TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
‘Murder in Maumere’ little-known story of church failing to shield its flock
Gerry van Klinken’s latest book was to be called Murder in Maumere. Strangely, this selling title was scrapped for the prosaic but academically acceptable Postcolonial Citizenship in Provincial Indonesia.
Change Size
"Postcolonial Citizenship in Provincial Indonesia" by Gerry van Klinken. (Palgrave Macmillan/-)
A
few shops in the largely Catholic city of Maumere in East Nusa Tenggara sell religious items. Some are imprinted with mottos, such as "Jesus Engkau Andalanku" (Jesus is My Mainstay).
Perhaps the faithful in the East Flores city find comfort with the phrase. However, this was not the case in February 1966.
Five months earlier in Jakarta, some 1,700 kilometers to the west, a failed coup against the government of first president Sukarno had been followed by an Army-organized bloodletting; an estimated 500,000 real or imagined communists were slaughtered by militias.
The genocide had just about petered out in Java and Bali when orders came to Maumere from the Army in Jakarta listing locals to be arrested. Almost all were Catholic.
Instead of demanding their congregations be protected and given fair trials, the clergy helped the Army. Apart from administering last rites to some of the 800 or more victims, the priests stayed silent.
This little-known story of the church failing to shield its flock, and often siding with the gunmen, can now be widely spread thanks to Dutch anthropologist Gerry van Klinken. In Australia, he used to edit the prestigious Inside Indonesia magazine.
His latest book was to be called Murder in Maumere. Strangely, this selling title was scrapped for the prosaic but academically acceptable Postcolonial Citizenship in Provincial Indonesia, guaranteed to frighten away casual browsers.
