Death to minorities in
Indonesia By Katherine
Demopoulos
JAKARTA - Indonesia's status as
a thriving pluralist democracy is under threat as
the country's religious minorities face
increasingly violent persecution and President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's government responds
with what critics perceive as passivity and
inaction.
An attack on three churches on
Tuesday follows the killing on Sunday of three
followers of Ahmadiyah, a minority Islamic sect
perceived by some here as heretical. Ahmadis
believe their founder is a prophet, in
contradiction to mainstream Islam which views
Mohammad as the final prophet.
Video
footage has emerged showing the murders in graphic
detail. First a mob armed with knives, sticks and
stones attacked a group of Ahmadis defending a
home. Rocks fly, glass shatters, a
man smiles for the
camera and the overwhelmed police mill about
helplessly.
Later, two men are shown,
stripped from the waist down, lying lifeless and
muddied on the ground. Blood oozes into the mud,
shouts of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great in
Arabic) erupt and the attackers launch another
savage volley of blows using sticks and bamboo
poles, as others use their phones to record it.
Condemnation of the killings has come from
the United States and European Union, as well as
human-rights advocacy groups Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch, and Indonesian activists.
"The United States joins the vast majority
of Indonesians in deploring the violence in
Indonesia directed at members of the Ahmadiyah
community that resulted in the deaths of three
people and the wounding of several others over
this past weekend. We also note with concern the
recent church burnings in Central Java," US
ambassador to Indonesia Scot Marciel said in a
statement.
Indonesia has both a history of
sectarian violence and internationally respected
pluralists, such as Abdurrahman Wahid, briefly
Indonesia's fourth president. On Monday, small
numbers of protestors of various beliefs, mostly
non-governmental organizations, activists and
professionals on their lunch hour, gathered at the
iconic Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, united by
Twitter messages and a common goal of expressing
solidarity with Indonesia's religious minorities.
Yudhoyono has promised an investigation
into the killings and has now called for violent
groups to be disbanded, but critics argue that his
government is part of the problem. In 2008, a
triumvirate comprising the religious affairs
minister, the attorney general and the interior
minister passed a decree preventing Ahmadiyah from
proselytizing and there are no indications of any
intention to revoke the order.
Ismail
Hasani, a researcher at the Setara Institute for
Democracy and Peace, says attacks against
Ahmadiyah were stepped up since the decree was
imposed and calls for it to be revoked. "After the
decree was launched the incidents increased. The
decree has been used as a tool of legitimation in
various incidents," he said, pointing also to
comments from the current religious affairs
minister, Suryadharma Ali. "I'm sure the violence
increases because the minister of religion always
provokes the public [with calls] to ban
Ahmadiyah," he said.
The Setara Institute
for Democracy and Peace says attacks on Ahmadiyah
rose to 50 in 2010 from 33 in 2009 and 15 in 2008.
The local Wahid Institute also records increases
from 2009 to 2010 in violations of religious
freedom, intolerance and discrimination.
Passive policy Government
passivity in dealing with the attacks is also an
issue, says Lutfi Assyaukanie, co-founder of the
Liberal Islam Network and a lecturer at Paramadina
University. "The roots of the problem lie in the
firmness of government and in the religious
authority. We are a big nation with no big leader.
SBY [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] doesn't do
anything. Only statements, statements,
statements."
Assyaukanie says the
leadership of Indonesia's two main Muslim
organizations, Nadhlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah,
is "so weak" and "very political". He says the
Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI) is also to
blame because in 2005 it reiterated a fatwa
(edict) denouncing Ahmadiyah as heretic.
"As long as the MUI is ultra-conservative
like now - they are still issuing fatwas
against Ahmadiyah - if they are still blaming
Ahmadiyah, we cannot stop the attack on Ahmadiyah.
We cannot stop the violence. There is a strong
relation between violence and the fatwa of
MUI."
Budiman Sudjatmiko, a legislator for
Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (PDIP), the
party of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri,
said the government is failing in its duty to
protect all Indonesians. "The state should protect
those citizens and the state failed to do that.
They [the government] have been intimidated by the
radicals."
The radicals he refers to are
small pockets of Islamic networks, which include
the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), religious
vigilantes with links to the police. FPI members
are now on trial in connection with the 2010
stabbing of a Christian pastor from the Huria
Kristen Batak Protestan church in Jakarta's
suburbs following a dispute over the church's
permits.
Luspida Simanjuntak, a fellow
leader at the church, was also beaten. She says
the government promised land for a new church, but
has still not handed over the plot. Although the
church is still active, she remains "uneasy" since
the attack and says banners are now hanging near
the proposed site, saying, "We strongly reject the
church's establishment".
Activists say
while they don't yet know which specific groups
were behind the Ahmadiyah killings, with violence
often hijacked for political and economic reasons,
it is clear that the attack was organized.
The police, they say, are culpable in
their consistent failure to enforce the law and
protect Ahmadis, both in this recent incident,
when they were warned several days in advance of
possible trouble, as well as other assaults on the
sect elsewhere on the islands of Java, Lombok and
Sulawesi. The police themselves have claimed a
lack of capacity to deal with the violence.
The threats to freedoms and the links to
Muslim hardliners broadens into other arenas. Pop
singer Nazril Irham, known as Ariel, was recently
sentenced to three and a half years under
Indonesia's controversial 2008 anti-pornography
law, in a sex video case seen by many as a useful
media distraction from an ongoing corruption saga
in Indonesia's tax office. Muslim hardliners
demonstrated at the court and were vociferous in
their condemnation of Ariel.
The broad
concern is that Indonesia is turning back the
clock on what is generally viewed as a flourishing
democracy and a successful emerging economy with
impressive growth. Syafi'i Anwar, executive
director of the International Center for Islam and
Pluralism, wants the radical groups that
perpetrate such attacks to be banned, but contends
it won't be easy. He warns that Indonesia is
showing regressive tendencies. "Sometimes we are
questioning - where is Indonesia heading right
now?"
Katherine Demopoulos is a
journalist based in Jakarta, Indonesia. She works
as a freelance reporter for the BBC and Financial
Times and writes extensively on Asian energy
markets.
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