Author:
Publications: The Herald,
Panaji, Goa
Date: December 6, 2000
Jakarta, Dec.5 (AFP)
- Muslims have slaughtered a total 93 Christians since last week on a small
island of the Maluku chain for refusing to convert to Islam, a church activist
said today quoting a survivor.
"The forced Islamisation
of Christians in Kasiui has been continuing since last week and by Saturday,
a total of 93 people have been killed for refusing to convert into Islam,"
said Sammy Weileruni, a lawyer with the Maranatha Christian Centre in Ambon,
the Malukus capital.
Weileruni said, a man
who escaped from Kasiui aboard a bot with his children and who arrived
in Ambon on Monday had given him the information.
Kasiui is a small island
in the Watubela island group east of Ambon island.
The man, a teacher, told
him that when he left on Saturday, a total of 763 other Christians, fearing
for their lives, had accepted to convert to Islam.
The victims were among
the some 3,000 people from four villages on the island who fled into jungles
following a mass attack by Muslims on November 28 that saw eight villages
killed.
The attackers, including
Muslims from the neighbouring Gorong island group, pursued the villagers
and those they captured were forced to convert or be killed.
"The only help was a
boat, requisitioned by the rulers of the State of civilian emergency (the
governor's office) in Ambon, sent to Kasiui with a crew of 20," Weilerunt
said deploring the lack of reaction from Indonesian authorities since he
first reported the slaughter last week.
The boat could not accommodate
all those who wanted to leave Kasiui, "and the Muslims were also angered
that they had come to pick up Christian refugees," he said.
The board left for Ambon
carrying only the teacher who was allowed abroad to join his wife in Ambon.
His children were allowed to join him.
The spokesman for the
military headquarters in Ambon could not be reached for comment.
The Maluku islands, previously
known as the Spice Islands, have been torn apart by almost two years of
Muslim-Christian conflict, leaving more than 4,000 people dead and over
half a million refugees.
The sectarian violence
was sparked by a dispute between a Christian public transport driver and
a Muslim in Ambon city in January, 1999 that quickly degenerated into fights
between Muslims and Christians and later spread to other islands.
In June, Jakarta imposed
a state of civil emergency in the Malukus and the North Malukus but it
has so far failed to rein in the violence. Both sides have accused
security forces of taking part in the fighting.
The Britain-based Christian
Solidarity Worldwide said last month those Muslim militant forces, many
of them from outside the Malukus, have threatened that "there will be no
church bells ringing in Ambon by Christians."
Maluku governor, Saleh
Latuconsia said, last week that some 1,300 militant Muslim rein-forcements
from Java island were in the islands.
Indonesia has been plagued
by unrest since the end of the iron-fisted rule of former president Suharto
in May, 1998.
