At Christmas our Muslim friends would visit us and bring their greetings. But this situation has now tragically changed. I find it quite disturbing to know that the courtesy and trust I experienced in Kupang has broken down in many places. Religious identity has become a focus of the tension and a source of the conflict. It has even become the focus and the source of communal hatred.
Children taunt one another about their religion.
As I try to understand what is really going on in Indonesia, it appears to me that religious traditions and religious identities are being deliberately targeted and manipulated. Religious faith and religious passions are being subverted by those who come with an agenda to create havoc and destroy the good things of life. Christians and Muslims are therefore being set up as local Christian and Muslim communities are pitted against one another and are being forced into a spiral of violence and hatred. I believe this tyranny is being orchestrated by the Indonesian military together with extremist Islamic forces. Their purpose is to create chaos and, out of the chaos, to assert their own form of sinister power and control.