You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Indonesian. (June 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Indonesian article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must follow the LLM translation guideline, revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Indonesian Wikipedia article at [[:id:Kerusuhan Poso]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|id|Kerusuhan Poso}} to the talk page.
The Poso riots, also known as the Poso communal conflict or Poso war, is a name given to a series of riots that occurred in Poso, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. This incident involved a group of Muslims and Christians in the region and was divided into three stages. The first Poso riot took place from 25 to 29 December 1998, the second from 17 to 21 April 2000, and the final one from 16 May to 15 June 2000.
On 20 December 2001, the Malino I Declaration was signed between the two conflicting parties, initiated by Jusuf Kalla, officially concluding the conflict.
Background
Central Sulawesi is a mountainous province situated between the southern part and the northern part of Sulawesi Island, including many islands nearby. The capital of Poso Regency, Poso, is located in the bay, six hours southeast of the provincial capital, Palu. Currently, Poso Regency has a Muslim majority population in towns and coastal villages, and a majority Protestant indigenous people in the highlands. Historically, in addition to the native Muslim population, there are many migrants of Bugis people from South Sulawesi, as well as from the northern Gorontalo region. There is also a long tradition of Arab traders living in the region, and their descendants play an important role in religious institutions and Islamic education in the area.
The regency is also a focus of the government's transmigration program, which aimed at bringing citizens from densely populated areas, such as Muslim-dominated islands including Java and Lombok, as well as Hindu-dominated Balinese islands, to scarcely populated areas. The Muslim community here consists of indigenous people, official transmigrants, and economic migrants of various ethnic groups which have settled in this area for decades. Under these circumstances, in the late 1990s, the Muslim population became the majority in Poso Regency with percentages above 60 percent.
On the other hand, ethno-linguistic groups that include Pamona, Kulawi, Mori, Napu, Behoa, and Bada inhabit the highlands of the regency. Many of these ethnic groups were formerly constituted dynasties and have histories of war between each others. The missionary activity of Netherlands began at the turn of the 20th century among these people, and effectively proliferated Christianity. The city of Tentena became the economic and spiritual center for the Protestant population of Poso, and the center of the synod of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church. This small town lies to the north of Lake Poso in North Pamona Sub-Regency, one of the few sub-regencies with the majority population of Pamona people.
Although the initial conflict centered on tensions between Muslim Bugis migrants and Protestant Pamona people, many other groups were drawn through their ethnic, cultural, or economic ties.
Unless the copyright status of the text of this page or section is determined to be compatible with Wikipedia's licenses, the problematic text and revisions or the entire page may be deleted one week after the time of its listing(i.e. after 00:05, 20 September 2026 (UTC)).
What can I do to resolve the issue?
If you hold the copyright to this text, you can license it in a manner that allows its use on Wikipedia.
To confirm your permission, you can either display a notice to this effect at the site of original publication or send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-enwikimedia.org or a postal letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages must explicitly permit use under CC BY-SA and the GFDL. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
Articles on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view and must be verifiable in published third-party sources; consider whether, copyright issues aside, your text is appropriate for Wikipedia.
You may rewrite this page without copyright-infringing material. Your rewrite should be placed on this page, where it will be available for an administrator or clerk to review it at the end of the listing period. Follow this link to create the temporary subpage. Please mention the rewrite upon completion on this article's discussion page.
Simply modifying copyrighted text is not sufficient to avoid copyright infringement—if the original copyright violation cannot be cleanly removed or the article reverted to a prior version, it is best to write the article from scratch. (See Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing.)
For license compliance, any content used from the original article must be properly attributed; if you use content from the original, please leave a note at the top of your rewrite saying as much. You may duplicate non-infringing text that you had contributed yourself.
It is always a good idea, if rewriting, to identify the point where the copyrighted content was imported to Wikipedia and to check to make sure that the contributor did not add content imported from other sources. When closing investigations, clerks and administrators may find other copyright problems than the one identified. If this material is in the proposed rewrite and cannot be easily removed, the rewrite may not be usable.
Place {{copyvio/bottom}} at the end of the portion you want to blank. If nominating the entire page, please place this template at the top of the page, set the "fullpage" parameter to "yes", and place {{copyvio/bottom}} at the very end of the article.
With the growing wave of violence, many people fled to areas with the majority population of their respective religions. Many Muslims went to Palu, Poso, and the coastal city of Parigi, while many Christians in Parigi fled to Tentena and Napu which is located in the mountains, and Manado in North Sulawesi. In January 2002, after the Malino I Declaration was signed, official figures for coordination with the humanitarian responses to the conflict estimated a total of 86,000 internal refugees emerged in Central Sulawesi. Central Sulawesi Christian Church estimates 42,000 refugees in the Christian-dominated areas in other regencies.
After the Malino I Declaration, there was some tentative progress. By the end of February, 10,000 refugees had returned home, mostly to the city of Poso, the sub-regency of Poso Pesisir, Lage and Tojo. In March 2002, Human Rights Watch found that many families were hesitantly sending male family members back and clearing the debris by building temporary houses, while waiting to see if the situation remained stable. Some were also waiting for the end of the school year. Since then the number of refugees has begun to decline. The Poso Regency Police and Political Affairs Office reported that in mid-July 2002, 43,308 people had returned home, some 40 percent of the estimated total 110,227 refugees.
There are two notable exceptions to this positive trend. New violence often leads to traumatized citizens fleeing back to safe havens. For example, clashes in August 2002 forced about 1,200 people to seek refuge in Tentena. Government or individual efforts of rebuilding have been hampered by new waves of violence throughout the crisis. Some people told Human Rights Watch that they had seen their homes destroyed more than once, and the barracks built by the local government and Indonesian army in 2000 were often targeted by these attacks. Christians in Tentena also have no plans to dismantle their shelters which were painstakingly built, in case of the need of the shelters in the future.
Other important exceptions are regarding the refugees belonging to minorities in their home regions. Muslim refugees from Tentena told Human Rights Watch in Palu that they had no plans to return home, although the remaining twenty-four Muslims who never left Tentena reported that their situation was safe.
Some refugees were given access to land in their new areas, such as Nunu area of Palu, and were able to support themselves through agricultural activities. Christian refugees in Tentena built large housing and were able to find jobs in the urban market, which is economically positive because of means to travel to other markets being limited. In areas where land or work is scarce, conditions are much more poor.
A local NGO reported in August 2002 that the basic needs of refugees were not met, creating problems such as the lack of nutrition for children, widespread diarrhea, skin disease and tetanus from shot wounds. A mental health assessment by the government in 2001 indicated that more than 55 percent of those displaced suffer from psychological problems, while major health problems are malaria, respiratory problems, gastric – intestine, and skin diseases.
↑"Estimates of the government Implementation Coordination Unit (Satkorlak)". January 2002.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
↑"Crisis Center of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church". December 2001.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
↑"Police Head to Poso to Help Disarm Factions". The Jakarta Post. February 25, 2002.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
↑"Forkom Replace Pokja Malino in Poso". Compass. August 4, 2002.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
↑"Poso Conflict Will Be Delivered to Vice President Website = Nuance Headings". July 6, 2002.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
↑"Refugee Conditions at Kamp Kec. Lage, Kec. North Pamona, East Pamona, Poso Pesisir, South Pamona, and North Lore, Poso District". LPS – HAM. August 2002.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
.svg)
