Until the unexpected peace deal was signed, the villagers who remained in Karanggayam and Blu'uran insisted their neighbours return to Sunnism.
Source/Credit: Bega District News
By Michael Bachelard | September 28, 2013
About 160 Indonesian villagers made refugees last year by a mob of their own neighbours may finally be allowed back to their homes after the two opposing groups realised that not so much separated them after all.
However, Indonesian government agencies are still scrambling to verify the deal, which sidestepped an official reconciliation process.
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The case of the Sampang Shiites has become a potent symbol of the recent fracturing of Indonesia's reputation for religious tolerance.
In August 2012, a Shiite man was killed and 48 homes in East Java burnt down by a Sunni mob. Shiite leader Tajul Muluk was later jailed for four years for blasphemy - the same sentence given to the murderer.
The Shiite victims were forced into refugee accommodation where they stayed for more than a year while the local government and its Sunni advisers initially refused to protect them.
On Monday night, though, grassroots representatives of the opposing groups announced they were ''ready to make peace and live side by side''. Their negotiators had met at the housing block where the refugees lived, skirting an ineffective, government-sponsored reconciliation process.
The Sunni villagers apologised for the violence and dropped a demand that the Shiites return to Sunnism. The Shiites promised not to try to make new converts, nor to sue for damages.
The local head of the municipal political and national unity office, Rudy Setiady, said he welcomed the deal but ''we want to bring the two groups together again … We want to make sure they really mean it.''
Logistical challenges also remain, including where the Shiites will live. Mr Setiady said replacement houses were due to be built in October.
About 10 days before the treaty was signed, Fairfax Media visited the refugees in their temporary accommodation as well as the villagers in Karanggayam and Blu'uran and found the communities still divided.
The trouble could be traced to 2004, when shopkeeper Tajul Muluk became a Shiite and began attracting followers. As the years passed, Sunni clerics, one of whom was Tajul's relative Ali Kharar, started crying ''infidel''.
The issue exploded on August 26, 2012, when one mother, Umi Hani, started taking 24 children of Shiite villagers back to their pesantren, or Islamic boarding school, after Ramadan. Sunni villagers had warned her if she did not do it at night, they would accuse her of proselytising.
The bus arrived in daylight and when Ms Umi boarded the children ''the other people in the village chased me, they called me a dog and said dirty things to me'', she said.
''I was in a minibus and people threatened the driver to stop and put me out or he'd be killed.''
Her ''provocation'' caused a riot, which raged for a day across the two villages, with perhaps 1000 machete-wielding Sunnis turned on their neighbours. They burnt and trashed 48 houses, hacked one man to death and displaced 235 men, women and children.
The Shiites fled and were accommodated firstly in a sports stadium and later at the Puspo Argo housing complex near Surabaya. The children had no access to education and few places to play, and adults could not work or even cook food.
Until the unexpected peace deal was signed, the villagers who remained in Karanggayam and Blu'uran insisted their neighbours return to Sunnism.
Local woman Fauze Filzanah said the jailed Shiite preacher had ''caused the trouble'' with his ''wrong teaching of Islam'', including the claim that his followers were permitted to kill their first-born child on the Islamic feast of sacrifice.
Ms Fauze said the Shiites would only be allowed back ''if they sign a letter … saying they had followed the wrong teaching''. If not? ''Definitely they'll be attacked again.''
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Many, including the Indonesian human rights commission Komnas Ham, suspect local authorities are stoking tensions.
Komnas Ham commissioner Imdadun Rahmat said politicians were increasingly attaching themselves to the symbols of majority Sunni Islam as a way to garner votes.
Christians, Shiites, Ahmadiyah followers and those practising traditional animist faiths have faced a jump in violence in Indonesia recently.
Read original post here: Exiled villagers returned to the fold
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