With frail, shaking hands, she opened her well-worn purse and retrieved the delicate cross hidden there. General Praboyo’s mother then lowered her head, and prayed for forgiveness; and for what she knew in her heart, would most surely now transpire.
* * * *
East Java - Situbondo – December, 1997
Second-corporal Suparman waited impatiently for the signal to move. His hands moved nervously in the darkness and found the haversack containing the deadly cocktails. Reassured, he continued to listen for the others’ voices as he lay hidden at the edge of the field. Rain filled clouds moved silently across the evening sky blanketing the moonlight and Suparman sensed that the attack was imminent, as darkness enveloped their surrounds. Habit forced his hands to check the lower leg pockets of his battle-dress, but then he remembered that they had changed out of their uniforms as the mission directives required.
This would be a civilian raid.
‘Let’s go!’ his Sergeant hissed, sending eight half-crouched men running along the soggy rain-water drain towards a number of barely visible buildings, the structures’ silhouettes confused to the marauders’ eyes, in the absence of light. They had covered more than a hundred meters when their leader’s voice snapped again.
‘Get down!’ Suparman heard the NCO’s command and the team threw themselves against the embankment, waiting for whatever it was that moved towards them along the narrow, bitumen road. Moments passed before they continued cautiously towards their target in file, listening for sounds which might be out of place here in the dark. Frogs croaked, a worrying sign that rain might interfere with their mission, but Suparman was more concerned with the filthy, slimy, colorfully ringed, deadly poisonous snakes which slid around in the night, preying on the noisy creatures.
The soldiers hurried across the road and came to rest less than fifty meters from the buildings, where they spent several more minutes determining where the civilian security guards slept.
‘To the left of the smaller building,’ a corporal indicated, pointing to where a soft, fifteen watt globe burned inside what they knew to be the sleeping quarters. Sergeant Subandi squinted, concentrating on the buildings, then cursed silently, swatting whatever insect had attached itself to his face.
‘Suparman,’ the NCO whispered for all to hear, ‘take Dedi and two others, and hit the church from there.’ He pointed to the walls farthest from where the tenants slept. ‘You,’ he ordered, placing his hand on the corporal’s shoulder, ‘take the others and approach from behind.’ The corporal raised his eyebrows questioningly, but this went unseen in the dark.
‘What about them?’ he asked, moving his free hand closer to the sergeant’s face while pointing at the dim light. Over the past month, they had razed almost a dozen other churches and not once targeted those inside.
During those operations, the inhabitants had fled in terror, encouraged by their attackers to do so. He sensed that the sergeant had moved outside the operation’s parameters, and wanted confirmation that this time, they were to kill. He could not see the cruel grin which marked the team leader’s face.
‘Burn them,’ he ordered, and rose to his feet clasping one of the Molotov cocktails in his right hand, simultaneously extracting a lighter from his jacket pocket with the other. The men followed suit, opening their own sacks containing the highly inflammable contents, and taking their positions as instructed.
Within minutes the church was ablaze. Tall dancing flames licked at the sky, casting light for hundreds of meters. Then the soldiers turned their attention to the adjoining buildings, hurling their deadly gifts into the air to smash against the buildings’ roofs, releasing burning fuel which spread through the ceiling and into the meager quarters where the minister and his wife remained, clutching each other in terror.
They cried out for assistance, and were dismayed when none came to their rescue. The ceiling above burst into flames, the heat and smoke unbearable. Finally, overcome by asphyxiation, the couple died, only minutes before the arsonists’ deadly fires could engulf their bodies.
The soldiers regrouped, then disappeared silently back through the fields to where their vehicle waited. By the time any of the local population had found the courage to investigate the carnage, the entire American-trained squad had driven more than fifty kilometers back to their station, where they changed back into uniforms bearing the insignia of the 21st Battalion, before returning to their provincial Kopassus headquarters in Surakata, Central Java.
Chapter Three
East Java – December, 1997
Lily Suryajaya
As custom required, Lily worked together with the older women in silence, their grief not evident as they washed the bodies in preparation for the funeral. Tears would flow later, when their work was done; when their minister and his wife had been laid to rest in the sacred ground within sight of the fire-gutted church.
Other non-Christian townspeople had demonstrated their deep-rooted apathy, electing to ignore the significance of the attack, silently pleased that the Chinese community had been punished for their apparent greed and commercial successes. Overwhelmingly, it seemed, even Christians not of Chinese extraction had elected not to attend their churches. They all now lived in a world filled with fear.
The church’s destruction had been the twelfth in a series of mysterious events which had, until the evening before, not claimed casualties. With the death of the two whose bodies now lay before them, these provincial Chinese had legitimate reasons to become even more deeply concerned with the escalation in violence, which they believed to be part of some concentrated campaign to further intimidate their race. Although there was no evidence to support the wide-spread rumors, the Christian community feared that the provocation had been initiated by Moslem elements, and that the orders had come from those in Jakarta who wished to create civil unrest to support their own secret agendas.
Whispered innuendo suggesting that men sporting typically military style haircuts had been seen at several of the churches before these were torched, had added to their fear. Such rumors were of great concern to the Chinese who suspected what this might mean to them, as it was common knowledge that the Indonesian army had often been deployed in the past, when the need arose to terrorize specific ethnic groups, for political gain.
But the Chinese were confused as to why suddenly churches had become the target of marauding bands of arsonists. Could it be, they asked each other, that the attacks were really the responsibility of militant Moslem groups?
After all, the Chinese communities only accounted for a small percentage of the Christian population. Surely, then, some argued, it was not the Chinese who were being specifically targeted, but Christians in general?
Although graffiti found at the scene of each desecration indicated that this sectarian violence had been instigated by Moslem raiders, the Christian communities questioned these attempts to fuel existing animosities between the rival groups. Bewildered by the escalating violence, the general consensus grew to support the belief that Jakarta elements were behind the civil unrest in the area. And now these subversive actions had resulted in the loss of the minister and his wife to the small Christian community.
* * * *
When the alarm was first given signaling that the Church and its adjoining accommodations were burning, not one from the congregation went to the scene, fearing that the gang responsible might still be present, and would confront any foolish enough to intervene. Besides, they had justified, those inside would surely have already fled to safety.
It was not until the following morning that evidence of the evening’s horrors became evident to all. The minister and his wife had perished, their remains found clutched together in scorched embrace. Too terrified to leave their premises, they had been overwhelmed by the heat and smoke and died. Their partly-charred bodies had been discovered amongst the smoldering ruins and taken to the rear section of the Apotik, the local, Chinese-owned