BOGOR, WEST JAVA, INDONESIA (ANS) – A crowd of Muslim hard-liners disrupted about 100 members of the embattled GKI Yasmin congregation as they held divine services at a member’s home in Bogor, West Java, on Sunday.

“We were conducting our worship at one member’s home before people from Forkami and Garis came to our place,” GKI Yasmin spokeswoman Dwiati Novita Rini told The Jakarta Post (www.thejakartapost.com) over the telephone on Sunday.

Dwiati said she did not know why the groups – the Islamic Reform Movement (Garis) and the Muslim Communications Forum (Forkami) – were protesting.

The congregation resisted efforts by about 50 Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) officers to stop their service, Dwiati said.

“The Satpol PP came around 9 a.m. and were trying to stop our activity because they didn’t want any clashes to happen. [House of Representatives member] Lily Wahid was negotiating with one of the Satpol PP officers and the congregation could continue worship,” she said.

The congregation completed their service peacefully around 10 a.m. and the demonstrators from Forkami and Garis left the congregation member’s home around 11 a.m, Dwiati added.

“The Bogor City administration, citing permit application problems, has barred the congregation from conducting religious services for more than two years, defying a 2010 Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing the congregation’s right to hold services at its church building,” added the Jakarta story.

NEW DELHI (Compass Direct News) – Acts of violence and intolerance against Christians in Indonesia almost doubled in 2011, with an Islamist campaign to close down churches symbolizing the plight of the religious minority.

The Indonesian Protestant Church Union, locally known as PGI, counted 54 acts of violence and other violations against Christians in 2011, up from 30 in 2010.

The number of such incidents against religious minorities in general also grew, from 198 in 2010 to 276 in 2011, but the worst is perhaps yet to come if authorities continue to overlook the threat of extremism, said a representative from the Jakarta-based Wahid Institute, a Muslim organization that promotes tolerance.

Rumadi, who goes by a single name, said his Wahid Institute also observed an attempt to institutionalize intolerance in this archipelago of about 238 million people, of whom about 88 percent Muslim. At least 36 regulations to ban religious practices deemed deviant from Islam were drafted or implemented in the country in 2011.

A Jakarta-based civil rights group, the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, noted that both the government and groups in society were responsible for the incidents, with the main violators including religious extremist organizations such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).

Indonesia’s hot-bed of extremism is West Java, the most populous province that includes the nation’s capital city of Jakarta. This province alone witnessed 160 incidents against religious minorities. In the 1950s, West Java was the base of an Islamist group, Darul Islam, whose splinter groups are still active, fighting the “secular” government and religious minorities.

Church Closures
Churches in West Java, which has about 520,000 Christians, also suffered the most last year. On Christmas Day, two churches in West Java’s Bogor city bore the brunt of growing extremism.

“Islamist vigilantes screamed and yelled at us and threatened us, as we sought to hold a Christmas service,” a leader of the Gereja Kristen Indonesia, also known as the GKI or the Yasmin Church, told Compass in an email.

“We could not hold Christmas service in our own church for a second year,” said the source, who requested anonymity.

The city administration, allegedly under pressure from local extremist groups, sealed off the half-constructed building of the church, situated in the Taman Yasmin housing complex on a street named H. Abdullah Bin Nuh, in 2010. Before Christmas that year, the Supreme Court ordered the city mayor, Diani Budiarto, to unseal the church building, and later an ombudsman also recommended the same, but the official refused to oblige. The church has held worship services on a sidewalk, with police cordoning off the compound, since April 2010.

On Dec. 25, church members insisted they wanted to celebrate Christmas in the building, which is legally theirs, but police prevented them from even going near the structure, the source said. The congregation met in a church member’s home.

Showing solidarity with the church were members of Ansor, youth wing of one of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU); interfaith activists, including the sister and youngest daughter of former president Abdurrahman Wahid; and members of the Asian Muslim Action Network. But they could do little to help.

“The police first allowed the vigilantes to stand next to us, and then moved them just about three meters away,” the church leader said. “The vigilantes issued threats to us, but the police did not arrest them.”

Having overseen the sealing of the Yasmin church, Muslim extremists are now targeting a 2,000-member Catholic church in Bogor city’s Parung area. The Santo Joannes Baptista (St. John the Baptist) church was able to hold its mass on Christmas Eve, followed by a Christmas Day service, although authorities had formally ordered the church to stop all activities.

The church building was constructed six years ago, but days before Christmas the head of Bogor district, Rachmat Yasin, issued the cessation order arguing that its construction violated planning rules due to its proximity to a residential area. Soon after the order, a group called the Muslim Community of Parung Bogor placed a banner near the church, stating that it was in support of Rachmat’s move to ban church activities, according to The Jakarta Globe.

