Hunger becomes common feature at 'hotspot' areas

Hunger becomes common feature at 'hotspot' areas

Santi W.E. Soekanto, Contributor, Jakarta

Baharudin and the other men of Buyung Katedo, a small Muslim
enclave in the Christian village of Sepe, Poso, Central Sulawesi,
knew they risked their lives by returning home only days after
they had fled an enemy attack that claimed the lives of 13 women,
children and elderly men in July last year.

Armed with sharpened machetes, Baharudin and three other
survivors stood on top of the hill overlooking the clove
plantation that they built years ago as migrants from South
Sulawesi. They had toiled, they had built a good life in Poso,
but unrest flared in 1998 that claimed thousands of lives from
both the Christian and Muslim sides. Buildings, trees and places
of worship were burnt down. Neighbors became enemies, and none
could enter the home or land of the other without risking death.

"We have to return home and maintain a vigil here, "Baharudin
told me. "This land and these clove plants are our only
possession, if we abandoned them the enemy would take over and
what would we eat then?"

Tiwi was a three-year-old girl; however, so undernourished was
she that she weighed far less than most two-year-olds. She had
not yet learned to speak and had not yet walked, much less run
around like other toddlers. She also suffered from shortness of
breath and when she cried her face turned blue due to lack of
oxygen. Her mother was concerned about Tiwi's health but was also
very confused.

"I have taken her to a shaman, I have taken her to a midwife
for some treatment, but she remains like this," the mother of
four said in front of her hut in a small fishing village, Labuan,
Poso subdistrict, Central Sulawesi. Tiwi definitely needed to see
a doctor, but she said, "I have never taken any of my children to
the hospital. Do you think I should?"

Before the Malino peace talks in late 2001, the only health
facility available was Poso Hospital in Poso City, 30 minutes
away by car from Tiwi's village. However, since the violence
erupted in December 1998 a long trail of destruction had been
created, the district was almost deserted and not many public
buses were seen around Poso. Besides, anyone from Labuan wishing
to enter Poso would have to go through some enemy-controlled
areas. Sniper attacks were not uncommon.

The Muslims, however, were not the only party suffering from
food shortages in the Poso conflict. A Christian woman, driven by
desperation for food following restriction of movements affecting
enclaves on both side, donned a Muslim woman's headscarf, a
jilbab, and entered the Poso city market one July afternoon last
year.

She was stooping to select vegetables when the crucifix
pendant of her necklace swung out of the fold of her jilbab,
right before the watchful eyes of the vendor. "We beat her up,
and sent her away," one local man told me. Without her groceries,
certainly, but at least she was alive.

Hunger is part of the scenery of any armed conflict in the
country. Some 90,000 Muslim refugees in Ternate, Maluku Utara,
who have been sheltering in various makeshift refugee camps, are
used to it.

In this hotspot of Indonesia, 10-year-old Mito waved his right
forearm, severed at the wrist following a bomb explosion in 2000,
while begging for scraps of food from passersby in front of the
Ternate post office. He had lost not only his hand but also his
parents, and now begged in order to survive.

"I could have saved his hand, he wouldn't have needed the
amputation, had it not been for a feud between doctors (sent from
Jakarta by the Ministry of Health and the local ones)," the
orthopedic surgeon, who worked at the clinic that treated Mito
told me ruefully. "But, OK, I think he would still have needed to
beg, even with his right hand intact, because there are simply
too many refugees in Ternate and not enough food."

Some young girls and women refugees in Ternate have had to
sell their bodies for food.

Compared with the relatively recent past, we live today in a
world of abundance. Improved health and increasing agricultural
productivity in the 20th century have catalyzed unprecedented
social and economic transformations.

Today there is more than enough food for all ...
theoretically. The problem is that food is neither produced nor
distributed equitably. All too frequently, the poor in fertile
developing countries stand by watching with empty hands -- and
empty stomachs -- while ample harvests and bumper crops are
exported for hard cash. Short-term profits for a few, long-term
losses for many.

Hunger is a question of maldistribution and inequity -- not a
lack of food. That is why, despite abundance, hunger hovers;
despite progress, poverty persists.

Who gets to be at the lowest rung of poverty-driven hunger?
Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in conflict zones, certainly,
and Indonesia has thousands of them. Earlier this year, 1.3
million refugees were scattered across 22 provinces, mostly from
Aceh, Ambon, Poso and North Maluku.

Coordinating Minister for Peoples' Welfare Jusuf Kalla vowed
to solve the refugee problem by the end of 2002; he recently
announced that 900,000 refugees had been repatriated and
resettled. In areas where violence still simmers, such as Poso,
Ambon, Aceh and North Maluku, an announcement such as this did
not mean prompt settlement of the hunger problem for many.

Aid continues to be poured into these conflict zones, but in a
country known to be the most corrupt in the region, this often
means that the officials get richer while the refugees continue
to suffer. This is what happened in North Maluku, where a former
senior official at the administration is being accused of
embezzling Rp 79 billion of aid for the refugees.

At the end of the 20th century, according to the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, food emergencies
affected 52 million people in 35 countries, mainly in the
developing world. Some of these situations have resulted from
adverse weather or economic and financial crises, but violent
conflict, mainly in the form of civil wars, was frequently the
major factor.

In February, 2000, armed strife left more than 11 million
people in 6 developing and transition countries in need of food
aid and other international humanitarian assistance, and
vulnerable to malnutrition. In addition, over 3 million people
continued to require food assistance in the aftermath of
conflict, as they remained displaced from their homes and
sustainable livelihoods.

Protecting nutrition, especially that of young people, is a
great challenge facing Indonesia today. More so in regions of
conflict such as Aceh where hunger is only one of a multitude of
threats hovering over refugees.