August 26, 2002
More violence erupts in Indonesia
___CENTRAL SULAWESI, Indonesia (BP)--Five people were killed and hundreds of houses were looted and burned when attackers armed with automatic weapons stormed through three Christian villages on Indonesia's Central Sulawesi island Aug. 12.
___Islamic extremist Laskar Jihad fighters were said to be responsible for the attacks.
___More than 2,000 people had been killed and tens of thousands displaced from their homes when a peace agreement was signed in December 2001. That agreement now is seen as failing.
___Indonesian authorities have not taken decisive action to disarm the perpetrators of the attacks, according to the Barnabas Fund, an organization working among Christian minorities under Islam.
___The Laskar Jihad are believed to be attempting to destroy all pockets of Christians between them and Tentena, the final Christian stronghold in Central Sulawesi and home to more than 65,000 people, according to International Christian Concern, a human rights organization for persecuted Christians. Numerous Christians have taken refuge there after their villages were attacked.
___Other recent attacks on Christians in Central Sulawesi, according to the Barnabas Fund, include bombing of buses carrying Christian passengers and the murder of Christians traveling in cars when stopped at barricades.
___International Christian Concern, meanwhile, has reported many villagers fled their homes and huddled together in small groups under trees and shrubs in nearby jungles, waiting to know if they would be slaughtered in the jungles or left alive. Also, a child was strangled to death, an elderly man was shot several times and many more were killed or badly wounded.
___The recent violence comes after Indonesia's highest legislative body rejected a proposal to introduce Islamic sharia law Aug. 11. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country but remains a secular state.
___For those in Southeast Asia who feared Indonesia becoming a center of Islamic militants, the latest rejection of Islamic law is reassuring. But for the proponents of an Islamic state, the battle is not over.
___"This time we're in front of a great wall that can't be penetrated, but we won't surrender," said Najih Ahjad, a member of the Crescent Star Party. "We vow before God and the Muslim society that we'll keep on fighting."
___Thousands of pro-shariah demonstrators chanted, "There is no God but Allah!" outside Parliament in Jakarta in response to the vote. Women in headscarves waved banners asking for implementation of Islamic law while boys wore T-shirts with photographs of Osama bin Laden.
___Earlier reports of violence against Christians came from Ambon, directly east of Sulawesi, where extremists detonated two bombs outside a supermarket in the predominantly Christian area of Mardika on Ambon Island July 27. Fifty-two people were injured, and at least one has died. Another homemade bomb in the Christian area of Gudang Arang was neutralized shortly afterward, according to Compass Direct news service.
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