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The Christians were outnumbered and taken by surprise and had nowhere to run. At least 44 people, all Christians, were killed. The centuries-old village, including Pattiasina’s Akedabo Christian Church, was burned to the ground.
The slaughter took place in a South Pacific paradise where Dutch mariners once made vast fortunes dealing in rare and precious condiments; where the aromas of clove and nutmeg perfume the air: the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands, now split into two Indonesian provinces, Maluku and North Maluku.
“We hid in the jungle; half of the village was with us,” Dian goes on. “And while we were hiding there, the chief of our village came to this place, by himself, looking for my husband and me. He said the coast was clear. He said ‘authorities’ had arrived and restored order. My husband asked where from were these ‘authorities’? From Java, or from North Moluccas? Because if it is Java, we may be saved, but if the Moluccas, perhaps not. Already we had begun hearing about … bloody things.”
Dian Pattiasina paused, her imagination no doubt revisiting familiar “bloody things.” But her expression didn’t change. She didn’t weep; anger didn’t flash in her brown eyes; she didn’t look up for reassuring smiles on the faces of the others. She just went on with her grave task of witness, her visage a mask.
“When they convinced my husband to come out, he said, ‘Please wait, I want to pray first,’ but they put a blindfold on his face and tied his hands behind his back. … Then a speedboat full of soldiers suddenly ran up the beach, and the people were shocked and frightened, and they all scattered. Some of the leading people of the village were taken away. I was able to find my children. I only prayed, ‘God, please, please, save my husband’s life.’”
Dian’s two children are Rose, now 20, who no longer lives with her mother and is said to be unwilling to talk about what happened to her father; and Liberto, a 9-year-old boy better known by his nickname, “Rambo.” He lives with Dian and is her reason for living.
“Later, I came to know that my husband was already killed,” she says. “It just came to me. Everyone knew it, but at that time I couldn’t listen to bad stories. Every time I thought about my husband, I felt very sad.
“I want very much to get him back, even if it’s only his bones, and to make a funeral. … I prayed, ‘Please, husband, I know you are dead, but I want you buried at my home.’ According to the stories the people told me, he was first taken blindfolded to a mosque and ordered to convert, to become a Muslim, but he would not. At the mosque he was harassed before he was killed, and shown to the crowd. Once again he asked permission to pray. They say he was stabbed while he was praying. … Still, I thought to myself for a long time, in my heart, ‘Maybe my husband is still alive.’ But I knew he wasn’t. All I have of him now is his Bible.”
The minister had escaped to the jungle with the clothing he had on, the Bible and the family savings of about 2 million rupiah (about $200 US).
Although the translator said “stabbed,” numerous eyewitnesses have testified that Rev. Pattiasina and three elders from his church were beheaded on the beach and buried on the spot.
The exiled Christians had stayed in the jungle for more than two weeks. This was very hard on the old people and the children. Many came down with malaria, and several died. Two women gave birth in the jungle. The Christians had little water and no food. Eventually their chief, Isaac Garera, realized that they had to give themselves up.
During surrender negotiations, the Muslims asked Garera about Pattiasina. “We had to give him up ... to show our determination to be Muslims,” the chief said. “We could not do this, so the Rev. Jusuf Benjamin Pattiasina gave himself up willingly.”
Dian, like the other villagers, was told to choose for herself and her family between death and conversion to Islam. She chose Islam. Then for several months, she and her children were schooled in Muslim practice and made to memorize passages from the Koran. She wore the Muslim head covering, the jilbab. And like the other Christians-turned-Muslims, she suffered daily “harassment” at the hands of their conquerors.
“We pretended to be Muslim,” she says. “In our hearts, of course, we were still worshipping Jesus.”
And planning an escape. After months of conspiring, Dian used her husband’s legacy to buy passage for herself and her children on a small Navy boat (commanded by a Christian sailor) to refuge on the island of Ternate. From there she made her way to Manado, where tens of thousands of other Indonesian Christians already lived in squalid government-provided camps and barracks built for “internally displaced persons” (IDPs). These people, refugees in their own country, would be Dian Pattiasina’s extended family.
Dian and her children managed to get out before more than 1,000 ex-Christians, males and females alike, were forced to submit to a “mass circumcision” on the village green. Because the six Muslim imams who performed the circumcisions used the same blades many times, many of the wounds became infected.
“I became a servant; I took in washing; I washed people’s clothes,” Dian says softly. “For this I was paid … a limited amount. Although I do appreciate even a small income, if only for school fees and pencil money for Rambo. … Although I keep telling him the reality. I say: ‘Rambo, you are only with your mama now. Please love your mama, even though she’s only a laundry girl.”
The translator adds: “She says she will do her best for the future of Rambo.”
Dian is not just a washerwoman. She is also a health and nutrition “cadre” trained and employed by Church World Service (CWS), an ecumenical humanitarian organization that tries to meet the most urgent needs of the IDP families. CWS, a partner of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a frequent collaborator with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, provides services ranging from emergency housing to agricultural consulting to trauma counseling. Dian is one of a group that sees to the health and nutritional needs of the IDPs and especially their children.
CWS Manado is run by Stien Djalil, a small, energetic, 60-something North Sulawesi native known from one end of the Indonesian archipelago to the other as Ibu Stien (“Ibu” being an honorific corresponding to our “Mrs.”). She combines a relentlessly positive attitude with the charm of a diplomat and the steely persistence of the original Terminator. Until now, however, she hadn’t been able to get Dian to talk about what had happened to her.
In Indonesia, quitting one’s home village is a momentous step, but Dian says she doesn’t expect to return to Lata-Lata — and doesn’t want to, because of what was done to her husband there. After a brief pause she admits that she is very homesick for the coconut and clove plantation she left behind.
An American would not use such a grand word as “plantation” for the little patch of dirt she worked, by hand, on Lata-Lata. But it was her patch of dirt, and her trees, and in her eyes it was grand. Now it’s 250 miles away and gone forever. She reports the loss without emotion, her voice deadpan, her eyes like those of a corpse or a sphinx.
She says she tries not to harbor feelings of bitterness towards “whoever will take the fruits of those plants” she left behind.
Dian says several men in Manado have approached her in courtship, “but I can’t forget my husband’s story; I can’t leave him behind and put another person in my heart.”
She reaches for a black-and-white picture of her husband, posing in his ministerial garb, Bible in hand. It is in an ornate plastic frame and hangs so high on the living-room wall that she can barely reach it. She takes it down, wipes it with a scrap of cloth and holds it in front of her like a shield. Still with no feeling in her eyes.
“I have told my son that I will do my best to get him through school, but just the other day he asked me, ‘Will you be able to support me?’” she says. “He worries about when he will go to junior high school (and fees are higher). I tell him, ‘You know your mama is illiterate, and only does laundry, but she also believes in God, and always she keeps praying that we will get a way out.’ ... My faith is very strong.”
She stands in a house that was abandoned until she and another IDP discovered it, moved in and fixed it up. Now that it’s fit for habitation, the owner is putting it up for rent. Dian and her friend and their children will have to move, because they have virtually no income and couldn’t pay the rent.
“I would be grateful,” she says, “if my story could be told.”
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