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A.C.N - Aid to the Church in Need Italian Office |
Religious Freedom in
the Majority Islamic Countries |
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Indonesia Population:
199,544,000
Under the Constitution of 1945, the condition laid down for religions in Indonesia is that of monotheism. The people must be devoted to their God, in accordance with their own religion, must co-operate with those belonging to other denominations in order to create a life of harmony, respecting their liberty and their activities and not forcing anyone to believe in another religion. The constitution permits five religions, Christianity included. Close on 90% of the population is Muslim, and there have been attempts on the part of a minority of Islamic fundamentalists to have the Koran made the basis of the constitution, even though the majority of Muslims prefer to retain the present situation. On Java, Islam is strongly influenced by Hindu thought, whereas elsewhere Islamic law prevails. The Christian churches are active, even though they are a minority, subjected to constant obstacles by the Muslims right down to the small details such as local relations. Two decrees dating from 1978 prevent religious propaganda "for making converts" and require the obtaining of government approval for aid from abroad. There have also been difficulties in obtaining permits for the construction of churches. The Indonesian situation gives grounds for concern for a variety of reasons. The powerful political tensions currently racking the country are increasingly finding outlet in acts of violence (the electoral campaign of Spring 1997 was characterised by violent clashes which resulted in more than 300 deaths). The economic situation has been worsened by the Asian economic crisis, the frightening increase in the cost of living, the unstoppable devaluation of the Rupee and soaring unemployment. The government has met all these problems and the growing discontent of the population with methods of, at times, brutal repression. In this context of crisis, and during the transition of power from the dictator Suharto to his protege, the current President Bacharuddin Jussuf Habibie, there have also been growing outbreaks of violence against Christians and their places of worship. The practice and the teaching of the non-Muslim religions recognised by the state are generally respected. The government promotes reciprocal tolerance. In general proselytism is discouraged, since it is seen as a potential source of agitation or disorder. The activity of foreign missionaries is tolerated, although there are not infrequent restrictions and delays in the obtaining of residence permits or similar documents. In a few cases there have been episodes of intimidation or violence against the Christian media, such as the newspaper Compass. The members of the Chinese minority (who represent some 3.2% of the population) are for the most part traders and shopkeepers, partly because they are excluded from employment in public administration or in the army. On October 10 1996, in the town of Situbondo in Eastern Java, a crowd of around 3,000 Muslims attacked and set on fire 30 churches and killed six people. The crowd was enraged by the excessively lenient sentence passed on a young Muslim by the name of Saleh. The rioters, in all probability incited by well-organised agitators, had convinced themselves that Saleh had hidden in one of the churches of the town. On the basis of these rumours they attacked churches, schools orphanages and private homes, in short, any building linked to the Christians. As a result a Protestant pastor, his wife and their two young children were trapped in a building, together with another young girl and a helper, and burned alive. According to the leaders of this Protestant church, and based also on eyewitness accounts and police reports, the whole thing had been carefully planned and orchestrated by agitators belonging to groups of Muslim fundamentalists - a fact demonstrated, according to the press agency UCA News of October 14-24 1996, by the speed with which the attacks on the churches took place, the ready availability of incendiary materials and the clear co-ordination shown by the various groups. In the western half of the island of Java, in Tasik Malaya on December 26 1996, 13 churches and a Christian school were destroyed. Idea Spektrum reports that the attacks took place during the course of a riot by Islamic extremists, who attacked government buildings, schools, factories and banks. Two couples were also killed, it appears, in their vehicles. Another episode took place at Manang in central Java, where around 50 Muslim youths burst into a Christmas Vigil Mass, beating the priest senseless, looting the furnishings and smashing the ceiling of the meeting hall. At the same time the young men told their victims that in future nobody in their village would be permitted either to be a Christian or to celebrate religious festivals. On January 30 1997, the fundamentalists destroyed numerous churches, a Chinese temple and the shop of a Chinese Christian. They broke into Rengasdengklok, some 30 miles from Djakarta, and attacked buildings with rocks and sticks. According to the local police there were no injuries, and with the arrival