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The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 9 | Issue 8 | Number 2 | Article ID 3489 | Feb 21, 2011 1 Intolerance, Religious Lynchings and the Future of Indonesia 不寛容、宗教的リンチ、インドネシアの将来 Andre Vltchek Intolerance, Religious Lynchings and the Future of Indonesia Text and Photos by Andre Vltchek Twice in the same week two gruesome attacks shook Indonesia and the world. On February 6, 2011, in Cikeusik Village, West Java – more than 1.000 furious Muslims lynched three members of a minority (or, as seen by some Muslims, ‘deviant’) Islamic sect Ahmadiyah. Two days later, on February 8 in Temanggung, Central Java, a crowd stormed a local courthouse and vandalized three churches after a man – a former priest who allegedly insulted both Islam and Christianity in his pamphlet – was sentenced to five years in prison, the maximum sentence. Protesters demanded the death penalty. A third attack soon followed. Burned Ceiling of One of the Temanggung Churches The last kilometers of the journey from Semarang to Temanggung lead through dramatic mountainous terrain, that is if one takes the badly marked shortcut from Bergas to Bandungan. Winding through stunning rice fields and bamboo groves, this road is beautiful but it would hardly please the piercing eyes of pious religious believers: its edges are dotted with one-hour hotels, karaoke clubs and pubs. In these parts of Central Java it is not uncommon to see lone sex workers descending from the hills along the road, in high heels and short skirts, still shaky after long nights of heavy alcohol consumption. Vista near Bandungan Near Bandungan at a tiny intersection a narrow road leads to Gedong Songo – one of the oldest Hindu temples in Java. This magnificent temple was built by the Sanjaya Dynasty, which controlled Central Java in the 8th and 9th centuries. Now Gedong Songo has no Hindu guardians–the staff is exclusively Muslim. Makeshift stalls are everywhere and the locals promote horse rides. The temple hardly conveys a spiritual or religious aura.

Intolerance, Religious Lynchings and the Future of ...apjjf.org/-Andre-Vltchek/3489/article.pdfHindu temples in Java. This magnificent temple was built by the Sanjaya Dynasty, which

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  • The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 9 | Issue 8 | Number 2 | Article ID 3489 | Feb 21, 2011

    1

    Intolerance, Religious Lynchings and the Future of Indonesia不寛容、宗教的リンチ、インドネシアの将来

    Andre Vltchek

    Intolerance, Religious Lynchingsand the Future of Indonesia

    Text and Photos by Andre Vltchek

    Twice in the same week two gruesomeattacks shook Indonesia and the world. OnFebruary 6, 2011, in Cikeusik Village, WestJava – more than 1.000 furious Muslimslynched three members of a minority (or,as seen by some Muslims, ‘deviant’)Islamic sect Ahmadiyah. Two days later, onFebruary 8 in Temanggung, Central Java, acrowd stormed a local courthouse andvandalized three churches after a man – aformer priest who allegedly insulted bothIslam and Christianity in his pamphlet –was sentenced to five years in prison, themaximum sentence. Protesters demandedthe death penalty. A third attack soonfollowed.

    Burned Ceiling of One of the TemanggungChurches

    The last kilometers of the journey fromSemarang to Temanggung lead throughdramatic mountainous terrain, that is if one

    takes the badly marked shortcut from Bergas toBandungan. Winding through stunning ricefields and bamboo groves, this road is beautifulbut it would hardly please the piercing eyes ofpious religious believers: its edges are dottedwith one-hour hotels, karaoke clubs and pubs.In these parts of Central Java it is notuncommon to see lone sex workers descendingfrom the hills along the road, in high heels andshort skirts, still shaky after long nights ofheavy alcohol consumption.

    Vista near Bandungan

    Near Bandungan at a tiny intersection a narrowroad leads to Gedong Songo – one of the oldestHindu temples in Java. This magnificent templewas built by the Sanjaya Dynasty, whichcontrolled Central Java in the 8th and 9thcenturies. Now Gedong Songo has no Hinduguardians–the staff is exclusively Muslim.Makeshift stalls are everywhere and the localspromote horse rides. The temple hardlyconveys a spiritual or religious aura.

