Poso’s pain

A recent upturn in sectarian violence on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island has renewed fears of a return of Muslim-Christian bloodletting that has left more than 2,000 dead in the province since conflict first erupted in 1999. Jakarta has sent in troop reinforcements to bolster a peace pact signed a year ago and last week, The Straits Times’ Indonesia Correspondent DEVI ASMARANI went to the region to assess the effects of the terror. In Poso, the coastal epicentre of the violence where she once lived, she was shocked by what she found.

Poso And Tentena (Central Sulawesi) – For hire car drivers like Johnny, each working day can be a matter of life and death, on or off the road.Apart from driving skills, Johnny has been forced to master the art of deception and disguise to survive in this volatile part of Sulawesi.

 

 

The 35-year-old’s trans-Sulawesi route crosses areas of bloody conflict where thousands have been executed in the past five years just for being in the wrong place with the wrong faith.

Johnny is a Christian, his religion officially recorded on his state identity card. But in Muslim areas he passes through five to six times a week, he tells people he is a mualaf (a person recently converted to the faith), buying the trust of those who know he has been married to a Muslim for 15 years.

He moved his family to Palu, the next major town and capital of Central Sulawesi, from the predominantly Christian hamlet of Lena to protect his wife and children.

And he has grown a goatee to look like many devout Muslims here and learnt prayers in Arabic from his wife.

‘I know I am living like a snake, but I think God understands that sometimes we have to lie to keep ourselves alive,’ he told The Straits Times.

But even the savvy ones like him know the limit. The rule of thumb for Christians is: Do not pass Muslim areas after dark and never spend the night in the coastal town of Poso, the epicentre of religious violence that killed more than 1,000 people in 2000 and 2001.

For Muslims, it is vice versa, except the town that is out of the question is Tentena, the Christian enclave about 50km south-east of Poso.

Segregated is the word to describe Poso, the former model of religious tolerance in the country, ever since the first riot broke out at Christmas in 1998. Stretching across 30,000 sq km with a population of 393,000 people before the conflict, the Regency of Poso comprise 13 districts and dozens of hamlets, each now divided into pockets of Muslims and Christians.

Downtown Poso, where the proportion of Muslims and Christians before the conflict was 60 per cent to 40 per cent respectively, is now practically entirely populated by Muslims. Tens of thousands of Christians have been purged from the town since 2000. Most went to Tentena, while others fled to Palu or Menado in North Sulawesi.

The ruins of houses and churches in the town and some of the hamlets across the coastal areas are a glaring warning for Christians to stay away. But traveling south, passing highland pockets of Christians, the picture reverses, with Muslim homes and mosques in ruins.

Death tolls hover around 1,000 from both sides so far. The local economy in the town of Poso has taken a drastic downturn, devastated by the absence of prosperous Chinese and Christians.

Yet despite the evidence, both Muslim and Christians here insist theirs is not a religious war. Instead, they share the same views – as do independent observers – that local and national politics and money have played a major part in exacerbating and prolonging the unrest.

The complexity of Poso conflicts has rendered the ongoing security approaches and existing peace accord ineffective in curbing violence.

To be fair, there has been Invalid leading Invalid leading practically no massive direct confrontation since the two warring parties signed a peace accord in Malino, South Sulawesi, on Dec 20, 2001.

Muslim warrior groups from outside of the areas have been disbanded and sent back to their hometowns, while the local groups are laying low.

But the excesses of the conflicts remain. Gun smuggling, jobless young men, and tens of thousands of displaced people make for a lethal cocktail of potential disasters.

Dodgy local politics, corruption and police and military rivalries provide ammunitions for more frictions.

Recent incidents have been sporadic, specific and more fatal since the Malino deal. Sniper attacks, ambushes and bombings of buses, and village raids have been on the rise. Last month, 19 people were killed and over a dozen wounded in various incidents, mostly attacks on Christian villages.

Pantangolemba, a Christian enclave squeezed between Muslim villages in Poso Pesisir district, was raided by about 50 armed men in black masks at midnight last month.

The son of the village chief and four other young men on night guard were killed, and the house of the local priest was shot at, although she and the family survived.

Most villagers have since fled to Tentena, the second time since 2000. Those who remain stay in groups in houses near the woods for safety at night.

Said resident Mrs S. Sepatondu: ‘I sleep with seven other families in one house now, but I can hardly close my eyes. At night we feel like sitting ducks.’

The authorities suspected the involvement of people linked to the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror network in the latest attacks. Police have arrested and shot dead some suspects, including men who were known to have received training by local JI leaders.

Muslim sources said there could be at least 60 of these men hiding in the forests around Poso. These are mostly combat-weary young men unhappy with their lack of a role in the post-peace accord Poso.

Police said the aim is to provoke retaliation from the Christian sides to create another major havoc.

