Retno Heriwati, Sumberkerto – Deep in the remote jungles of Indonesia's East Java a mysterious spate of ninja-style murders has prompted a local Moslem group to take the law into its own hands.
At least 10 people have been brutally killed in the past month in the area. Residents say most of the victims were found in grotesque conditions with slice wounds all over their bodies.
Accusing the police of being too slow in handling what looks like a repeat of a major wave of killings a year ago, local representatives of Indonesia's largest Moslem mass organisation have organised their own defence.
In late 1998, unidentified black-garbed killers roamed East Java villages at night murdering Moslem clerics and suspected black magic practitioners. Well over 100 were killed in that wave of killings, which remains unsolved. The killings also spread to some parts of central and west Java.
Many saw the 1998 killings as a bid to trigger widespread violence in the strongly Moslem region at a time when the country was racked by its worst economic and political crisis in decades.
Grotesque killings
Last week two Moslem teachers were killed in Sumberkerto, a sleepy village to the south of the town of Malang. Their heads were smashed. One body was found in a gutter and the other outside the victim's house.
Some locals said they saw five men clad in black masks taking the victims away from their houses the night before.
On Wednesday an 80-strong party of Moslem men in camouflage armed with rattans and knives patrolled the vast green paddy fields in Sumberkerto, a farming village with no electricity and a population of just 197 people.
"People in this village have already been targeted by the ninjas, therefore we are safeguarding the area from further threats," said Hanif.
He belongs to Ansor, a wing of Indonesia's largest Moslem group, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). Most of the victims so far have been members of the NU, formerly headed by President Abdurrahman Wahid.
To reach the village, you have to trek for two hours through dense tropical forest on a muddy winding path. A bouncing trip on a motorbike from the nearest road to the village, a mosquito-infested highland, can cut the journey to 45 minutes. Hanif said in the past week they had not let any outsiders enter the village in a bid to prevent further killings.
Police accused of foot-dragging
Local religious leaders said police had been moving too slowly in handling the killings and warned of spreading violence if the government did not move quickly to stop it.
"The killings are part of a systematic scenario to destabilise some parts of East Java and if it is too late it could flare to the whole of the province," said Moslem leader Hasyim Musadi in Malang, some 685 km east of Jakarta.
He added he had received reports implicating local military officials in the murders, claims which security forces dismiss.
"We heard reports from our sources that one of the main perpetrators is a criminal from Jakarta who had been trained by military headquarters," said Musadi.
But police said some locals had hampered the probe by refusing to talk to the officials. "What can we do? The residents have so far refused to talk to the police," said Malang police chief Lieutenant-Colonel Herry Prastowo.