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    Gedong Songo Temple

    Approaching Temanggung, police and militaryvehicles are everywhere. In the centre,armored trucks and troop transporters blockone another in front of the modest local policeheadquarters. Uniformed police and armypersonnel are patrolling all key corners andbuildings, especially the churches. Theirpresence seems to be unnecessarily heavy now– no mob would dare to attack with even afraction of such law enforcers in sight.

    Too Late

    “How many people were arrested?” I ask,actually knowing the number, which is14.

    “Can’t release the number”, answers the high-ranking officer. “It’s still a secret.”

    “What are the charges?” I try again.

    “Secret,” he replies.

    In front of vandalized church – protectorsor perpetrators?

    The police station is right next to the church –one of those that were damaged on February8th. Dozens of police officers are crammed intothe tiny wooden guard’s shack, smoking clovecigarettes and grinning at those who come tovisit. One wonders how the mob couldvandalize the church just meters from thepolice station, and on the same side of the road.

    I first go to the Muslim religious leaders. I wantto hear their side of the story. What I know isthat there was a mildly deranged Catholicpriest from Manado, or more precisely formerpriest, as he actually turned against his faith.One day this priest who was by then living inJakarta, came to visit his relatives living in thistown – Temanggung. Before arriving he wrote a‘book’, actually a pamphlet, trashing bothCatholics and Muslims, comparing (visually)some symbols of Islam to male and femalereproductive organs. He distributed somecopies to local people. Someone, after lookingover few pages, got fired-up and denouncedhim to the police. The former priest wasarrested. What followed was a trial in the localcourthouse. The maximum sentence fordefaming religion in Indonesia is five years andhe was convicted and sentenced to themaximum. Then an outraged crowd stormedthe courthouse demanding the death penalty.The Defendant, as well as the judges andlawyers, had to be evacuated. The mob thenwent on a rampage, desecrating the churches

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    and trying to set them on fire.

    Tafiq Hartono – Speaker of the Forum ofUnited Muslims

    “What happened here is actually very differentfrom what people saw on the news”, explainedthe Speaker of the Forum of United Muslims(Forum Umat Islam Bersatu), Taufiq Hartono.“But even we don’t know up to now whathappened. The attacks were definitelyprovoked by some interests from outside. Wedon’t know who began destruction of the court.They were not people from Temanggung. Noneof them were from here. Judging by theirdialects, the attackers were from Solo,Pekalongan, Kendal (all in Central Java:author); even from Jakarta. Our people justwant to live in peace.”

    “Why didn’t the local people who want to live inpeace defend the churches?” I asked.

    “We were tried to stop the mob, but the attackswere massive. At least 2 ,000 peopleparticipated. Some came in trucks; others bymotorbike. We hoped that the police would beable to stop attacks, but they were unable to doso. As far as we know, there were no membersof FPI taking part in this action (IslamicDefender’s Front – extreme group responsiblefor countless attacks on non-Muslims andmoderate Muslims: author). The police did verylittle to stop the mob. The Army arrived intrucks from the city of Magelang 30 minutes

    after the violence erupted.”

    Protecting the Courthouse – Indonesianstyle

    By the time I arrived, the courthouse had beencleaned of debris. Soldiers guarded theentrance, more than a dozen of them slept onthe floor. I managed to sneak in. After somewobbly attempts to appear official and get totheir feet, the soldiers fell back on their cartonsspread on the floor. Heat and humidityoverwhelmed them.

    The church near the police station looked muchmore battered. Statues were desecrated. Halfof the torso of Jesus was missing and so weresubstantial parts of the Virgin Mary. Theelectric organ was ruined. A wood carving ofThe Last Supper had several heads, includingthat of Jesus, cut off.

    “Of course there were local people among theattackers”, said local priest, Romo DwinugrahaSulistya. “But I have to agree that theyappeared to have been ordered; commanded. Itwas not a spontaneous act.”

