OPINION
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Elaine Pearson | November 18, 2011
“Now we are vilified,” an Ahmadiyah imam told me last
week at a mosque outside Jakarta that is threatened with closure. This
is not the Indonesia that US President Barack Obama described last year
on his visit to Jakarta, when he said, “Even as this land of my youth
has changed in so many ways, those things that I learned to love about
Indonesia — that spirit of tolerance that is written into your
Constitution, symbolized in mosques and churches and temples standing
alongside each other, that spirit that’s embodied in your people — that
still lives on.”
In Bali this week, Obama should urge President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono to protect the rights of religious minorities and
take urgent steps to protect religious freedom.
Religious tolerance in Indonesia is in danger. There
has been a surge in deadly sectarian attacks against religious
communities and dozens of mosques and churches have been forced to
close. In the first nine months of 2011, the Setara Institute, which
monitors religious freedom in Indonesia, documented 184 incidents of
religious violence — a higher rate than the annual average of 204 such
attacks over the last four years. About 80 percent of these attacks took
place on Java, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim, and targeted
Christians, Shia Muslims, Bahai, and the Ahmadiyah, who consider
themselves Muslim but whom many Muslims consider heretics.
As Obama said, religious freedom is protected under
the nation’s Constitution. But as freedom of expression in Indonesia has
grown since the fall of Suharto in 1998, so has intolerance and
violence. Instead of protecting minorities, the government has promoted
and enforced discrimination.
The Ahmadiyah mosque I visited last week in the
Jakarta suburb of Bekasi is facing increasing pressure to close. The
imam told me: “We’ve been here for 22 years. We have never faced these
problems before. We are a part of this community.” The imam showed me
threatening SMS messages warning him of violence if the mosque doesn’t
close.
Indonesia’s national Ahmadiyah association, Jemaat
Ahmadiyah, estimates that at least 30 Ahmadiyah mosques have been closed
in recent years. In 2008 the national government passed a decree that
prohibits the Ahmadiyah from practicing their faith. So far 16 provinces
and regencies have followed suit, issuing local decrees banning the
Ahmadiyah.
On Oct. 13, the mayor of Bekasi issued a decree
banning all “Ahmadiyah activities” in the city. The exact meaning of
“activities” is unclear, but every Friday since then the local Muslim
clerical council, police and the military have gone to the community
center to urge the Ahmadiyah to stop their religious services.
Attacks against the Ahmadiyah have gotten
increasingly violent because perpetrators know sectarian violence is not
seriously prosecuted in Indonesia. In a deadly attack in February, a
1,500-strong mob of Islamist militants beat three Ahmadiyah men to death
and seriously injured five others in the village of Cikeusik, Banten.
Although the brutal violence was captured on film, only 12 of the
attackers were tried and they received prison sentences of just three to
six months. The prosecutors claimed the Ahmadiyah provoked the attack
and sentenced one victim who nearly lost an arm to six months in prison
for assault and disobeying police orders.
The Ahmadiyah are not the only victims. This year,
militants have burned down Christian churches in Temanggung, Central
Java, and a suicide bomber targeted a church in Solo, killing himself
and wounding 14 churchgoers. Churches in Riau were burned down in August
and now, perhaps in retaliation, a mosque in predominantly Christian
West Timor is facing similar pressure to close.
The upsurge in religious violence and the lack of
state protection is akin to what happened in Pakistan, where the
Ahmadiyah faced systematic and legalized persecution. This played into
the hands of the Taliban and other militant sectarian groups. Now fewer
and fewer voices in Pakistan are willing to speak up for religious
minorities because they themselves wind up targets of deadly attacks.
Given Obama’s words on religious tolerance during his
last visit, ignoring the growing religious violence now would show he
is out of touch with reality in Indonesia. The United States has an
interest in a stable, democratic Indonesia, and that demands a country
that respects religious freedom. Urging Yudhoyono to speak out against
religious intolerance and to seek a repeal of laws that inflame
sectarian violence and discrimination should be at the top of Obama’s
agenda.
Elaine Pearson is deputy director of the Asia Division at Human Rights Watch.
Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe
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Source:
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www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/the-thinker-open-or-closed/479189
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