of three army lorries full of soldiers order was soon restored. At the end of December, in the town of Tasil Malaya in western Java, four people were killed and 15 injured. Serious damage was done to over a hundred buildings and to 12 Christian churches. At Situbondo five people were killed - the Protestant pastor Isaac Christian, his wife and three children. Twenty-five churches and a temple were destroyed. The Indonesian Chinese and the Christian minority are always the targets of these Muslim attacks, which are also partly rooted in the poverty of the Muslims. For in fact 80 per cent of the private capital is in the hands of the ethnic Chinese. On top of this, the Islamic militants want to make Islam the only religion of the country, obligatory for all. During the last two years, 1,300 buildings belonging to the Catholic Church have been seriously damaged. In an interview with the German news agency KNA, Sister Rosa Damai Rahayu lists the major problems encountered by missionaries in this country. These range from of the sheer size of the territory and the lack of efficient transport and communications, to the opposition of the Islamist movement, which is putting pressure on the village populations to drive out the missionaries. Added to this there is the legacy of colonial domination and a resulting lack of awareness on the part of the local population. In its bulletin of January 1-3 1998, KNA relates the growing attacks against the Church and against Christians which, according to the Vatican news agency Fides have gone hand-in-hand with the take-over of the successor to President Suharto. The report refers to a declaration by the Muslim commander, Abduiraham Wahid, who is head of the Nahidatul-Ulama movement, according to whom about £70million have been allocated in order to create religious and social disorder. Fides states that behind the attacks there is a shadowy group which is pursuing its own political economic and religious agenda. It appears that some new Christian religious movements are seeking to establish themselves in the country with American funding. Idea Spektrum speaks of riots by Islamic extremists in western, eastern and central Java. Also hit is the south and west of Kalimantan. In recent months, 64 churches and Christian centres have been destroyed. Sometimes the Islamic extremists hire gangs to carry out these acts of vandalism. In early February 1998 there were attacks on Chinese Christians in southern and central Sulawesi. On January 26 1998, at Kregan in central Java, the shops and houses of Christians were destroyed. Two thousand activists chased out the inhabitants of the surrounding villages. On November 25 1997, 350 Muslims attacked the parish church in the village of Karya Tani and attempted to intimidate the parish priest and the members of the Bible Institute in Batu. It appears that the gangs were paid for this attack too. Father Ignatius Sandyawan Sumardi, a Catholic priest who had given shelter to three activists of the principal opposition party who were seeking refuge from the police, was brought to trial in Djakarta in October 1997. The fugitives had taken refuge in the house of Father Sumardi’s brother and so he too was charged. Father Sumardi runs a centre for street children and for the homeless, and at the end of 1996 he was awarded the Indonesian prize for human rights. In April 1997, according to the KNA bulletin of July 16 1997, he was forbidden to leave the country. In October and December 1997, the tourist centre Villa Syngra, at Bogar, was the target of attacks. Seventy young people were beaten with sticks and the parish church was destroyed. All public Catholic celebrations of any kind are forbidden during Ramadan. In the town of Clegon in Western Java, from Easter 1997 onwards, all Christian rites and public ceremonies were forbidden. In Garut Selatan, all evangelising activities were forbidden and at Ketapong the Church was refused permission to put up a building for religious services, even though the majority of its inhabitants are Christians. Eight Sisters of the Little Child Jesus, on arriving in Cileduk, a suburb of Java, were attacked by stone-throwing Muslims; they responded by building a care centre for children, an old people’s home and a school. At Flores, Sister Ugolina gathers in all the sick children who have been abandoned by their families. According to Human rights without frontiers of March 6 1998, not even private property has escaped and, in addition to their churches, the houses and homes of Christians have been destroyed and burned as well. It is difficult to obtain information, given the huge size of the territory and the sheer number of islands scattered over a wide area. The collapse of the Asian financial markets and the consequent impoverishment in Indonesia have caused the population to vent their anger on the Church, making aggression of this kind almost into a national sport. The Christians in Indonesia total around 20 million, as against some 170 million Muslims. The worst violence has taken place on Java, followed by Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Djakarta. Some of the most recent attacks have been supported by the fundamentalists, but others seem to spring from the ordinary poor who have been fed with the myth of a Muslim nation. In a few cases