Mayhem in the Moluccas

Strife in the Spice Islands has cost thousands of lives and created over half a million refugees; while agitators foment violence, centuries of peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims have disappeared in a sea of senseless hate

SINCE THE BEGINNING of 1999, Indonesia’s Molucca Islands have been torn by intercommunal strife on an unprecedented scale. An estimated 5,000 people have been killed, many more wounded and approximately 600,000 made homeless, many of them now wandering in search of new homes on other islands. The situation is beyond the control of the Indonesian authorities or security forces, but no one has yet been able to explain convincingly why this sudden eruption of violence occurred, or to say how it can be stopped.

Monopoly of the spice trade

The islands, popularly known as the Spice Islands, and in Indonesian as Maluku, are highly valued because of their clove, nutmeg and mace production. They became the arena for rivalry and conflict between the European colonial powers from the fifteenth century onwards. Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch and English vied for supremacy. By the mid-seventeenth century the Dutch had gained the upper hand, and used their power to secure the monopoly of the profitable spice trade. One result of this was the arrival and growth of a substantial Christian population, particularly on one of the main islands, Ambon. Moluccans were enthusiastic collaborators in the Dutch colony, which was run with characteristic Dutch colonial rigour. This was demonstrated vividly in the so-called Ambon massacre of 1623 when the Dutch executed ten Englishmen, ten Japanese and one Portuguese on suspicion of hatching a plot to overthrow the Dutch administration. The brutality shown by the Dutch in torturing their prisoners to secure confessions coloured English views of the Dutch for many years, especially throughout the Anglo-Dutch wars of the seventeenth century.
The islands were overrun by the Japanese in the Second World War. With the absorption of the East Indies into the new Republic of Indonesia in 1949 the Moluccas were included, against the will of their inhabitants. The South Moluccans had hoped to set up their own republic after liberation, and bitterly resented, and resisted, being sucked into Indonesia. As a temporary measure the Dutch government allowed South Moluccan soldiers and their families to settle in the Netherlands, where many of them still are. (In the 1970s they, or their children, tried to call attention to their problems with a series of terrorist actions, including the hi-jacking of trains, but they have now settled more happily in Dutch society. A South Moluccan republic has not yet been recognised either in the Spice Islands or in the Netherlands).

Christian against Muslim

The struggle in the islands is between Christians and Muslims. Indonesia is about 95 per cent Muslim, the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, and the Spice Islands are the only part where the Christians have a large proportion of the population — about 40 per cent. Until recently, devotees of the two religions have coexisted harmoniously, and the islands were regarded as a model of peaceful intercommunal relations. This makes the present outbreak of insensate hatred the harder to understand.
The intercommunal harmony was broken in January 1999 when, during the Muslim feast of ‘Id-ul-Fitr in Ambon, a minor street brawl between a Christian and a Muslim developed into full-scale rioting involving many members of the two religions. Churches and mosques were set ablaze and houses destroyed, while more than a hundred people were injured, many of them by machete blows. People left their homes to seek some sort of security in schools and barracks, and police arrested the ringleaders. The outburst was blamed on inter-island migration mainly caused by waves of Muslims from povertystricken areas of Sulawesi floo-ding into Ambon in search of a better life.

The fire spreads

At first the troubles were confined to the island and city of Ambon, which was virtually gutted, but before long they spread to other parts of the Indonesian archipelago which had already been affected by the withdrawal of the army from East Timor and by Indonesia’s economic troubles. Dozens of houses were burned in Seram, and violence broke out on the islands of Haruku and Saparua to the east of Ambon. Barracks in Ambon were commandeered to give shelter to refugees, and gruesome stories began to circulate of torture, mutilation and even cannibalism. By the beginning of March the dead numbered 200; the army commander, General Wiranto, announced the creation of a special force to respond to riots, although, even at that stage, it was clear that some army units were so demoralised or partisan as to make their handling of riots ineffectual or likely to exacerbate the situation. The deputy president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, was given special powers to oversee the handling of the crisis, which threatened to spread throughout Indonesia (although nowhere else is there the same dangerous mixture of half-and-half).

