Another Seventh-day Adventist Church has been burned in East Indonesia, adding to the toll in human lives and destruction that has been mounting during the two-year-long conflict between Muslims and Christians in the region. 

Reinhold Kesaulya, president of the Adventist Church in Indonesia, reports that there are new outbreaks of violence throughout the Maluku Islands. “I received a call this morning, Tuesday, November 28, from one of our church elders in Galala, Ambon,” Kesaulya says.  “While crying on the phone he told me that our members are suffering for lack of food.  They cannot go out from their homes since there are snipers ready to shoot.”  Kesaulya says he reassured the elder that he had done his “very best to send news everywhere and anywhere around the world for help, while at the same time also sending special prayers to Heaven.” 

“He [the church elder] was relieved,” Kesaulya adds, “and told me that whatever happens to them, they will always be faithful to our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

Kesaulya also received information November 28 that shooting has broken out in Kairatu, Seram island, three hours by boat from Ambon, and that the Adventist Church building there has been destroyed. 

“A few years ago when Chinese Christian churches were burned in Indonesia, the international community was reluctant to denounce such acts as religious persecution,” says Dr. John Graz, religious liberty director for the Adventist Church worldwide. “According to experts, it was only an ‘ethnic’ problem.” 

Calling intolerance a “monster that knows no limitations,” Graz says that the church is “in constant contact with Indonesia, with other Christians, and with the United Nations” about the conflict in East Indonesia. “In this very complicated situation, we are studying the best way, with prayer and effective actions, to help those who are persecuted.  You can be sure that we won’t leave our brothers and sisters without help.”

More than 3,000 people have died in religious violence in East Indonesia since January 1999.  According to news reports, the conflict has developed into a Muslim jihad, or holy war, with Islamic fighters and weapons flooding into the area from other Indonesian regions. An estimated 15 Adventists have been killed in the sectarian violence and 12 churches burned.