Baptist Press, Aug 20, 2002
Violence, persecution continue to loom for Indonesian Christians
By Erin Curry
CENTRAL SULAWESI, Indonesia (BP)--Five people were killed and hundreds of
houses were looted and burned when attackers armed with automatic weapons
stormed through three Christian villages on Indonesia's Central Sulawesi island Aug.
12, according to news reports.
Islamic extremist Laskar Jihad fighters were said to be responsible for the attacks.
More than 2,000 people had been killed and tens of thousands displaced from their
homes when a peace agreement was signed in December 2001, but now is seen as
failing.
Indonesian authorities have not taken decisive action to disarm the perpetrators of the
attacks, according to the Barnabas Fund, an international organization working
among Christian minorities under Islam.
The Laskar Jihad are believed to be attempting to destroy all pockets of Christians
between them and Tentena, the final Christian stronghold in Central Sulawesi and
home to more than 65,000 people, according to International Christian Concern, a
human rights organization for persecuted Christians. Numerous Christians have taken
refuge there after their villages were attacked.
Other recent attacks on Christians in Central Sulawesi, according to the Barnabas
Fund, include buses carrying Christian passengers having been bombed and shot at
as well as cars stopped at barricades while the Christian occupants were attacked
and sometimes killed.
International Christian Concern, meanwhile, has reported that many villagers had fled
their homes and were huddled together in small groups under trees and shrubs in
nearby jungles, waiting to know if they would be slaughtered in the jungles or left alive.
Also, a child was strangled to death, an elderly man was shot several times and
many more were killed or badly wounded, according to ICC.
The recent violence comes after Indonesia's highest legislative body rejected a
proposal to introduce Islamic sharia law Aug. 11. Indonesia is the world's largest
Muslim country but remains a secular state.
For those in Southeast Asia who feared Indonesia becoming a center of Islamic
militants, the latest rejection of Islamic law is reassuring. But for the proponents of an
Islamic state, it is not the end.
"This time we're in front of a great wall that can't be penetrated but we won't
surrender," Najih Ahjad, a member of the Crescent Star Party said, according to The
New York Times Aug. 16. "We vow before God and the Muslim society that we'll keep
on fighting."
Thousands of pro-sharia demonstrators chanted, "There is no God but Allah!" outside
Parliament in Jakarta in response to the vote. Women in headscarves waved banners
asking for implementation of Islamic law while boys wore T-shirts with photographs of
Osama bin Laden, according to the Associated Press.
Earlier reports of violence against Christians came from Ambon, directly east of
Sulawesi, where extremists detonated two bombs outside a supermarket in the
predominantly Christian area of Mardika on Ambon Island July 27. Fifty-two people
were injured, and at least one has died. Another homemade bomb in the Christian
area of Gudang Arang was neutralized shortly afterward, according to Compass Direct
news service.
Back in Central Sulawesi, Vence Waani, pastor of the Pentecostal Church in Sepe,
recounted the Aug. 12 attacks: "The sounds of automatic weapons were coming from
all directions, mixed with the hysterical shouting of mothers, the weeping and
shrieking of children, the glow and flames of fire from the burning houses all blending
into one scene of horror," International Christian Concern reported. The pastor and his
family escaped, but their newly rebuilt church was burned to the ground as jihad
warriors attacked and villagers sought to defend themselves with themselves with
makeshift machetes, sickles and sharpened bamboo sticks.
"This is the second time in just over six months that these people have lost everything
they possess and had to flee from their burning village. Have they no right to live in
their own land?" Annette Hammond, an Australian working in aid distribution in the
region, told Compass Direct Aug. 14. The Laskar Jihad attacked and destroyed the
same village in December 2001.
Todd Nettleton from Voice of the Martyrs, a group that has served the persecuted
church for nearly 30 years, said Christians are taking precautions, but beg prayer
support.
"They are doing whatever they can to set up defense mechanisms for themselves,
they're also asking the government to provide some type of military presence that will
hopefully offset this attack when and if it comes, but they are very much relying on the
Lord because really, that's the only hope they have," he said in a Mission Network
News report.
Copyright (c) 2001 - 2002 Southern Baptist Convention, Baptist Press
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