The Christian Post, Monday, May. 23, 2005
Attack in Indonesia Sparks Fears
An attack that killed five paramilitary policemen last week in eastern Indonesia has
raised fears that Muslim-Christian violence may resume in the Moluccas Islands.
Monday, May. 23, 2005 Posted: 7:07:14AM EST
An attack that killed five paramilitary policemen last week in eastern Indonesia has
raised fears that Muslim-Christian violence may resume in the Moluccas Islands.
Violent clashes there from 1999-2002 killed 5,000 people.
[PHOTO: A May 17, 2005 attack in eastern Indonesia's Moluccas Islands, which
killed five paramilitary policemen has sparkedt fears that Christian-Muslim violence
may once again start in the Moluccas Islands, about 1,400 miles east of Jakarta.]
The five men dead were members of the elite Mobile Brigade, known as Brimob. They
were shot as they slept in a security post at a remote Loki Village in Seram island.
One assailant and a civilian were reportedly killed during the attack.
"This incident is a type of terror designed to weaken the security and stability in the
Moluccas," police spokesman, Endro Prasetyo, said to Reuters.
According to Reuters, Brig. Gen. Aityawarman reported that two suspects confessed
to being involved in the attack. The suspects claimed that the slain officers were
protecting a Christian village nearby,
Although Indonesia is 87 percent Muslim, the ratio of Christians and Muslims is
evenly split in the Moluccas Islands, said Asia Times Online.
Since 2002, there has been a tense-truce in the islands, located about 1,400 miles
east of Jakarta. Sporadic violence, however, continues to fuel tensions, says Reuters.
Several days prior to last week's attack, Asian Times reported violence in the eastern
Indonesian Islands, citing concerns that radical Islamic groups would once "again
expose ethnic and religious fault lines" by using local conflicts in the Moluccas to
spread radicalism throughout Indonesia's provinces.
The International Crisis Group (ICG), a Belgium-based conflict analysis group, stated
recently that militants in eastern Indonesia may be using non-religious conflicts to
incite so-called religious battles.
On April 24, ICG reported an attack in Mamasa, Sulawesi - west of the Moluccas
Islands - that killed five people and burned five houses. The victims were primarily
Christian.
The ICG reported stated that "...because Mamasa is majority Christian and the
villages in which opposition was initially concentrated are majority Muslim, the conflict
is widely misunderstood in Indonesia as communal."
"The conflict is essentially administrative, but it is widely perceived as religious", said
Sidney Jones, ICG South East Asia Project Director, in a recent report. "Such
perceptions increase passions and risks alike".
The group stated that none of the individuals interviewed believed that religious
differences caused the reported April 24 attack. The sources claimed that the attack,
instead, may have arisen from disagreements caused by an old district being
split-in-two in 2002. The split apparently occured by local officials seeking personal
gain.
In another ICG report issued May 3, the Indonesian government made quick arrests in
connection to the Mamasa attack after recognizing the danger of polarization along
religious lines.
Francis Helguero
francis@christianpost.com
Copyright © 2005 Christianpost.com
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