Teen Relives ‘Nightmare’ of Life as a Muslim Slave

WAIPIA, Indonesia —  For seven months, Benhard Leinussa lived the life of a Muslim slave.

Forced to convert to Islam and undergo circumcision after his village was destroyed, the 17-year-old said his Muslim captors gave him a new Islamic name, Suadin, and put him to work.

His job: building a house for the chief of a Muslim village.

Leinussa, a Protestant, is one of more than 5,800 Christians reportedly forced to convert to Islam in Indonesia’s Molucca Islands, where followers of the two religions have been fighting a bitter war for the last two years.

Most of the forced conversions have taken place on remote islands and received little attention abroad. Leinussa, who escaped through the jungle of Ceram island, provides one of the first reports that some former Christians have been kept as captive laborers.

“I was required to work,” Leinussa recounted recently at a refugee camp here in central Ceram. “They told us to build a house for the chief of the village. They didn’t pay me. They only gave me food. I felt like a slave.”

About 60 former Christians remain in servitude in the village, he said.

Ceram has seen some of the worst destruction of the conflict as Muslims have driven Christians from the eastern half of the island and Christians have burned Muslim villages. More than a quarter of the reported forced conversions in the Moluccas have occurred on Ceram.

In recent weeks, some Christian villages on the northern and western shores have come under attack from Muslim forces. More than 16,000 refugees have fled to central Ceram, where they live in the homes of other Christians or in crowded barracks. Six volunteers from the Turning Point Christian Fellowship in Fountain Valley recently came here to help build housing for the refugees.

Leinussa’s troubles began Jan. 3, 2000, when Muslims attacked the village of Liliama on the southern side of Ceram. Among the attackers, he said, were members of the white-robed Laskar Jihad, the feared Muslim warriors who have come from other parts of Indonesia and other countries to take part in their declared holy war against Christians.

The 300 villagers fled into the jungle as the raiders torched their homes. Leinussa was among 20 residents who split off but got lost in the jungle. They lived in a cave for a week on a diet of rattan buds.

Eventually, Muslim men offered them a deal. “They told us, ‘If you come down to the village and change your religion, you can stay with us,’ ” he recounted.

They went to Polin, where they found about 60 others from their village who had already surrendered.

They were assigned housing and told to sign a statement saying they had willingly converted to Islam. Leinussa said he signed under threat of death.

He and the others took an oath converting to Islam, chanted a Muslim prayer and took a ceremonial bath. Several days later, he was forced to undergo circumcision with a razor blade.

Leinussa says he was not a good Muslim. He didn’t like to pray or go to the mosque. He began to worry when Indonesian soldiers stationed nearby beat five converts who were not devout enough. Then a Muslim neighbor warned some former Christians that their lives were in danger.

In the early morning of Aug. 23, Leinussa and 18 others escaped into the jungle. They crossed the rugged mountains and two days later reached safety on the northern side of the island.

Leinussa has since returned to Christianity and has moved to the town of Masohi on Ceram so that he can attend high school. But he worries about the 60 captives he left behind, including an uncle.

“This is a nightmare,” he said. “I feel tortured inside.”