 By the end of March there was a lull in the rioting. It was agreed that the figures of dead and wounded, although almost impossible to verify, were much higher than official estimates allowed, and that, in Ambon itself, the Muslims had fared badly, with an estimated 50,000 having been forced to flee back to Sulawesi. But in August, like a forest fire breaking out again, there were fresh outbursts in Ambon. Christian concern that the army was assisting the Muslims was heightened by the discovery of military-issue rifles in the hands of Muslim militias. The fighting has continued throughout 2000, with Ambon always the flashpoint, and the surrounding islands being swiftly set alight. In June President Abdurrahman Wahid issued orders banning outsiders from entering the Moluccas because it is outsiders who create trouble in the area. He claimed that the riots were the work of certain prominent people in the capital, Jakarta, but did not elaborate. They do not want changes, he said. They want to maintain the status quo so that they can make trouble there. Reports from Ambon at that time did, indeed, suggest that Muslim forces were being organised by people from outside Ambon. Naturally enough, suspicion fell on army generals, some of whom had become seriously disaffected by the secession of East Timor, viewed as a crushing defeat by the army, and by diminution of power and privilege for the armed forces. President Suharto, a former army commander, had favoured the army throughout his long presidency, and his removal from power in 1998 was a serious blow to his supporters. Both his successor, Habibie, and the present President, nicknamed Gus Dur, have taken steps to curb the activities and influence of the armed forces.

Holy War warriors arrive

Muslim militias have become known as jihad (holy war) warriors. It is clear that thousands are being shipped into Ambon from other islands, almost certainly with the collusion of the army and the civil authorities. In a statement in June, leaders of the Catholic Amboina diocese reported that the aim of the jihad warriors was to cleanse the Moluccas of Christians. Church leaders reported an attack by 5,000 of these fighters on a Christian village, Duma, on Halmahera Island, in which 200 Christians were killed. Many Indonesian troops actually supported and fought alongside the jihad warriors, they said.
Bishop Petrus Canisius Mandagi of Amboina has supported the President’s order to close the islands to outsiders, but has pointed out that jihad warriors have continued to pour in. He and other Christian leaders have called for United Nations intervention to prevent the systematic expulsion of Christians from the islands.

Who is guilty?

After 32 years of military government under Suharto, who only stepped down, under pressure, in May 1998, Indonesia is in a state of flux. The civilian government has not yet learned how to govern, and has an economic crisis on its hands, while the military have not yet been able to adapt themselves to their new role. Given that the armed forces are strongly pro-Muslim, it is likely that Christian accusations of partiality towards the Muslims are pretty accurate. It is probably also true that they helped in transporting jihad figh-ters from other parts of the archipelago to the Moluccas, and that they have armed, equipped and trained them. There is a tendency in Christian circles, whether in Indonesia or outside, to blame Muslims exclusively for the violence and continuing unrest. But there are as many complaints from the Muslims as from the Christians, and people on the spot stress that both sides are to blame : the violations and barbarities of one side are matched by those of the other.
For example, Christian forces on the island of Halmahera drove out virtually the whole Muslim population of the town of Jobelo, in much the same way as Christians have been expelled from Ambon and surrounding villages.
There is also some evidence that Indonesian army intelligence has manipulated both sides, for example by circulating pamphlets insulting the prophet Muhammad in Muslim areas and Christ in Christian ones. Their intention, presumably, is to destabilise the country and perhaps give a pretext for dissatisfied generals to seize power. The dirty tricks department of Indonesian army intelligence has a long history of such operations.

Bring in peacekeepers... or somebody

As the months pass it is clear that matters are getting worse. Sporadic violence by stone-throwing youths has given way to mass attacks by well-trained squads of jihad warriors whose aims are not simply to kill, maim and burn, but to clear their enemies out of the area. It was the hope that suitable, non-partisan army units would be able to halt this process and restore peace, but this has not happened. The army has not only failed to solve, but has succeeded in compounding the problem. The Indonesian human rights commission has called for a peacekeeping force made up of troops from the Association of South East Asian Nations (AS-EAN), and this is certainly worth following up. The trouble is that any such force, whether from ASEAN, the UN or the European Union, must be invited in by the president or his government. So far President Wahid, under pressure from army commanders, has resisted this. Logically, the first requirement is for the Indonesians themselves to investigate and find out who is masterminding instability in the Spice Islands and take appropriate action. But at present that seems unlikely to happen.