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A war only God sees: Hidden from the outside world, a conflict of death, religion, mutilation
Seattle Times Monday, March 26, 2001 - With her home destroyed and her church burned to the ground, 14-year-old Marina Rumakur knew there was only one way to survive: Convert to Islam and submit to a painful rite of mutilation.
Trapped by Muslim extremists on the tiny Indonesian island of Kesui, she and more than 900 fellow Christians surrendered. Hundreds of Catholics and Protestants were forced to undergo female genital excision or male circumcision with kitchen knives and razor blades as the island was "purified" of all its Christians.
The victims ranged from a 6-year-old girl to a 74-year-old woman.
"They said if we didn't convert to their religion, they would cut our throats," the teenager recounted. "We prayed and prayed there would be a ship to save us."
The people of Kesui have been caught up in a vicious war of religious cleansing that has swept through Indonesia's Maluku Islands over the past two years. Largely hidden from the outside world, the conflict has claimed at least 5,000 lives and driven more than 500,000 people - a quarter of the Malukus' population - from their homes.
Death, mutilation, slavery
Throughout the Malukus, also known as the Moluccas or the Spice Islands, Muslims and Christians who previously lived side by side now attack one another and burn one another's homes. Here in this provincial capital, the two factions live behind barricades in segregated enclaves. On many islands, entire villages of Muslims or Christians have been wiped out.
While both sides are guilty of attacks and atrocities, the forced conversions have been carried out almost entirely by the Muslim side. The Muslims also force genital cutting, which is not part of the Christian tradition.
Christian leaders and refugees say more than 5,800 members of their faith on seven islands have been forced to convert to Islam over the past year. On at least one island, scores of converts have been kept as slaves by Muslims, according to a youth who escaped.
Death by other means
Refugees who set to sea in decrepit boats to flee the fighting sometimes never reach land. Nearly 500 fugitives, mostly Christians, drowned last June when their overloaded ferry sank in rough waters.
The Indonesian government appears powerless to end the war. Military units sent to keep the peace in the scattered group of about 1,000 islands have instead joined the fighting - usually on the Muslim side - while police have often sided with the Christians.
At times, soldiers and police officers have fought and killed one another.
Part of worldwide jihad?
The fighting has much in common with the "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Serbian province of Kosovo, but because of the islands' remote location, the conflict here has received far less attention.
Reliable figures are hard to come by, but about 60 percent of those killed have been Muslims. Roughly half the refugees are Muslim and half Christian.
With the help of men and arms from outside the region, the Muslim fundamentalists appear to be gaining the upper hand. One extremist group - the Laskar Jihad, based on the island of Java - has declared the conflict a holy war and sent 4,500 trained fighters from other parts of the nation to seize the Malukus for Islam.
"Waging a holy war in Maluku is obligatory for all Muslims in Indonesia," proclaims the Laskar Jihad Web site, www.laskarjihad.or.id.
Christian fighters say identity cards found on the bodies of some white-robed jihad warriors show that they have come from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East.
One island's story
Kesui, with a population of about 3,000 before the conflict, is one of the most isolated places in Indonesia. It takes two days' travel by ship to get there from Ambon, the region's main city, about 250 miles to the west.
Before the turmoil, fewer than 1,000 Christians lived in four villages on the island. Intermarriage between Muslims and Christians was not unusual, and some people changed religions when they married. A major difference between the two groups was that the Christians on the island liked to eat pigs and dogs, anathema to Muslims.
Last fall, Muslims began warning Christians to convert or be attacked. They refused.
In late November, scores of Muslims carrying spears, machetes and rifles assaulted the Christian villages. Some jihad warriors from outside the island took part, according to Christian refugees who were evacuated to Ambon in December.
Villagers buried their Bibles
Marina, the 14-year-old, said she fled into the jungle as the Muslims attacked her village, Karlomin. She could hear the attackers shouting "Allahu Akbar!" - God is great. She watched from hiding as the militants torched the Catholic church and the rest of the village. "I cried when I saw them burn my house," she said.
Marina said she was among 260 villagers who stayed in the jungle with little to eat for two days until Muslims found them and said the Christians would be saved if they converted to Islam.
Knowing they had little choice, she said, the villagers buried their Bibles and walked to the Muslim village of Amarlaud. The Muslims searched their possessions for religious artifacts and assigned the newcomers to live with families in the village.
Word spread that two Christian teachers who refused to convert were killed in other villages.
"They asked all of us if we really meant to convert to Islam," Marina said. "We didn't answer the first time. The second time I said yes, but really in my heart I didn't."
Mutilation with no anesthetic
Several days later, the Muslim leaders announced that the converts would undergo circumcision or excision. Marina said she objected but was told that she would be killed if she didn't go along.
Indonesian Muslims have had a tradition of female genital excision - the removal of all or part of the clitoris - before girls reach puberty. Sometimes called female circumcision and regarded in the West as female genital mutilation, the practice has declined in recent years in urban areas but is still common in remote regions.
Marina was told to sit in the lap of an older Muslim woman while another woman, an Islamic teacher, performed the procedure without anesthetic. The razor blade had already been used on several women without being washed, Marina said.
The Islamic teacher promised that the procedure wouldn't hurt any more than being bitten by an ant, but that was a lie. Marina said she cried out from the pain and wept. Her sisters, Emiliana, 6, and Anselma, 8, also were forced to undergo excision.
'I wanted to be angry'
Christina Sagat, 32, another Catholic villager from Karlomin, said she and others underwent genital excision by a Muslim woman with a kitchen knife.
"When she cut the clitoris, she said, `This is to cleanse the dirt of dogs and pigs,' " Sagat recalled. "I wanted to be angry, but I couldn't show that in front of them. I was afraid they would kill me."
The women were told to wash in the sea afterward. No treatment or medicine was provided, Sagat said, although some women bought antibiotics at a local store.
Men were also forced into circumcisions.
`I feel ashamed'
Many of the Kesui refugees who were brought to Ambon live in a church hall not far from the hulks of buildings burned in the fighting. They quickly converted back to Christianity, but there is no restoring what they lost in Kesui.
"I feel ashamed, and I feel incomplete," Sagat said. "I feel like I don't have dignity. Everyone feels the same way."
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