The seeds of discontent in the beautiful Maluku islands
The seeds of discontent in the beautiful Maluku islands
By Angelique L. Picaulima van Engelen and Harley Saimima
JAKARTA (JP): Macho and fierce are correct ways to describe
natives of the Maluku islands. An intrepid race that sailed the
oceans to the Pacific Islands about 2,000 years ago, the legends
of some Polynesians say their remote ancestors came from the
Maluku islands.
For hundreds of years the islands' produce kept kings and
governments in power, or, due to a lack of produce, toppled them.
Ships from all over the world sailed there; some of the visitors
stayed and blended with the local population, leaving behind
Asian, Arabian and European descendants.
Until some years ago, the most obvious fact of life in Maluku
was the harmonious relationship between people of different
faiths and lineage.
The plurality needed a system to keep mavericks, found in any
race, in check. Traditional laws held these dauntless and
militant people on a short leash. A system was created where
kings were only appointed from a few families. Fear and restraint
installed through custom or adat made people wary of committing
violence against each other.
The various communities lived in either Christian or Muslim
villages, but with good intervillage relations, until the
Soeharto regime imposed the Javanese system of village heads,
through local elections or by political appointment.
Since 1,300 a system of "blood brotherhood" between villages
prone to disputes had covered all disagreements. Whenever a
dispute reached a certain level of intensity and preparations for
a full-scale war, either between Christian and Muslim,
Muslim/Muslim or Christian/Christian villages, had been made,
these local kings convened.
As soon as an understanding to bury the hatchet was reached,
the villagers were ordered to attend a reconciliation ceremony.
Witnessed by their kings, religious leaders and elders, both
sides apologized. A peace agreement through apela gandong
ceremony, often enhanced by mystic performances, was a sacred and
binding agreement.
That was then, when every person knew his or her place in
community and adhered to a system which kept their bellicosity
and militancy at bay.
History shows that the traditional authorities have toppled --
through the absorption of Maluku into the United Republic of
Indonesia in the 1950s, the victory of the Indonesian Military
(TNI) over the Republic of South Maluku, and a systematized
undermining of the Christian community since the early 1980s.
This has created an immense void. The fall of the untouchables
led to the latent threat of aggression, which has exploded into
communal clashes of unheard fierceness.
It is difficult to account for the ongoing violence but it may
be at least partially explained by the marginalization of
Christians in Maluku; politically, due to their involvement with
the Dutch colonial powers and its armed forces, the KNIL; and
economically, through the exploitation of exceptionally rich
Eastern Indonesia. They also belong to a minority religion in the
country. Ambonese in particular belong to a traditional purist
sect of the Calvin Protestant Church, a sect too severe even for
most Europeans.
During Dutch rule the Ambonese were either scholars, civil
servants, soldiers, spice farmers or fishermen. Most thought
trade was below their social status; approximately only 10
percent of them were engaged in small-scale trading.
As far back as the late 1970s things went well. Clove, nutmeg
and other trades flourished and the people liked being in the new
republic, their militancy dormant due to increased prosperity.
Then Akib Latuconsina was appointed as Maluku governor. It was
reportedly him who started the rivalry between the two major
religions.
Two days after his appointment, he forbade the ringing of
church bells in the churches near his residence (in predominantly
Christian Ambon!). Next came the waves of migrants from Java,
sponsored by the local and the central government.
Within a couple of years, the population scales started to tip
dangerously as these Javanese-oriented, government-sponsored
transmigration projects, had by then transported thousands of
families and their offspring to Maluku. Here they not only lived
on land acquired through forced "land reform projects", but were
also intentionally separated from the local population.
These migrants created predominantly Javanese oriented
villages, which mostly flourished.
As the migrants and other settlers became stronger, the
interaction between adat villages became weaker.
The governor in Ambon started to openly favor the Muslim
community. Before Akib's appointment, Christians and Muslims
built mosques and churches together. Greetings of
Assalamu'alaikum on Christmas Day and Salam Sejahtera on Idul
Fitri were a cherished local tradition; in many families some
members were Muslim and some were Christian. Now people greet
each other by cutting each others' throats!
In Jakarta people are raising charges about the
Christianization of Indonesia. Churches and seminaries have been
targeted by fanatical mobs, and many Christians live in constant
fear of being accosted because of their religion.
Meanwhile, the policies and financing of the former government
can be said to have played a role in the proselytizing of
Christians in Eastern Indonesia.
This is because all migrants, except a few who have doctored
their documents, adhere to the Muslim religion, an informal
prerequisite for membership of the transmigration program. Used
to hardship on Java, hard-working and seasoned in small-scale
trade and other crafts, the newcomers, with the help of
government officials who had their own plans, in time began to
control the economy and local government, whereas the Chinese and
the Makasarese from South Sulawesi controlled the outbound trade.
Ambon's new elite started to undermine the power of the
church, Christians started to feel threatened and it did not need
much before militancy raised its ugly head.
Slowly but surely much cherished Ambon was gradually strangled
by fanatical and power-hungry men. Still, the rivalry had not yet
reached its peak in the absence of religious overtones. However,
Ambon had become a volcano, bubbling and boiling, preparing for a
major eruption "when the time and the price was right".
Maluku Christians grappled with their unexpected fall from
grace under Soeharto, increasing poverty through dabbling in the
clove trade by Soeharto's son Tommy, invasion of migrants on
customary lands confiscated through the land reform projects and
systematic discrimination.
The elderly became apathetic and quarrelsome -- but the
youngsters became unruly. The educated left to seek opportunities
in the western part of the country, while the uneducated stayed
and got into one mischief after another.
If the Ambonese had been belittled under Sukarno they would
have adjusted to their inferior position. This did not happen;
Sukarno knew well enough that the Maluku people would never have
joined the Republic docilely if they had not been promised some
sort of equality and, of course, freedom to practice their
religion.
Over-populated Java needed the vastness and the riches of
Irian Jaya, the international trade, sea thoroughfares, the
fishing concessions, the gold on Haruku island and other natural
resources of Maluku and the forests in the center of Kalimantan,
all predominantly Christian regions.
In retrospect, the exploitation and marginalization of Eastern
Indonesia and its peoples was a grand plan, cleverly designed and
duly executed by unscrupulous politicians, and aided by the army
and greedy businessmen.
Indonesia's "Armageddon" was created by its own people against
its own people. Ludicrous or not, the monetary crisis, the fall
of Soeharto and his handymen and the full-scale religious war in
Ambon and the outer islands may end up saving Maluku people from
something even more sinister and inimical; the gradual,
institutionalized obliteration of a courageous and proud race.
Angelique L. Picaulima van Engelen is married to an Ambonese
and has stayed a number of times in Ambon, most recently before
the riots began. Harley Saimima is a student at Pattimura
University in Ambon.