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    Parts of Jesus are obviously missing

    The priest is remarkably composed, given whatoccurred recently in his congregation. “TheMob streamed through the streets, destroyingtraffic signs and converting them to weapons.Some people were carrying swords and stone-throwing slings. Some were armed withcobblestones. All symbols of Christianity weredestroyed: crosses, The Last Supper, statues ofJesus and Mary. All of our people – all Catholics– were crying when they entered the church.And not only Catholics, also Protestants, evensome Muslims; people of all religions cried. Atone point I asked everybody to pray together.” Not much left of them

    Once again I asked about the book that fired-upsuch destructive passions. It was alreadyresting in my bag – a ‘gift’ from one of themembers of The Forum of United Muslims - butI had not yet had time to read it.

    Father Dwinugraha Sulistya

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    “When he was distributing the book”, saidFather Dwinugraha Sulistya, “I decided to seefor myself what was going on, so I sent myassistant to talk to him. After all, he used to bea fellow priest and I wanted to know whatexactly he was trying to achieve. But heexplained that he did not consider himself to bea priest, anymore. Not even a Catholic! He saidhe did not believed in Hail Mary, in Holy Trinityand especially in the Catholic Churchhierarchy. He still believed in Jesus, but not inthe institution of the church. In his book hecompared religions; he compared The Bible andthe Koran. The first pages were fine, butfurther on the text deteriorated…”

    And so it did, as I found out later, reading thepamphlet in the car that was driving me back tothe city of Semarang. But 5 years in prison, oreven perhaps the death penalty, for that badlywritten outpouring of bitterness, produced bysomeone who was apparently suffering fromirreversible loss of faith?

    Decapitated Diners at Last Supper

    PASURUAN RELIGIOUS ATTACK

    As this article was about to go to press, anotherbrutal religious attack shook Indonesia. Thistime the victims were children – boys from aboarding school in Pasuruan.

    The Jakarta Post – Indonesia’s official Englishlanguage newspaper – reported that: “A mob of100 people attacked boarding school inPasuruan, East Java, on Tuesday, a day whenMuslims in the country commemorate thebirthday of the Prophet Muhammad.”

    Four boys suffered serious head injuries afterbeing beaten mercilessly by the mob thatarrived on motorbikes. Security guards wereinjured as well and several parts of the school(YAPI Islamic Boarding School) were destroyed.

    It appears that the crowd got ‘very angry’ (acommon description in Indonesia of the state ofpeople who are about to kill or injure those whodo not share the same race or religious belief)because they thought the school was run byShiites who are the minority in predominantlySunni Indonesia. In a bizarre twist, later, somepublic statements made that clerics at theschool were actually only ‘sympathetic’ toShiites but taught Sunni teachings.

    I visited the city of Pasuruan just a few daysbefore the accident. I saw the polluted portwhere local fishermen as well as those from theisland of Madura were loading and unloadingtheir catch, as well as illegal logs brought infrom the island.

    Two steps from the car (before I could eventake out my equipment) fingers were pointed atmy face, calling me stereotypically ‘albino’(‘bule’ – a common Indonesian insult to whites).Coolies were twisting their torsos, showing metheir backside and making appalling sounds.Children soon joined the adults. I stood just afew steps from the police station where twomen in uniforms smoked their cloves, observingthe scene. I went there and complained, askingwhether they did not consider this a ‘racistincident’. One of the officers blew the smoke inmy face and then spoke with insulting clarity:“This is Indonesia”.

    I always wonder (being 75% white and only25% Asian ‘by blood’) whether I should just

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    swallow these insults while working in this‘moderate and friendly country’. But then Iremember all those horrors that non-whitepeople experience in Indonesia – horrors thatthey have shared with me on many occasions -Papuans (considered ‘black’ – very ‘bad’ here),Chinese and even visiting Africans.

    Local policeman in Pasaruan insults theauthor

    Then it occurs to me, maybe all this is somehowconnected: the loud shouts, the intolerance, theracial and religious attacks, even acts ofgenocide that are occurring on the soil of thisarchipelago.

    Two days before the attack on the courthouseand churches in Temanggung, a mob in thevillage of Cikeusik (Banten Province in WestJava) began closing in on the house thatbelonged to the Ahmadiyah Islamic minoritysect. The brutal attack was filmed by severalmobile phones of the attackers (a very commonpractice in Indonesia) then distributed on theweb. Three people died and seven werewounded.

