he Christians of the Poso region of Indonesia are desperately asking for Christians worldwide to pray and to help as more Christians are being killed and villages attacked and burned.
One Christian missionary on the island of Sulawesi today reported the following to the Washington, DC based human rights organization International Christian Concern:
My dear sisters and brothers, the Tentena People and its surroundings are really in bad need of assistance from you... in many forms: food, money and clothes to help the internally displaced persons. Beside this, please continue praying and pressure our government!! Thank you.
"The situation in Poso has been growing more tense each day. There have been bombings and shootings going on regularly. Last Thursday an Italian tourist on his honeymoon was traveling on a Christian bus when he was shot and killed by terrorists. A leading Police spokesman implied that he [the Italian tourist] might be one of the men behind the violence. Unbelievable! This evening [August 12] we have just received news that the village of Sepe about 15-20 km from Poso is being burned down. The attack began at 6.30pm local time. The locals of course have no weapons, having surrendered them all to the Police [in accordance with the Malino Agreement]. The Special Forces all secretly disappeared from the village, leaving no military at all to guard the village, despite the attacks over the last few days. The attackers, suspected of being jihad, were dressed in black and came into the village, burning down all the buildings.
ICC received word today from the Crisis Center
(CC-GKST) located in Central Sulawesi that their efforts to evacuate the dead bodies from the demolished village of Malei have been thwarted by the Muslims in adjacent villages. A spokesman for the Crisis Center described to ICC the problems their evacuation teams are facing:
"As they arrived in Silanca, they could not go to Malei because they would have had to pass through Muslim villages, which are now tightly and brutally guarded by the Muslims militants. The government's armed forces have done nothing at all to help! Now the team of 5 vehicles, including an ambulance, are driving from Tagolu to
Ranononcu, negotiating with the authorities to allow for the evacuation of the eight dead bodies. Both communities (Moslems and Christians) from the villages along the main road in all directions are tightly guarded by each community. The differences are, in Christian community they check the cars to look for weapons, but in the Moslem community, the main thing they look for is identity cards. When a Christian is identified, they are then killed." The following examples were cited:
On August 11, a Christian man was murdered in Kayamanya, Poso city. He was killed when driving his motor bike on the way to his house (from Palu to Poso City), but in Kayamanya he was stopped by a Muslim mob and when they checked his ID and found that he was a Christian, they killed him.
On August 9, at 4:00 pm, all the Christian houses in the villages of Malei and Tongko were burned to the ground. These houses had just been rebuilt using the aid received from the government [internationally sponsored aid]. It was later confirmed that one Christian man was killed during the attack. He was identified as 70-year-old Naba Doelelia, but his body had not yet been found. Another man from the village of Malei, 50-year-old Sikia, who is deaf, was either killed when his house was burned down or was taken hostage. Because he was deaf, he did not hear the commotion from the attack and therefore did not escape.
On August 11, five Christians, passengers on a bus driving from Makassar (South Sulawesi) to Gorontalo (North Sulawesi) were killed. After the bus was hijacked, the bus passed through Kayamanya in Poso city where witnesses saw four bodies thrown from the bus in front of the Kartika Hotel (only 3 km from the police station). When the authorities arrived, the bodies had been taken. A report came from Palu police saying that later one body of a dead man was brought to Palu. It is suspected that this man was one of the passengers in the same bus. Up to now the bus is still missing.
A report from a woman (a teacher) saying that her husband was on the way to Palu by bus when, in Tambarana village, he got off the bus when a Muslim mob was stopping all vehicles. He took another public bus going back in the direction of Poso. He has never been seen since.
Rev. Rinaldy Damanik, the General Secretary of GKST Synod Board and the Coordinator of CC-GKST, has accused the Indonesian Coordinating Minister of Social Welfare, Yusuf Kalla, of "having a good relationship with the Laskar Jihad (the leading Muslim terrorist organization). Kalla had made a statement in the Jakarta Post, the Indonesian English language newspaper, on Saturday, August 10, that the recent violence that resulted in the death of an Italian tourist was "not the style of the Laskar Jihad." However, according to the people in Central Sulawesi, this is exactly the style of the Laskar Jihad and has occurred since the beginning of the Poso Conflict, which has included car shootings, bus bombings, attacks in villages, killing of civilians, etc.A leader of the Crisis Center of Central Sulawesi (CC-GKST) has asked International Christian Concern for help:
"My dear sisters and brothers, the Tentena People and its surroundings are really in bad need of assistance from you. Information just arrived saying the students of the Schools in Tentena are collecting donations in many forms: food, money and clothes to help the internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the CC-GKST. Beside this, please continue praying and pressure our government!! Thank you."
International Christian Concern is a Washington, DC based human rights and aid organization that assists Christians worldwide who suffer oppression and persecution. More information is available on the ICC web site at www.persecution.org.
International Christian Concern
(From FreeWorldNow.com)