By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Jul 12 2000 (IPS)

Moluccan community leaders abroad say the Indonesian army is both unable and unwilling to prevent the sectarian violence that plagues their ancestral island home.

They are demanding that the international community send peace keepers to the island to end the ‘slaughter’.

The conflict between the Christian and Muslim communities in the Moluccas, formerly known as the Spice Islands, has been raging since January 1999.

Tens of thousands have fled their villages for the relative safety of refugee camps on the island, or to other parts of Indonesia.

On Monday bus loads of protesters arrived here from the Netherlands, home to the largest Moluccan community in Europe (50,000), to demand that European Union ministers at least put the Moluccas on the agenda of the General Affairs Council.

Wearing traditional dress and the red headband favoured by the majority Christian Moluccan population, rally organiser Willem Sopacua told of the group’s struggle to be heard, pausing to join his hundred or so colleagues in chants calling for international intervention – and independence.

“The world talks about East Timor, but our people are dying in even greater numbers. The (death toll) is much higher than the (Jakarta) officials admit,” he told IPS, fingering the blade of the ceremonial knife tucked under his belt and straining to be heard over the furious drumming of fellow protesters.

Sopacua is Secretary of the Moluccan National Congress and co- ordinator of the Republic of the South Moluccan Action Centre; two organisations that he said together represent the Diaspora in Europe ‘including many Muslims.’

However, when asked if there were any Muslims at the protest rally, none could be found.

Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation, with about 90 percent of its more than 200 million people following Islam. On the Moluccas, there is no significant majority.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that over 3,000 people have been killed since regional hostilities flared up 18 months ago, but in recent weeks the death toll has been steadily climbing.

The escalation has been blamed on the influx of over 2,000 followers of the Laskar Jihad since May. The leader of the Java based Muslim paramilitary organisation has repeatedly warned that his group would send 10,000 members to wage a holy war against the Christians. Radical militants from Sumatra have made similar threats.

According to reports of the state news agency from the regional capital, Ambon, some 100,000 Christian refugees are awaiting evacuation and many face starvation.

At least 22 people in the nearby Christian village of Waai were killed on Thursday. Almost 500 Christian refugees, fleeing the Moluccas island of Halmahera by ferry, drowned last week when the overcrowded vessels sank.

The London-based humanitarian group, Amnesty International, noted that both sides to the conflict have accused the local police and army of taking sides and participating in the conflict, but that these allegations have been difficult to confirm.

A representative of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GFBV), a German humanitarian organisation that helped organise the protests, and which has been active in human rights in the Moluccan region for several decades, told IPS that the Laskar Jihad is widely believed to have close ties to former Indonesian dictator General Suharto and support from the military.

“The most alarming development in recent months is the direct involvement of the security forces in the conflict. The military now admits that soldiers and police have taken sides, rather than trying to end the violence.

“Furthermore, the military has supported calls of Muslim militants to fight a holy war against Christians in the Moluccas,” said the GFBV’s Asia expert, Ulrich Delius.

Indonesia held its first free and democratic parliamentary elections in decades on Jun 7, 1999. According to GFBV, the Laskar Jihad, with support from Suharto, are deliberately ‘inflaming the situation’ in order to destabilise the island nation’s fledgling democracy.

On June 26, Indonesian President, Abdurrahaman Wahid, declared a civil emergency in the region – a measure one step below martial law – and sent in additional troops in an effort to quell the violence.

However, despite a ban of visits to the island from non- residents ordered by Wahid, troops have not prevented the paramilitaries from entering.

While there is ‘an urgent need for a neutral force to intervene to stop the bloodshed,’ said Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Joe Saunders in a June 29 statement, the troops stationed in the region ‘have virtually no credibility in the areas where a neutral force is desperately needed.’

“The declaration of a civil state of emergency will mean nothing if the security forces themselves aren’t neutral,” he said, noting reports of army-issue weapons and ammunition finding their way into the hands of partisans.

It is against this backdrop that the Moluccan community in Europe is calling for the international community to intervene.

In June, the Moluccan National Congress and co-ordinator of the Republic of the South Moluccan Action Centre began a campaign to get the Geneva-based United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights to ‘take a stand’ on the Moluccans.

They sent 10,000 postcards to UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, demanding that the UN Security Council authorise a peace keeping mission.

As part of the consciousness-raising effort, Moluccan youth groups active in the Netherlands, have been circulating ‘quite shocking photos’ of victims of the violence, including some of those who had been decapitated, said Sopacua.

He told IPS that protesters would also travel to Geneva the third week of August when the UN Human Rights Commission next convenes to demand intervention and that public demonstrations would be held on average once per week until the group’s demands are addressed.

The Wahid government has rejected calls for an international peace keeping force, although a military spokesperson said last week that a large number of troops deployed there (now comprised of 19 battalions) would be replaced because ‘they had become too emotionally involved in the conflict.’

A spokesperson for Chris Patton, the EU executive Commissioner for External Relations, told IPS that the EU Commission ‘and indeed nobody in the West,’ wanted to be seen as questioning the territorial integrity of Indonesia so soon after East Timor had achieved autonomy.

Elections and possibly independence for East Timor are scheduled to take place at some point between Aug 30 and the beginning of Dec 2001.

The spokesperson confirmed that the issue was not discussed Monday or Tuesday at the General Affairs Council, which sets the EU agenda for the next 30 days. For this session, that included determining the priorities of the EU as regards the 55th UN General Assembly.

For Frieda Souhuwat, a staff member of a group, that calls itself the Moluccan government in exile, who said she had lost several members of her family to the conflict, the hesitance of the international community to get directly involved is ‘inexcusable.’

A GFBV representative told IPS that France, which assumed the rotating EU Presidency on Jul 1, had declined to grant a Moluccan delegation an audience.

However, an assistant to Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for a Common Security and Foreign Policy, had agreed to hear their concerns.

Jozias van Aartsen, the Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, which is Indonesia’s former colonial power, said last week that the conflict should been seen as an internal matter.

The strongest European response to the situation thus far has come from the European Parliament, the only popularly elected body amongst the EU institutions.

A joint resolution of sponsored by left-leaning political groups, adopted by the parliament on Jul 6, calls on the EU executive Commission and EU foreign ministers ‘to insist that the Indonesian government must take all possible steps to end the violence in the Moluccas.’

But while the resolution leaves open the possibility of sending international observers to the region, it stops short of calling for an international peace keeping force.

It stresses, ‘the need for the international community to examine how it can contribute to restoring calm in the islands.’

Parliamentarians also called on the Indonesian authorities to create humanitarian aid corridors, and establish close checks on all arms consignments to and from the Moluccas.

A Dutch man holding a banner calling for a UN peace keeping force fought back tears as he told IPS of his Moluccan-Dutch wife’s daily panicked calls to her family there, and his frustration at the international community’s silence. ‘They have been forgotten,’ he said.

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