Aceh in May, the secretary-general of the UN, Kofi Annan, issued a statement urging Indonesia to ensure the safety of aid workers and ensure their access to people in need. Martial law continues.
But Indonesia has ignored Annan's warning, and the question of foreign aid workers has become so urgent that it is likely to be raised with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri when she visits the UN this week, senior UN officials said.
The decision to keep foreign aid workers out of the province, which is in northwestern Sumatra, is enforced by a Ministry of Justice decree issued after the start of the army offensive on May 16. It sets up a special visa system for Aceh.
UN officials said they requested 13 special visas for foreign staff workers in Aceh. Two were granted, and those have now expired, they said.
A Human Rights Watch report issued on Friday said that because of scant information it was difficult to assess precisely how the population of 4.2 million, most of whom live outside the two main cities, was surviving. But it was known that more than 500 schools had been burned down.
The Indonesian government reacted angrily to the Human Rights Watch report.
"It's very arrogant for an agency like Human Rights Watch to think that because they can't get access to certain places like Aceh, because they don't have eyes and ears and mouths, therefore the situation there is closed and there must be rights abuses," said the spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Marty Natalegawa.
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