Banyuwangi Java - stock photo

A March 2018 aerial view of Banyuwangi Regency at the far eastern end of the island of Java, Indonesia. It has a population of about 120,000. Banyuwangi (the name means "Fragrant Water") is built in the centre of the east coast of Java, with the backdrop of the Ijen Plateau to the west, and with fine views across the Bali Strait to the island of Bali lying to the east. Banyuwangi city was the capital of the Kingdom of Blambangan, the sixteenth-century Hindu kingdom which ruled this eastern tip of Java. Although the rapidly expanding Muslim kingdom of Mataram attacked Blambangan during the early seventeenth century, it managed to survive as the last Hindu kingdom on the island, and it was mostly ignored by the Dutch colonists until the eighteenth century, when they took it over. In 1998, a witchhunt in Banyuwangi against alleged sorcerers spiraled into widepsread riots and violence resulting in 143 deaths. In addition to alleged sorcerers, Islamic clerics were also targeted and killed by rioters.