Author: Alex Spillius in Ambon
Publication: The Telegraph, UK
Date: February 5, 2001
The religious strife in the Spice
Islands has extended to the violent conversion of local Christians, followed
by involuntary and unanaesthetised circumcisions. Thomas Rusin, a Roman
Catholic villager, was given his new name - Hasim - at gunpoint by a mob
in a mosque. He, his family and his friends were told that if they did
not convert to Islam they would die. They had already heard that two Protestant
teachers from another village who had refused had been slaughtered. They
had no choice.
They were made to repeat three times
the declaration that is the simple entry to the Muslim faith. Mr Rusin's
cousin, Christina Sagat, mumbled the Lord's Prayer to herself in defiance.
She was then given the name Fatma. The crowd inside and outside the mosque
cheered and waved spears, machetes and rifles.
The Roman Catholics' bags were searched
and their bibles, rosaries and statuettes of Mary were torn, smashed and
burned. The habib (preacher) showed them how to wash their feet and how
to prostrate themselves and pray. As they were kept prisoner in the compound
of the small village mosque in Tanah Baru, on tiny Kesui island, they were
variously insulted and instructed in the Koran.
Then, after a week, they were told
that unless they were circumcised they would not be true Muslims. Men and
women were taken by armed guards in groups of four or five to separate
houses where the operations were performed by an old man and woman. Each
group was cut with the same razor blade, without anaesthetic or painkillers.
Several developed infections and
were treated at hospital when they reached Ambon, capital of the Moluccas
islands, three weeks after their experience. The evacuees say that all
the men, women and children, numbering several hundred, who were rounded
up from various Catholic villages, were circumcised.
Catholic nuns from the Ambon diocese
suspect, and pray, that only small incisions were made on the women to
draw blood, rather than complete circumcisions. Female circumcision is
not practised in Indonesia. Whatever the degree of barbarity carried out
on the island, it is certain that more then 1,000 Christians from there
and the neighbouring island of Teor were coerced into Islam.
There are similar reports from three
other islands. The conversions have been condemned by mainstream Muslim
leaders, but Christians now fear that the two-year sectarian war in the
Moluccas has taken an alarming turn. They believe the fundamentalist paramilitary
group Lashkar Jihad from Indonesia's dominant island, Java, is determined
to "Islamicise the Christian population".
The Roman Catholic bishop, the Rt
Rev Peter Mandagi, said: "We fear that is their goal. They don't just want
a conflict. They want to drive us out or change us. These atrocities on
Kesui were an attempt to show who is master, to humiliate Christians."
After centuries of relatively stable
co-existence the Musliam and Christian communities are now segregated.
Thousands of homes, churches and mosques have been destroyed in the conflict.
Mass slaughter has been carried out by militia on both sides and 5,000
to 8,000 lives have been lost.
Bishop Mandagi said the "sickness
is in the Moluccas, but the virus is in the capital, Jakarta", 1,400 miles
to the west. The Moluccas were always a tinder box. The rest of Indonesia
is 90 per cent Muslim but in the Moluccas Christians - mostly Protestants
- form 45 per cent of the population and have traditionally dominated the
provincial government.
The conflict has been the biggest
failure of the struggling 15-month-old administration of President Abdurrahman
Wahid, which has allowed thousands of armed Lashkar Jihad warriors to land
conspicuously in Ambon.
2 February 2001: MPs' vote points
way out for Wahid
31 January 2001: Minister warns
Indonesia of coup threat by military
30 January 2001: Protesters in
Jakarta storm parliament gates
24 July 2000: Jakarta rejects calls
for UN force in Spice Isles
27 January 2000: Fugitives watch
100 massacred by Muslim gang
21 January 2000: Inquiry into army
role in violence on tourist isle
20 January 2000: Tourists flee
fresh violence in Indonesia
19 January 2000: 250 die as religious
violence spreads from Spice Islands
9 January 2000: Religious war threatens
Indonesian president
31 December 1999: Spice Islands
religious clashes leave 400 dead