Unrest at the public Internet Networking of Indonesia Community

IN THE aftermath of last week's suicide bombing by a rogue Islamist of a church in the Central Java city of Solo, messages flew around the social networking site Twitter urging followers to go to an extremist website.

There, on arrahmah.com, was an article condemning Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for his strong and quickly delivered words against the violent act in Solo, contrasting it with a supposedly weak response to the alleged attacks on Muslims by Christians in Ambon.

It continued with a litany of falsehoods, including claims that a village had been burnt down and that thousands of Muslims remained in mosques in Ambon, seeking refuge from the crusader hordes.

In two days some 20,000 people had retweeted the message. Disturbingly, it was just the latest in a series of highly inflammatory tweets, SMS and Facebook postings sowing the seeds of disharmony and promoting terrorism in Indonesia.

Last month, there were two striking examples of the power of social media to spread misinformation and promote conflict.

On September 11, a deadly riot broke out in Ambon, an island in Maluku in eastern Indonesia. Seven people died and scores of homes and vehicles were damaged after rumours spread by SMS, Twitter and Facebook that a Muslim had been captured and tortured to death by Christians. In fact, he died in a traffic accident.

Three days later, in Makassar, a city in South Sulawesi, a mentally ill man went on a stabbing rampage killing three people. The man happened to be a Christian and within hours, SMS and Twitter messages were warning of co-ordinated Christian attacks on Muslims.

Two Christian men were stabbed in retaliation and more than 1000 people fled to a police school to seek refuge from Christian attacks that never occurred.

Indonesian police yesterday said they had arrested a wanted terror suspect, Ben Asri, in connection with the Solo bombing.

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