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Human rights watchdog issues call for peacekeeping mission in Maluku islands
Indonesian Observer Wednesday, February 07 - 2001-A national human rights group yesterday said more than 3,000 people have been killed in two years of religious strife in the Maluku islands, and recommended that a peacekeeping mission be sent there to end the bloodshed.
The task force, consisting military and police officers trained with mediation skills, will replace existing security personnel, who stand accused of taking sides in the clashes between Muslims and Christians, said the state-owned National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).
Speaking to journalists after presenting a report on the commission's investigation in the Malukus to President Abdurrahman Wahid at the Jakarta presidential office, Komnas HAM Chairman Djoko Soegianto urged the government to take stern action against provocateurs.
He said there must be good coordination between the civil emergency administrator and the central government in order to create a conducive situation for law enforcement in the strife-wracked islands.
Komnas HAM's report said at least 3,080 people have died in the violence, 4,024 injured and 281,365 refugees forced to flee their homes.
It said the fighting, which has been raging since January 1999, proved that the state failed to protect the people.
The commission attributed the conflicts to social gaps, provocations, the partisanship of local security personnel, religious sentiments, personal revenge and conflict among the elite and among individuals.
The 1999 religious riot in Ketapang, Jakarta, also fueled clashes in the eastern provinces, it said.
The commission said the violence later subsided but the arrival of holy war fighters belonging to the Laskar Jihad group reignited the conflict, worsening the situation in Maluku, whose two million inhabitants are equally divided between Muslims and Christians.
Bambang Suharto, a senior member of the commission, predicted that the new US administration under President George W. Bush would take a more active role in preventing violence in the Malukus.
He warned that western governments are getting increasingly worried about the plight of the Christian minority there. "With the new government in the United States, there are several conservative Christian groups who have demanded to make this one of the main concerns of Bush's government," Suharto said.
Some Democratic lawmakers in Washington have warned that the Republican Party's Christian conservative base could in the future exert greater influence on the administration's policies, including foreign affairs.
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