Q: In your recent report on the state of religion in
Indonesia, you worry about rising intolerance. How bad is it, and what
forms does it take?
There are two critical issues, and they both involve bad regulations
that lead to abuses against minorities. First, the 1965 law on the
prevention of abuse and defamation of religion has encouraged certain
religious groups to accuse minorities of ‘defaming’ their religion.
Vigilante groups have organised violent protests against members of the
‘deviant’ Islamic sect Ahmadiyah in many places from 2005 onwards. The
radical activist group Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) is the best known
among them. Mainstream Islamic figures agree that Ahmadiyah is deviant,
but they have not supported these attacks.
Other groups have launched court cases against minority religious
groups. After the Constitutional Court upheld the law in 2010,
allegations of defamation and deviancy have increased significantly.
There were 11 court cases last year alone, compared with less than ten
over the entire period between 1965 and 1998. As the criteria for being
‘deviant’ (sesat) widen, the target has expanded from mystical Javanese
sects in 1965 (kebatinan) to Islamic groups much closer to the
mainstream, such as Ahmadiyah and now Shi’a. I’m afraid the next target
will be unorthodox sufi groups, as is already happening in Aceh.
Second, strict permission procedures for the erection of houses of
worship have been exploited by the same groups to harass minorities. In
our last report we discussed issues with churches in Aceh Singkil
district. Two church cases closer to Jakarta are still prominent in the
news: GKI Taman Yasmin in Bogor, and HKBP Filadelfia in Bekasi. In each
case a growing religious community needs a larger house of worship, but a
local majority resists that. Organised groups from outside have turned
these cases into national issues. Until a few years ago such attacks
were restricted to a few areas. They have now spread to others. Now it
is not only churches. Mosques in some Muslim-minority areas have also
become a problem, although to a lesser extent. This is what happens when
the government fails to solve the problem: it spreads. This is very
worrying. Instead of strong political will, we have seen one excuse
after another for not taking it seriously.
If law is expected to transform society, the use of legal language
such as ‘defamation’ or ‘deviance’ transforms society badly. Similar
violent incidents have happened repeatedly in recent years. Some drag on
and become much more difficult to solve. More than 100 Ahmadis have
sought refuge in Mataram since 2006. Hundreds of Shi’a Muslims in
Sampang have faced the same fate since 2012. Other potential conflicts
are also not being handled well and threaten to escalate.
However, let us keep it in perspective. Terrorism and large-scale
communal violence have receded because the government acted effectively.
So if it were not for the two problems of defamation and houses of
worship, we would not feel the situation is particularly bad. Indonesia
is still more or less religiously harmonious in many places, and
democracy is working.
Q: All the incidents you mention took place in provincial towns. Why is that?
Yes, not all of Indonesia is affected by these problems uniformly.
West Java has had many problems with these two issues (though recently
the police have brought some perpetrators to justice for attacks against
Ahmadiyah). In 2012 Aceh saw significant defamation issues, leading to
three deaths, and there were more problems with churches.
Q: Acts of intimidation against minority religious groups
started with reformasi. First it was small radical groups like the FPI,
but now much larger groups agree minorities are a problem. Politicians
become afraid to act. What causes this escalation? Smart tactics by FPI?
Intolerance among the broader public? Local governments seeking
popularity in democratic Indonesia?
All the factors you mention play a role, but the main problem lies
with local and central governments. It is very misleading to say, as our
minister of religious affairs has several times, that these problems
are only administrative. Law enforcement does not work. When local
governments and security officials do not act it emboldens hardliners. I
don’t think they are afraid to act, because sometimes they do and then
we don’t read about it in the newspaper. But there is not enough
incentive for them to act boldly on these two issues. It is not
important enough to them. I heard that all the recent candidates for
district head in Sampang, Madura, held similar views on what they would
do about the Shi’ites. If any of them had defended the Shi’a community
they felt it would set them apart from other candidates negatively.
Interestingly, the incumbent in Sampang had been the boldest in speaking
out against the Shi’a community, and he lost the election. So such an
issue doesn’t always sell. And they forget that there is also a
political risk in inaction.
Decentralisation has made local mayors, district heads and governors
so powerful that they sometimes go against the central government. In
the case of GKI Taman Yasmin in Bogor, even the President basically said
he could not constitutionally be involved. He left it to the local
leaders. This is true in non-religious issues too. At the same time,
national political leaders tend to consider such concerns to be
relatively minor. Religious freedom is not a popular issue among any of
the parties in parliament. Even the dramatic attacks on the Ahmadis in
Cikeusik and Shi’ites in Sampang only stayed in the headlines for a few
days. This was not like the large-scale communal violence of some years
ago. It did reach international forums, but somehow the government
always got away with merely a normative response.
