Five people die in attacks on Indonesian churches
JAKARTA, Oct 11 (Reuter) - Five people died when a mob burned nine
churches, four Christian schools and a convent in the Indonesian town of
Situbondo, a policeman in the town said on Friday.
"It is true the churches were burnt" on Thursday, the policeman told
Reuters by telephone from the town on Java island 800 km (500 miles) east
of the capital Jakarta.
"The five died inside a church," he said before the phone was cut off.
He said the crowd also destroyed a court building and cars and caused
other damage during the violence around 1 p.m. on Thursday.
Indonesia's nearly 200 million population on the archipelago of 17,500
islands is more than 85 percent Moslem, but the state ideology preaches
religious tolerance and recognises the five main religions.
Situbondo is about 160 km (100 miles) east of Indonesia's second city,
Surabaya, where a number of attacks on churches were reported in June.
The reason for these attacks was not clear.
The policeman said it wasn't yet known what had cause the Sitobondo riot
or whether it had been organised. A number of people had been detained
and investigations were continuing, he added.
A Surabaya-based journalist who went to Situbondo said the riot apparently
broke out after a hearing in the court into a case of alleged blasphemy
against Islam.
He said several thousand people outside the court during the third
hearing into the cased called for the accused to be sentenced immediately
or handed over to the crowd. He said another church was also burnt in the
neighbouring town of Panarukan.
A hall being used by Roman Catholics as a church in a village in east
Jakarta was burned down in mid-September. Catholics in the area
attributed the attack to religious antagonism towards their presence.
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