Muslims and Christians offer themselves as reconcilers in Indonesia's bloody Moluku Islands

Mennonite Central Committee
Saturday, 19 February 2000

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia -- News stories from Indonesia these days tend to focus on violent unrest, on Christians and Muslims killing each other on many different islands. Images of smoking buildings and fleeing refugees emerge daily -- jarring pictures of death and destruction on beautiful tropical islands. What news stories don't show are the quiet efforts of many Indonesian Muslims and Christians to bring reconciliation and peace to this vast archipelago.

Recently three universities in Java worked together to prepare a team of Muslims and Christians to offer themselves as reconcilers. The group first met with refugees from the fighting in Ambon, largest of the Moluku islands, and later developed good contacts among the contending groups on Ambon. Realizing that when it takes years to develop a conflict it will also take years to end it, the team knew it would be working for a long time.

Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana (UKDW) (Ambassadors of the Word Christian University), in the Javanese city of Yogyakarta, is sponsored by 12 church groups, including Mennonite World Conference member Gereja Kristen Muria Indonesia. UKDW has developed a peace center over the last decade. Training seminars have been given and the director, Dr. Judo Poerwowidagdo, is in demand as a facilitator.

UKDW worked together with the public Gadjah Mada University and the Islamic University to develop the reconciliation team known as Tim Independen Rekonsiliasi Ambon (Independent Team for Reconciliation in Ambon or TIRA). The team plans to return periodically to offer opportunities for Ambonese to collaborate on efforts at reconciliation. The cooperating universities also plan to form teams dedicated to other hot spots in Indonesia.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) has funded some of TIRA's effort. MCC is also helping to support province-wide reconciliation efforts by church groups in West Papua (formerly Irian Jaya).

MCC has been working in Indonesia for more than 50 years, coming when the country was born after World War II as European empires were rolled up and put away. MCC came to help the indigenous Mennonites of Java who were starving in those difficult postwar years, and stayed on to do many types of development work in the emerging nation.

Today MCC has workers in West Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) doing community development, clean water projects, health projects and teaching. On the island of Java MCC workers teach or cooperate with local partners on development projects.

MCC has placed a volunteer in UKDW's peace center. Duane Ruth-Heffelbower from Fresno Pacific University's Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies in Fresno, California, is working in Yogyakarta to help prepare Indonesians for cooperative conflict transformation and peace building roles, as well as supporting training and intervention efforts throughout Indonesia and the surrounding area.

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org