Bomb Blast Targeted Christian Indonesian

By ABDI MARIThe Associated Press

PALU, Indonesia -- A bomb ripped through a crowded meat market in an Indonesian province that has been plagued by sectarian violence, killing at least eight people Saturday and wounding 45, officials said. Many of the victims were believed to be Christians.

The bomb went off in a slaughterhouse that also sold meat directly to the public in the town of Palu on Sulawesi island. It was packed with people buying pork for Saturday night's New Year celebrations, said Brig. Gen. Oegroseno, the police chief of Central Sulawesi province.

The bomb appeared to be a homemade device, he said, loaded with ball bearings and nails to maximize the number casualties.

"The explosion was so loud, I couldn't hear for a couple of seconds," said Tega, a resident who lives nearby and uses only one name, like many Indonesians. "I ran out of my house and saw bodies lying around."

Television footage showed police carrying bloodied bodies into ambulances. One man, apparently unhurt, was holding his head in his hands and screaming. Hospital workers and intelligence officials said at least eight people died and Oegroseno said another 45 were wounded.

Authorities had repeatedly warned in recent days that al-Qaida-linked terrorists were plotting attacks in Indonesia over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, prompting the government to deploy thousands of troops to guard churches and places where foreigners gather.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the blast, and urged police to investigate whether it was linked to other attacks on Christians in the province earlier this year, said his spokesman Andi Mallerangang.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and most people practice a moderate form of the faith. But attacks against Christians have increased in recent years amid a global rise in Islamic radicalism.

Central Sulawesi was the scene of fierce battles between Muslims and Christians in 2001 and 2002 that killed about 1,000 people, and violence has flared anew in recent months. Christians make up about half the population in Sulawesi.

In October, unidentified assailants beheaded three Christian high school girls in Poso, east of Palu. In May, two bombs in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena killed 20 people. Police have questioned several suspects in those attacks, but have not formally brought charges against anyone.

One Christian clergyman said Saturday he was losing patience.

"Whenever an incident takes place, senior officials ask us to tell the people to remain unprovoked," said Rinaldy Damanik, leader of the Synod Churches of Central Sulawesi. "When will the authorities be able to reveal the barbaric perpetrators in the province?"
Security officials and former militants told The Associated Press in recent interviews that terrorists linked to the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network were behind the renewed attacks on Christians on the island.

Jemaah Islamiyah, which has ties to al-Qaida, has been blamed for a series of bloody bombings in Indonesia since 2000, including two strikes on Bali that together killed 222 people, many of them foreigners. It is also accused in Christmas Eve church bombings five years ago that left 19 dead.

Maj. Gen. Firman Gani, the Jakarta police chief, said last week that Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists might use the holidays to retaliate for the November death of bomb-making expert Azahari bin Husin, who was gunned down in a police raid.

On Christmas Eve, bomb squads searched for explosives at churches in the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities, where thousands gathered to worship. Security forces also tightly guarded dozens of churches on Sulawesi.

Survivor tells of girls' beheadings

POSO: A thick scar running from the back of her neck to just under her right eye, the lone survivor of a machete attack in which three Christian girls were beheaded on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has spoken for the first time of her terror.

"All I could do was pray to Jesus for his help," said 16-year-old Noviana Malewa, who fled the October attack with a gaping head wound. "I was streaming with blood."

Noviana, who now lives under police guard in the Christian town of Tentena, described how the girls were taking a short cut to school through jungle and plantations when they ran into at least five masked, black-clad men. Within seconds, three of the teenagers were beheaded -- fresh victims of violence that has turned the Indonesian island into yet another front in the conflict with terrorists.

As Noviana fled bleeding, the assailants collected her friends' heads, put them in black plastic bags and then dumped them in Christian parts of the small town of Poso, one on a porch, the other two on the street.

"They were killed as if they were chickens," said Hernius Morangki, showing a journalist the spot where his daughter was decapitated. "I keep asking myself: What were my daughter's sins?"

Muslim militants are blamed for the beheadings, the most gruesome yet in a campaign of terror against Christians on Sulawesi.

Muslim-Christian violence killed almost 1000 people on Sulawesi between 2000 and 2002 and attracted Muslim militants from across Indonesia, among them members of the terror group Jemaah Islamiah.

Despite a peace deal, bombings, shootings and other attacks on Christians have continued, especially around Poso.

Former fighters and security officials say the latest attacks are carried out by Muslim islanders bent on avenging their dead from the earlier conflict, and terrorists aiming to foment a new war.

"They want to see Poso become alive with the spirit of jihad again," said Fahirin Ibnu Achmad, an Afghan-trained militant who took part in the 2000-02 war. "It is easy to recruit people who have seen their relatives slaughtered," he said, claiming to have renounced violence after spells in prison for gun-running and taking part in an attack on a Christian village.

Sulawesi is one of several islands in what some call Southeast Asia's "triangle of terror" -- a porous region encompassing the insurgency-racked southern Philippines in the north and the Maluku archipelago, itself the scene of sectarian conflict, to the west. Also nearby is heavily Muslim southern Thailand, where a two-year insurgency has left more than 1100 people dead.

