New report
says more than 100 people jailed solely for peacefully expressing their views
during Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono presidency
Jakarta Globe, Bastiaan Scherpen, Nov 21, 2014
Jakarta. Slamming a skyrocketing rate of convictions based on questionable interpretations of a half-century old blasphemy law during the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Amnesty International on Wednesday called on Indonesia’s new government to usher in an era of respect for human rights.
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| Shiite cleric Tajul Muluk is escorted by police after being sentenced for blasphemy, in this file photo taken on July 12, 2012. (AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto) |
Jakarta. Slamming a skyrocketing rate of convictions based on questionable interpretations of a half-century old blasphemy law during the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Amnesty International on Wednesday called on Indonesia’s new government to usher in an era of respect for human rights.
Launching a
report that discusses the criminalization of beliefs in Indonesia in the past
decade, Rupert Abbott, Amnesty’s research director for Southeast Asia and the
Pacific, told a Jakarta audience that the organization supports President Joko
Widodo’s commitment to human rights, but that the new government has its work
cut out in a climate of “intensifying intolerance.”
‘Deviant’
teachings
Freedom of
religion is “one of the most pressing issues facing Indonesia,” Abbott said
during the launch of the report, adding that his organization documented more
than 100 cases of people being jailed solely for peacefully expressing their
views in the years 2004-14 — almost one each month.
Titled
“Prosecuting Beliefs: Indonesia’s Blasphemy Laws,” the report lists a number of
cases that have made headlines in Indonesia and beyond in recent years,
including that of Tajul Muluk, a Shiite cleric from Sampang in East Java jailed
for his “deviant” teachings.
Shiite
villagers from Sampang were driven from their homes in December 2011 and remain
displaced.
Asfinawati,
one of the lawyers representing the cleric, and a former executive director of
the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), condemned the court proceedings that
ultimately resulted in her client being jailed for four years on what she
described as highly dubious grounds and with key witnesses feeling so
intimidated that they refused to testify.
One of the
key problems, she explained, is legal uncertainty. “There is no official legal
interpretation of what can be defined as blasphemous,” Asfinawati said.
Prisoners
of conscience
Besides
meeting civil society activists, the Amnesty delegation this week also met with
lawmakers and senior government officials. Abbott said his team had urged the
government to immediately release at least nine prisoners of conscience currently
behind bars.
He said
Amnesty considers everyone who is jailed for peacefully expressing their
political views a prisoner of conscience, including Filep Karma and Johan
Teterisa.
Filep is
serving a 15-year sentence for raising the Morning Star flag in Jayapura,
Papua, in 2004. The flag is a symbol of the Papuan struggle for independence
from Indonesia. Johan is a school teacher from Maluku who was sentenced to life
in prison for unfurling a separatist flag in front of then-president Yudhoyono
in Ambon in 2007.
Josef Roy
Benedict, Amnesty’s campaigner on Indonesia and Timor-Leste, added that the
organization was also urging Joko to find a solution for the Ahmadis driven
from their homes in Lombok. This community has been forced to stay in a Mataram
dormitory since their expulsion from West Lombok in February 2006. And,
Benedict said, there is also the issue of discriminative bylaws on the regional
level that urgently needs the president’s attention.
Turbulence
ahead
At the
press conference, Bonar Tigor Naipospos of the Setara Institute explained that
the fall of Suharto’s New Order regime created an opportunity for hard-line
Islamist groups to make themselves heard and start pushing a political agenda.
These groups also managed to promote intolerant strains of thought as part of
an overall religious revival in the world’s largest Muslim-majority
nation-state, he said.
“Religion
is being used as a political tool,” Bonar stressed.
The
issuance of several key fatwa’s during Yudhoyono’s decade in power by the
nation’s top Islamic advisory body, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI),
underlines the rising tide of intolerance. An MUI fatwa that denounces
pluralism, liberalism and secularism, issued in 2005, is often seen as having
set the tone for a decade of increasingly open persecution of groups like the
Ahmadiyah and followers of the Shiite branch of Islam. The 1965 blasphemy law,
hardly used in the era before Yudhoyono’s presidency, has since become an
important tool for opponents of sects seen as deviant.
However, Bonar
said that with regard to religious freedom, the precedents set by Joko when he
served as governor of Jakarta were promising. He cited the examples of Joko’s
unrelenting support for Susan Jasmine Zulkifli, a Christian official appointed
as chief of the majority-Muslim Lenteng Agung subdistrict of South Jakarta,
triggering protests, and the fact that Joko managed to resolve a church dispute
in Tambora, West Jakarta.
Still, the
deputy chairman of the Setara Institute warned that it would not be easy for the
new government to improve the situation for minorities under siege. Pointing to
the power of the Red-White coalition (KMP) of Joko’s rivals, which controls the
House of Representatives, Bonar feared efforts to oppose any attempts to change
problematic laws.
“The
Indonesian political situation will experience turbulence,” he said.
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