[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Machete killings fuel Indonesia's religious hatred
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- Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 12:04:05 +0100
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**http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1646661,00.html?gusrc=rss
Machete killings fuel Indonesia's religious hatred
Jihadists are being blamed for beheading of two Christian schoolgirls, reports
Dan McDougall
Sunday November 20, 2005
The Observer
First light is the most captivating time of day as you cross the vastness of
the Indonesian archipelago.
Set against the blood-orange horizon, the echoing call of the muezzin shakes
you from your dreamlike state as men file to morning prayers in bleary-eyed
procession. Islanders arch their backs against heavy carts laden with fresh
jackfruit and laughing children in white uniforms dawdle to school.
But in the central towns of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi events of the
past few weeks have destroyed the frivolity of the pupils' daily journeys.
Three weeks ago, four cousins from the tightly-knit Christian community,
Theresia Morangke, 15, Alfita Poliwo, 17, Yarni Sambue, 17, and Noviana Malewa,
15, were brutally attacked as they walked to the Central Sulawesi Christian
Church High School by men wearing black ski masks. Three of the girls were
beheaded. Noviana, the youngest, survived, despite appalling machete wounds to
her neck.
The headless bodies of her cousins were dumped beside a busy nearby road. Two
of the heads were found several kilometres away in the suburb of Lege. The
third, Theresia's, was left outside a recently built Christian church in the
village of Kasiguncu.
A week after the attack, a day after Alfita's funeral, two other Christian
girls, Ivon Maganti and Siti Nuraini, both 17, were shot by masked men as they
walked to a Girl Scouts' meeting. They and Noviana are still critically ill in
hospital. All six were Christians in a predominantly Muslim community.
And yesterday police in Sulawesi said two young women had been attacked on
Friday by black-clad assailants on motorbikes armed with machetes.
A 20-year-old woman died and her friend was injured. Police said it was too
early to tell if the latest attack was linked to the deadly sectarian unrest
simmering between the region's majority Muslim and minority Christian
communities. Hostilities last broke out in 2001, ignited by rumours that a
Muslim girl had been raped by a Christian, attracting the widespread attention
of Indonesia's militant Islamists.
To jihadists across the archipelago and beyond, Poso's tensions were a call to
arms against the region's 200,000 Christians. By the summer of 2001, with
little attempt by the government to halt their migration, thousands of
militants, mainly from outlawed groups such as Laksar Jihad and Jemaah
Islamiyah, had travelled here with weapons, military training from Afghanistan
and a mission to drive out the infidels.
Within months, it was war as the Christians armed themselves, finally prompting
the government to send in the military to keep the two sides apart. Thousands
died in the following year, and more than 60,000 families fled their homes. For
the past four years, despite a high-profile police and military presence and a
'peace deal' between Christians and Muslims, the troubles simmer on.
As news of the beheadings was reported around the world, government officials
in the capital, Jakarta, denied Islamic militant involvement, suggesting
instead they were the work of Poso's criminal elite to incite religious
conflict so they could profit from aid and divert the security forces'
attention from tackling crime and corruption.
But independent political analysts such as Sidney Jones, of the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group, claimed that the killings could only have been
carried out by local Islamic extremists linked to regional terrorism networks
already blamed for bombings in Bali and Jakarta in recent months.
The beheadings and shootings were not the only attacks on Christians in the
Poso region this year. A bomb in Poso's largest Christian market killed 22
people and injured 70 last May. A second bombing last week critically injured a
young mother who was among 11 Christian passengers in a van.
Noviana's devastated mother, Nur, 46, blames those attacks and the attempt on
her daughter's life on Muslim extremists intent on bringing back large-scale
violence to Poso. 'My daughter is fighting for her life because she is a
Christian. This has nothing to do with local gangsters; it is about religion.
But they won't be able to provoke us, we don't want another war. We want
justice, not vengeance. We are suffering enough.'
On the western approaches to Poso, buffaloes luxuriate in muddy fields behind
filthy roadside stalls piled with mango and dried flatfish. There is little
evidence of rice farmers in traditional coolie hats, only Muslim men in prayer
caps. There are no churches, but the domes of small mosques dot the wide
horizon of the town. Many look half-built, their distinctive forms merely
outlined by exposed metal rods, making them look more like rusting bird cages.
Paramilitary police patrols, known as Brimobs, rumble by, the boots of bored
soldiers dangling over the edge of their American-made pick-up trucks.
Stretched across the corrugated façade of a roadside shack, a faded black flag
displays Laskar Jihad's symbol of blood-red crossed scimitars. Inside, a group
of men are smoking Kreteks, Indonesia's ubiquitous clove cigarettes, and
watching badly dubbed imports of Western movies. The stall outside suggests
they are raising funds for the earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir, but their
collection tins are empty.
'Do you recognise it?' asks Usman, the youngest man, smiling at the flag. 'It's
been there for years. Nobody seems to want to take it down. We're not
terrorists, but we have little respect for Christians. Indonesia should be an
Islamic country without the impurities of Christianity or Hinduism. There are
no churches here. The beheadings of these schoolgirls suits the Christians.
Perhaps they did it to show Muslims as monsters.'
An older man, his yellowing face an mass of wrinkles, hacks and coughs in the
recesses of the shack and smiles a toothless grin. 'Assalamu alaikum [may peace
be with you],' he says, pointing at my sunglasses which he offers to exchange
for an ancient hand grenade.
