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Blasts hit
Indonesia's Ambon as mobs torch church
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Reuters
Thursday
25, 2002 6:31 AM ET |
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Several
explosions rocked an area near the Muslim quarter of Indonesia's
eastern city of Ambon on Thursday, wounding at least two people
and triggering a mob to torch a church, police and witnesses said.
The fresh bout of violence
coincided with the anniversary of a local Christian separatist
group and came despite a peace pact reached between Christians and
Muslims in February.
"There was the torching of a
church which was under construction and there were mortar
explosions which wounded two people," National Police Chief
Da'i Bachtiar told reporters.
Witnesses said the explosion
occurred near the city's Muslim quarters where flags of the
separatist South Moluccas Republic (RMS) were flying.
"After the explosions, many
people swarmed the streets near the church," one witness told
Reuters by phone from Ambon, some 2,300 km (1,400 miles) east of
Jakarta.
Ambon is the key hub in the
Moluccas, a once picturesque chain of islands that was the scene
of three years of savage religious violence that killed at least
5,000 people.
Most of the city is partitioned
into Muslim and Christian quarters.
Local authorities banned
journalists from covering the anniversary of the RMS, a
decades-old movement whose membership has dwindled to an estimated
100 people but which is accused by many Islamic groups of backing
attacks on Muslims.
A Jakarta radio station earlier
reported four people had been arrested for hoisting the group's
flag.
The RMS was established in 1950 by
supporters of Indonesia's former colonial ruler, The Netherlands.
Political analysts say the group
poses no threat to Jakarta due to its tiny numbers but Chief
Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earlier this week said
it had the potential to grow and cause a "fundamental
problem" in the Moluccas.
Unlike separatist groups in Aceh on
the northern tip of Sumatra and in the vast eastern province of
Papua, the RMS does not have a military wing.
Many of its members reside in the
Netherlands.
Around 85 percent of Indonesia's
210 million people are Muslim, although Christians comprise half
the population in some eastern areas.
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