Parents of 4-year old burned in church bombing, in Idonesia

Relatives carry the coffin of Intan Olivia at her parents’ house on Jl Cipto Mangunkusumo in Samarinda before her burial at the Phutak Christian Cemetery in Loa Duri, Kutai Kartanegara, East Kalimantan, on Tuesday. Intan died from severe burns to her body hours after the terror attack on a church in Samarinda on
Sunday.(Tribunnews/Christoper D). The bomb attack perpetrated by alleged Islamic State (IS) group sympathizers at a church in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, killing a toddler and injuring three others, aimed to provoke religious tensions in the area, an analyst says.
But the terror group will likely fail at achieving this goal, as both Muslims and Christians have condemned the attack, which came at a time when the country is facing a growing threat of religious intolerance.
Instead of blaming a specific religion for the attack, religious followers have left it up to law enforcement bodies to resolve the case, a move that has prevented the emergence of sectarian conflict in the area, University of Indonesia (UI) terrorism expert Ridwan Habib said.
The majority of Samarinda’s residents are Muslim, with 841,682 adherents, followed by Protestantism with 52,445 followers and Catholicism with 22,554 followers.
East Kalimantan has never experienced a religious conflict before, but the province saw a bloody ethnic conflict in one of its cities, Tarakan, in 2010. Another bloody ethnic conflict rocked Sampit in neighboring Central Kalimantan in 2001.
Triggering sectarian conflict was the typical goal of IS attacks, Ridwan said. Targeting a church, he said, would create tension between Muslims and Christians in the region, especially Christian followers from the Dayak tribe, one of the largest tribes in the region.
But so far there is no indication that the attack will trigger retaliation from local Christians.
The family of Trinity Hutahaean, a 4-year-old toddler who was severely wounded in the attack, said they had forgiven the alleged perpetrator, identified as Johanda.
Trinity’s aunt Roina Simanjuntak said that the family would let God decide whether revenge was exacted on Johanda for his attack on a group of innocent toddlers playing in the church compound with a
molotov cocktail.
Roina added that the family also did not condemn the attacker because “God teaches us to forgive and not to pay revenge”.
“I have a big hope that my family members, especially Trinity’s mother, can face this hard time. She is still in trauma after seeing what happened to her child, Roina said on Tuesday as quoted by kompas.com.
Trinity’s mother remained patient and did not pray for God to punish Johanda, Roina added.
“Don’t let this incident happen again in the future. [The offender] has done enough to hurt the family.”
Ridwan said that Sunday’s bombing was not a random incident, but a planned attack. Johanda, a former terrorism convict, had lived for years in Samarinda, where he joined an East Kalimantan branch of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) — a domestic terrorist faction that supports IS.
“He had been looking for a target: the easiest and the most vulnerable one in the area where he lived. He was not someone sent to the area to carry out the attack,” he said.
Ridwan said that the attack took place just days after IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made a public call for all IS sympathizers to launch sporadic attacks across the globe as the terrorist group was cornered in Mosul in Iraq after a US-led coalition intensified attacks in the region.
The Samarinda attack did not come as a surprise to him because the city had seen growing campaigns calling for the establishment of a khilafah (caliphate) in the past two years, Ridwan said.
“You will find growing pro-khilafah movement activities in Samarinda including pengajian [religious gatherings] and rallies,” Ridwan said.
Local branches of JAD and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) have long campaigned for a caliphate system in Samarinda, said Ridwan, but the difference was that JAD justified the use of violence to establish a caliphate system, while HTI did not.
“Both organizations have different strategies [to establish a caliphate]. HTI has said that it did not justify violence, while JAD considers such an act as a form of jihad,” Ridwan said.