Church in the World

Beheading on Indonesian island sparks sectarian tensions

Asia

An Indonesian Christian has been decapitated in the latest attack against non-Muslims in the town of Poso in central Sulawesi. Residents found a plastic bag containing the head of Carminalis Ndele, a 48-year-old village chief, several miles away from his body, on 4 November.

Rudi Trenggono, the district's deputy police chief, said there were no suspects as yet, but did not rule out the possibility of a religiously motivated attack. According to Indonesian newspapers, a sheet of paper was found alongside Ndele's head, containing a message inciting violence. Poso has seen intermittent communal violence between Muslims and Christians since 2000 despite a government-brokered peace accord agreed two years ago. This incident followed the unsolved shooting of a man in the grounds of a church in Poso last month. Also in October, a Hindu woman was killed and two Christian men wounded when shots were fired randomly into houses in the region on the same day that two Christians were hacked to death near the provincial capital, Palu.

'One needs to be cautious before jumping to conclusions that could harm a lot of innocent people,' said to Fr Ignatius Ismartono, Indonesian consultant to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. 'All too often generalisations are made when talking about interreligious conflicts, while the situation is extremely complex and derives from numerous factors that have nothing to do with religion, such as questions of control of the land and its resources.'

Fresh tension surfaced in western Sulawesi recently following the administrative division of a district which saw some mainly Muslim villages placed under the jurisdiction of areas primarily inhabited by Christians.

Mohammad Maftuh Basyuni, Indonesia's newly appointed national religious affairs minister, said interreligious harmony would be a key priority for him when he paid a recent visit to the Jakarta offices of the bishops' conference. He met with the bishops for 90 minutes during their biannual meeting. Basyuni was sworn in with the rest of the Cabinet on 20 October, when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became Indonesia's first directly elected president. Basyuni, a Muslim, said he welcomed Catholic involvement in the various interreligious forums throughout Indonesia.

Indonesian Christians are keeping a close watch on the trial of Abu Bakar Bashir - an extremist leader charged with running a network of militants of Jemaah Islamiyah, suspected of planning and carrying out the 2002 terrorist attack in Bali that left more than 200 dead, and the 2003 Marriott Hotel attack in Jakarta that killed 12 - to see how the new Government tackles Islamic militancy. If found guilty, Bashir could be condemned to the death penalty, but a harsh punishment could trigger further tension and acts of violence.
Ellen Teague