Tual clashes claim three lives
JAKARTA (JP): Security personnel fired shots to disperse battling Christians and Muslims in the Maluku city of Tual, Antara reported. At least three were killed, while 19 others were injured in the violence, the news agency said.
An AFP report, however, put the death toll on Friday to at least seven.
Antara said two of the dead were identified as Sodikin Sominto and Abdul Ghani Renhora, while the third had yet to be identified. Most of the injured sustained bullet and knife wounds.
At least two battalions of riot personnel were deployed to stop the clash, reportedly attempting to disperse rioters by shooting at their legs. As of late Friday, tension remained high, as gunshots and explosions from homemade bombs were heard sporadically.
The riot was the latest outburst of religious unrest in Maluku province, where more than 300 people have died this year. Dozens of churches and mosques have been burned.
Residents told AFP that Christians hurled Molotov cocktails at houses and fought Muslim groups with spears and knives. Some women took part in the fighting.
Witnesses said they saw the bodies of five Muslims and two Christians. At least 19 people suffered bullet or knife wounds.
"I saw two men who were killed by knives and arrows," said a witness who requested anonymity.
The military has struggled to contain frequent outbursts of unrest over the past year. Religious and ethnic tensions, economic hardship and disputes over the course of the transition to democracy have fueled violence since the downfall last May of authoritarian president Soeharto.
Maluku was known during the Dutch colonial period as the Spice Islands. Tual is 2,800 kilometers east of here. Most of Indonesia's 210 million people are Muslims, but Maluku province has a large Christian population.
In Ujungpandang, the capital of South Sulawesi, a sociologist questioned the repatriation of Muslim Bugis and Makassar refugees to the Maluku capital of Ambon. He said it would take the refugees more than just a month to recover from their traumatic experiences of violence.
"This sending home of refugees is more a political act than (one that is) social in nature," Muhammad Darwis of Hassanuddin University told The Jakarta Post.
If the repatriation was meant to indicate that normalcy had returned to Maluku, then the involved parties were only exploiting the refugees as a commodity, Darwis said, calling for a review of the policy.
Estimates of refugees from Maluku vary, but the most recent figures put the figures at more than 50,000.
Over the past week, the local organization KOMPAK had sent back to Ambon over 1,000 Bugis and Makassar refugees who were Muslims.
From the sociological point of view, Darwis said refugees would need at least five months to recover from their psychological trauma.
"Give them a chance to heal their traumatic experience. Then, we return them," he added.
KOMPAK coordinator, Tamzil Linrung, however, said his organization had considered the aspect but decided to help return the refugees because the situation allowed it.
"It's not done without foresight," he said. (27/aan)