The Sulawesi war has never been credibly investigated, and only a few perpetrators have stood trial. The island's Muslim and Christian communities, each numbering about half the population of 12.5 million, nurture their own histories of the conflict, casting themselves as victims.

Christian-Muslim relations were generally harmonious until 2000, when fighting spread from the Malukus. Each side killed hundreds and burned down scores of villages, among them the hilltop hamlet where Noviana and her schoolmates lived.
AP

One year on, tsunami survivors remember...and rebuild

BANDA ACEH, Dec 15 (Reuters) - One moment Sartinah Fatar is painting her lovely new traditional Acehnese house, chattering happily to her husband. The next she's in tears recalling the day the sea roared in and snatched away her mother and two children.

Remember. Rebuild. It's the slogan of the Indonesian reconstruction agency, set up after the Dec. 26 tsunami killed 231,452 people around the Indian Ocean rim, most of them in Aceh.

Sartinah and hundreds of thousands of other tsunami survivors are doing plenty of both as the anniversary of one of nature's most ferocious episodes approaches on Dec. 26.

Sartinah's family is one of the lucky few that have a new home. More than 1.5 million people are still living in tattered tent camps, military-style barracks or crammed in with relatives in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Even the dead cry out for better shelter.

Near Sartinah's house in Kampong Java, a fishing community in Banda Aceh, is a crude hand-painted sign. "This is a mass grave," it says. "Don't throw garbage on our mortal remains and soul. Allah has called us. Let us rest in peace."

Indeed, for two miles into Banda Aceh the tsunami erased everything, leaving a bleak landscape of cement and tile foundations that resemble big burial slabs in a vast graveyard.

A quarter of Kampong Java's population of 5,000 survived the 9.15 earthquake, the strongest in 40 years, and the series of tsunami waves it spawned.

ASKING FORGIVENESS
Sartinah's family was eating breakfast when the quake rattled the dishes off the table. They ran outside, joining others who were racing in from the beach shouting "the water is coming".

She ran with her husband to the elementary school next door, her 8-year-old daughter close on her heels and her 18-year-old son helping his frail grandmother.

Sartinah was about to haul herself onto the roof of the school when the waves, taller than the palm trees in the yard and travelling faster than a train, slammed into her.

She never saw her daughter, son and mother again.

"I was hanging onto the roof and thinking I never had a chance to ask for my mother's forgiveness," Sartinah said, the tears flowing down her cheeks. "As a Muslim you have to ask forgiveness. If your mother doesn't forgive you, you can't go to heaven."

The disaster of biblical proportions drew a veritable Noah's Ark of faith-based groups to the tsunami region, including Muslim Aid, which is building 172 traditional Acehnese homes in Kampong Java. Some survivors wondered why God had unleased such terrible fury on their communities

Overall, the international community raised more than $11 billion, "the most generous and most immediately funded international emergency relief effort ever", U.N. emergency coordinator Jan Egeland said.
Muslim Aid took its design for panggung houses to the surviving residents of Kampong Java and allowed them to customise the design to their own needs,

The result was a 48-sq-metre (516 sq ft) three-room, quake-resistant home on thick timber stilts, with concrete walls, a corrugated roof and front verandah.

"All the homes look different, so it doesn't look like a Council housing project," said H. Fadlullah Wilmot, Muslim Aid's country director in Indonesia.

The donor community has pushed for community involvement in the $10 billion reconstruction effort in the main tsunami affected countries, one of the reasons home rebuilding has gone so slowly, Oxfam International said in a report on Wednesday.

"'Do it quick, but do it with communities' was the motto when working on shelter throughout the tsunami zone," it said.

Bureaucratic problems in acquiring land, unclear government policies and aid agencies' lack of expertise in building shelters also contributed to delays.

WRECKAGE IN MINDS
Only 15 percent of the 308,000 homes that need to be built in tsunami affected countries have been completed or under construction, according to government data.

While the physical debris has largely been cleared from coastal communities, health workers worry about the wreckage in peoples' minds.

The tsunami pulverised entire communities and slaughtered its inhabitants. The monster waves left thousands of orphans, "bachelor towns", women bereft of children and the compounded grief from multiple deaths in families in its awful wake.

A year ago, women outnumbered men in Aceh. A long-running separatist rebellion had thinned the ranks of possible grooms. but the tsunami killed up to 75 percent of the women in coastal communities of Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka and now thousands of widowers are looking for brides.

An Oxfam report in March said women were slowed by the children they carried and were less likely to know how to swim. Men, on the other hand, were out on boats, running errands, or working further inland in fields or hills.

Some women still cling to an irrational hope their children are alive; others are undergoing reversals of tubal ligations to try and have babies again.
Aid groups such as New York-based International Rescue Committee have set up "child friendly spaces" to help heal the psychic wounds of the young and most vulnerable.

About a fifth of Aceh's children are suffering at least slight trauma requiring intervention, said Sonny Irwan, an IRC programme coordinator for Cot village down the coast from Kampong Java. There, kindergarten children draw pictures, play on swings -- and sing songs with incredible gusto.

