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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The war on violence
By Peter Snowdon
This week saw a new outbreak of street-fighting in the archipelago of Indonesia, when Muslim rioters set fire to churches, overturned cars and scattered Molotov cocktails across the tourist island of Lombok, some 40km from Bali. Thousands of locals, both Christian and Hindu, have been evacuated, along with many hundreds of Western visitors. The groups responsible for the violence claimed, somewhat paradoxically, that they were acting to protest the Indonesian government's failure to put a stop to similar violence which has pitted Muslims against Christians in the Moluccas islands, 2000 km to the east.
Since January 1999, the fighting in the Moluccas has caused around 2,000 deaths. Following a period of relative peace, hostilities flared up again over Christmas, when a Muslim group burned down the main protestant church in the capital, Ambon City. Contrary to the appearance of "ancestral ethnic hatred", local people believe the trouble was deliberately fomented by outside groups. Muslims accuse the RMS, the islands' Christian-dominated government in exile, of stirring up trouble. Other commentators, however, see the Muslim groups themselves as puppets in the hands of elements within the Indonesian army which remain loyal to deposed President Suharto.
A recent report by Tamrin Amal Tamagola, who is leading a reconciliation mission in the Moluccas, claims that members of the Suharto family have been directly financing the most active groups, who in turn have direct links to General Wiranto, minister for the security forces in the government of President Abdurrahman Wahid. From such claims, it is a short step to suppose that the present climate of violence has been deliberately fostered in order to destabilise the civilian government and increase its dependency on the army. This hypothesis would appear to be confirmed by eye-witness reports describing the riots as highly orchestrated, apparently with the complicity of the police.
Age may not wither former dictators, but it can improve their acting talents. Across Europe, governments and civil society groups have been quick to contest the supposed "senility" of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile. The general, currently detained in Britain awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of murder, was recently ruled unfit to stand trial by a British medical commission, and now seems likely to be released in the near future. The medical report, however, has not been published, and a number of eminent psychiatrists have already come forward to cast doubt upon its soundness. The governments of France and Belgium have both expressed their intention to seek to bring the former dictator to justice notwithstanding British doubts about his mental health.
Meanwhile, Spain suffered a more direct reminder of the nature of political violence Friday, when a car bomb exploded in central Madrid, killing a 47-year-old lieutenant colonel of the Spanish army. A girl of 13 was also slightly injured. The bomb was planted by ETA, the armed Basque separatist group which in November called an end to a year-long truce in its war against the central government. This was their first successful operation since resuming hostilities, earlier attempts to detonate car bombs in the capital having been foiled by the police. Since 1968, 770 people have died in ETA attacks. Euskal Herritarrok, the political wing of ETA, issued a statement deploring the loss of the officer's life, and calling on the governments of France and Spain to bring about a peace "founded on respect for the will of the Basque people". ETA's understanding of the popular will is possibly more mystical than strictly democratic. In recent regional elections, the separatist party took only 15 per cent of the vote.
Still, that is better than the number of people who would likely vote for the Tutsi government of Burundi, if they were ever given the chance. Since 1993, civil war has opposed the Hutu majority, who make up over 85 per cent of the population, and their unelected rulers. Out of a population of six million, 200,000 have died, half a million are refugees, and another 800,000 are internally displaced. In addition, some 330,000 people are currently being held in 53 "regroupment camps", where conditions are appalling and human rights abuses commonplace.
Last week, Nelson Mandela, who has succeeded the late Julius Nyerere as chief facilitator to the Burundi peace process, gave his first address to the UN Security Council, in which he said that "significant progress" had been made towards an enduring reconciliation. However, much remains to be done. In particular, the regroupment camps remain a controversial issue, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan describing them as verging on "humanitarian catastrophe", while Burundi's Foreign Minister Severin Ntahomvukiye insisted they were merely "special security measures" to protect civilians. The Burundi government has always strenuously denied that the camps were part of a mass programme of ethnic cleansing, such as that which devastated neighbouring Rwanda in 1994. A resolution to demand the immediate disbandment of the camps was dropped at Mandela's request, as unlikely to receive the unanimous international backing the former South African president feels his mission requires in order to succeed.
