Indonesia’s claim to practicing religious tolerance seems to grow
increasingly tenuous every passing year as complaints about intolerance
continue to mount.
This year, the National Commission for Human Rights, or Komnas HAM,
received 67 reports of cases of religious intolerance, nearly double the 39
reports that it received in 2013.
Attacks on churches and minority houses of worship accounted for most of
the reports, in which, by all accounts, there have been no arrests or
indictments.
That such serious offenses
go unpunished — and are often aided by the police, who either back the
hard-liners mounting the attacks or do little to prevent them — is a travesty
in a nation that continues to impose draconian blasphemy charges for the
slightest affronts to Islam.
One of the most
egregious cases to date is that of the GKI Yasmin congregation in Bogor, which
has been locked out of its church since 2008, despite two Supreme Court rulings
ordering the municipal authorities to allow the congregation back into the
church to worship. The new Bogor mayor, Bima Arya Sugiarto, pledged to resolve
the matter when he came into office in April, but has since backed down,
refusing even to acknowledge the existence of the congregation.
If the congregation
has to mark yet another Christmas on the sidewalk outside its sealed-off
church, their prayers interrupted by heckling from Islamic hard-liners, it will
be one more black mark on Indonesia’s claim to being a bastion of tolerance and
pluralism.
But the congregation
can at least take comfort in knowing that it is not the first group to have
been denied a place to rest on Christmas.
For shame, Indonesia,
for shame. And a very merry Christmas to all.
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