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Indonesia's deadly war games
By Richel Langit
JAKARTA - "By hook or by crook" seems to be the tenet
that Indonesia's powerful military and police hold dearly in
pursuing their political ambitions.
Renewed religious conflicts in Ambon, Maluku, have increasingly
been exploited by the military and police to boost their
bargaining position against President Megawati Sukarnoputri and
other civilian politicians in both the House of Representatives (DPR)
and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), with the ultimate
goal of maintaining their political role.
Indeed, MPR, the country's highest legislative body, is working on
the fourth and last phase of constitutional amendment, which is
expected to put an end to the military's political role. If the
amendments are endorsed by MPR in its annual meeting in August,
the military and police's political role comes to an end in 2004,
instead of 2009 as previously agreed. For the military and police,
which have controlled the country's political life for more than
three decades now, the sudden change constitutes an untimely
political shock that has cost them huge economic privileges.
It is not surprising, therefore, that almost immediately after the
bloody attack on the Christian village of Soya, Ambon, last
Sunday, which killed 14 people, calls have mounted for the
imposition of a military emergency in the province, where
protracted religious conflicts have claimed close to 10,000
innocent lives. The imposition of a military emergency would
practically mean allowing the military to rule the province.
The truth is the military and police have sabotaged efforts by the
Maluku administration to stop the conflicts by ignoring orders
from Governor Saleh Latuconsina. Latuconsina in particular
complained about the navy's indifference to his orders to beef up
sea security and criticized security officers' reluctance to
arrest those responsible for instigating the violence.
"If we ask the navy why they do not provide sea security,
they would say 'we lack equipment', where in fact the Maluku
administration has provided most of the required equipment,"
Latuconsina said on Wednesday. "How can the situation in
Ambon improve and how can I take stern measures against the
warring groups if my instructions are just ignored by security
personnel?"
Earlier, the military switched the religious conflicts in Ambon
from horizontal conflicts - between two social groups - to
vertical conflicts between the state and the Republic of South
Maluku (RMS) by accusing the insurgent group of masterminding the
bloody violence in the province. By pointing their fingers at RMS,
the military is practically declaring war against the alleged
perpetrators of the violence.
But what puzzles many outsiders is the fact that security officers
have taken no action against the Java-based Muslim paramilitary
group Laskar Jihad, whose presence in the province has only
exacerbated the violence. No less an authority than Latuconsina
linked last Sunday's bloody attack on the Christian village of
Soya to the Laskar Jihad paramilitary and its leader Djafar Umar
Thalib, who once fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in
the1980s. Indeed, two days before the deadly attack, the Muslim
cleric addressed his fighters in a mosque in downtown Ambon,
lambasting security authorities for failing to prevent the alleged
separatist group RMS from hoisting its secessionist flag on April
25, and calling for a "people's war" and holy war
against the separatist movement.
The same Laskar Jihad has also been involved in confiscating lands
belonging to Christians and distributing them to its members and
Muslims from outside Maluku province. Legal owners of these lands
were chased out by force and as a consequence have had to escape
into the jungles in order to save their lives. Christians captured
by the vigilante Laskar Jihad forces had to face the consequence
of simultaneously forced conversion to Islam and circumcision or
death.
When leaders of warring groups came to a government-sponsored
meeting in Malino, South Sulawesi province, last year, Laskar
Jihad leaders refused to come to the "negotiation
table". And when leaders from both camps signed a peace
agreement in the resort town of Malino last February 12, Laskar
Jihad refused to recognize the settlement. In fact, immediately
after the meeting, Laskar Jihad leaders set up their own radio
station, through which they openly urged Muslims to wage war
against their Christian infidel enemies.
Speculations are mounting that the presence of Laskar Jihad in
Ambon is fully supported by the military and police as part of
their effort to create "necessary conditions" for the
imposition of a military emergency in the territory. It is a
well-known fact that some elements in the military and police are
actively supporting certain Muslim fundamentalist groups, which
often take the law into their own hands.
Meanwhile, by implicating RMS in the communal clashes, the
military has, in effect, sided with the Muslims and declared war
against the Christians fighting for their lives. As such, the end
of the conflicts may come with a bitter reality - the perishing of
Christian communities in the province, either by forced conversion
into Islam or martyrdom. Either way, the conflicts would follow
the plot sketched out by Muslim fundamentalist groups that have
persistently demanded the implementation of Islamic law, or syariah,
in Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim country. In fact, the RMS
issue was first brought up by the Laskar Jihad in 2000, when it
sent over 10,000 volunteers from Java to fight along their Muslim
friends against the Christians in Maluku.
RMS, a little-known secessionist group that finds its roots in the
declaration of the South Maluku Republic by Ch R S Soumokil on
April 25, 1950, has been identified with the Christians. But as a
movement, RMS long ago lost its steam, with its support base
vanishing rapidly after the Dutch, who colonized Indonesia for
more than 350 years, recognized Indonesia's independence in 1959.
Since then, RMS has ceased to be a threat to the country's unity.
If many Christians now demonstrate support for the rebel group,
they are merely expressing their anger and disappointment over the
government's inability to put an end to the conflicts, which have
displaced thousands of innocent people.
Religious conflicts in Ambon are unmistakably communal conflicts
that started out as an ethnic conflict between migrants from Buton,
Bugis and Makassar ethnic groups, which are all Muslims, and the
indigenous Maluku ethnic group, which is evenly divided between
Muslim and Christian communities. The migrants later successfully
exploited the conflict by appealing to Muslim brothers in the
Maluku ethnic group, shattering long-held social values such as
"Pela Gandong", or mutual help and brotherhood.
Nevertheless, the conflicts remained communal violence until the
government and military announced the involvement of RMS in the
conflicts.
According to Thamrin Amal Tomagola, a noted sociologist from
Maluku, the switching of conflicts from horizontal, or communal,
to vertical conflicts and the recent bloody clashes in Ambon were
designed to allow the military to use a repressive, security
approach to putting an end to the conflicts.
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