04330
July 21, 2004

Indonesian pastor murdered in pulpit

Masked men escape after disrupting service with machine gun fire

by John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE — An Indonesian Protestant minister was shot and killed during an evening worship service on July 18 when two unidentified gunmen sprayed her congregation with automatic-rifle fire.

     The Rev. Susianty Tinulele, the 26-year-old pastor of Effata Christian Church in Palu, had just finished her sermon when she was shot through the head. She died instantly.

     Four worshippers suffered gunshot wounds and were hospitalized. One of them, a 17-year-old girl, died later of head injuries.

     Police said four attackers wearing black masks overpowered a lone security guard before two of them opened fire with machine guns from the front door of the church.

     Since last November, Muslim “jihadists” have been systematically assassinating Christian leaders in central Sulawesi and attacking Christian worshippers during church services.

     The attack in Palu was one of a series of violent events in the area in recent days.

     On July 16, the body of a 25-year-old Muslim motorbike-taxi driver from Poso was found. He had been stabbed in his chest, hands, neck and head. Poso police arrested a 23-year-old Christian man who had been seen driving the dead man’s motorbike.

     On Saturday, July 17, the body of a 35-year-old Christian woman, the wife of an Indonesian soldier, was found in front of her home in Poso. She had been stabbed nine times in her chest and stomach. Eyewitnesses said her assailants wore black masks and arrived on motorbikes of the same brand as those later used in the church attack.

     Saturday evening, a homemade bomb exploded outside a crowded arena during a music and dance festival, but caused no injuries or damage. No one claimed responsibility for the blast.

     Tinulele, who had just been ordained as a minister in the Central Sulawesi Christian Church (GKST), was a prominent supporter of the Rev. Rinaldy Damanik, a GKST leader now serving a three-year prison sentence on a charge of “carrying weapons.” She had taken food to Damanik in a Palu prison on Friday.

     Some Christian leaders believe supporters of Damanik — who they say was convicted on a “trumped-up” charge — may be specific targets of the “ride-by” attacks.

     Damanik, an official of the Crisis Center for the Church of Sulawesi who was a key figure in peace negotiations between the Christian and Muslim communities, denied the charges against him but was convicted last August.

     Indonesian intelligence officials have blamed most of the violence on Jemaah Islamiyah (IJ), the terrorist group accused in the 2002 bombings in Bali that killed more than 200 people. IJ is known to be linked with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

     On May 25, lawyer Ferry Silalahi, a Christian who was part of Damanik’s defense team, was shot to death as he and his wife left a house-church service in Palu.

     Silalahi was also one of the state prosecutors of five JI members charged with terrorism last year. Police found in the suspects’ possession detailed descriptions of church services and lists of  names of Christian officials. The defendants were released after judges ruled that the evidence against them was insufficient.

     The central Sulawesi police chief, Brig. Gen. Taufix Ridha, has said he believes the renewed attacks are part of a campaign to disrupt this year’s presidential election and instigate new religious fighting in the troubled area.

     The towns of Palu and Poso and the Central Sulawesi region have been major battlegrounds in Muslim-Christians warfare since 1998. An estimated 2,000 people were killed in the area between December 1998 and December 2001, when the Malino Accord brought a dramatic decline in large-scale riots.

     The International Crisis Group, a humanitarian organization that opposes violence, noted in a February 2004 report that “systematic, one-sided” attacks, including “mysterious killings” by unidentified assailants, have continued, “with overwhelmingly non-Muslim victims.”

     “We are trying to determine the motive,” a spokesman for Indonesia’s national police told The Straits Times, an Australian newspaper. “It is very disturbing that attacks like this continue to happen in churches here.”

     Some of the past attacks:

     On Nov. 29, 2003, two Christian men were killed while attending a church service in a town about 70 miles east of Posoi. Attackers using Indonesian military weapons shot through the church door as the service was ending. The pastor’s wife and two worshippers were wounded in the attack.

     On the same day, about 20 armed men attacked the predominantly Christian village of Kilo Trans, west of Poso, killing the village chief, a Hindu migrant from Bali. The gunmen strafed the entire village, but most Christians were attending a prayer meeting in the local church and escaped injury.

     On Dec. 1, the Christian village of Tiwaa was attacked. Masked gunmen fired on the house of the village chief. He was not there, but a Christian man who ran from the building was critically injured.

     Six other Christian churches in central Sulawesi were attacked last November and December, according to the Barnabas Fund, a British organization that defends Christians from persecution.

     Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri reacted to Tinolele’s murder by calling on Christians to be calm and to rely on the police to solve the case.. She also ordered the national police chief, Gen. Da’i Bachtiar, to visit the scene and handle the case personally.

     The Rev. Nathan Setiabudi, chairman of the Indonesian Communion of Churches, said the killing in Palu “was not religiously motivated.”

     “It was purely a criminal attack, and the perpetrators have to be arrested,” he said after a meeting with Megawati.

     Two hard-line Islamic parties were defeated in recent voting in Indonesia’s presidential vote, and will not be involved in a two-candidate run-off election scheduled for Sept. 5. However, the two remaining candidates hope to form alliances with the Islamist groups to secure crucial support in the final round of voting and assemble a ruling coalition.

     “This will give Islamist parties with a relatively minor support base a disproportionately large influence over policy,” said a Barnabas Fund spokesperson.