https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNPYs_WLe7Y

12/09/2020 Washington D.C. (International Christian Concern) – In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Christians experienced indescribable atrocities at the hands of extremists in Indonesia. Thankfully, things eventually grew more peaceful in the years that followed… until last month.

On November 27, Islamist terrorists attacked a Salvation Army service post in Indonesia, brutally killing four Christians and burning down several Christian homes. It is our responsibility to raise our voices, so that Indonesia does not travel further down the path of violence.

Please join us today in calling the Indonesian embassy in your country and politely, but firmly, ask them to condemn the persecution of Christians.

To contact them, please use the phone numbers listed below:

• US: (202) 775-5200
• Canada: (613) 724-1100
• UK: +44 20 7499 7661
• EU: (+32) 2 775-0120
• Australia: +61 2 6250 8600

Transcript:

In 1997 to 2004 in Indonesia there was a massive anti-Christian jihad. And it’s a little bit interesting because Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country and looking back prior to that they didn’t have terrible relations between Muslims and Christians. Christians were definitely living in some kind of it’s a little bit like the old south if you’re African-American. So they had to kind of mind their business, not cause trouble, but there wasn’t a real history of violence.

And that all changed in this jihad, this massive jihad. There was an outpouring of hate that was just unprecedented. 10,000 Christians murdered, probably 1,500 churches burned down, and we have videos of thousands of Muslims walking through the streets, marching through the streets in jihad robes, going out to attack an island, and as well as videos of them being recruited to the mosques. So the point being that this wasn’t just terror groups, this was lots of fundamentalist Muslims, the neighbors going out, attacking their neighbors and their fellow citizens, it was terrible.

So ICC’s founder Steve Snyder during that time was going into Indonesia and he was going in on boats and rescuing people off the islands that were being attacked and bringing in aid, et cetera, and seeing a lot of trauma, and he took a lot of pictures. So Steve passed suddenly, I come in as the president, and I’m flipping through pictures and I’m looking just… I’m getting up to speed with what’s going on with persecution around the world. And I come to Indonesia and I see all these pictures Steve took were brought back, and it was just beyond horrific, I think something died in me that day.

And there are two of them that always stick with me, and one of them was with a young boy, and he was probably eight years old, and he had been beheaded and his head was laying in the grass and his eyes were still vibrant and glassy. It was a very gruesome picture, it was horrible.

And another one, this was a news clipping, was a Christian there was a kind of a parade I guess goings on, but people were marching through the streets and they had Christians heads on poles. There was a cop who was reaching out to one of the guys carrying the pole, carrying the head, giving him an “attaboy” on the back. I’m like my gosh, what have I fallen into? What is this? And it’s just I was seeing a level of evil that I hadn’t seen before. So soon after that I toured the island, I toured Sulawesi where Steven and Ben and where a lot of the tax were, and even in Poso, and I kind of saw it firsthand.

But last week there was another attack, another one of these violent attacks. Now this has been dormant for a long time, and then this just happened, so this is worrisome. But a small terror group, small Islamic terror group, wandered into a Salvation Army compound or village with a church and a Salvation Army group, and they killed, beheaded four different people. And the attack came out of nowhere. The group was MIT. So relatively small, very small group, actually only about 10 or 12 members, and hadn’t done anything to this scale before that I know of. But the authorities knew of this group.

So anyways, now here’s the interesting thing, and this isn’t a huge surprise. The Indonesian media and the Western media are giving this thing a whitewash. The Indonesian media is probably giving it a whitewash and the Western media follows suit and doesn’t look into it, and it’s just maddening, I see it all the time. But they’ll say so for instance, here’s what you’re seeing out in the press, it’s like well, we don’t know what the motive was, it’s an Islamic terror group, it’s a Christian village, the victims are Christian and they’re with the Salvation Army church.

So it’s not exactly a leap, we know full well what was going on. This isn’t a classic Islamic terror group that totally fits what happened in the past. But you have to laugh at these guys. So the attack, like I said, look, it’s a radical Islamic group, a Salvation Army church, et cetera, et cetera.

And not only that, but we checked in with our sources on the ground, here’s what we we’re hearing. That this group, they were known to the villagers. They would come into the village and ask for food, they would come into that church even, probably checking it out and sizing it up but they were asking for food from the Christians too. So in the surrounding area, about 750 people have left the area, and you can imagine what is their mindset? They know, every Christian knows, what happened back in 1997 to 2004. And so they don’t know exactly what’s going on, but they are going to run and protect themselves, protect their lives.

But anyways, I wonder if you would do your Indonesian brother and sister a favor, and that is call the Indonesian embassy, and we’re going to put the number below for the one in the States, for Canada, for England and Australia, but call the embassy and politely ask for the president to come out and condemn these attacks, strongly condemn radical Islamic attacks on Christians. He hasn’t done it. Took him a few days to say anything, and what he came out with was very safe and it’s really frustrating, and he needs to be called on it. So that’s why the embassies are there, let’s call, check out the number below, call and condemn these attacks and say the president needs to get on TV and condemn them publicly and condemn radical Islam, protect Christians.

So that’s our action item for today, that’s the best thing we can do, this is actually very effective. Indonesia cares about its reputation, so let’s get on the phone and do something, and we’ll follow up with more developments as they come.