But militants are just part of the problem. More detrimental is the rampant distribution of weapons in Poso and the lack of measures to stop it.

Some modern rifles and guns like AK-47 and M-16 used by the two warring groups were known to be smuggled in from the southern Philippines. But many more like the SS1 assault riffles and bullets were made by the state-owned company Pindad that supplies weapons to the Indonesian military and police.

Live bullets can be bought easily here; sometimes troops stationed at remote security posts even sell them to the locals for cigarette money. That the police never uncovered the real network behind the arms business – despite their success in capturing terrorist suspects – raises suspicions that powerful groups possibly linked to the military were backing the arms distribution.

But even without the gun business, the security had been accused of exploiting the conflict.

Commercial and private cars passing Police Mobile Brigade or army security checkpoints along the Palu-Poso-Tentena route have to fork out troop payments.

When tension is high, the only transport companies that continue to operate are those belonging to the army cooperatives.

Some speculate that the conflicts are being maintained to benefit the military politically. By proving police incapable of handling troubled areas, the military expected to be given control over security in Poso, as in the neighbouring Maluku islands where at least 9,000 were killed between 1999 and 2001.

Like in Maluku, local politics also had a hand in deepening the conflicts.

The first three outbreaks of violence occurred about the time of the succession of the regency leadership. There were tensions then over the Muslim and Christian candidates. Muslim figures eventually won strategic positions, angering many Christians who saw it as a breach of the traditional power- sharing arrangement in Poso politics.

The damage is irreparable to the two religious groups now. Ironically, it all started at Christmas in 1998, which also fell in the fasting month of Ramadan, with a typical alcohol-induced brawl between two young men.

But it was only after the second riot in April 2000 that the confrontation escalated into a religious conflict on a grand scale, with the razing of churches and houses in Poso’s Christian neighbourhood for nearly a week.

Christians fled to highland areas as far away as Tentena. A month later, Christian groups, one of which was led by East Nusa Tenggara native Fabianus Tibo, began their retaliation campaign. Hundreds of Muslims were slain and thousands expelled from Christian villages during this time.

It got worse when Muslim groups from Java and other islands flooded in in mid- 2001, declaring Poso a holy-war or jihad territory.

Groups like Laskar Jihad, Laskar Mujahiddin, and Laskar Jundullah, which is headed by convicted terrorist Agus Dwikarna currently in detention in the Philippines, took over Poso.

It was around this time, that JI reportedly entered the area, setting up military training camps for local men. The authorities say the groups train men to fight, make weapons and explosives and convert them to their ideological causes.

They get the backing of local prominent figures such as businessman Daeng Raja, who provided a place for Laskar Jihad in his neighbourhood in Gebangrejo.

‘I don’t see anything wrong with training the kids to fight. It is the right of every citizen to defend themselves and their territories,’ he said.

Despite cries of religious solidarity, however, intense rivalries emerged among the Muslim Laskars and between local Muslim groups and counterparts from other provinces.

‘Some local religious leaders felt threatened, even offended, by Laskar Jihad, which exercised a very different and extreme interpretation of Islam than they do,’ Mr Arianto Dai, a Muslim civil servant, said.

Meanwhile, the Christians were purging Muslims from their villages and conducted retaliation raids. Observers said the Christian groups were not as organised as their Muslim counterparts.

‘The Christian groups were more defensive and unorganised compared to the Muslim laskars,’ said Mr Anto Sangaji, the managing director of the non- governmental organisation Yayasan Tanah Merdeka, who has been studying the conflict.

‘Most of them did not start an attack, and a lot of the victims came from their side.’

Reverend Rinaldy Damanic, the coordinator of the Crisis Centre of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church (GKST), justified the violence as crucial for survival.

Speaking to The Straits Times in Palu prison, he said: ‘We have given them our right and left cheek, we don’t have a third cheek to give them.’ He was sentenced last year to three years’ imprisonment for possessing illegal weapons.

While Tibo and his groups were sentenced to death, some Muslims perpetrators received light sentences or walked free, Christian groups complain. Last week Poso police released two men, who were allegedly involved in the recent attacks of Christian villages, after hundreds of people besieged the police headquarters, killing a Christian motorist on the way there.

But the Muslims have similar complaints, saying the authorities were often too quick to blame them. Police were condemned for human rights abuse for the shooting of a suspected Muslim attacker in a recent raid.

Mr Yahya Mangun, a Muslim signatory of the Malino Peace Accord who heads the Working Committee on Reconciliation, said the long road to reconciliation requires Christians and Muslims to return to their homes.
But even he has qualms: ‘I’m not entertaining any illusion that peace can return soon – it will take at least a generation to heal the wounds of both sides.

Senin, 24 November 2003
Sumber : The Straits Times