Tual clashes claim three lives

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)