local Muslims have helped to calm down the anti-Christian riots. The Archbishop of Djakarta, Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja, has expressed great concern at the violence that exploded in the capital Djakarta between November 11 and 14 1998, when 17 people were killed and hundreds injured. Thousands of students, who were protesting peacefully against the special session of the Supreme Assembly of the state were confronted by the police and the army. The most violent clash took place on November 13 in front of the Catholic Atmajaya University, in the centre of Djakarta, close to the palace of the assembly. The soldiers brutally opened fire on the students and on the people indiscriminately. The following day the protest turned into general rioting in some of the commercial districts, with the people torching and looting some of the businesses. In a number of provincial towns the students continued to demonstrate in the streets until Monday 16th, as a gesture of solidarity towards their dead friends. On November 14 at Medan in northern Sumatra, over 10,000 students occupied the airport for the entire afternoon, causing the cancellation of a number of flights. On the same day, in the parish of Fiore del Carmelo in a western suburb of Djakarta, the cardinal celebrated the funeral of Bernardine Realino Norman Irawan, a student at the Catholic University who had been killed during the clashes of Friday 13th. There was great emotion among those present, because the young man was well known as one of the volunteer members of the medical team put together by the Jesuit Father Sandyawan Sumardi - following the earlier unrest of May, as a result of which Suharto was forced to step down as president. Following the funeral ceremony Frans Seda, a well-known Catholic and former finance minister, made an emotional appeal to the journalists, asking why the reform movement should deserve to be repaid with violence, blood and death. "If that is the way it must be, then we are ready, but is that the only response? This tragedy must not happen again. If it happens again it means that they want to hurt the country," he told Fides. Many Catholics feel great sympathy towards the students because they are articulating the real hopes of the people. The gates of the Atmajaya Catholic University were adorned with funeral wreaths. The people of Djakarta spontaneously helped the students, giving them food and medicine. In the clashes that took place in the capital between 11th and 13th November, during the special session of the Supreme consultative assembly of the state, 17 people were killed and at least 456 injured. This information was given by the Jesuit Father Sandyawan Sumardi, who leads the group Volunteers for Humanity. His information was obtained from the volunteers themselves, who worked during the demonstrations. The 17 people killed included six students from various colleges, two university students, two policemen, one supermarket watchman, four Muslim activists and two other dead people who have not yet been identified. Also among the victims was one of the members of the volunteer staff, Bernardine Realino Norman Irawan, the economy student (mentioned above) at the Atmajaya Catholic University who was struck in the heart by a bullet on the afternoon of November 13. He died, together with some of his friends when the police opened fire on the crowd of demonstrators. On Sunday November 22 1998, during incidents provoked by Muslims, 13 churches were set on fire and 13 people killed, apparently on the spurious pretext that some of the Christian Amboina (a tribe of former head hunters) had ransacked three mosques the preceding night. According to others, the origin of the clashes was a dispute between Amboina Christians and Muslims in the Chinese quarter of Djakarta. However, according to Compass Direct the responsibility for the destruction lay with the Front for the Defence of Islam (PFI), who began with a hail of stone throwing against a Protestant church in Djakarta, following this up with other acts of violence, witnessed among others by foreign journalists, who saw acts of mutilation in the public streets. While the enraged crowd was shouting "We are Muslim gentlemen and they are Christian pigs" or "Kill all the pagans!", one of the leaders at the head of the Muslims is said to have called out to an army officer who was protecting some Amboina Christians to "stand aside and allow Islamic justice to take its course". On the walls of a burnt-out church were found scrawled these words: "Bantai Ambon" (Kill the Amboina) painted in large letters. The Indonesian Christian leaders have warned their congregations, trying to dissuade their own people from seeking vengeance, since they are aware of the violent customs within Indonesian culture, which is still often permeated with tribal elements such as the notion of the blood feud. In its edition of November 27 1998, Fides reports that following the rioting on Sunday November 22, the political and religious leaders called for calm and condemned the minority of rioters who were responsible for the massacres. On November 24, A.B. Susanto of the Forum of the Catholic Associations of Indonesia issued a general appeal to the citizens of the capital, calling for a return to peace among the people. And two opposition