Word: pelima
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...brief visit to Poso by Chief Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Dec. 5 and a pledge of several thousand more troops did little to reassure Christians. "What is really needed is for the security forces to go in and disarm these outsiders," says S. Pelima, a civil servant and Protestant preacher based in the regional capital of Palu who served on a reconciliation team of community and religious leaders set up by the Governor last year. Since the May 2000 eruption, he says, the team had managed to contain the violence between the two communities to a few killings...
...Like almost everyone else, Pelima is too scared to blame the Laskar Jihad directly. But he is unequivocal in dating the most recent round of troubles to the arrival of the outsiders. "In the past four months many Christian villages have been cleaned out and many killed. Now you can see people walking around carrying guns openly in those villages," he says despairingly. "How can that be? We are farmers here and know nothing about automatic weapons. Where did these men get the guns from and the training to use them...
...thousands of refugees fleeing toward the safety of Tentena, an hour's drive inland from Poso. The raids have died down, but only after Christian sources reported that Laskar troops took over the last remaining road connecting Tentena to the outside world. That's when Christian community leaders like Pelima feared the worst and words like genocide began to appear on Internet list servers devoted to the Sulawesi conflict. "What is their intention in wanting to go to Tentena, wanting to cut it off from the rest of the world?" he asks. "People there are very, very frightened. They...
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