[There are fears that the Indonesia is facing a period of increasing instability with worrying signs of tensions on the predominantly Catholic island of Flores. A report from the International Crisis Group, claims violent incidences in recent months on the usually tranquil island were apparently fuelled by disaffected soliders from East Timor and conflicts between the military and police.]

Presenter/Interviewer: Anita Barraud

Speakers: Sidney Jones, Director of the Indonesian chapter of the International Crisis Group.

Jones: "There were a couple of incidents in July and August which really shook the town of Maumere, one in July when a protestant from North Sulawesi who happened to be a crew member on a visiting ship inadvertently entered a Catholic church on a Sunday during mass was offered the communion wafer, the host, and he didn't know what to do with it and he took it in his hand and started to go out of the church, and a near riot broke out."

"And he was eventually taken to the police station and within about a half an hour suddenly trucks full of by one estimate about 8,000 men came into the area around the police station demanding to basically lynch this particular prisoner and the violence was not stopped by the police to the point that mobs of men marched toward the local mosque, even though this individual was not a Muslim. It was precisely the local mosque that became the target of the mob wrath. No one that we talked to believed the violence was spontaneous."

Barraud: So you're saying that it was an organised event, it appears that it was an organised event?

Jones: "It appears that it was an organised event and the question is why would the local mosque still have become the target? And I think there are a couple of things going on here, one is that there really is genuine resentment by the Florenese towards migrants from other parts of Indonesian who have come and settled in Flores, and this is a pattern you see all over Indonesia. And they were talking about Madurese in Kalimantan or we're talking about Bugis from Sulawesi in Papua, but also another development that's taking place here is that many people suspect the army of wanting to create trouble so that they can come in and say look, you need we the military after all, you need to have us here in charge of the local situation."

Barraud: In your report you also say that there's some unresolved issues regarding East Timor?

Jones: "Flores is very close to East Timor, after the violence in 1999 in September when everybody fled to West Timor the Indonesian military was faced with the problem about what do we do with all the soldiers, regular army soldiers who had been stationed in East Timor? What they did was to take the soldiers who had been stationed in Dili and insert them into different district level and sub-district level posts, most of them in Flores. This not only created far more military presence, it also meant you had a lot of young men, who were soldiers, who were angry, and who were basically under-employed and those people are prime candidates to become troublemakers."

Barraud: Under-employed and underpaid?

Jones: "Right, there's a second incident that happened in Flores in August, a fight broke out at a local pub between police officers and military officers and who led an assault on police headquarters and in the process we had fully armed police confronting fully armed military in this tiny little town."

Barraud: Why such tension between the military and police?

Jones: Again what's going on in Flores is a reflection of many problems that the rest of Indonesia is facing, but the police used to be a member of the armed forces. When they were split off in the process of democratisation they were given primary role for internal security. The army across Indonesia felt affronted that these poorly trained often highly corrupt, poorly educated people they looked down on, were now taking over from them and getting international donor assistance in some cases. As a result there has been tension rising across the country exacerbated by the fact that a local level police and army compete for spoils, they compete for extortion benefits, they compete for drug trade, they compete for who runs the prostitution rings and so on."