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Conflict in Maluku fuelling tension

Source
Far Eastern Economic Review - January 20, 2000

Margot Cohen, Jakarta – It was a gut-wrenching evening for the Defenders of Islam. Packed into Jakarta's Al Ashlah mosque on January 9, hundreds of young men dressed in white tunics and skullcaps listened rapt as their leaders denounced the "Christian savagery" in the Moluccan Islands, where, they were told, "tens of thousands of Muslims have been murdered, thousands of Muslim women raped and thousands of children orphaned." Soon, they were warned, the bloodletting could begin on their own doorstep.

"The Muslims of Indonesia are going to be destroyed," warned one young cleric, Reza Pahlevi. "It started in Maluku, and now it could spread to other provinces. It's not impossible that it will reach Jakarta. We must be ready."

Will religious enmity become the latest export from the renowned Spice Islands? That's the frightening prospect for jittery Indonesians and foreign investors as they monitor the national repercussions from the year-long conflict that exploded yet again in December, claiming possibly thousands of Muslim and Christian lives and displacing more than 180,000 people.

Spiralling beyond Ambon to the islands of Buru, Ternate, Halmahera and elsewhere, the latest violence has prompted a public outpouring of disgust at the government's seeming inability to halt the madness.

Unlike the firebrands, most Muslims aren't rising to the anti-Christian bait and are simply praying that President Abdurrahman Wahid will live up to his reputation as a champion of interfaith harmony and find some way of dousing the flames. Will he? With an administration beset by divisions, it's proving even harder to control the army, which appears to be pursuing its own agenda in the Moluccan Islands at the expense of peace.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric reverberating in mosques, leaflets and street protests is beginning to spook minority Christian communities. With some Muslim clerics in Jakarta and West Java preaching "holy war" at services to mark the end of Ramadan, some Christians have even begun mulling a move overseas.

"We are worried that this is the first stage. What is the second stage?" asks Ignatius Ismartono, a Jakarta-based official from the Indonesian Bishops' Conference.

The Maluku crisis has exposed signs of severe strain within the fragile political alliance between the president and Amien Rais, the chairman of the National Mandate Party and a key backer of Wahid's presidential bid last October. Amien lashed out at Wahid's government as ineffectual and issued a two-week deadline to halt the killings. Other statements indicated Amien is intent on repositioning himself as a Muslim leader, after making concerted efforts to reach out to minorities during the election campaign.

The crisis has also laid bare the vulnerability of Vice- President Megawati Sukarnoputri to accusations that she is ill- prepared to handle weighty matters of state, and particularly the task that Wahid gave her of calming the Spice Islands. Some Jakarta officials as well as supporters of Megawati believe public demands for a quick resolution of the Maluku crisis are unrealistic.

Her staunchest defenders go further, rejecting the attacks on her as a conspiracy aimed at ensuring she never becomes the country's leader. "Some people don't want Mega to become president. So starting now, there are manoeuvres to undermine her," fumes Zulvan Lindan, a Muslim MP from Megawati's party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. Still, Megawati did leave herself open to criticism by trotting off on a family vacation just as Ambon was again descending into bloodshed. Nor did she advance her own cause by virtually ignoring the three- person team of knowledgeable Moluccans informally assigned in late November to advise her on fresh policies. The team says it wrote three letters to Megawati and Wahid requesting formal status and a budget, but never received a reply.

Indonesians' anger over the escalating violence doesn't just apply to sluggish bureaucrats and government leaders; they're also upset at what they see as inflammatory and unbalanced media coverage. During the Suharto era, reporting on religious conflicts at the provincial or national level was strictly taboo. Now that reformasi has lifted such restrictions, many newspaper readers and television viewers resent that information from unreliable sources is often trumpeted as fact. For example, the Maluku body counts have varied widely depending on whether the information was provided by Christian or Muslim sources.

"Provocative statements are routinely published, and this can be very dangerous," complains Arnold Purba, executive director of Solidaritas Nusa Bangsa, a nationwide network of activists trying to promote racial and religious harmony.

Ironically, however, Wahid's embattled administration is benefiting from the unreliable news reports. Recognizing that the islands' paralyzed local government is incapable of providing solid data, many Indonesians are waiting for more accurate information before taking a firm stand on who's to blame. That's giving the president's supporters in the nationwide Nahdlatul Ulama organization and the National Awakening Party time to do some damage control. "I guarantee the conflict will not spread to other areas," says Said Aquiel, chairman of religious affairs in Nahdlatul Ulama. Their main tactic: Spreading the word that the Maluku problem shouldn't be viewed as a purely religious conflict. "We tell them that the Moluccans are victims of the political elite," says Choirul Anam, head of the East Java branch of the NAP.

That's a widely voiced theory, inside and outside Maluku. Intellectuals and religious leaders of all faiths cling to the belief that cronies of former President Suharto, power-hungry religious extremists, and military officials aiming to recover lost political ground are perpetuating the conflict. For their part, the Defenders of Islam and other right-wing Muslim groups argue that it is aimed at shaming the military and triggering international intervention to allow the Spice Islands to break away, just like East Timor. Such arguments have raised suspicions that the Muslim right is appealing for military support.

So far, the anecdotal evidence falls short of fleshing out any conspiracy theories. What is clear, though, is that any long-term solution to the islands' woes will have to take into account a knotty set of factors. As Human Rights Watch noted in a January 7 report: "Tensions had been building for decades as a result of the decline of traditional authority structures, the influx of migrants, [and] perceived Islamization of the central government and civil service."

More immediately, however, many human rights and religious groups have pointed at the role of the military, which has been accused of taking sides in the conflict, with soldiers even selling ammunition and renting guns to their favoured factions. While the armed forces finally took more decisive steps in early January, such as confiscating weapons, checking identity cards and mounting a naval blockade to guard against any influx of thugs or ammunition, many analysts argue that the military is too deeply embedded in the conflict to offer much long-term relief. Amir Hamzah, a private investigator and former columnist for the armed forces newspaper Angkatan Bersenjata, is one of many analysts who believe the unrest is linked to the military's economic interests in Maluku. He says certain officers, both active and retired, feel threatened by the prospect of decentralization. If Jakarta implements plans for regional autonomy and local revenue-sharing next year, local parliaments would have the power to cancel or refuse to renew lucrative contracts with military-backed companies engaged in fisheries, forestry and mining.

Riots, he argues, would delay such losses. "If the local government is paralyzed, parliament doesn't function, and there's no social control, automatically, Jakarta can't carry out decentralization," Amir predicts.

As the generals fend off flack over the Maluku mess, they're still haunted by the bloody aftermath of the independence vote in East Timor. With both domestic and international human-rights commissions due to complete reports in late January, it's already open season to discredit their findings. At the Al Ishlah mosque, leaders of the Defenders of Islam slammed Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights as a tool of Christian-coddling foreign governments, and accused it of ignoring Muslim victims.

"Why is it that only Muslim generals are going to be prosecuted?" thundered charismatic cleric Muhammad Rizieq Syihab, drawing a roar of approval from his flock. Chances are, that won't be the last sign of friendship between the Muslim right and military might.

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