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Renewed Muslim-Christian
Clashes in Poso, Sulawesi
By Kazi Mahmood
JAKARTA, Dec. 4 (IslamOnline) - The violence-stricken regency of Poso in Sulawesi, Indonesia saw renewed clashes this week even after the arrival of troop reinforcements in the region, official sources in Jakarta said on Tuesday.
Official sources blamed armed Muslim groups last week for attacks against seven Christian villages in the area around Tentena and Poso town, which is 40km north of Tentena.
Police last weekend arrested around a hundred Laskar Jihad members, confiscating arms and restricting the movement of other members of the group in Poso. The army also sent four battalions into the region in a bid to curb the violence and help the police disarm the warring factions, but to no avail.
Tens of thousands of people in the mainly Christian district are said to be living in fear after renewed clashes between Muslims and Christians, in which whole villages have been destroyed.
A member of the Laskar Jihad said the situation was becoming tense since the arrival of the armed Muslim group in Poso,
but said that Christians had been planning fresh attacks against Muslims before their arrival.
On a website, the Laskar Jihad said its presence in the Poso regency was to act as a balance of the forces in place in the gross absence of police and military assistance for the Muslims.
Muslim villages are surrounded by Christians in several areas of Tentena. Other villages with a Muslim majority have been under constant attack during the past two and half years, IslamOnline was told.
"We have seen villages being attacked with impunity, with the security personnel helpless or even not present," Father Tumbelaka from Tentena said, adding that some 32,000 people lived in mainly Christian areas in and around Tentena and that more than 13,000 refugees from other parts of Poso district have sought safety there since May of last year.
The violence between armed Muslim and Christian groups in Poso has left more than
2,000 people dead and tens of thousands homeless.
Reports say that Laskar Jihad is armed with standard military issue weapons, such as M-16s. Aid groups said armed Christian militias have also set up roadblocks.
The Laskar Jihad said the violence in the region started with the killing of Muslim students in the Wali Songko Islamic School, where dead bodies
were found sprawled over vast areas from the rivers to the marshes and inside the complex.
Top Indonesian Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Monday that the government would send some 2,600 extra troops and police to help end the violence and search for weapons and "any individual or organization who is not supposed to be in Poso."
The Laskar Jihad, an activist Muslim organization based in Central Java, has battled Christians in the Malukus. The group claims to have sent thousands of fighters to the Poso district to help Muslims.
Deputy United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator Michael Elmquist said last week that up to 7,000 members of Laskar Jihad had moved to Poso. Laskar Jihad spokesman in Poso Mohammad Eshan denied reports that thousands of its men were in the area, saying there were only 700 members in Poso.
Laskar Jihad denies it is behind the violence, and said it was the local Muslim community that led the latest attacks after Christians first provoked them.
The National Human Rights Commission has sent a fact-finding mission to the tense provinces to investigate why security forces failed to control the violence, despite warnings that clashes were imminent, said a spokesman.
The same Commission, however, failed to send fact-finding missions to the provinces were Muslims were under attack and were summarily raped and murdered, according to members of armed Muslim groups.
In the most recent violence, Muslim groups attacked Sepe village near Tentena on Saturday evening, wounding at least four soldiers, the military said.
The Laskar Jihad said that at the start of the conflict, the successive governments in power did not defend Muslims and watched while innocents were killed.
Latest reports from Jakarta indicate that authorities might declare a state of emergency in Poso in order to protect Christians
and Muslim from one another.
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