Publication

This Breifing examines the unrest in Ambon that followed the death of a motorcycle taxi driver and led to seven more deaths, the destruction of more than 150 homes and the displacement of thousands. An extraordinary effort by a group calling themselves “peace provocateurs” used text messages, and social media to counter misleading and inaccurate information and may have prevented violence from spreading further. In the immediate aftermath, conspiracy theories emerged about who could have provoked the violence and why, but it could well have been spontaneous, building on accumulated tensions and unresolved issues left over from the earlier conflict that wracked the region from 1999 to 2002.