The Bad PlusHere we are about to celebrate the end of Ramadhan, a time for reflection within a communal setting, and the depressing news surfaces of six ninja characters beheading three Christian schoolgirls in the troubled province of Central Sulawesi.
National police spokesman Aryanto Budiharjo said up to six men in black clothes and masks attacked the students in Bukit Bambu village as they were on their way to class at the Central Sulawesi Christian Church (GKST) high school in Poso.
"The perpetrators wore black attire and veils and they used machetes," he told reporters.
The police said that the information was obtained from a survivor in the incident, who managed to escape the attack but suffered wounds to her face.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono immediately held an emergency security meeting with Vice President Jusuf Kalla, top security officials and ministers to assess the situation in Poso.
"In the holy month of Ramadhan, we are again shocked by a sadistic crime in Poso that has now claimed the lives of three school students," he told reporters. "I condemn this barbarous killing, whoever the perpetrators are and whatever their motives."
He ordered the security forces to find the killers and maintain order in the region.
The security forces?
Jason Brown analysed the many differing interpretations of the wave of as yet unsolved killings by so-called 'ninjas' of
dukuns (village soothsayers) in East Java in 1998.
Who was masterminding the dukun santet slayings? Were elite politicians working behind the scenes, as some high-profile political leaders claimed, including Abdurrahman Wahid, then head of Indonesia's largest Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama? Was it a military exercise designed to create chaos throughout East Java in the wake of Suharto's resignation? Were forces at play to disrupt a major congress of Megawati Sukarnoputri's Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) planned for Bali, just half an hour by ferry from Banyuwangi? Were the dukun santet simply scapegoats in a carefully manipulated campaign designed to disrupt and discredit the emerging post-New Order political forces in the staunchly Islamic province of East Java?
The London Times had an 'interview' with a captured ninja.
His eyes glazed, his torso striped with livid weals and his wrists swollen, Jaafar did not look like a dreaded "ninja" killer as he answered his vigilante captors' questions.
Jaafar said he did not know what he was doing. "I am just a fisherman from Pulau Seribu (Thousand Islands) near Jakarta," he said. "I was brought here by plane by the men who recruited me. Look at my arm - they gave me seven injections before I was sent out."
Rambling, semi-coherent and still in shock, Jaafar appeared too simple to understand why the vigilantes kept demanding to know who had offered him money and trained him. "I don't know who they were," he repeated. "They had crew-cut hair, that's all."
Crewcut hair?
Peter Dale Scott would agree that the military could well be behind the latest grotesque killings. After all, he believes they were responsible for the slaying of over 100 moderate Muslim clerics in 1998.
Persecution.org will probably put the blame of extremist Muslim groups. No doubt they are right, but the question remains of their true motivation and who are their paymasters.
(Incidentally, I think Persecution.org may have its mission ~ Serving the Victims of Christian Persecution ~ wrongly worded. Shouldn't it be 'Serving the Christian Victims of Persecution'?)
Christians, Muslims, believers in the spirit world or tourists. It makes no difference. This is yet another heinous crime very much on a par with the recent bombings in Bali.
That there could be a political perspective, an attempt to derail the democratically elected government of SBY cannot be overstated.
The Machiavellian masterminds must be unmasked.
And soon.
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