Women and children shot while praying
Andrew Dunwoody (independent journalist) | 11.04.2004 15:50
Seven people have been wounded in a shooting at an Easter church service on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Hundreds of people have died on the island in conflicts between Christians and Muslims. Police said two gunmen burst into the church on Saturday night and sprayed the congregation with automatic weapons fire before escaping. Hospital staff said on Sunday none of the injured, who included a four-year-old girl, were in imminent danger. The shootings happened just outside the town of Poso in central Sulawesi, an area that has acquired an unenviable reputation for inter-religious violence.
Local Muslim clerics described the attacks as,
"Inevitable as long as Christians stay in Indonesia"
Hundreds of people have died around Poso, and despite a peace accord signed between leaders of the Muslim and Christian communities in 2001, the region remains a powder keg. Analysts say that much of the unrest is being stirred up by members of the same group that attacked foreign tourists on the island of Bali a year and a half ago and is unlikely to end any time soon.
A recent report by the International Crisis Group said some members of the group, known as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), were pursuing a different strategy from the Bali bombers. It said that this branch of JI believed attacking foreigners was counter-productive and it instead decided to work towards establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia, starting in Poso. A spokesman for JI said that only when the entire world lived under Islamic rule would the attacks end. But the report also warns that some militants are likely to become frustrated with the slow progress and return to a more confrontational path. Saturday's attack may indicate that trend is accelerating.
http://www.persecution.org/Countries/indonesia.html
http://www.worthynews.com/christian-persecution/features/christian-village-suffers-midnight-attack.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1955918.stm
Local Muslim clerics described the attacks as,
"Inevitable as long as Christians stay in Indonesia"
Hundreds of people have died around Poso, and despite a peace accord signed between leaders of the Muslim and Christian communities in 2001, the region remains a powder keg. Analysts say that much of the unrest is being stirred up by members of the same group that attacked foreign tourists on the island of Bali a year and a half ago and is unlikely to end any time soon.
A recent report by the International Crisis Group said some members of the group, known as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), were pursuing a different strategy from the Bali bombers. It said that this branch of JI believed attacking foreigners was counter-productive and it instead decided to work towards establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia, starting in Poso. A spokesman for JI said that only when the entire world lived under Islamic rule would the attacks end. But the report also warns that some militants are likely to become frustrated with the slow progress and return to a more confrontational path. Saturday's attack may indicate that trend is accelerating.
http://www.persecution.org/Countries/indonesia.html http://www.worthynews.com/christian-persecution/features/christian-village-suffers-midnight-attack.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1955918.stm
Andrew Dunwoody (independent journalist)
e-mail:
a.dunwoody@tiscali.co.uk
Comments
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Lynch 1
11.04.2004 17:31
Why does spring grab me by the throat? what does it want of me? so what even if it does not have enough spears and military flags! I jeer at you spring for flaunting your blind eye and your bad breath. Your stupration your infamous kisses. Your peacock tail makes tables turn with patches of jungle (fanfares of saps in motion) but my liver is more acidic and my venefice stronger than your malefice. The lynch it’s 6 PM in the mud of the bayou it’s a black handkerchief fluttering at the top of a pirate ship mast it’s the strangulation point of a fingernail up to the carmine of an interjection it’s the pampa it’s the queen’s ballet it’s the sagacity of science it’s the unforgettable copulation. O lynch salt mercury and antimony! The lynch is the blue smile of a dragon enemy of angels the lynch is an orchid too lovely to bear fruit the lynch is an entry into matter the lynch is the hand of the wind bloodying a forest whose trees are galls brandishing in their hand the smoking torch of their castrated phallus, the lynch is a hand sprinkled with the dust of precious stones, the lynch is a release of hummingbirds, the lynch is a lapse, the lynch is a trumpet blast a broken gramophone record a cyclone’s tail its train lifted by the pink beaks of predatory birds. The lynch is a gorgeous shock of hair that fear flings into my face the lynch is a temple crumbled and gripped by the roots of a virgin forest. O lynch lovable companion beautiful squirted eye huge mouth mute save when an impulse spreads there the delirium of glanders weave well, lightning bolt, on your loom a continent bursting into islands an oracle contortedly slithering like a scolopendra a moon settling in the breach the sulfur peacock ascending in the summary loophole of my assassinated hearing.
a c
Call for protest
11.04.2004 19:06
Meet at the Indonesian Embassy 38 Grosvenor Square London W1K 2HW on Monday evening at 8pm. Bring banners and loud hailers for chanting.
If you can't make it please call or fax your protest.
STOP these killings now
Tel. (020) 7499 7661
Fax. (020) 7491 4993
Christian
more info?
11.04.2004 22:55
ed
Further Details
12.04.2004 07:57
Come and join us tonight outside the embassy and hear from Indonesians who have lived through the persecution
Christian
Selective reporting
12.04.2004 16:56
Skyver Bill