To many, the distinctive smell of Kreteks is the embodiment of all things
Indonesian. Here in this remote corner of Sulawesi it is clear that a love for
the weed is one of the few things uniting Christians and Muslims. Indonesia is
the world's most populous Islamic country and most of its 190 million Muslims
practise a tolerant version of the faith, but hardline groups are on the rise.
In recent months, the country's highest Islamic body issued a fatwa condemning
liberal Islamic thought, and radical groups stepped up campaigns to prevent the
country's 20 million Christians from building churches, as well as announcing
plans to stem the influx of Balinese Hindus to major cities such as Jakarta and
Yogyakarta.
In Bekasi, West Java, people claiming to be members of the extremist Islam
Defenders Front have prevented three churches from holding services since
September, claiming that they did not have the required permits. Two weeks ago,
500 members of the churches held a service in the street but were confronted by
a mob of 200 Muslim extremists. Only a heavy police presence prevented a battle
between them. Both sides are now taking their dispute to the courts.
Professor Dien Syamsudin, chairman of Muhammadiyah, the second-largest
Indonesian Muslim organisation, said: 'Muslims have long been suspicious of
Christian proselytisation because of the rapid growth in the number of
Christians in the past few years. Christians have the same concerns about
Muslims. This perception needs addressing or it could lead to national
disintegration.'
Christians see the attacks on the schoolgirls in Poso as part of a calculated
campaign by Laskar Jihad, which subscribes to the same militant Wahhabi creed
as al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and the Taliban and claims to have 10,000
fighters. It has dedicated itself to defending its beliefs across Indonesia.
When the first Laskar commandos arrived in Sulawesi in 2001 they were received
by the provincial governor and the head of the local parliament, underscoring
their support at the highest levels of government. From direct infusions of
cash to fund the fighters to phone calls to local military commanders to
prevent crackdowns, sympathisers have ensured that the Laskar Jihad can operate
with impunity. Ask anyone in the government about their existence around Poso
and you get a flat denial.
About an hour's drive inland from Poso lies Tentena, a Christian stronghold
where people blame violent Islamists for the attacks on the girls and the
bombings. The town is disfigured by the gutted remains of Muslim houses whose
occupants were driven out by Christians at the height of the Poso conflict.
Others still bear blood-red spray-painted crosses, the marks of the 'Red Squad'
which emerged out of the region to fight its own 'Holy Crusade' against Poso's
Muslims when violence first broke out in the region four years ago.
Here, in the sweltering heat, the atmosphere is far from industrious. The
yellowing bloodshot eyes of many local people suggest a love of tuak, a
powerful palm wine drunk by the litre. Many carry guns in full view of the
police.
For peaceful Christians many of them refugees from Poso, the existence of
Ninja-clad attackers brings back memories of 2001 when hundreds of masked
Muslim men stormed one Christian village after another, firing automatic
weapons, tossing petrol bombs and home-made grenades into houses and ordering
terrified residents to get out for good. They killed anyone who dared to
resist.
'The people of the world called the beheadings of these girls barbaric,' says
David, a lay preacher in the town. 'Pope Benedict led prayers in Rome for the
safety of Christians here, but few governments have expressed real concern. We
are on the verge of another jihad.
'Almost all the religiously motivated aggression this year has been directed
against Christians: schoolgirls murdered as the army turns a blind eye. But the
government would rather talk of gangsters, not jihadists, carrying out the
attacks. I want to know why most of the weapons carried by these militants are
army issue.'
To Christians such as David it is 'unthinkable' that the military could have
failed to end the attacks. Similar failures can be discerned in other
Indonesian hotspots, including Maluku, and the west Kalimantan town of Sambas,
where Christians have also been targeted. Claims of army complicity are rife
among Christians, who regularly accuse the military of turning a blind eye to
the Islamic militia in the area and the smuggling of weapons from the mainland.
Others point to a lack of prosecutions for attacks on Christians and talk
darkly of militant training camps in remote valleys, as if to say the next mass
slaughter is just around the corner. 'There is a pattern,' says Mona
Saroinsong, co-ordinator of the Protestant Church Crisis Centre in Manado,
north Sulawesi. 'There have been other attacks apart from the beheadings and
shootings and none of the aggressors has been found. The attackers operate in
small groups, each with a specific task and area to cover, and wear black masks
to avoid being identified. Another similarity with previous attacks is that the
head of the police was elsewhere when the killers struck.'
The girls' relatives and friends are demanding justice. A number lobbied the
House of Representatives in Jakarta last Thursday, demanding that its members
support all efforts to ensure that the murderers are caught.
'We are asking security personnel to finally get serious about investigating
the case,' said the group's spokesman, David Malewa, Noviana's brother. 'We are
not going to take revenge and have already forgiven the people responsible for
the deaths. But can't the state give us a little justice?'
Their demands intensified after five suspects, including a former military
police officer, were released for lack of evidence. Three have since been
re-arrested, but have yet to be charged.
The Poso police chief, Muhammad Soleh Hidayat, said the investigation was being
held up because the only witness was Noviana, who is too ill to be questioned
and remains under close guard at a police hospital. 'Our priority is to save
her life. It would be inhuman to insist on questioning her,' he said.
Stories of slaughter have become commonplace since the collapse of three brutal
decades of dictatorship by President Suharto in 1998. His repression curbed
religious and ethnic hatreds. Restraint has now all but vanished in towns such
as Poso, with horrifying results.
The beheadings there, other religious attacks and the bombings in Bali make
Christians and foreigners living in Indonesia increasingly worried about their
safety.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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