At 4am Sunday morning, the Danish consul on the island of Java, Mr. Villy Nielsen, alarmed the 14 Danes who remain on the island and who had chosen to ignore the warnings of the Danish Foreign Ministry. The 14 agreed to be evacuated to a secret location, where they are now under the protection of guards from Indonesia’s official intelligence agency.
“We lived in an area where the hardest core radical Muslims reside. So far no Danes have been approached, but I take the threat very seriously,” Consul Villy Nielsen told Berlingske Tidende today.
Fearing Muslim Housecalls
Since last week rumours went round suggesting that certain groups of Muslim extremists were planning a house-to-house “sweep” of Danish residents.It was rumours like these that made the Danish Foreign Ministry pull out all embassy staff on Saturday, as well as repeat its advice to all Danes to leave the country. It is estimated that about 175 Danes are still in Indonesia. In spite of the tense situation, most of them have no intentions of leaving as things look now.
“I have been here for a few years and have evacuated my family twice before, so I’ve been through this sort of situation before, where we had to go through these considerations,” an anonymous Danish business man from Jakarta tells Ekstra Bladet today under the alias ‘Peter’. He too has taken his family to a secret apartment address instead of staying at their normal home, where they fear certain Muslim radicals might stop by with evil intensions.
“When we heard of the threats it was hard to sleep at night. I can get startled by loud shouts from the streets. We live with a constant feeling of nervousness and a general frustration of not being able to live in my own home. It’s really strange to live in a strange apartment in your own city,” says ‘Peter’.
Reportedly, many Danes share a similar fear. This fear has only been made worse by other rumours suggesting that the embassy’s official list of names and addresses for all Indonesia-based Danes might have been leaked to an Islamic organization.