“The site is not for a church, but it was a house turned into a house of worship. It is a violation,” Rachmat told the daily. “Moreover, they worship on a regular basis. It is a mistake.”

The head of the Indonesian Bishops Conference, Benny Susetyo, said there had been no conflict between the church and the people living in its vicinity for six years.

“The problem arose when a group of people started to disturb the calm in the region around the house of worship,” he told The Jakarta Globe.

Susetyo added that district authorities had repeatedly rejected demands made by the church for a permit, without giving any reason.

“This is despite us having clearly followed the procedure for the construction of houses of worship.”

Islamist groups have demanded a similar action against five other churches in Pracimantoro town in Central Java province, the source added. These churches – Pentecostal Church of Indonesia in the Ngalu Wetan area, Church of all Nations and Bethel Tabernacle Church in the Gebangharjo area, Javanese Christian Church in the Godang area, and Nazarene Christian Church in the Lebak area – have operational permits to hold church services. They had applied for building permits, but authorities never responded.

Central Java is also a hub of Islamist extremists. Last Sept. 25, a suicide bomber said to be an Islamist terrorist blew himself up at the gate of the Sepenuh Injil Bethel Church (Bethel Full Gospel Church) in Solo city, injuring about 20 people.

Sealing of church buildings and the refusal to grant building permits top the list of major violations of Christians’ religious rights in Indonesia, according to the Setara Institute. A 2006 joint ministerial decree requires signatures from congregations and residents living nearby, as well as approval from the local administration, to build a house of worship.

Government Inaction
The Setara Institute criticized President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for inaction. The president urged people to be tolerant in at least 19 of his speeches in 2011, but he has not backed his words with action, it noted in a recent report.

Intolerance has steadily been increasing in Indonesia, whose constitution is based on the doctrine of Pancasila – five principles upholding the nation’s belief in the one and only God and social justice, humanity, unity and democracy for all.

The Setara report cited a February incident in which a mob of about 1,500 Muslim extremists brutally killed three members of the Ahmadiyya community, which is seen as heretical by mainstream Muslims, in the province of Banten near West Java.

“Cases of intolerance have intensified this year, numbering more than last year, and at the core of the problem is poor law enforcement by the government,” Setara deputy chairman Bonar Tigor Naipospos told The Jakarta Globe.

‘Religious Tolerance Bill’ would only entrench discrimination, critics say.

DUBLIN (Compass Direct News) – Members of a church in Bogor, West Java, are determined to continue meeting outside their sealed building each Sunday until they are granted freedom to worship inside it, despite a ban on street meetings issued by the local mayor.

“The church will never give up meeting together,” a local source who preferred to remain unnamed said of the Indonesian Christian Church (Gereja Kristen Indonesia, or GKI), in the Yasmin area of Bogor.

The ban on street meetings forced church members to worship at an alternative location on Sunday (Oct. 23).

GKI Yasmin Bogor church<br>photo by Compass Direct News

Amid the stand-off, religious freedom for groups such as the Yasmin church would be dramatically reduced under a “Religious Tolerance Bill” under consideration by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, critics of the proposal say. A constitutional debate is raging in Indonesia over the bill.

On Oct. 9,Yasmin church members and police officers clashed on the street in front of the sealed church building over the Christians’ right to meet there. According to local media reports, West Java police are now investigating complaints filed by both sides; a police chief has accused church members of knocking him unconscious, while the church has countersued police for disrupting its service.

In defiance of a Supreme Court order early this year affirming Yasmin’s constitutional right to freedom of worship, Bogor Mayor Diani Budianto canceled the church’s worship permit, locked and sealed their church building and banned church members from meeting on the street (see www.compassdirect.org, “Mayor in Indonesia Again Balks at Granting Church Permit,” Aug. 15). The permit had been hard-earned; under terms of a 2006 Joint Ministerial Decree, all churches must meet strict criteria to qualify for a church worship permit, including proof of at least 90 church members, signatures of approval from at least 60 local residents, and approval from village officials and a local interfaith forum.

Yasmin church officials have since refused offers from local authorities to relocate to another building, citing the case of the Batak Christian Protestant Church in Bekasi, West Java, evicted from their previous premises and now denied a building permit.

Rights Experts Condemn Bill
Following a sharp rise in similar conflicts over the past two years, the Religious Affairs Ministry is considering the Religious Tolerance Bill, first proposed by the Ministry in 2003 and revived in February following the brutal murder of three members of the Ahmadiyah sect. The group has often been targeted by Islamic radicals for its claim that Muhammad was not the last prophet of Islam.

Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali, Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi and Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare Agung Laksono met last week and announced their joint endorsement of the bill to local media.

