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Whatever. All agree that words were exchanged, long knives were unsheathed, and things got out of hand.
The toll, so far, is about 10,000 people killed; at least 15,000 injured seriously; 25,000 houses burned to the ground; 1,250 churches, mosques and other public buildings destroyed; and more than 500,000 people — a quarter of the population of the Moluccas, the fabled Spice Islands — made to live in squalid camps and barracks far from their ancestral homes.
Thousands of Moluccan Christians (and, reportedly, hundreds of Muslims), have experienced “forced conversions,” escaping death by renouncing their faith. In many Christian-to-Muslim conversions, newly made Muslims, male and female, have had to prove their sincerity by undergoing ritual circumcisions performed by Islamic clerics.
Virtually no one has been punished in connection with any of the murders, bombings and arson fires. Of the handful of suspects who have been arrested, virtually none has been convicted of a serious crime. In many cases, Muslim suspects have been turned loose after jails were stormed by angry crowds.
In the five years since the initial “trigger incident,” Muslim-Christian violence has flared up on dozens of other occasions, and the Christians are getting the worst of it — partly because thousands of “jihad fighters” from outside Indonesia have come to the Moluccas and introduced ever more sophisticated tactics and weaponry.
Three months ago, in the latest outbreak of what Moluccans call “the conflik,” 40 people were killed, about 2,600 families lost their homes, and Indonesian Christian University in the Moluccas was burned to ashes, along with its 200,000-volume library and its priceless and irreplaceable collections of artifacts of the Moluccan and Indonesian cultures.
The April violence was the first major break in a peace that had held, with occasional brief but deadly lapses on both sides, since May 2002, when government-sponsored talks in city of Malino resulted in a cease-fire, and Moluccans of both faiths danced in the streets to celebrate the end of three years of bloodshed.
Now, however, Ambon once again looks as if it has been bombed, with whole neighborhoods reduced to scorched foundations and piles of rubble. The faces of its people reflect an unsettling mixture of fear and menace. The city’s air, normally perfumed with clove and nutmeg, smells like ashes.
Over the next week or two, the Presbyterian News Service will be publishing stories about the causes and consequences of the violence; the experiences of some of the victims, survivors and refugees; the efforts of Presbyterian Church (USA) partners to help some Christian survivors; and the effects on the Protestant churches in these troubled parts of Indonesia. Other stories will take a new look at East Timor, which suffered similar violence before attaining independence in 1999.
Today: The causes of the most extreme interfaith warfare on the globe; what it has to do with the presidential election; an ancient peacekeeping system is overwhelmed by modern hatreds; the widow of a pastor martyred for his faith.
Next: How the Protestant church in East Timor is faring five years after voting for independence; the death and resurrection of a Timorese evangelist.
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