The town of Poso in Indonesia suffered religious violence between Christians and Muslims through the 1990s that only ended when a peace deal was brokered in 2001. Today, the town is almost exclusively controlled by Muslim forces except for one Christian neighborhood.
The remaining Christians may have wished they left. On Sunday, six men in black clothes and masks attacked Christian students as they were walking to school, beheading three teenage girls. This is the second violent incident since May, when bombings in the nearby Christian town of Tentena killed 22 people.
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Andre Vltchek
October 30, 2005
7:09 am
US-sponsored right-wing military coup in 1965 unleashed religious and ethnic cleansing. Between 500 thousand and 3 million people died in a terrible orgy of terror. Most of them were leftists, atheists but also Christians and Chinese.
There is nothing moderate or secular about today's Indonesia. Prayers and other religious activities are being broadcasted - often day and night - from the powerful loudspeakers. Lack of religious zeal is not tolerated by opressive Indonesian families and communities. Everybody HAS to have religion (it is stated in his/her ID card) - and only 5 of them are toterated. Not to have religion is therefore illegal!
Hundreds, maube thousands of churches are burning every year. Members of other believes are living in fear, facing violence. Country is discussing and adopting opressive laws coming the Middle East and North Africa: anti-cohabitation law already active and enforced by orwelian neighbourhood watches (unrelated men and women can't live under the same roof), law banning kissing in public, law forcing a foreign men to deposit 50 thousand dollars to the state bank in case they want to marry Indonesian women.
Religious intolerance and brainwashing is having enormous impact on intellectual level of Indonesian society. People here lost ability to question, challenge; to copare.
Working as a writer, filmmaker and political analyst in Indonesia is extremely frustrating. Considering myself "progressive" and even "leftist", I can't publish the truth about Islam and its impact on Indonesia in the US or Europe. I am forced to call lies "the true" and vice versa. To criticize Islam is seen as supporting the US foreign policy in the Middle East. Nonsence, of course, as the US itself destroyed most of the secular and progressive movements there, utilizing opressive religious regimes for its goals.
I hope that beheading of 3 schoolgirls in Sulawesi will at least open the eyes of some people... It it will not, what will?