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JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday condemned the brutal killing of four villagers by suspected Islamist militants as “beyond the limits of humanity” as the warlord prepared to deploy special forces to join in search of the murderers.
In a video address, the president said Friday’s attack on a region divided by bloody sectarian conflict in the past was designed to drive a wedge between the population in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.
“That rude act was intended to provoke and terrorize the people. They wanted to destroy the unity and brotherhood of our people,” he said.
“We need to stay united in the fight against terrorism.”
Those killed in the Sigi region of central Sulawesi on Friday were all Christians, a church group and human rights activists said. The government has not mentioned his religion.
One of the victims was beheaded and the other three had their throats slit, according to National Police spokesman Awi Setiyono.
Their homes and places of worship were burned, he said, but reiterated that the killings had nothing to do with religion.
Authorities believe the militant Islamist group Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT) carried out the attack. There was no liability claim.
Central Sulawesi was a hotbed of sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians in the late 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in hundreds of deaths.
More than 100 military and police officers have been deployed to the area since the killings on Friday and the military chief, Hadi Tjahjanto, said special forces would be mobilized.
“I am sure that the MIT that perpetrated this crime against innocent residents will soon be caught,” he said.
Andreas Harsono, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Indonesia, told Reuters that 11 farmers had been killed in the same area this year.
On Monday separately, Indonesian police announced that they had arrested suspected bomb maker Upik Lawanga of the militant group Jemaah Islamiyah.
Lawanga is suspected of making a bomb that killed more than 20 people in 2005 in a market in Poso, also in central Sulawesi.
(Information by Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Stanley Widianto; writing and additional information by Kate Lamb; editing by Martin Petty)
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