"WE have no certainties anymore. The Muslims are closing us in. They feel no restrictions to kill the Christians. Ambon will be attacked again." In the church in the main street of Ambon, the capital of the Indonesian province of Maluku, a desperate Lies Ulahayanan expresses her fear.
In the background babies are crying. In the modern church-building tens of refugee families are sheltering. The main police station and the parliament building of Ambon are filled with Christian refugees, who arrived in mid May when the violence flared up, ending a five-month period of relative calm. Since May the Muslim-Christian clashes, which followed the arrival from Java of thousands of members of the Laskar Jihad (army for a holy Islamic war) in Ambon, have not ceased.
Christians - Catholics and Protestants - believe that the Muslims want to drive them out from their island and to turn Ambon (and other islands of the Moluccas-archipelago) into an Islamic area. "We don't want to wait until we are all killed. If there's no place for Christians in the Moluccas, the government should give us another place to live." Lies Ulahayanan is quoting from a letter Christian women's organisations of Ambon have sent to the Indonesian authorities.
"I already packed my bags with clothes in case of emergency. We are ready to flee."
But the Muslim population in Ambon is just as fearful. An Islamic journalist says: "We are very scared because of the violence. If the Christians come to attack us, many Muslims join the fight to protect our area." Ambon is ruled by fear, hatred and revenge. Both parties accuse each other of starting the violence which erupted on January 19th, 1999 in Ambon city after a Muslim passenger refused to pay a bus-driver for his journey.
In the past 17 months the violence spread over many of the thousand spice islands of the Moluccas and developed into a religious civil war. Many believe the conflict was organised and instigated by political and military groups in Jakarta in a vicious attempt to get power. The arrival of the Laskar Jihad is another proof of the involvement of political elites in Java in the Moluccan war. But apart from "outside" manipulation the violence in the meantime has its local dynamics.
"Our boys are also to blame," says Nellie Gaspers, a 74-year old Christian woman. "We as older people want the violence to be stopped. But many of our Christian boys want to continue to fight." During the civil war numerous villages, shopping areas, mosques, churches, and neighbourhoods have been burnt.
The island of Ambon already has 90,000 refugees: as many Muslims as Christians. Thousands have been killed with both sides showing extreme cruelty. In a refugee camp for Muslims in Ambon city Siti Arifin explained how last year her brother was massacred: "Our neighbourhood was attacked by Christians. Hundreds of houses were set on fire. My brother managed to save me and many others. But when he wanted to drink some water, he was caught by the Christians. They cut him in pieces. When he was brought to the military hospital, they found out that his body was no longer complete."
Lies Ulahayanan lost two family members: "My cousin was beheaded but we have only been able to bury his head. We did not find the rest of his body."
The violence has torn the population apart. The city is divided in exclusive Christian and Islamic zones with the governor's office as a frontier exactly in the middle. The long, low white building is one of the few "neutral zones" where Christians and Muslims can meet. Behind the office is the Christian city centre, which Muslims do not dare visit. On many walls in the city centre is painted the word "Israel", the country with which the Christians are identifying themselves. The destroyed boulevard, A.Y. Patty, that runs in front of the governor's office, is cynically called "Gaza-line" by the Christians. That is where the Muslim residential area starts.
The Muslims have been driven by the Christians into a small area. "Our zone is just six kilometres long. It is suffocating," says the Islamic journalist.
Life on Ambon is completely disrupted. Companies have been destroyed or closed down. Many people lost their job. The administration hardly functions. "I can't concentrate. We live under permanent stress. We wait for the first gun shots, then we flee from the office.
I'm the first to run. My unit has 78 officials, but more often only 20 of us are present," says Lies Ulahayanan, who works at the governor's office.
Even newspapers have been religiously cleansed and work with exclusively Christian or Islamic staff. Children go to different schools and grow up with the poisonous image of the enemy. There are children who witnessed their parents being slaughtered. Sometimes family members or friends at the other side of the religious divide can't even telephone because it is considered too dangerous, says Lies Ulahayanan.
"There are only two ways to get peace. It could be that God will come to help us. The other option is that either the Muslims or the Christians will be killed. It is a matter of kill or to be killed. Millions of rupiah (the Indonesian currency) have been spend on reconciliation initiatives, but it hasn't produced any result.
"The Muslims want to exterminate us. There is no peace offer. We only get war declarations. We fight now for the survival of Christianity."
"Before every fight we inform the church. If they allow us, we go into the fight," says Agus Wattimena, a local leader of Christian fighters. According to Wattimena he can count on 300 shock troops, while his complete "popular army" has about 50,000 troops.
"Let them come. We will slaughter them. I have mobilised 100,000 muslims," says the Islamic leader, Haji Muhammad Jusuf Ely. "If the Christians attack us, they will pay a high price. All our women, children and elderly people will join to defend ourselves. They don't mind to die since it is an honour for Muslims to die during the jihad. If we die for the defence of our religion, God will give us the best place in heaven."
Governor Saleh Latuconsina - a moderate Muslim - makes a helpless impression. "For two years I'm governor now. But it feels like one hundred years." He would prefer to step down, he says, but the Muslims put pressure on him to stay on because there's a big chance the next governor will be a Christian.
"They will kill him if he resigns," says Jusuf Ely. "The situation is so complex," stresses the governor, who is seen as a "softy" by both parties. "The Muslims are very much divided among themselves, while the Christians are better organised and more under control. They listen to the church and their leaders." But the governor not only has to deal with local factions which have been engaged in an escalating arms race.
Governor Latuconsina is convinced that part of the political elite in Jakarta "the status quo. . . well Suharto" (the former president) is organising the violence in Ambon. He refers to the arrival of thousands of fighters of the Laskar Jihad, who in April received military training in Java before they got on the boat to Ambon.