Jakarta – Six young Christians said Thursday they spent a sleepless night in the grounds of the Swiss embassy after jumping into the mission to highlight the sectarian conflict in the Maluku islands.
"They [Swiss diplomats] offered us breakfast. It was very kind of them, but we refused because our friends are bringing us food every six hours," one of the six, Arnold Thenu, told AFP by mobile phone from the chancery grounds.
"We didn't sleep, we stayed up talking," said Thenu, a 25-year-old law student of a private Christian university here. He added the group, all from Indonesia's strife-torn Maluku islands, had been told they would have an early morning meeting with the diplomats.
The Swiss foreign ministry in Bern has said that one of the group – five young men and a woman – had on Wednesday had asked for asylum, and all six had threatened suicide if the diplomats refused to meet them.
Swiss foreign ministry spokesperson Monica Schmutz Cattaneo said the other demands were that the five not seeking asylum be assured of safe passage out of the embassy, and that Bern help draw world attention to the Maluku conflict.
About 4,000 people have died and more than half a million have been left homeless since the Muslim-Christian unrest erupted in the Malukus, also known as the spice islands, in January 1999. "They spoke of the systematic elimination of Christians by Muslims in the Malukus," Cattaneo said.
Thenu said on Thursday another of the group might ask for asylum on Thursday "because he felt uneasy with the situation and not safe." A Swiss embassy official, speaking at the locked embassy gate here, said the six would not be allowed into the chancery building, or to give a press conference.
The official declined to give his name and said any comment must come from Bern. Still draped along the front fence of the mission was a huge banner reading: "Save the Moluccas!" – the Dutch spelling for the islands.
In a statement issued outside the embassy Wednesday, the Mahamuda Siwalima [Maluku Youth] said: "We are worried that if it is not speedily settled, the conflict in the Malukus would sooner or later become a gradual ethnic cleansing."
The group called on the Swiss government and the United Nations to help, "in an active and objective way, the investigation, the handling, the safeguarding and the settlement of the problems in Maluku."
They said they had chosen the Swiss embassy because the UN commission on human rights is headquartered in Geneva. "In reality, the disunity [in the Malukus] was created by mercenaries from Jakarta who came to disunite the Muslims and the Christians in Ambon," said Jamie, one of 14 protestors picketting outside the embassy.
Christian activists have documented cases where uniformed and armed soldiers have taken part in attacks against Christians in several areas of the Malukus. They have since called on the United Nations, or any foreign nation, to intervene in the conflict to provide neutral arbitration.
The bloodshed on the islands first broke out after a trivial dispute between a Christian public transport driver and a Muslim in Ambon on January 19, 1999.