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Lawamena
Victoria
Reports
by
CRISIS
CENTRE DIOCESE OF AMBOINA
Jalan Pattimura 32 - Ambon 97124 Indonesia
Tel 0062 (0)911 342195 Fax 0062 (0)911 355337
e-mail [email protected]
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THE
SITUATION IN AMBON / MOLUCCAS - Report No. 367
2003-15-05
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Ambon, May 15, 2003
1.
PATTIMURA UNIVERSITY TO BE REHABILITATED When, on his
recent visit to Ambon, Cabinet Minister of Social Affairs Yusuf
Kalla went to survey the badly damaged Pattimura University site
at Poka, he noticed that part of the buildings is being
rehabilitated. He urged to speed up rehabilitation efforts, so
that next August the whole Campus is ready for use again. Should
be noticed, however, that many Christians up to now do not venture
yet crossing the bay and set foot in Poka-Rumahtiga
2. RMS FLAG HOISTING For whatever reason, today some
twenty RMS flags were raised or at least displayed, whereas a
couple of them were floating in the air attached to balloons. Most
of the flag were found in the Ambon neighbourhoods of Kudamati,
Gunung Nona and Batugajah.
3. SOWING UNREST AND UNCERTAINTY The government in
Jakarta has decided that national holidays should be placed
together as clusters, so that daily business is not too much
interrupted. Thus the national holiday of Maulid Muhammad was
moved from Wednesday, May 14 (yesterday) to Saturday May 17, thus
creating a cluster of three holidays: Friday (Waisak), Saturday (Maulid
Muhammad) and Sunday. Most people in Ambon were unaware of this,
so they did not turn up on Wednesday. As not a few then thought
the holiday was moved to the following day, Thursday, most offices
were closed today as well. Thus this week we have holidays from
Wednesday up to Sunday. Well-to-do people in Jakarta and other big
cities of course prefer these clusters in order to be able to
enjoy nice prolonged holidays. Many of the poor, however, will
have difficulty to meet daily needs on those second, third etc.
days.
Another source of unstability: A law is being prepared which will
very much afflict non-government schools. So all over Indonesia
there are demonstrations pro and contra this law. Those pro
are muslims, whereas most of those that are contra are
christians, who do not want to have to build a mushyollah [little
mosque] to their school and to pay for a muslim religion teacher
if they have at least 10 muslim pupils etc. etc. Besides, certain
activities like Sunday School etc. must be reported to the
government in order to avoid a fine of one billion Rupiahs and 10
years inprisonment. In the wake of the numerous demonstrations,
and perceiving that there are also muslim organisations among the
protesters, it has now been decided to suspend the promulgation of
this law.
C.J.Bφhm msc,
Crisis Centre Diocese of Amboina
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