Western Resistance

« Bangladesh: Islamists Set Off Railway Bombs | | France: Royal Warns of "Violence" if Sarkozy Wins »

May 2, 2007

Indonesia: Bombings In Ambon, Scene Of Muslim/Christian Conflict

News from Associated Press via the Malaysia Star and International Herald Tribune, also covered in the Jakarta Post and Antara News:

This morning (local time) at the main mosque in Ambon, Indonesia, a grenade was thrown. The device blew up as worshippers were gathering outside the Al-Fatah Grand Mosque in preparation for morning prayers. There were no injuries, and the service continued as usual.

There were earlier explosions in the week. The first explosion had happened on April 25 at a bus station, followed the same day by a grenade which was hurled at a house. Six people had been injured in the earlier attacks. 12 people had been questioned by police, including the six people who had been injured. April 25 was the 56th anniversary of the founding of a Christian separatist group, the Moluccas Sovereign Front - the Front Kedaulatan Maluku or FKM.

Ambon is an island in the Moluccas (Malaku province), or Spice Islands. the Spice Islands were annexed into Indonesia in 1950, which led to the creation of the FKM. Ambon became the scene of a conflict which went on from 1999 to 2002, a conflict known as the Moluccan War. 9,000 people died in this war. The violence also took place in Poso in Central Sulawesi province, in which 1,000 people, mostly Christians, died between December 1998 and 2002. Sulawesi and Ambon have populations which are split fairly evenly between Muslims and Christians.

As a response to Ambonese Christians' desires to secede from mainly Muslim Indonesia, an Islamist paramilitary group called Laskar Jihad (Lashkar Jihad), led by Jafar Umar Thalib, made war on the local population. What triggered the involvement of Lashkar Jihad was a market brawl on January 19, 1999, between Muslims and Christians. Violence escalated shortly after this incident.

On February 11-12, 2002, a peace deal, supervised by Indonesia's Minister for People's Welfare Yusuf Kalla (who is now deputy prime minister), was signed by the various warring factions from Sulawesi and Ambon. This agreement was known as the Malino Accord.

Shortly after this, the government arrested Dr Alex Manaputty, leader of the KFM, on April 17, 2002. He was sentenced on January 28, 2003 to three years' jail . He fled Indonesia in December 2003, escaping to the US.

On Friday April 26, 2002, eleven days after Manaputty's arrest, a gathering was held at the Al-Fatah Grand Mosque in Ambon, after Friday prayers. This mosque, scene of this morning's grenade attack, had been used to give medical aid to the Islamist fighters during the Moluccan Conflict. The meeting in 2002 had 5,000 Islamists of Lashkar Jihad present, and was addressed by Umar Jafar Thalib. He said: "From today, we will no longer talk about reconciliation. Our... focus now must be preparing for war - ready your guns, spears and daggers."

Two days later, on Sunday April 28, 2002, Thalib's followers invaded the Christian village of Soya in Ambon. 21 people died, with small children and women hacked at with machetes and decapitated, and men beaten to death with staves, beheaded, and burned alive in their homes. A church was burned, along with 30 homes. I have seen a jihadist video celebrating the atrocities of Soya, which show murders being carried out with staves, and babies in a hospital with machete injuries. Soldiers from the Indonesian army appear to be involved - in the video they were shown arriving in trucks, and holding aloft severed heads of villagers. Christians say that M-16 rifles were employed by attackers - the standard issue for the Indonesian army.

Despite his breaking of the Malino Accord and inciting murder of the Christians, when Umar Jafar Thalib was taken to court on charges of inciting religious violence, he was acquitted on January 30, 2003.

Today in Ambon, flags of the KFM were tied to trees and hanging from buildings.

***********

In separate news, the Jakarta Post reports that there have been grenade attacks in Aceh province in Indonesia. This province had been the scene of bitter struggles of the separatist movement called the Free Aceh Movement or GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka). Over a period of 29 years, 15,000 people had died in the fighting, but on August 15, 2005 a peace deal was signed in Finland. A year after the tsunami of December 24, 2004, which had killed more than 167,000 people in the province, Islamists had taken control of the province.

Since 2002, Aceh has been officially allowed to implement its own form of sharia law as part of the peace arrangements with Indonesia. This has been implemented by the sharia police, called the Wilyatul Hisbah. Public beatings have taken place, and women are not allowed to be in close proximity to a man ("khalwat"). On December 17 2006, it was reported that the authorities in Aceh intended to introduce hand amputations (jarimah uhud) as punishments for theft. At the same time, it was revealed that the Islamic authorities had diverted tsunami aid money to implement sharia punishments, rather than the housing the money was intended for.

Irwandi Yusuf, a former GAM fighter, was elected by a popular vote to the post of governor of Aceh province in an election that took place on December 2006, and vetoed implementation of the amputations.

The current explosions in Aceh appear to be aimed at former GAM members. Early on Sunday, April 29 in the northern town of Lhokseumawe, a grenade was thrown at the home of former rebel Sofyan Dawood. No-one was injured, though windows were shattered. On April 23, grenades had been thrown at the house of Lhokseumawe's deputy mayor, and on April 24 grenades were thrown at the headquarters of the "Mobile Brigade", a police unit, at Banda Aceh, capital of the province.

According to AKI, the GAM party does not approve of sharia, while the more hardline PKA party (Partai Rakyat Aceh) wants full implementation of "progressive" sharia.

Jodi Heriyadi, police spokesman for Aceh province said: "A series of grenade throwing had disrupted people's peacefulness. We have to intensity our investigation."

On Monday afternoon a young girl was killed. She and some friends had found a ball-like object and had been playing with it when it exploded. The incident took place outside Langsa town in Aceh, and injured two children and a local farmer. It was suggested by police that the bomb had been a legacy of the earlier conflict, and is unrelated to the recent grenade attacks.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at May 2, 2007 7:07 PM

Comments

Post a comment