[ppi] [ppiindia] Machete killings fuel Indonesia's religious hatred

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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1646661,00.html


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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