POSO: A thick scar running from the back of her
neck to just under her right eye, the lone survivor of a machete attack in
which three Christian girls were beheaded on the Indonesian island of
Sulawesi has spoken for the first time of her terror.
"All I could do was pray to Jesus for his help," said
16-year-old Noviana Malewa, who fled the October attack with a gaping head
wound. "I was streaming with blood."
Noviana, who now lives under police guard in the Christian town of
Tentena, described how the girls were taking a short cut to school through
jungle and plantations when they ran into at least five masked, black-clad
men. Within seconds, three of the teenagers were beheaded -- fresh victims
of violence that has turned the Indonesian island into yet another front
in the conflict with terrorists.
As Noviana fled bleeding, the assailants collected her friends' heads,
put them in black plastic bags and then dumped them in Christian parts of
the small town of Poso, one on a porch, the other two on the street.
"They were killed as if they were chickens," said Hernius
Morangki, showing a journalist the spot where his daughter was
decapitated. "I keep asking myself: What were my daughter's
sins?"
Muslim militants are blamed for the beheadings, the most gruesome yet
in a campaign of terror against Christians on Sulawesi.
Muslim-Christian violence killed almost 1000 people on Sulawesi between
2000 and 2002 and attracted Muslim militants from across Indonesia, among
them members of the terror group Jemaah Islamiah.
Despite a peace deal, bombings, shootings and other attacks on
Christians have continued, especially around Poso.
Former fighters and security officials say the latest attacks are
carried out by Muslim islanders bent on avenging their dead from the
earlier conflict, and terrorists aiming to foment a new war.
"They want to see Poso become alive with the spirit of jihad
again," said Fahirin Ibnu Achmad, an Afghan-trained militant who took
part in the 2000-02 war. "It is easy to recruit people who have seen
their relatives slaughtered," he said, claiming to have renounced
violence after spells in prison for gun-running and taking part in an
attack on a Christian village.
Sulawesi is one of several islands in what some call Southeast Asia's
"triangle of terror" -- a porous region encompassing the
insurgency-racked southern Philippines in the north and the Maluku
archipelago, itself the scene of sectarian conflict, to the west. Also
nearby is heavily Muslim southern Thailand, where a two-year insurgency
has left more than 1100 people dead.
The Sulawesi war has never been credibly investigated, and only a few
perpetrators have stood trial. The island's Muslim and Christian
communities, each numbering about half the population of 12.5 million,
nurture their own histories of the conflict, casting themselves as
victims.
Christian-Muslim relations were generally harmonious until 2000, when
fighting spread from the Malukus. Each side killed hundreds and burned
down scores of villages, among them the hilltop hamlet where Noviana and
her schoolmates lived.