party leaders likewise supported and reiterated this appeal, condemning the violence and intolerance. According to Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organisation in the country, which numbers 35,000 members, and Megawati Sukarnoputri, the representative of the Indonesian Democratic Party, the phenomenon of intolerance is a limited, minority one. "The disorders show once again how a group of delinquents can easily be used by certain political factions for their own ends," the two leaders declared on November 24. The local authorities suspect that the violence was organised by a conservative Islamic elite in order to increase the pressure on the government. Local sources confirm that those responsible for the attacks were fundamentalist Islamic factions bent on exploiting the poverty and discontent of the people in order to stir up hatred and violence against the ethnic Chinese (who are mainly Christians or Buddhists) and against the symbols of their religions. In an official declaration issued on November 23, the Holy See expressed its concern over the situation and deplored the events, "so harmful to the traditional principles of tolerance which have prevailed in Indonesia under the Constitution of the country". However, there were nonetheless violent reprisals taken by Christians, during which, between November 30 and December 1, 15 mosques were attacked, ransacked and set on fire, together with a market, an Islamic school and a hostel for Muslim pilgrims in the region of Kupang (West Timor), a town that is majority Christian. During a radio broadcast the bishop of Kupang, Petrus Turang, publicly asked pardon for the incidents. The Indonesian newspapers, according to the MISNA agency of December 2 1998, confirm the hypothesis of "hidden manipulation" behind these public disorders, in an attempt to unleash a "horizontal" confrontation between the various ethnic and religious groups and so divert attention away from the legal proceedings against Suharto and the real problems of the country. But despite the letter of the law, there does exist a real and genuine persecution of Christianity in Indonesia. Over the last 20 years, 385 churches have been destroyed - 118 of them between 1996 and the present day - and 33 people have been killed. The explosions of violence have a political and economic root, in addition to a religious one. The Indonesian economy is to a large extent in the hands of Chinese Indonesians, almost all of them Catholics, who own 80 per cent of the private industry. In February 1998 it was mainly the shops and properties of these people that were attacked by the rioters. During the upheavals in May 1998, 1,200 ethnic Chinese were killed. Some fundamentalist Islamic groups are intolerant of the new religious movements, which are seeking to penetrate the country with support from the United States. There is a sharp contrast between two of the Islamic organisations, the first led by Wahid and the second by Amien Rais. This latter group will probably have the best of things, with the rise to power of Habibie, who is a friend and supporter of Rais and who came to power at the end of May 1998 after 32 years of government under Suharto. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 1998 draws an even more uncomfortable picture of the religious persecution that has been going on for decades. According to this account, since 1969 some 440 religious buildings have been destroyed in Indonesia, and in February 1998 alone at least 40 churches were subject to acts of vandalism. By contrast, Asia News and UCAN describe the small centre of Bawen, where the village head, a Muslim woman, has defended Mateus Dato, a former university lecturer, a Catholic and president of a local association, from attack by dozens of Muslims who wanted to smash up his home. In this village the Christian families outnumber the Muslim families by two to one, but there had been peaceful co-existence up to the point when Dato refused to give a favourable vote for the construction of a musholla (Islamic chapel). The Christians, although in a majority, still have no church, while just 200 yards from the place where they live a large mosque is emerging with a musholla attached to it. The worst religious repression is taking place in East Timor, a Portuguese colony up to 1975, which was invaded by the Indonesian army and proclaimed a province of Indonesia in 1976. The population have not accepted this annexation and in the first few months of 1997 alone there were 35 deaths, 81 injured and 633 people arrested, while 134 disappeared. The population here is 85 per cent Catholic. The only hope is that with the new government things might change. But Bishop Belo of Dili (East Timor), who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, has denounced the forcible conversion of orphans from Catholic families to Islam. Between 15 and 20 Catholic orphan children are taken away each year from East Timor to Indonesian institutions in Java, where their names are changed and they are brought up in Islam. Since 1997, East Timor has had two dioceses, that of Dili and that of Baucau. The first has 520,000 faithful, 66 priests and 280 religious, while the second has a little over 200,000 faithful and 22 priests. |
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