Introduction
Eastern part of Indonesia has many provinces and beautiful cities. Beaches, mountains, culinary, culture all together become one reason to visit East Indonesia. But right now, people’s image when they hear the word East Indonesia is about conflicts. From the past, East Indonesia cannot be separated from the word ‘conflict’ and until now political, social and religious aspects become the reason for the conflict.
For example, Ambon, in 1999 a deadly conflict happened, and it gave a negative impact on Ambon until now. It was called a bloody conflict since around 5000 people died from 1999 to 2002 and made many people lost their house. Therefore, they immigrated to the other part of the city.
Indonesia is a country that contains a lot of religions such as Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddha, and Konghuchu. Unfortunately, people still bring religious issues as the trigger of the conflict including the Ambon conflict where Muslims and Christians clashed. However, after some research, religion is not the only reason behind it.
Ambon is a beautiful city with histories of conflicts. Even though Ambonese people are living in a better condition right now, still, the trace of the conflict still influences their everyday life. The fair level of tolerance, the distance between both religious communities, limited neighbor interaction are all the impacts of the conflict. That is why we need to increase the communication and the tolerance level for all Ambonese people right now.
The peacemaking job does not stop after the signing the peace agreement or the dialog agreement, e.g. Malino, but how people can interact and make Ambon is peaceful again. How to make people in Ambon trust each other and believe in the government so their tolerance level will increase?
The conflict in Ambon and the current state of post-secularism in Indonesia
After the conflict in Ambon, it is not easy to live peacefully in Ambon. This traumatic experience of the conflict will occur in the future and make people aware of people around them. The issue of discrimination regarding the position of both religions also exists.
Discrimination issue happens in Ambon right now. We believe, though, that we are the society that tries the best to eliminate discrimination in social economic and political aspect.
However, sometimes it is tough to control all the people’s mindset. Minority and majority issues and the discrimination phenomenon often occur as the effect of very fierce competition in getting accesses.
For example, in the health services state that they are trying their best effort to give all the services both in Muslim and Christian equally. However, it turned out that the discrimination happened in the provision of assistance for refugees. The refugees think that mostly one particular religion, e.g. Christian, get better assistance and facilities compared with the Muslim ones. That is why they thought that they got unfair treatment.
When a flood hit Ambon in August 2012, for instance, refugees from a community felt the assistance received was less than the aid that another community received. There were refugees from Muslim that questioned why all the Christian refugees received the aid, while Muslim refugees did not.
Some other discrimination cases are related to economic issues, for example, project tender and trading processes. There are several cases in which ethnicity or groups are prioritized than the others. The Chinese community, for example, is considered having many privileges because they give ‘bribes’ in a certain amount to local bureaucrats.
It is identified that there are several sources of violence in Ambon. Separatism and identity become the reasons of conflict and create a lot of damages in Ambon. Governance and election also take part as the reason behind the conflict. This graphic shows that many aspects become the reasons and so Ambonese must be smart enough to retain their anger for any small matter.
So, people and government must work together to create many events to build the tolerance among the people.
Even though the conflict in Ambon has finished, we cannot forget that we still have a long way to make Ambon even better again. It must start with the people. People must be smart to know to get influence so quickly by the other parties. Provocation sometimes still appear, although it is hard to trace where they come from and who triggered them.
For example, the bombing terror that always happens and makes the situation in Ambon feel dangerous. For instance, bombing terror in Terminal Mardika in 2017 was a way to trigger hostilities for people to clash again. Not only in Ambon, but also other cities in Indonesia, people become secular and do not have trust in other people.
They tend to separate their group from the others. It is the wrong way to solve this problem. People must unite to live peacefully and do not easy to get influenced by bad people.
Soft diplomacy method
We can stop conflict without violence, but with peace. Both parties can sit in one table in one same room with the same language to get the point of agreement that we must stop violence and recognize that peace is the best way.
As a vice president of Indonesia in that time, Jusuf Kalla (JK) who had the ability to find the root problem of conflict truly deserves tremendous respect and compliments. JK quickly found the root of the problem. It was not because of any religious issues, but many cases of the change of the composition of the population that gave implication for the change of social-economic statuses that led to the change of political status.
A leader must have a lot of ideas to solve a conflict, and he must have a lot of another plan if his first plan is not successful. JK proves that soft diplomacy still relevant until now. The use of another source like economics knowledge will make the demand for peace is strong again.
JK thinks as a businessman, but he acts like a politician. He knows how to negotiate with people, how to negotiate without making any conflict again.
Mediator (facilitator) in this conflict must also win the trust of the conflicting parties. The mediator’s task is to facilitate dialog between conflicting parties, so that everyone can understand each other’s positions, interests and needs. Therefore, they can pay attention to common interests.
Licklider (1995) finds that a civil war that has ended because of the negotiation process still have the chance to reappear, compared with the conflict that ends because of military force.
The conflict that ends because the military force, though, has a chance towards the emergence of mass destruction of one nation.
That consideration is also a concern from the government regarding all the conflicts that have resolved could re-emerge if people do not satisfy with the result of the agreement. All conflicts right now can be solved. However, people concern that politics and the following social issues will affect the harmony and peace in the area.
Lessons
It is basically easy for people who live in the conflicting areas in East Indonesia to find a way to attack each other again. For example, different choices over different candidates during an election can be the reason these people attack each other. Bad people will take this chance to influence them and make the situation worse through brawls and demonstrations to the government that always become hot news in media.
Lessons from all the conflict experience in Indonesia is that security forces’ attack will always fail to help the peacemaking because using the armed forces will only worsen the situation and make it hard to act justly.
Often, armed forces attacks result in a more unstable and insecure situation where people end up worrying about their security instead.
Besides, some political elites also often deliberately initiate conflicting atmosphere to win a confrontation.
In that sense, societies should invest in resolving root causes of conflicts like anomie and discrimination against certain ethnic groups. Also, they need effective community policies that can stop any potential ‘sparks’ that could ignite conflicts.
Because of the social capabilities that have been strengthened in Maluku, and institutions of reconciliation and interfaith dialog have been created to counter the negative rumors, prospects for preventing further religious conflicts seem hopeful.
Nevertheless, while so many root causes persist in Maluku, the risk remains. Right now, diplomacy and leadership training are essential. We cannot just give all the tasks to the government. The peacekeeping endeavors are the responsibility of individuals.
We must know how to deal and how to lead our areas or villages when a potential conflict is to reemerge. People must know how to speak and drive people to open an honest but respectful conversation if one day conflict occurs in their society.
If JK, as a human being, can lead a meeting with the conflicting parties, all people can also do it. We have to avoid stereotyping and group-labelling people and try to establish residences that contain people mixed ethnicities, religions, or other socio-economic statuses. Immigrants and native people should be united as we all are human beings.
The local government must try not to classify the people based on their background, so people can learn how to mingle with other people. Those easy steps I believe will self-prove to increase the level of tolerance among our people especially my people from Ambon.
By
Juniar Laraswanda Umagapi
25 years old, graduated students of university of Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta and National Research university higher school of economics Moscow Russia and now as a contract lecturer in Institute of Social and Political Science (IISIP) Jakarta
PS:
This essay has been edited and modified for digital publication and reading easiness reasons.
These terms have been agreed upon by the writer (s).
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