Thousands of security personnel guarded churches and markets yesterday after the execution of three Roman Catholic militants sparked sectarian violence in the world's most populous Muslim country, with mobs torching cars and looting stores.
Soldiers and policemen were scouring the jungles for nearly 180 inmates who escaped after Christian youths attacked a prison on Friday in the West Timor town of Atambua, sending guards fleeing into the jungle, local police chief Lieutenant Colonel Heb Behen said.
So far, only 25 inmates have been caught or have surrendered, Behen said.
PHOTO: AP
The executions of the Christian militants by firing squad for a brutal massacre at an Islamic school six years ago appeared to smooth the way for the executions of three Muslims convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings.
Some analysts said the government would be unwilling to spark public anger by carrying out death sentences against the Islamic convicts ahead of the Christians.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla appealed for calm following Friday's violence, which left at least five people injured.
He said the executions had nothing to do with religion.
Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 48, and Dominggus da Silva, 42, were convicted of leading a Christian militia that launched a series of attacks in May 2000 -- including a machete and gun assault on an Islamic school where scores of men were seeking shelter.
Muslim groups put the death toll at 191.
The attack on the school was one of the most brutal incidents during sectarian violence that swept central Sulawesi province from 1998 to 2002. At least 1,000 people from both faiths were killed.
However, only a handful of Muslims were ever punished for their part in the unrest, and none to more than 15 years behind bars.
Although violence in Sulawesi, which has a significant Christian presence, largely ended with the signing of a peace deal in 2002, there have since been isolated attacks, from bombings to beheadings. The town of Palu, the provincial capital and the scene of Friday's pre-dawn executions, was quiet yesterday with hundreds of policemen patrolling the main roads.
But tensions remained over a government decision to hastily bury one of the condemned men, da Silva. Family and friends dug up his body, saying they wanted to rebury him in their own coffin and in his own clothes.
The bodies of Tibo and Riwu were returned to their hometowns in Beteleme, where families and friends planned to bury them today.
On Friday, Christian mobs rampaged in the Sulawesi villages of Tentena and Lage, torching cars and police posts after learning of the executions.
On the island of Flores, the condemned men's birthplace in East Nusatenggara province, machete-wielding youths terrorized residents and tore apart the local parliament, breaking windows and smashing doors and overturning benches.
‘OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE’: The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been researching bat coronaviruses to trace the SARS pathogen, which is 80 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2 The Chinese virology institute in the city where COVID-19 first emerged has three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site, but none match the new contagion wreaking havoc around the world, its director has said. Scientists think COVID-19 — which first emerged in Wuhan and has killed more than 340,000 people worldwide — originated in bats and could have been transmitted to people via another mammal. However, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology told state broadcaster China Global Television Network that claims made by US President Donald Trump and others that the novel coronavirus could have escaped from the facility were
HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES? An institute of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and a company are to be sanctioned over ‘human rights violations and abuses’ The US Department of Commerce on Friday said that it would sanction a Chinese government institute and eight companies over alleged human rights abuses against Uighurs and other minorities in China’s western Xinjiang region. “These nine parties are complicit in human rights violations and abuses committed in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” the department said in a statement. The Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science and Aksu Huafu Textiles Co are to be sanctioned “for
SPACE RACE: The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp mission aims to land a robotic rover and put a probe into orbit around the planet China is targeting a July launch for its ambitious Mars mission, which includes landing a remote-controlled robot on the surface of the Red Planet, the company in charge of the project has said. Beijing has invested billions of dollars in its space program in an effort to catch up with its rival, the US, and affirm its status as a major world power. The Mars mission is among a number of new space projects China is pursuing, including putting Chinese astronauts on the moon and having a space station by 2022. Beijing had been planning the Mars mission for some time this year,
Former US vice president Joe Biden on Friday said he “should not have been so cavalier” after he told a radio host that African Americans who back US President Donald Trump “ain’t black.” In a call with the US Black Chamber of Commerce that was added to his public schedule, Biden said he would never “take the African American community for granted.” “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy,” Biden said. “No one should have to vote for any party based on their race or religion or background.” Biden faced criticism after his comments earlier on Friday on The Breakfast Club, a
RSS