Jakarta Globe, Camelia Pasandaran, Anita Rachman & Arientha Primanita | August 11, 2010
Jakarta. Ahead of the start of Ramadan today, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that the Islamic holy month should be free of violence and called for harmony among the country’s various religious groups.
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| President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has called for peace and tolerance in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Antara Photo) |
“If there is any sign of violence, it should be prevented by police,” he said at the Presidential Palace on Tuesday, in his first public comments to address a recent string of violent acts against religious minorities.
Last week a violent mob attacked the mosques of the minority Muslim sect Ahmadiyah in Kuningan, West Java.
And on Sunday, members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) Bekasi, also in West Java, were chased down and beaten with sticks by a mob after they tried to hold Sunday services.
These are just the latest incidents of what pluralism advocates call a worrying trend, and one that the government has paid little attention to.
The Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy released a number of reports showing that these incidents are on the rise this year, and noted that in some cases regional governments had played a part in the violations.
Yudhoyono said authorities, both in the central government and the local and provincial levels, should be more sensitive and responsive to interfaith conflicts to prevent them from escalating.
“I hope ministers and the regions pay more attention to this matter. If there are differing opinions, you should find solutions,” he said. “I hope the police and regional governments cooperate to ensure security and public order.”
Ismail Hasani, a Setara researcher, said he hoped the president’s statements were more than lip service and would translate into real action.
“If there are incidents again, the National Police chief must take real action to protect the victims,” he said. “Police often only detain [hard-liners] to cool down the situation and then release them soon after without taking them to court.”
Ismail said If the government is committed to upholding the right of religious belief and practice it should annul discriminatory regulations such as the one that restricts the activities of the Ahmadiyah community and the one that requires community consent prior to the establishment of a house of worship.
Calls have also been mounting for the government to fulfill its mandate of protecting religious freedom by cracking down on hard-line groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), which has conducted a number of violent raids.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives agreed to hold a meeting to discuss the hard-line groups. “The government has been working very slowly [on this issue], we cannot let violence happen again,” said House Deputy Speaker Pramono Anung, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
However, Djoko Suyanto, the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, said disbanding hard-line groups is not an effective solution.
“I can disband it now, but tomorrow it will only change its name and continue on. It’s not about the name, not about the organization, but about what they do,” he said.
“It is easy to make an organization, but the most important thing is how the head of that organization stops their people from behaving that way.”
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