Guardian Unlimited, Sunday November 20, 2005
Machete killings fuel Indonesia's religious hatred
Jihadists are being blamed for beheading of two Christian schoolgirls, reports Dan
McDougall
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.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
|