Bonar Tigor Naipospos, deputy chairman of the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, said the bill will simply legitimize existing discriminatory regulations in the 1965 Anti-Blasphemy Law as well as those in the 2006 Joint Ministerial Decree. The decree has contributed to many conflicts, including the current clash in Bogor. The new bill places more stringent limits on proselytizing, constructing places of worship and religious education, according to The Jakarta Globe.

Elaine Pearson of Human Rights Watch fears that the law – proposed by the same ministry that has called for a complete ban on Ahmadiyah – will further entrench discrimination against religious minorities.

Dr. Musda Mulia, chair of the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace, told The Jakarta Post that many articles in this bill are not compatible with the principles of democracy, pluralism and human rights. Rather than limiting religious activities, the government should ensure that all religions receive equal treatment, he added.

The success or failure of the bill rests on the terminology, Fajar Riza Ul Haq, executive director of the Maarif Institute, told the Globe. “They should have drafted a religious freedom bill instead of this one,” he said.

Faith Out of Focus
A European Union delegation is holding a two-day seminar to discuss the conflicts, another local source told Compass on Monday.

“But only moderate Muslims are attending,” he said. “If members of the Front Pembela Islam [Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI] and other radical groups had joined in, I’m sure the discussion would have been more helpful.”

One participant who attended yesterday told Compass that speakers did not address violence against Christians at all; rather, they emphasized “organizing and maintaining inter-religious dialogue.”

Organized jointly by the European Union Delegation to Indonesia and Brunei and Nahdlatul Ulam, one of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organizations, the seminar sought to “explore the contribution made by faith organizations to the fulfillment of human rights and the challenges in balancing respect for freedom of religion with other human rights, including the freedom of expression,” according to a press release on the E.U. delegation’s website.

“We must [ensure] … that the legitimate assertion of religious belief is reconciled with broader human rights concerns,” Julian Wilson, head of the delegation, wrote in the release.

Moderates Urge Government to Act
Moderates of all faiths, however, are frustrated by the government’s failure to address these issues.

“I think Yasmin church will just have to stand firm, despite the risk of being roughed up by the police,” the source close to the church said. “As we’ve seen in previous cases, it may take one or more casualties, drawing unwanted media attention locally and internationally, before the government moves in more seriously to protect the Christians.”

Moderates were particularly annoyed at the government’s failure to address forced church closures.

“As usual, the president sits by and does absolutely nothing, while the mayor of Bogor ignores the Supreme Court rulings and suffers no consequences,” one online reader commented at the foot of a Jakarta Post story about Yasmin church on Oct. 11.

Local authorities often adopt regulations or bylaws that are at odds with Indonesia’s constitution (see www.compassdirect.org, “Christians Call for Rejection of Sharia-Inspired Bills,” Aug. 19, 2009). Rahmat Effendi, acting mayor of Bekasi in West Java, recently banned the Ahmadiyah from “any activity that may be interpreted as an effort to spread its beliefs.”

The ban – faithful to Indonesia’s 1965 Anti-Blasphemy Law but contrary to constitutional guarantees of religious freedom – came into effect on Oct. 13. Ahmadis in Bekasi have since met under strict police surveillance.

Based on these inconsistencies and the apparent bias in application of existing laws, many Indonesians doubt that the new bill will improve conditions for religious minorities.

“Look at the rising mob crime and violence, the irrational sentencing in the February murders of three Ahmadis, the hate rhetoric in Bogor and the real Islamic violence towards anyone who is not a fundamentalist,” a reader identified as Dr. Dez commented on a Jakarta Globe story posted yesterday. “These issues are all inter-related. The bill will drive a further wedge into divided communities, resulting in more violence. Then the new Intelligence Bill will allow victims to be detained as a threat to security.

“Please have a conscience and speak out,” he added. “You are not just safeguarding groups like the Ahmadi, but your children too.”

JAVA, INDONESIA (ANS) — More than 1,000 Muslim protesters have stormed a courthouse and burned two churches in central Java, Indonesia.

According to the BBC website, the attacks in Temanggung happened after a Christian man was sentenced to five years in jail for distributing leaflets deemed insulting to Islam.

The BBC reported that Indonesian police said the crowd considered the sentence too lenient and were demanding the death penalty.

The BBC said the incident came two days after Muslim villagers in western Java killed three members of a minority Islamic sect.

A police spokesman told the BBC that the angry crowd began attacking the court building in Temanggung after the verdict was read out.

The violence spread to surrounding neighborhoods where two churches were set on fire and a third was damaged, and Police fired warning shots into the air to disperse the crowds, the BBC said.

‘Extremist groups’
In a separate development, a video has emerged of Sunday’s deadly attack on members of the minority Ahmadiyah Muslim sect.

The footage — seen by the BBC — shows three men being beaten to death.

