THE AUSTRALIAN, April 20, 2002
Switching allegiances
By Don Greenlees, Jakarta correspondent
FOR at least three generations, probably more, the women in Ernawati Christin
Mustamu's family have been changing their religion.
Her grandmother was a Muslim who became Christian, her mother a Christian who
became Muslim, and Ernawati herself a Muslim who became Christian. It all had to do
with finding the right husband, and religion wasn't a barrier.
Says Ernawati of her conversion to her husband's faith: "In Ambon, it is quite normal .
. . I feel more secure knowing that my children will have a clear religion."
This easy mixing of the religions in her extended family was typical in Indonesia's
eastern islands of Maluku until January 19, 1999. On that day, as Muslims celebrated
the end of Ramadan, racial and sectarian riots erupted in Ambon, wrecking the
relative harmony of the seaside capital.
Over two weeks, gangs torched much of the town and a string of villages in the north
of Ambon bay, leaving a Beirut-like landscape of broken tenements and charred
rubble. Quickly the conflict spread. Three years on, the death toll stands at about
6000.
The fighting engulfed other islands, including the neighbouring province of North
Maluku. Muslims and Christians, 350,000 of whom were made refugees, were divided
into religious enclaves.
This conflagration not just divided communities; it also divided families. Ernawati, a
28-year-old mother of two, was visiting the home of her Muslim parents in a mixed
neighbourhood of Ambon when the violence broke out.
Trapped there for a week, she eventually made it back to the Christian-dominated
neighbourhood where she lived with her husband. It would be more than a year before
she could have a tearful reunion with her parents and five siblings.
"We could still contact one another through the phone, but we could not meet," she
says. "There were many families like that."
Many soldiers sent from neighbouring South Sulawesi to quell the trouble sided with
the Muslims against the Christians. This was not surprising: the first target of the
fighting – indeed, in the view of many its root cause – was Christian hostility towards
mostly Muslim migrants from South Sulawesi.
A year later, an Islamic extremist militia, the Laskar Jihad, arrived with military
training and modern weapons. Analysts in Jakarta believe it was in fact entirely a
creation of senior army officers.
The portrayals of the fighting as a clash of two religions missed a vital point: the
majority of the population were bewildered by the conflict and just wanted peace.
Ernawati's Muslim parents both fled to Sulawesi with her younger sister. When her
Christian grandmother died in 2000, her mother briefly came back, but had to be
smuggled into the funeral.
"I just want peace," says Ernawati. "I just want to be with my family again."
In June last year, Maluku was placed under civil emergency laws, giving the Governor,
Saleh Latuconsina, dictatorial powers. A month later, conflict fatigue finally consumed
even the diehard religious fanatics. Clashes between the communities ceased and
were replaced with a new brand of war, comprising bombings, selected acts of arson
and other forms of terror.
"It's shifted into a different kind of conflict," says Cornelius Luhulima, from the Centre
for Strategic and International Studies. "The only way for them to sustain it is through
terrorist attacks for their own selfish reasons."
But the period of relative calm from mid-2001 did help create conditions in which
Jakarta could try to impose a peace agreement. Following the success of a deal to
end fighting between Muslims and Christians in Central Sulawesi, the central
Government brought Christians and Muslims from Maluku to the hillside town of
Malino and prodded them a peace accord on February 12.
Malino II, as it is known, brought a brief surge of optimism to a shell-shocked
community, although many of the key points may prove hard to implement. For the
first time since fighting broke out, Ernawati's brother, Irwan Hamzah, 24, walked into
his sisters Muslim neighbourhood to visit her.
The familiar edginess returned after a powerful bomb explosion on April 3 outside a
hotel in a Christian quarter of Ambon town. Seven people were killed and as many as
50 injured. Aid workers counted five survivors with missing limbs; some had lost both
legs.
Soon after, the Governor's office, the last symbol of civilian rule in Maluku, went up in
flames. The local parliament had been burned months earlier.
Says Irwan, reflecting a common dilemma: "We don't know whose game this is." He
now only meets his sister in a "neutral" market, where he sells cuts of beef.
The theories on who is behind efforts to sustain the conflict are as numerous as the
analysts.
"Many people believe those who masterminded the recent bombing and destruction of
the Governor's office are the military – so how can you feel secure?" says Father
Cornelius Bohm, a Dutch Catholic priest with three decades of experience in Maluku.
Military analysts say units sent from outside have been under orders to take an even
hand in the conflict and appear to have done a better job in the past 12 months. But
they do acknowledge certain military elements have a thriving business offering
protection, meaning they have an interest in sustaining anxieties.
Moreover, hardline groups in the Muslim and Christian camps are not ready to forgive.
Although Laskar Jihad forces have gone from a peak of about 3000 to 500, Christian
leaders use their presence to justify continued vigilance. Says Luhulima, an ethnic
Ambonese: "The grassroots and the middle class downward want peace; the middle
class upwards are not ready to let it go."
The conflict appears now to have degenerated into a struggle for local power and
control of petty finance – if this was not always the case. On the receiving end are
the great mass of people who simply want to get on with their lives, like Ernawati and
her family.
© The Australian
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