Jakarta – The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) claims to have uncovered a plot to provoke violence in Ambon and clashes in other parts of the Maluku province, where thousands have been killed and injured in a year of religious rioting.

Komnas HAM secretary Mr Asmara Nababan told reporters in Jakarta that forged documents had been discovered scattered in the streets of Ambon following battles between Muslims and Christians.

"The documents, which provoked and inflamed people's emotions, were not something produced by amateurs," he was reported as saying yesterday by the Suara Merdeka newspaper. "There is a strong suspicion that the documents were produced by members of the political elite in Jakarta," said Mr Asmara, without identifying the provocateurs.

Communal and religious fighting has been provoked in Indonesia in the past by competing military and civilian factions seeking to discredit or destabilise the government or military leadership.

The documents found in the streets of Ambon contained plans to exterminate one ethnic group in Maluku. This led to the mobilisation of members of that ethnic group, who quickly assembled with their weapons on the pretext that they had to defend themselves, Mr Asmara said.

He emphasise that the bloodshed could not be simply viewed as tension between religious groups, but power struggles within the political elite.