The Maluku sectarian conflict (Indonesian: Konflik Sektarian Kepulauan Maluku), also known as the Maluku riots (Indonesian: Kerusuhan Maluku) was a period of ethno-political conflict along religious lines that occurred in the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, with particularly serious disturbances on the islands of Ambon and Halmahera. The duration of the conflict is generally dated from the start of the Reformasi era in early 1999 to the signing of the Malino II Accord on 13 February 2002.
The principal causes of the conflict are attributed to general political and economic instability in Indonesia following the fall of Suharto and the devaluation of the rupiah during and after a wider economic crisis in Southeast Asia. The forthcoming division of the existing province of Maluku into the new provinces of Maluku and North Maluku exacerbated existing district political disputes further and, as the political dispute had been characterized along religious lines, inter-communal fighting broke out between Christian and Muslim communities in January 1999, cascading into what could be described as all-out warfare and atrocities against the civilian population committed by both sides. The main belligerents were therefore religious militia from both faiths, including the well-organised Islamist Laskar Jihad, and Indonesian government military forces.
Overview Though all violence during the four-year period cannot be linked directly to political or sectarian issues, as a significant majority could be attributed to opportunistic crimes, the violence was categorized by the armed campaigns of local militia groups targeted almost exclusively against the civilian populations of the islands. This also included the Laskar Jihad militia group, composed of trained fighters from other predominantly Muslim areas of Indonesia, who ran a campaign in the later stages of the conflict to drive out Christian residents of Maluku. On the other hand, in several cases, Christian militias also carried out attacks and massacres against Muslims, precisely on Eid al-Fitr, January 19, 1999 in Tobelo. The nature of the violence was intended to displace members of the rival community, as it assumed the form of mass-evictions through the use of intimidation and harassment, followed by vicious attacks on large groups of locals and arson attacks on their residences or even whole neighbourhoods that could be termed as pogroms in some cases. In one instance in April 1999 all Christian residents were expelled from the Banda Islands.
Despite firing some 80% of all ammunition spent in the fighting, the Police and Armed forces of the Republic of Indonesia claimed to be neutral throughout the conflict. However, the authorities were criticized for not preventing attacks and allegations of ethnic and religious bias were alleged by both communities, in particular that a number of troops handed over state-owned weapons, mostly to Muslim militia members, and said weapons were used in later attacks and atrocities. In some cases individual personnel of both the military and police are reported to have joined the militias of their respective religion, with up to 350 military personnel alleged to have assisted and fought alongside Muslim fighters. Initially the local militia groups had organised themselves as 'defenders' and 'protectors' of their respective community against rival attacks, establishing posko or command posts in light of the Police inaction, however, these rapidly evolved into mobilization points for local gangs to launch attacks from.
The conflict had a significant effect upon the 2.1 million people of greater Maluku. Leading up to the Malino agreement, the International Crisis Group estimated that 700,000 people had been displaced by the four years of fighting in the Moluccas which is thought to have claimed a minimum of 5,000 lives. This constituted the largest movement of refugees since the federation of the Indonesian state and the majority of the 1.4 million internal refugees reported in February 2002 by the World Food Programme.
Background
Political and economic factors Decentralisation stimulated a renewed effort in 1998 for the northern islands of Maluku to secede from Maluku province. The secession was supported on all sides of the religious and political spectrum as residents shared the same concerns of relative logistical difficulties associated with distances in the region, the expropriation of economic wealth by outside individuals and a distant and disengaged government in Ambon. The movement was crucially backed by then governor of Maluku province, Saleh Latuconsina, and following lobbying by prominent North Maluku parliamentarians and student activists, in February 1999, then president Jusuf Habibie promised to create a new North Maluku province.
The authoritarian rule of Suharto, to which the Christian and Muslim religious hierarchies of Al-Khaira'at and Gereja Protestan Maluku had been subordinate, had granted the groups niches of coercive power over their respective communities and guaranteed a relatively stable structure of local assemblies and distribution of power for the previous few decades. Identifying oneself with the religious establishment that held the political power allowed one to access a network that provided favours, protection from crime and other practical benefits for its members and, it has been suggested by political scientist Gerry van Klinken, this network allowed small disagreements on the street level to spread across much of Maluku society.
However, the fall of the nationwide New Order structure and decentralisation allowed open and competitive electoral competition for district positions of authority, which held both prestige and economic advantages, cast doubt on the number of voters each group could claim to command and it was within the best interests of all significant groups to mobilize support for their respective cause.
