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Police, MUI silent on rising intolerance

Jakarta Post - February 25, 2016

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Nurul Fitri Ramadhani, Fedina S. Sundaryani and Haeril Halim, Jakarta – The National Police are declining to take the blame for worsening violence against religious minority groups, saying that no specific data proves their involvement.

The police were responding to a recent survey conducted by the Jakarta-based religious freedom watchdog, the Wahid Institute, which found an increasing trend of violent opposition to freedom of religion and faith, from 154 cases in 2014 to 190 in 2015, with the National Police, as a state actor, being responsible for the most violations.

National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Agus Rianto said on Wednesday that the survey did not give details on police complicity in the violations and failed to specify what constituted a faith-based violation.

"I can't comment on this issue since it isn't specific on which religions were targeted by the police force and what kind of violations they were," Agus told reporters at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), which appeared on the list in second place in the non-state actor category, with 21 cases, after unaffiliated citizens who were blamed for 29 cases, also declined to comment on the report. "I don't want to discuss the issue," said Amany Lubis, secretary-general of the MUI.

According to the survey, the police were prone to violating the rights of minorities. As a law enforcement agency they were frequently involved in conflicts and were thus in a position to use excessive force to disperse demonstrations and prohibit freedom of expression in public.

Institute director Yenny Wahid said that the National Police already had enough awareness of religious tolerance and it was officers at the regional level who lacked understanding and were often at a loss as to how to deal with conflicts involving minority groups.

"They usually end up doing favors for the majority and prohibiting the activities of the minority in the name of 'ensuring public security' to avoid a clash," she said.

In response to the survey, the Religious Affairs Ministry has pledged to accelerate the drafting of a bill on the protection of religious believers to provide protection to subscribers of all religions.

"We aim to finish the drafting this year, so that we can start the deliberation with the House of Representatives by next year," Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin said.

The ministry has made slow progress in the drafting of the bill since it started early last year.

The bill has five main themes: the government's treatment of citizens with beliefs outside the six permitted faiths, restrictions on certain religious teachings, methods for deciding whether certain religious ideologies are deviant and which agency has the authority to decide, the regulation of construction of houses of worship and a stipulation to strengthen the role of the Religious Community Harmony Forum (FKUB).

Rights watchdog Setara Institute criticized the draft bill, saying it would clearly serve the interests of the major religions instead of giving protection to religious minority groups, especially with the provision that would sanction the establishment of a council mandated to declare whether a belief was to be considered deviant.

Setara Institute deputy chairman Bonar Tigor Naipospos said that under Lukman's predecessors, the bill was labelled the "religious harmony law", but subsequently the Religious Affairs Ministry changed its name to the "protection of religious believers law", a new phrase that Bonar said aimed to create the impression that the bill would give protection to beleaguered religious minority groups such as the Ahmadiyah, Shiites and Christians, all of whom have always been the targets of attacks by hard-line groups across the country.

"The government always believes that religious tolerance problems occur because of the absence of rules regulating religious life. However, it fails to understand that there is no harmony without religious freedom," Bonar said. He said that under no circumstances should the state step in to interpret whether a religious belief was deviant.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/02/25/police-mui-silent-rising-intolerance.html.