Through these forms of expression they can draw on their own inner strengths and heal, he said

"In the beginning, they just drew pictures of the tsunami," Irwan said. "Now the pictures are of normal families with the sun and the sky."

Indonesia Indofood To Lay Off 3,500 Workers By End 2005

JAKARTA (Dow Jones)--Indonesian food producer PT Indofood Sukses Makmur (INDF.JK) Wednesday said it has laid off 2,900 workers in the year to end-October in an effort to make the company more efficient.

"We plan to continue to lay off another 600 workers by the end of this year to improve efficiency," Indofood's Vice President Franky Welirang told reporters.

After the layoffs, Indofood's workforce will total 46,500.

The world's largest instant noodle maker by volume has spent IDR130 billion on compensation for laid-off workers to date.

"The layoffs, however, will save us up to IDR100 billion on salaries a year," said another Indofood Vice President, Cesar Dela Cruz.

Analysts said Indofood needs to streamline its workforce in order to maintain growth and increase its falling share of the noodle market.

Indofood currently has a 73% share of the national noodle market, down from around 90% in early 2000, due to stiffer competition.

Dela Cruz expects market share to increase to above 75% next year as the company plans to introduce new products.

Indofood, which is 51.5% owned by First Pacific Co. Ltd. (0142.HK), sells around 10 billion instant noodle packages every year.

Singapore accused of maid neglect

BBC News Report
Female migrant workers in Singapore face what amounts to forced labour due to a lack of legal protection, US-based rights campaigners say.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said domestic workers were overworked and frequently denied food, pay and social contact, as well as suffering physical abuse. Singapore's government said the report "grossly exaggerates" the situation.

Affluent Singaporeans often hire maids
from abroad like Indonesia

Maids working throughout South East Asia complain of abuse. HRW produced a similar report on Malaysia last year.

Some 150,000 women work as maids in Singapore, mainly from Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

The report paints a grim picture of young women trapped in apartment blocks, beaten, sometimes raped, killed or driven to suicide by their employers.

The authors of the report say they believe such abuse is widespread in Singapore. In the past six years, at least 147 domestic workers have died in the city state.

Excluded

The rights group interviewed 90 people and conducted case studies to compile its 128-page report, Maid to Order - Ending abuses against migrant domestic workers in Singapore.

HRW argues that by excluding maids from its Employment Act, Singapore is failing to comply with international law.

"A system that excludes a class of workers from labour protections, leaving them to work for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for pitifully low wages is one that demands serious and meaningful reform," it says.

But Singapore's government denied it was exploiting the maids.

"On their own accord, FDWs [foreign domestic workers] choose to work in Singapore because of better conditions here compared to their home and other countries.

"Contrary to HRW's report, the majority of FDWs enjoy meaningful and safe employment in Singapore. An independent poll by Singapore Press Holdings in Dec 2003, revealed that over 80% of FDWs were happy to work in Singapore," the Ministry of Manpower said on its website.

Harsh conditions

One domestic worker cited in the report complained of overwork.

"Sometimes employers want the maid to clean until 2200 or midnight and to start working again at 0600," she said.

Another maid told HRW: "Sometimes there was not enough food... They bought food from outside, but not for me. When angry, [the employer] would throw my food in the rubbish... I was very scared. My employer told me, 'Tomorrow you have a punishment, no eating.'"

Foreign and domestic workers in Singapore at present have no right to any time off. As of next year, employers will be obliged to give them one day off a month or financial compensation.

But the report says the women should be given the same rights as other workers in Singapore.

The authors say Singapore is by no means the worst offender in the region, but they argue that this tightly controlled city state could improve conditions very easily, giving many thousands of vulnerable women greater control over their lives.

Indonesia worries about possible Christmas terrorism

Jakarta (dpa) - Indonesia is boosting security ahead of the Christmas and New Year's holiday season with intelligence pointing to possible terror attacks, local media reported this morning.

Syamsir Siregar, head of State Intelligence Agency (BIN), said that his agency had learned of possible plans by terrorists to launch attacks at the end of this month, the Jakarta Post reported.

"There are plans for terror activities in large cities such as Jakarta," Syamsir Siregar said after a ceremony at the state palace.

Senior Jakarta police officials said they would deploy some 17,000 officers to safeguard the capital, particularly churches, malls and tourist destinations, during the holiday season.

Security will also be boosted, including the installation of closed-circuit television monitors at big churches, in five cities in Central Java where terror attacks might be carried out, police said.

Indonesia has been the site of several deadly terror attacks in recent years, including simultaneous church bombings around Christmas 2000, which left at least 19 people dead.

Islamic militants also launched attacks in Bali in 2002, leaving at least 202 people dead; at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003, killing 12; outside the Australian embassy in September 2004, killing 11 and wounding about 180; and again in Bali on October 1 this year, leaving 23 dead.

Although chief bombmaker and suspected mastermind of some of the attacks, Malaysian Azahari bin Husin, was killed in a raid by police last month, his accomplice and another leading suspect in the attacks, Noordin Top, is still one of Indonesia's most-wanted fugitives.