The fact that religious issues are not always effective politically
can actually be positive. Religion may leverage your position a few
points in local elections, but if you are weak in other points, it will
not save you. The unlikely victory of Jokowi and his non-Muslim, ethnic
Chinese running mate Ahok in the Jakarta governor’s election proved
that. They beat the incumbent Fauzi Bowo, who was supported by FPI,
Rhoma Irama and other Muslim organisations using religious arguments.
They were too strong on other points, so the religious attacks
ultimately were ineffective.
The main issue is not intolerance but what we call the ‘management of
diversity’. This involves central and local government policy, conflict
prevention and resolution, and law enforcement. It also means doing
more to deal with potential or imminent conflict between groups. We
recommend avoiding legal or rights-based approaches as much as possible.
Religious grievances since reformasi are more frequently framed in
legal terms: for example, building permits for churches and the
religious defamation law. Yet we have big problems enforcing the law,
from the police level up to the Supreme Court—and not only on religious
matters.
Moreover, our regulations, especially on defamation, are poor. The
defamation law is old and bad, yet it is being used more and more. The
regulation concerning houses of worship was improved slightly in 2006
but it still makes life difficult for minorities. It created an
instrument called the Forum for Religious Harmony (FKUB) to resolve
problems. There are now around 500 of them. With the exception of a
number of such forums at the district and provincial level, they have
not performed well and have sometimes caused new problems. This has
happened despite some progressive new laws and a constitutional
amendment that should have improved religious freedoms.
Rather than rights-based approaches, we recommend mediation. This
already happens a lot. Yet it is not always done well because too often
the victims have to pay the biggest price. But there are also success
stories. We can develop our ability to mediate. Of course I do not say
we should forget law, but changing bad laws has been a priority for so
long that we forgot to strengthen our society’s capacity for mediation.
Q: In your report you say government leaders often blame the
victims of religious intimidation rather than the perpetrators. They
urge minority groups to move elsewhere, as if they had no right to live
where they do. This would have been unimaginable under the New Order.
Why is government today so much weaker?
First, the New Order was not that good either. The harmony was on the
surface. Suharto decided who would be the victims—at different points
of time they were the alleged communists, Muslims, Christians, and other
groups. Transmigration was also a policy of relocation, sometimes by
force, though for different reasons.
In any case, second, just as in other democratising countries, the
government tends to be weak, or even has to be weakened to give more
space for people. Decentralisation weakens central government power, to
an extent that is not always clear. Sometimes the president finds this
convenient. On things that do not matter much to him, he can be seen to
be making compromises. In this case, democracy is not the explanation
for his inaction, but an excuse. In cases like this, which have
deteriorated because local governments are unable or unwilling to act,
the president himself surely has to act.
Even international human rights institutions, such as the United
Nation Human Rights Council, cannot force the government to act. Only a
few countries have pressed Indonesia on its treatment of minorities and
their questions did not go very far. They consider Indonesia’s human
rights record is not bad overall.
Q: Other fragile democracies treat their minorities badly
too. Burma's Rohingya, Pakistan's Christians/ Hindus/ Ahmadis, Iraq's
Sunnis, Egypt's Copts. Minorities are particularly vulnerable at
election time. Is this the dark side of democracy?
This shows that democracy should not only be about elections and
other institutions. It also means better protection of minorities. With
time, I think our democracy will mature. Indonesia’s democracy is better
and more stable than those you mention, especially Pakistan and Iraq.
Indonesia is more like India, Turkey and Senegal, which all show the
success of building a democracy in a religious society. Of course more
incidents force us to be more cautious. It is difficult to say that
religion should not play a public role in a country like Indonesia. It
has done so throughout our history and in my opinion it can continue to
play roles in a democracy. But we worry about religious expression that
leads to violence and discrimination.
Q: Is there a democratic way to solve this in the short
term? All the democratic solutions you mention in your report seem to
be inadequate. You mention mediation, but acknowledge that in practice
this often involves blaming the victims. You hope the central government
will show more spine, but you know they have shown none the last few
years because they are afraid of the voters.
We are now at the point of no turning back. There’s no alternative to
democratic solutions. I am still optimistic that most of this is
temporary. The problems are not uniformly widespread; in some places
leaders have acted tough and kept minorities safe, and police have also
done well; in other places budding conflicts have been solved or
mitigated. People are not stupid. Democracy can give them ways to punish
bad leaders. Our civil society is strong. That is what has saved
Indonesia so far. But of course civil society’s strength has limits. If
the government, both local and central, does not act to solve these
problems immediately, I’m afraid they will grow like a cancer, and our
life in Indonesia will be much more difficult.
Zainal Abidin Bagir directs the postgraduate
Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University.
He is one of the authors of the ‘Annual Report on Religious Life in
Indonesia 2012’ (‘Laporan Tahunan Kehidupan Beragama di Indonesia 2012’,
http://crcs.ugm.ac.id/annual-report). He was interviewed by Gerry van Klinken.
http://www.insideindonesia.org/weekly-articles/stopping-intolerance
