Rev. Irianto Kongkoli
Oct 18th, 2006, in News, by PatungReverend Irianto Kongkoli, murdered in Palu, Sulawesi, on Monday, was buried today.
Reverend Kongkoli, the head of the Protestant Gereja Kristen Sulawesi Tengah (GKST) synod, was shot in the back of the head in Palu on the 16th as he, his wife, and and their four-year old daughter Gea, were shopping for ceramic tiles at Sinar Sakti construction materials shop on Jalan Mongonsidi. He was buried today, the 18th, at the Talise cemetery in Palu. About 5000 people attended his eulogy service. (Antara and Kompas)
Reverend Irianto Kongkoli.
Irianto Kongkoli was born in Poso, Central Sulawesi, on 14th March 1963, but grew up in nearby Tentena. He completed his theological training at the Duta Wacana Christian University in Yogyakarta. While in central Java he also studied Islam at the Yogyakarta State Religious Institute and became a fluent speaker of Javanese at the same time, as well as learning a good amount of Arabic.
Upon returning to Central Sulawesi he took up a number of senior church positions, including acting as the General Secretary of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church and as Director of the Marturia theological college in Palu. At the time of the sectarian fighting in the area in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s Irianto become a key player in peace-making attempts, and he was one of the signatories to the December 2001 Malino peace agreement brokered by Jusuf Kalla. Later he helped form the Forum Peduli Kemanusiaan Poso, the Poso Humanity Forum, with various key Islamic figures, as a further effort at creating stability in the region. (Liputan6)
Typically for an event such as this senior police and community figures have claimed that his killing was an attempt by “old players” in the province to again stir up sectarian trouble. No arrests have yet been made and going on past events no arrests are likely. In 2003, a church activist, R. Tadjoja, and a public prosecutor, Ferry Silalahi, were shot dead by gunmen, and on July 18th, 2004, Reverend Susianti Lusiana Tinulele was killed while preaching at Effatha Church in Palu. These cases have never been solved.
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January 29th 2007
Police believe that two men, Abdul Muis and Dedi Parsan, planned and carried out the shooting, the former being the one who pulled the trigger. Abdul Muis was arrested on 11th January in a raid while Dedi Parsan was killed by police on the same day. l6
7 Comments on “Rev. Irianto Kongkoli”
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Mizzy says:
It happens all the time and never been solved…..what’s behind this??? How much tears you guys need…..may God forgive you who did it….amien
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Ismail says:
Christians a killed allover the world by Muslims and its sad. he his indeed in a safe place now. Christ’s heaven! and i pray that his killers and all that inspire them will come to know the lord-in Jesus name.
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O. Bule says:
This is exactly why Indonesia should NEVER be allowed to become a theocratic state of any kind. NO sharia law. The murderers must be found, given a fair and speedy trial, and hung.
O. Bule
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mat saleh says:
May Lord bless Pastor Kongkoli and his family !
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Hassan says:
interesting logic floating around here: if a Christian is killed then the killer automatically must be a Muslim (according to Ismail, and as implied by o.bule). well guess what? using your logic, if munir was a Muslim, so the killer must be a Christian right? some conspiracy theory you got there, Ismail.
btw, it scares me to see how many murders had occured nowadays in Indonesia, but no killers! seems our police officers need more training in those academy of theirs.
anyways, deepest sympathies..
this should stop. we must never take anything we will not be able to replace, human lives. the scariest part is when they gun him down in front of his wive and kids.
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Yole says:
Having just come from Palu I am struggling with some thoughts. Who has guns? Only the authorities. Civilians of any religion do not have guns. Who can commit atrocities in broad daylight on the main road in town and vanish without a trace? Noone unless they have official sanction and assistance. The newspaper said the roads out of Palu were blocked so that the perpetrators could not escape. That is not true. The roads INTO town were blocked and people were checked for sharp weapons. Are the authorities really that incompetent? Or are they involved? (Don’t bother suggesting that they were trying to prevent people coming into town to cause a riot – if they were so naive as to really think that then they ARE totally incompetent and ignorant of local culture.) What is going on? Will Gov Paliuju be berani enough to really find the perpetrators and bring them to justice? Or will they if even caught, like so many before them, be arrested and then released for “lack of evidence”?
Somebody seems to be trying to provoke interreligious violence. But it is clearly NOT local Muslims. They are all busy fasting to atone for their sins and are as horrified as everybody else. They think somebody did it to defame Islam because it is unimaginable to them that any God-fearing human would do such a thing.
What indeed is going on?
Comment on “Rev. Irianto Kongkoli”.
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He’s in a safe place now.
I hope this case is handled seriously by the Indonesian government – whoever the murdere is.