Southern Baptist workers told to leave Indonesian island

Indonesian police have ordered a team of American volunteers to leave the village of Waipia on the island of Seram, in Indonesia’s Maluku Islands.

The team of Southern Baptist volunteers from California arrived on the island Feb. 25 to provide humanitarian assistance to hundreds of Christian families displaced by an ongoing conflict in the Maluku Islands between Christians and armed Muslim invaders, known as the Laskar Jihad.

Shortly after the Americans began to construct needed housing and provide health care to the displaced Christians, they were instructed to leave. On Feb. 27, police in Waipia informed the volunteers that the “government will not allow foreigners with mere tourist visas” to carry out humanitarian work. Despite repeated efforts by the American volunteers to persuade the police to allow them to stay and provide assistance, the police ordered them to leave by March.

According to the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the team was taken to the city of Ambon March 1.

International Christian Concern (ICC), a Christian rights group based in Washington, D.C., has been monitoring the conflict in the Maluku Islands and in the central part of the island of Sulawesi. A trip last November by ICC members provided evidence of the destruction and loss of life caused by the Laskar Jihad, and revealed that the Muslim militants were loyal to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

(EP)