by Dr. Jeff Hammond, Tangerang, West Java
26 July 2000

It was truly with fear and trembling that I flew into Ambon. The airport is
surrounded by hostile Muslim villages with only one point of access to the
sea from which to take a speedboat. When I arrived, there was a navy vessel
parked in the middle of the bay from the airport to the Christian part of
Ambon. All boats heading towards the Christian sector had to report there
and be thoroughly inspected for weapons before proceeding. The captain of
our boat successfully hid his pistol. The Muslims going to the Muslim
sector did not have to be inspected. That does not excite the Christians!

Arriving was to immediately enter a war zone with explosions of mortars and
grenades and bullets flying overhead. We had to travel along narrow
pathways with walls either side, up and down crevices and past sniper
points. Five people in front of us were hit and wounded by snipers and so
they then had to take us along an alternative route. I was staying only 300
meters from barricades separating the Muslim and Christian sectors. The
Muslims, aided by the Jihad warriors and some units of the Indonesian
military, now control some 70% of the island and 65% of the city. The
Christians are being pressed in to a smaller and smaller section and the
Muslims are trying to cut a wedge through to divide the Christians into
smaller sections. The wedge is almost complete. Each day they try to add
another 10-20 meters of the land they hold, and each day the casualties
grow.

Cries come out from the mosque whipping the Muslims into a frenzy and
calling upon the military and the police to join them in a fight to
defend the religion of Allah and to wipe out the Christians. The mortars
begin flying and the shooting intensifies. Indonesian troops squat along
side Jihad warriors and shoot into the Christian section to cover for other
Jihad warriors who race across the road and once they have sufficient
people through they then attack the Christian positions, killing, maiming,
burning and looting. I witnessed these things happening in Ponegoro, Ambon.
It is a truly horrifying and frightening sight.

The Christians do not attack, they just defend their positions, and
while under attack sing some of the most beautiful worship hymns of history
to praise and glorify Jesus Christ even as they are under siege. I wept
every time I heard them singing ­ so worshipful and yet in some ways it was
like a surrender to an inevitable death and the consequent mourning. I
managed to video a little of this in the dark with my very inadequate
camera.

One of the Christians went behind the Muslim lines and took graphic footage
going in and out among the Jihad warriors. They must have thought he was a
Muslim or maybe the Lord just made him invisible to them. His video is very
graphic and is being sent to the UN. It was hard to sleep that night with
all that was going on.

Heavy rain stopped the mortar attacks. The Muslims stopped firing and we
were able to sleep a little easier. Thank the Lord for the heavy rain. The
next morning was a little more peaceful as the number of bullets flying
around and mortars exploding had greatly subsided. The Christians told me
that this is what normally happens
and that there would probably be a lull as the Muslims prepared for the
next attack.

We headed off to Passo, which by road would be only 15-20 minutes away. But
the Muslims now control the road between Ambon City and Passo. So we had to
walk over the mountains along narrow pathways with hundreds of high and
steep steps, into a section of jungle and down along a creek bed. The heavy
rain, which stopped the mortar attacks last night, also made the jungle
pathway slippery and muddy. All along the way people would stop and ask
me, "Are the UN coming? Will you tell them to come?" Others would grab me
and say, "Can you get us guns or bullets so that we can protect ourselves?"

It happened so many times, and the terror in their eyes will haunt me for a
long time, especially some of the elderly women who pleaded and pleaded for
us to save them. In Passo we met with some community leaders, pastors and
the District Chief. They gave me letters from the children and begged me to
get them to Kofi Annan at the UN. They said, "Maybe he will listen to the
voices of the children."

Here are the letters addressed to the Secretary General of the United
Nations: "The voice of the suffering children. I am a student in grade 5 at
the Xaverius Primary School in Passo-Ambon. My father was killed on the
27th July 1999. Many children in Ambon don't have a
father or a mother because they have been killed. United Nations please
come to Ambon because we no longer have faith in the army. Come quickly to
Ambon because we are very frightened. Greetings of peace and love from
Ambon."

