Australian Financial Review, April 10, 2002
JAKARTA OBSERVED
Fears of civil war haunt Ambon again
Tim Dodd
Last Wednesday a large bomb exploded in the centre of Ambon, the major city in
Indonesia's Moluccan Islands, killing four people and injuring another 58. Shortly
afterward a crowd, angered by the return of violence to the city after a peace deal was
brokered two months ago, burnt down the local governor's office.
Since then the situation has remained tense. The United Nations pulled out all but
locally employed staff from its two agencies on the ground - UNICEF and the Office of
Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affair - and yesterday another building in the city was
burnt.
Such news scarcely raises an eyebrow in Australia, but in Indonesia last week's
events in Ambon have made a major impact. There are fears of a return to the hellish
years of 1999 and 2000 which fitted anybody's definition of a civil war. Muslim and
Christian militias killed each other in the streets with guns and grenades, the police
and army took sides and fought each other, and the formerly peaceful city, known as
a jewel of the Indonesian archipelago, became a new Beirut divided into Christian and
Muslim zones.
Australia should be concerned, too. For one thing, Ambon is only 1,500km north of
Darwin. And secondly, half of its disrupted and weary population is Christian and if
these people look for a place of refuge outside of their country, Australia is the
obvious choice.
Some of them have already done this. In January 2000 a boatload of 47 adults and
seven children landed on Bathurst Island near Darwin, seeking to escape the trouble
at home.
In the past three years, since Ambon and the whole Moluccan island chain began its
descent into chaos, there has been a lot to escape from. The death toll is uncertain
but could easily be as high as 10,000. According to Indonesian authorities, 12,200
buildings have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people have fled.
Currently the city of Ambon alone is home to over 130,000 refugees.
In mid-2000 the tempo of the clashes increased when the Laskar Jihad and other
Islamic militia groups arrived in Ambon and produced the fearful images that resonate
in the minds of most Westerners with a Christian background - white-robed,
sword-wielding, Islamic radicals out to destroy infidels.
When that boat from Ambon arrived two years ago, the Howard Government was able
to deal with a potentially problematic situation discretely. The people who arrived on
the boat were allowed to remain in Australia at least for the moment. But they have
not been discouraged from returning home, and many of them have. But what if a
boatload of Christian refugees from Ambon should appear on the horizon now?
Under the Government's new policies they would be turned back. But if they
succeeded in scuttling their boat and forcing the navy to pick them up, they would be
detained on Christmas Island or some remote Pacific atoll by a government sworn to
protecting its borders.
But Christian Ambonese threatened by Islamic warriors in white robes would have a
hold on the Australian conscience in a way that their compatriot boat people,
predominantly Muslims from far-off Afghanistan and Iraq, cannot quite manage.
Another factor running in favour of the Ambonese is that Australian protestant
churches have very close links to their brethren and sisters in the Moluccas. The
Uniting Church, which does extensive mission work in the northern islands of the
chain, lobbied heavily in Canberra for action to help Christians when conflict erupted in
that region two years ago.
Those leaders of public opinion - Australia's radio shock jocks - would have no
problem with championing Christian boat people while condemning their Muslim
counterparts. So the Howard Government has many reasons to hope that last week's
bombing is not the prelude to a resumption of civil war in the Moluccas.
If the situation does deteriorate, how great is the risk that more boats will head for
Darwin? Given what has happened in Ambon, and indeed the whole of Indonesia, in
the past few years, it is remarkable that more boatloads of Indonesians have not
already set out for Australia.
The Jakarta Government estimates that Indonesia has 1.3 million internal refugees.
These comprise the hundreds of thousands who have fled their homes in the
Moluccas, East Timorese in West Timor, those who have fled the Aceh conflict and
people displaced by vicious communal fighting in Borneo and Sulawesi. The fact that
they do not habitually flee overseas says something to those analysts who see
Indonesia as a nation on the verge of disintegration. It actually has a hard core of
resilience and an overwhelming majority of people are committed to a united Indonesia
as their country. The last place that an ordinary Indonesian would think of fleeing to is
Australia.
But of all Indonesians it is the Christians in the Moluccan Islands who are most likely
to think of Australia as a haven due to their physical proximity, their religious identity
and church links.
Until now hopes were high that the peace deal, brokered by Indonesia's Co-ordinating
Minister for Social Welfare, Jusuf Kalla, would hold. Even before it was signed in
February, violence had diminished and the Laskar Jihad had stepped back from
fighting to concentrate on its social assistance programs such as operating clinics
and schools and providing municipal services to Muslim communities.
After the peace pact there was one incident in which Muslims protected Christians
during a riot in a Muslim market, a very hopeful sign that the populace would not allow
itself to be provoked. Indonesians, and Australians, must hope that they will not be.
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