In the soon to be established North Maluku province competition for the newly created administrative positions was largely between gubernatorial candidates the sultan of Ternate, Mudaffar Sjah, who relied upon the support of the influential Evangelical Church of Halmahera (GMIH), and the Makianese Muslim regent of Central Halmahera, Bahar Andili. The redrawing of administrative districts and contention between Tidore and Ternate over the location of the soon-to-be capital cast into doubt the viability of numerous existing power-structures and those employed by the groups that formed these structures.
Economic power in Ambon from the mid-1980s onwards was held by civil servants, observed P. M. Laksono, and their salaries and monetary provisions from Jakarta contributed the overwhelming majority of wealth entering the Maluku region, as local agricultural and marine production was largely subsistence and commercial fishing operations were mostly foreign owned. Some estimates placed direct employment in the civil service at a quarter of total employment in Ambon and figures from 1990 stated 38% of Ternate workers were employed by the government. The dependence on a generally static number of public service positions meant that youth unemployment in Ambon was unusually high; in Benteng on Ambon 73.2% of the population was listed as not yet employed in 1994, and it was these disaffected youth that mostly composed the foot-soldiers of the conflict.
The violence cannot, however, be entirely attributed to political or religious institutions; during a communal dispute before the outbreak of widespread violence, among others, at the Ambon villages of Wakal and Hative Besar, their representatives acted to mitigate conflict but were widely ignored in that case. Customary factors
Demographic change has also been cited as a factor in creating tension. Particular issues related to the disturbance of the customary land rights, or adat, that were common to both indigenous Moluccan religious communities but were of little concern to newer migrants who had no interest in a traditional alliance system.
The residents of Ambon had been particularly adherent to a theory of pela gandong, whereby villages, often of differing religious persuasion, were 'bound by blood' to assist one another and marriages between the members of the villages were forbidden, as they were between blood relatives. Any transgression against these rules would be severely punished by curses from the ancestors who founded the institution. The alliances facilitated a relationship to allow peace between villages that were rigidly structured as either wholly Christian or Islamic and had formed the largest political units of Moluccan society prior to the Indonesian state. However, this system could not accommodate land-title of nonlocal, nonvillage-based transmigrant landowners.
These local customs that maintained respect had also been undermined by reform Islam, which was popular in Ternate during the 1980s, and the 1981 fatwa from the Indonesian Ulama Council that banned Christians from participation in Islamic holidays aided the segregation of the religious communities.
Ethnic factors Ambon and surrounding islands had a roughly equal number of Christian and Muslim citizens in the years prior to the crisis. However, in the three-decade period after 1969 some 98,000 people were resettled in Maluku as part of the official government transmigration programme, the majority Bugis, Makassarese or other Muslims from South Sulawesi. Further independent migrants also settled in Maluku and in February 1999 the national newspaper, Kompas, estimated 225,000 migrants from South Sulawesi had settled in the Maluku Islands with 30,000 living in Ambon. Bugis and Butonese owners had rapidly increased their share of merchant and retail trade in Ambon to the extent that markets were specifically targeted by Christian gangs during the earlier stages of fighting in Ambon City as a way of harming the Muslim community.
The shift contributed to greater bureaucratic and political representation of Muslims in Maluku district affairs, with two successive Muslim governors selected in 1992 and 1997 who began to fill vacancies in the civil service with Muslim appointees, and has been cited as creating anxiety within the Christian community about a potential Islamisation of Maluku, contributing to sectarian tensions.
During the early stages of the conflict the large-scale internal displacement of Ambonese to Northern Maluku, Ternate in particular, and the rumors and crimes the internally displaced people described to local residents are cited as a factor in the increased sectarian tension and initial violence in North Maluku during August 1999.
North Halmahera land disputes In North Maluku the population was 85% Muslim prior to the start of conflict. There had been a steady exodus of Makianese from the island of Makian to Ternate and the northern regions of Halmahera. Dozens of villages had been established and populated by Makianese transmigrants who had moved there from the neighbouring island during the 1970s, following fears of a volcanic eruption. Some of the migrant Makianese had been shifted to live and cultivate on or near land traditionally claimed by the Jailolo and Kao ethno-linguistic groups, and claims to the land became more forceful with the discovery of gold deposits in the 1990s and the announcement of an Australian owned mine to open in mid-1999.
Resentment of the increasing influence of Makianese was not restricted to the Christian minorities, with mistrust aired in Ternate and Tidore following their attainment of important regional positions outside the traditional Makianese homeland.