Machete killings fuel Indonesia's religious hatred
Jihadists are being blamed for beheading of two Christian schoolgirls,
reports Dan McDougall
Sunday November 20, 2005
The Observer

First light is the most captivating time of day as you cross the vastness of the Indonesian archipelago.

Set against the blood-orange horizon, the echoing call of the muezzin shakes you from your dreamlike state as men file to morning prayers in bleary-eyed procession. Islanders arch their backs against heavy carts laden with fresh jackfruit and laughing children in white uniforms dawdle to school.

But in the central towns of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi events of the past few weeks have destroyed the frivolity of the pupils' daily journeys.

Three weeks ago, four cousins from the tightly-knit Christian community, Theresia Morangke, 15, Alfita Poliwo, 17, Yarni Sambue, 17, and Noviana Malewa, 15, were brutally attacked as they walked to the Central Sulawesi Christian Church High School by men wearing black ski masks. Three of the girls were beheaded. Noviana, the youngest, survived, despite appalling machete wounds to her neck.

The headless bodies of her cousins were dumped beside a busy nearby road. Two of the heads were found several kilometres away in the suburb of Lege. The third, Theresia's, was left outside a recently built Christian church in the village of Kasiguncu. The rest