Jakarta – Muslims have slaughtered 93 Christians since last week on a small island of the Maluku chain for refusing to convert to Islam, a church activist said yesterday quoting a survivor.

"The forced Islamisation of Christians in Kasiui Island has been continuing since last week and by Saturday, a total of 93 people have been killed for refusing to convert into Islam," said Sammy Weileruni, a lawyer with the Maranatha Christian centre in Ambon, the Malukus capital.

Mr Weileruni said a man who escaped from Kasiui on a boat arrived in Ambon yesterday and had given him the information. Kasiui is a small island in the Watubela island group east of Ambon Island. The man, a teacher, told him that when he left on Saturday, 763 other Christians, fearing for their lives, had accepted to convert to Islam.

The victims were among some 3000 people from four villages on the island who fled into the jungles following a mass attack by Muslims on November 28 in which eight villagers were killed.

The attackers, including Muslims from the neighboring Gorong island group, pursued the villagers. Those they captured were forced to convert or they were killed.

"The only help was a boat, requisitioned by the rulers of the state of civilian emergency [the governor's office] in Ambon, sent to Kasiui with a crew of 20," Mr Weileruni said, deploring the lack of reaction from Indonesian authorities since he first reported the slaughter last week.

The boat could not accommodate all those who wanted to leave Kasiui, "and the Muslims were also angered that they had come to pick up Christian refugees," he said. The boat left for Ambon carrying only the teacher who was allowed on board to join his wife in Ambon. His children were allowed to join him.

The Maluku Islands, previously known as the Spice Islands, have been torn apart by almost two years of Muslim-Christian conflict, leaving more than 4000 people dead and over half a million refugees.

The sectarian violence was sparked by a dispute between a Christian public transport driver and a Muslim in Ambon city in January 1999 that quickly degenerated into fights that spread to other islands. In June, Jakarta imposed a state of civil emergency in the Malukus but has so far failed to rein in the violence. Both sides have accused security forces of taking part.

The Britain-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide said last month that Muslim militant forces, many of them from outside the Malukus, have threatened that "there will be no church bells ringing in Ambon by Christmas". Maluku Governor Saleh Latuconsina said last week that some 1300 militant Muslim reinforcements from Java island were in the islands.