Another writes: "Mr. Secretary General of the UN, we children of
Ambon are very frightened of the Jihad soldiers and the army. They
murder, loot, burn our homes, and chase us away. They also rape the women
they catch. The Lord has touched our hearts to beg the UN to come to Ambon.
Help us, we are suffering terribly."

This village of 15,000, swollen to 30,000 because of the refugees, has
already been attacked four times. They are expecting an imminent attack and
gave me a copy of the Jihad attack plan,
which had fallen into their hands. An ambulance inspected by the police on
the outside of the city going toward the Muslim stronghold with coffins was
found to contain many modern rifles and thousands of bullets. The
Christians saw this as an answer to prayer and that this would delay
attacks against their village.

Returning back to Ambon City was painful. Apart from the physical
difficulty of making such a hard trip twice on the same day and being
overtaken by the night and having to walk in the dark, the most painful
activity was talking with the refugees and hearing the agony in their
pleas. In the evening we viewed a video of the previous couple of days
fighting in Ponegoro where fierce battles had been raging for several days
and many had been killed or injured.

The next morning began with a pastors meeting to seek the wisdom of God
concerning the conflict, the refugees, and God's plan for the future of
Ambon. Many of them said that they would not flee and desert the sheep who
cannot escape. They would stay with their sheep whatever the cost.

However the reality was that more than half the pastors have already left,
choosing to go with those who fled than those who stayed behind.

After the pastors meeting, we then had a private meeting with the
General Secretary of the Maluccan Protestant Churches. He shared that early
in the fighting in 1999, some villages did attack Muslim villages in
response to their villagers being attacked, but eventually the church was
able to bring the people to a point of aggressive resistance, i.e. building
barricades and then defending them to the death, rather than going out to
attack Muslims. It was a most enlightening look into the Ambonese Christian
view of their position. He believed that the way to solve the problem was
for the military to be withdrawn along with the Jihad warriors and then to
let the local Ambonese sit down together to sort out a viable peace. Along
with that, prayer and fasting, repentance and the unity of Christians was an
urgent priority if they were to see the grace of God intervene.

We were then shown some of the mortars and grenades that had recently
landed in the area but not exploded. They kept them in water and then took
them out so that I could photograph them. I must confess I was a bit
nervous about their offer.

In the afternoon we went to the hospital and visited those who had been
injured in the recent fighting. Some had been shot in the hand,
shoulders, chest and stomach. Some had had their limbs cut off in the
battle. How do you talk with teenagers who just the day before had a limb
cut off or blown off? O Lord, I need more of Your grace, wisdom and faith.
It was so humbling praying with them one by one that even now two days
after leaving Ambon I begin to weep as I think of them and how they
responded as we prayed together. After finishing praying with one, another
would say, "Would you please pray with me too?" We had planned to spend
about 15 minutes looking at conditions in the hospital and ended up
spending two
hours.

Then we visited more refugee sites. There are just so many. Some large
tents have been added onto houses and inside the space is divided up with
galvanized sheets to make rooms. Some of these beds made from bamboo, no
larger than a King size bed have 8 people sleeping on them. Seeing their
plight made me feel ashamed because I only had a few thousand dollars to
provide relief. I had come so proud that I was going to be able to make a
significant contribution until I saw how little could really be done. O
Lord, please give us the gift of miracles to multiply the fish and the
bread! Give us the power to say, "Peace, be still!"

On my last day there, Sunday, it was off to church, well actually to
homes because some 140 churches here have been destroyed beyond use. What
do you say when you stand before these saints. Mortars are exploding in the
distance. Bullets are flying overhead. Men, women and children are being
slaughtered. What do you say when you know you are going to leave the
island and they will remain behind?

One more race across the sea in a speedboat and this time no naval
vessel. Sometimes the boats are attacked, sometimes just shot at from the
shore. It's very tense in the boat. Everyone is praying silently until we
reach the safety of the shore in the embattled last Christian village in
that sector.

Pray!