The evil among us
Barbaric! No other word describes the anger and exasperation many of us feel at hearing the news of the killing and beheading of three teenage girls in the Central Sulawesi district of Poso on Saturday. No decent human being could have done such a sadistic thing. The perpetrators were evil. What motivated them to do such an heinous act is beyond reason and comprehension.
Our heart goes out to the bereaved families and friends of the three students of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church Senior High School. May their souls rest in peace, and may their loved ones who are left behind be given the strength and courage to face and go through this ordeal.
There is no doubt that the killings, and the method -- their severed heads were placed a distance away from their bodies -- were acts of provocation to reignite conflict between Muslims and Christians. Poso, where people of the two religions are relatively equal in number, has seen more than its share of brutal communal conflicts in the last five years.
The timing, less than a week before Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadhan, reminds us too much of the way the religious conflict in Ambon was started in 1999.
It began with a petty fight between a transit van driver and his conductor. That fight turned into a brawl between their two neighboring villages delineated along religious lines, but then quickly spread to become a full blown conflict between Muslims and Christians across Ambon and other parts of Maluku.
More than a century of peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians in Ambon was destroyed overnight. There is only one explanation for this: The presence of agent-provocateurs who were prepared to go to any lengths, including sadistic murders, to promote their political agenda. And they chose their timing close to major religious celebrations. The initial fight in Ambon took place in January 1999 just a day before Idul Fitri and less than a month after Christmas.
One valuable lesson we should take from Ambon is that neither religious community in Poso need be provoked by Saturday's killings. The flame in Ambon took many years to douse precisely because both sides vowed to avenge every single life lost.
The killing of the three girls is understandably bound to enrage Christians in Poso and would prompt calls for retaliation.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has rightly condemned the murders and appealed for calm and restraint. But appeals alone are not sufficient to contain people's anger.
The President should make sure that the murderers as well as those who ordered the killings are publicly identified and arrested. He should make sure that the police and the intelligence agencies have the resources needed to catch them. He should ask for no less from the police whose job it is to protect people's lives. Heads must even roll for what is clearly another major lapse on their part.
And police have to catch them fast. We cannot emphasize enough that speed is of the essence. Poso Christian leaders can only restrain their followers for a brief period before anger sets in and becomes uncontrollable. If the police fail to show results soon, the rage of Christians will translate into acts of retaliation.
Before long, Poso will be set on fire once more.
Except that this time around, there is no guarantee that the religious conflicts which had been largely confined to Poso and Ambon, will not spread to other parts of Indonesia. Already, we are seeing signs of uneasiness among non-Muslims because of the government's seemingly constant failure to protect them. And we are seeing signs of growing religious radicalism and even intolerance between religious communities.
The state's ability to ensure peaceful coexistence between religious communities and to guarantee religious freedom in this country, is being tested to the limit.
From the terrorist attacks by radical Islamic groups in the predominantly Hindu Bali, to the acts of vandalism against churches and religious sects considered by conservative Muslim leaders as heretic, and now to the killing of three Christian girls, all raise a much more serious question about the government's commitment as well as its ability to protect the rights of religious minorities and to enable them to freely practice their faith.
President Yudhoyono has a lot to answer for, as much as those barbarians who committed the brutal killings on Saturday, in explaining why intolerance, radicalism and acts of violence including terrorism in the name of religion are becoming regular features of our nation's life. Whatever happened to our commitment to build a pluralist nation where our differences strengthen rather than set us apart?