The Ahmadiyah sect has been labeled by the government as deviant, but is not banned.

A body which advises the US government on religious freedom has said Indonesia must act against “extremist” attacks.

“Indonesia is a tolerant country that should be more intolerant of extremist groups. It’s time the Indonesian government brings them to account for the violence and hatred they spread,” said Leonard Leo, chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The BBC explained that Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, but it is a secular nation.

The BBC added that international human rights groups say more hardline fringe groups have been harassing religious minorities in recent years. The Indonesian president has been criticized for not doing enough to protect the rights of all citizens.

“Those arrested were questioned and released,” said the CDN story. “Some officers and a civilian were reportedly injured. Local residents, including non-Christians, had accepted the presence of the church, said local Block Captain Junaedi Syamsudin, but a group called the Forum of the Muslim Brotherhood of Limusnanggal has worked since 2008 to have the church eliminated.

“Three months ago members of the forum went to Cileungsi offices to object to the church’s presence, Syamsudin said, and the regent promised to demolish the house.”

The story went on to state that Eddy Hidayat, head of Bogor police operations, said the house “lacked a use permit.”

The building coordinator for the Pentecostal church, Hotlan P. Silaen, said police were not neutral in the dispute.

“The clash with citizens could have been avoided if the police had been neutral and not been goaded into a situation that caused bodily harm,” Silaen said.

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Church members in Depok city, West Java, are unable to use their church building after the mayor, citing protests from area Muslims, revoked a permit issued in 1998.

Under a Joint Ministerial Decree SKB issued in 1969 and revised in 2006, all religious groups in Indonesia must apply for permits to establish and operate places of worship.

Read the full story at Compass Direct News

Members of the Islamic Defenders’ Front FPI in Tangerang, Banten province, confronted and threatened to kill church leader Bedali Hulu yesterday as he visited his elderly mother-in-law in a rented home formerly used as a meeting place for his congregation.

For the past 18 months Hulu’s Jakarta Baptist Christian Church GKJB in Pisangan village, Sepatan district has wrestled for the right to hold church services in the village. Members will soon take the matter to court in hopes of finding a permanent solution to the dispute.

Yesterday’s confrontation by the Muslim extremist FPI was the latest in a series of threats. Last week as the congregation held a simple meeting in a church member’s home – sharing a meal and singing a few hymns – FPI members arrived and repeated threats first issued in November to raid the homes of church members if meetings continued.

Read the full story at Compass Direct News

Muslim extremists and local government authorities last week threatened to tear down a church building under construction in North Sumatra even though church leaders met requirements of Indonesia’s draconian law on worship places, the church’s pastor said.

Emboldened by local authorities’ unwillingness to grant a church building permit to Protestant Bataks Christian Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan, or HKBP), some 100 Muslim extremists accompanied by government officials on April 29 tried to destroy the building under construction in Jati Makmur village, North Binjai, 22 kilometers (14 miles) from the provincial capital of Medan.

The Rev. Monang Silaban, HKBP pastor, said about 100 members of the Islamic extremist Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defender Front, or FPI), some armed with “sharp weapons,” arrived at 4:30 p.m. accompanied by Binjai municipal officials, who brought a bulldozer. Church members quickly gathered to defend the building, with women anxiously crying, “Please God protect us.”

The groups nearly came to blows in the rain as some Islamic extremists made their way into the structure, which was about 40 percent completed. Brigadir Mobil (Brimob) security forces and Binjai reserve police arrived and were able to bring calm, with the mob eventually calling off the assault.

Read the full story at Compass Direct News.

Islamic extremist groups and local governments in Indonesia closed 110 churches from 2004 to 2007, according to religious and human rights organizations.

The Wahid Institute, a moderate Muslim non-governmental organization, along with the Communion of Churches of Indonesia (Persekutuan Gereja-Gereja di Indonesia), the Bishops’ Conference of Indonesia (Konferensi Waligereja Indonesia) and the Indonesian Human Rights Commission reported that discrimination and violence against churches was most common in the provinces of West Java, Banten, Central Java, South Sulawesi and Bengkulu.

Radical Muslim groups attacking churches included the Islamic Defender Front (Front Pembela Islam, or FPI), the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, Hizbullah Front, Muslim Clergy Members Forum (Forum Ulama Umat Islam) and the Muslim Safety Forum (Dewan Keamanan Masjid).

Some of these groups coerced local governments to send letters to churches prohibiting any activities. When churches did not comply, they would be burned or otherwise damaged, as happened last December to Jakarta Baptist Christian Church (Gereja Kristen Baptis Jakarta, or GKBJ) in Sepatan, Tangerang province. Muslim extremists from the FPI kicked out the windows and doors of the home of pastor Bedali Hulu and threw out his belongings.

Read the full story at Compass Direct News.