DATE=2/3/2000
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=AMBON VIOLENCE
NUMBER=5-45374
BYLINE=PATRICIA NUNAN
DATELINE=AMBON
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Tension remains high in the Indonesian city of
Ambon, the capital of eastern Maluku province after a
year of clashes between Christians and Muslims that
have left up to two thousand people dead. Patricia
Nunan reports from Ambon, the city is now divided not
only by a border between the two communities, but by
the cycle of killing and revenge that
continues to drive a wedge between the two religious
groups.
TEXT: /// ACT -- traffic noise ///
An afternoon in the Christian quarter of Maluku's
provincial capital, Ambon. Police have just intervened
to stop a mob of Christians from beating a 42 year-old
Muslim man, and bystanders are still milling about,
talking about the incident.
/// ACT VOX-POP ONE [in Indonesian]///
"I believe in what the Bible says and of course it
doesn't teach us to do such things," says one man.
But, he adds, "because of what we know, we can't trust
the Muslims."
/// ACT VOX-POP TWO [in Indonesian]///
Another man says the people who beat the Muslim were
victims of attacks by other Muslims. "They are very
emotional, he adds, "and they cannot
control themselves."
/// VOX-POP THREE [in Indonesian]///
A woman standing nearby says, "this is really
worrying, this kind of thing always happens, and a
larger conflict starts from it."
The Muslim man, Mochtar Adam, later died of his
injuries. It was a high price to pay for what he had
done wrong -- walk into a Christian neighborhood.
Tension remains high in Maluku province since
December, when at least 500 people died in the worst
week of sectarian violence in Indonesian history.
That outbreak came at the end of a year of Christian-
Muslim clashes that has claimed, by some estimates, at
least two thousand lives. And violence continues to
erupt across the province.
Maluku's provincial capital, Ambon, is now a city-
divided.
Burnt-out buildings and rubble line the streets where
churches and mosques, restaurants and shops once
stood. The abandoned state-owned utilities building
now houses a platoon of soldiers, stationed to prevent
more violence from erupting.
A so-called "green line" marks the border between the
Muslim and Christian halves of the city. Barbed-wire
checkpoints, manned by soldiers, bear signs declaring
each half of the city a "restricted zone" to the
unwelcome half of the population.
///ACT - ROWAT (while driving in car) ///
That was another one of the green lines between Muslim
and Christian communities.
/// END ACT //
Richard Rowat is a coordinator at Medecins Sans
Frontieres, an international humanitarian aid
organization which works to improve medical conditions
in conflict areas around the world. M-S-F is one of
only two aid organizations in the province.
/// ACT ROWAT //
We're in a Muslim community now called Malungung,
often one of the hot-spots. Last Friday
there were crowds building up here and the army
gathered and subdued the potential clash.
///END ACT ///
Even M-S-F is forced to maintain two separate offices
-- one in the Muslim section of town, another in the
Christian part. Only expatriate
staff can travel back and forth between the two
communities.
In the eight months that Mr. Rowat has been based in
Ambon, he says the violence has only gotten worse.
/// ACT ROWAT ///
"Well it's changed from original clashes when I first
came here, with swords and spears to one of almost
exclusively guns. So in that sense, it's much more
violent. But there's no one fighting against the
government, so it's not a civil war per se, it's an
intercommunal war.
/// END ACT ///
Mr. Rowat says that since the conflict erupted, one of
M-S-F's main tasks has been to help local hospitals
cope with the number of wounded patients flooding
through their doors.
///ACT ROWAT ///
So many of the doctors have left. They can't deliver
drugs across Muslim-Christian lines. That's one of the
roles that M-S-F plays. We take those drugs and
deliver them across those lines, so we try to keep the
small clinics alive.
///END ACT ///
At one of those clinics, Yassan, a Muslim, is
recovering from a wound he received in an explosion of
a home-made bomb. He says he is ready to fight against
Christians again.
/// ACT YASSAN [SPEAKING INDONESIAN]///
Yassan says the Christians attacked the Muslims so
they made it a holy war.
Just a few days after the death of Mochtar Adam, the
Muslim man who was beaten by the mob, a Muslim woman
telephoned her daughter. The daughter, who converted
to Christianity to marry her Christian husband now
lives in a Christian neighborhood. The mother was ill,
and wanted her daughter to come home for a few days to
help out around the house. The young woman agreed.
But aid workers say that when the daughter arrived
back in the Muslim village where she grew up, she was
beaten to death by her former neighbors.
To the poor woman's killers the death of Mochtar Adam
was thus avenged. In the larger scheme, the death was
another sign that the cycle of violence in Malaku
would continue.
NEB/PN/FC/PLM
03-Feb-2000 05:07 AM EDT (03-Feb-2000 1007 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