    Zafrullah Pontoh from Ahmadiyah

    This is how The Asia Times described the videodepicting the lynching of Ahmadiyah membersin the article “Death To Minorities InIndonesia” by Katherine Demopoulos: Videofootage has emerged showing the murders ingraphic detail. First a mob armed with knives,sticks and stones attacked a group of Ahmadisdefending a home. Rocks fly, glass shatters, aman smi l e s f o r the camera and theoverwhelmed police mill about helplessly.

    Later, two men are shown, stripped from thewaist down, lying lifeless and muddied on theground. Blood oozes into the mud, shouts of"Allahu Akbar" (God is great in Arabic) eruptand the attackers launch another savage volleyof blows using sticks and bamboo poles, asothers use their phones to record it.”

    I tried to access the video but was asked toprove that I was more than 18 years old. Ipostponed inspection until the next day but by14th February the video appeared to have beendeleted.

    This was not the first time I experiencedlynching and torture in Indonesia, indeed, it isdifficult to think of other parts of contemporaryAsia that rival it in this respect. I stillremember the self-congratulatory smiles of themurderers in Ambon (Moluccas), in Solo,Lombok, and East Timor. Many of thosecommitting gruesome crimes are happy to pose

    http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MB12Ae01.html

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    for cameras. They see nothing wrong with theirdeeds. Recent release of the video of a torturedPapuan man (alleged a freedom fighter) isillustrative of the ‘naive nature’ of Indonesianbrutality: the man had his genitals burned andsoldiers were running a knife across his neck,but the military men merrily recorded theirdeeds, eventually passing the video on.

    Lombok church burned down by Muslimextremists on January 17, 2000

    In Semarang I talk late into the night with NoorHuda Ismail – the foremost expert on Islamicextremism in Indonesia. Huda himself wentthrough education in a radical madrassah,eventually changing course and beginning tohelp several hardliner Islamic terrorists(potential and actual) to re-integrate intosociety and abandon militancy. At one pointHuda worked as a correspondent for TheWashington Post.

    Noor Huda Ismail

    Now he was outraged at what had occurred:outraged by the people of Indonesia, by ‘elites’and by Western media and academia, whichconsistently depicts Indonesia as “tolerant,peaceful and democratic”:

    “ T h e p r o b l e m w i t h m o s tIndonesian Muslims is that theydon’t have their own opinion”,explains Huda Ismail. “They followblindly what leaders say or whatthe Koran says or the hadiths say.They don’t apply critical thinking.Therefore, when their leaders saythat they are moderate andtolerant followers of Islam, mostpeople just say ‘yes’ and think thatthis is correct. Most IndonesianMuslims never act on their owninitiative. Ask them something andchances are they will reply: ‘Oh,my leader said… Oh yes, the Koransays…’ When they say they aremoderate, it is because it’s whatthey hear from their leaders. Toprove my point, just go to anymosque and ask whether theyaccept Ahmadiyah!”

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    Syekh Muhammad Kholil Mosque inBangkalan, Madura

    I actually did. A few days before meeting withHuda, I drove to the conservative island ofMadura, not far from Surabaya. There I visitedthe enormous Syekh Muhammad Kholil Mosquein the city of Bangkalan - built like some lavishpalace in the Gulf. I found caretaker –Mohammad Hasan - and asked him what hethought about recent events in West andCentral Java and whether he was prepared toaccept Ahmadiyah. With no hesitation hereplied:

    Mohammad Hassan thinks that Ahmadiyahmembers should be killed but churches

    should be spared

    “Ahmadiyah members should be killed. It isabout faith. In Indonesia, we don’t wantAhmadiyah because it deviates from theteaching of the sharia. They deserved to bekilled because they are destroying people’sfaith. When it comes to burning churches, I amagainst it. We are a peaceful religion.”

    To put things in perspective, the reasonAhmadiyah evokes so much hatred amongMuslims in Indonesia is because it claims thatthe last prophet was not Muhammad butAhmad (Mirza Ghulam Ahmad 1835-1908).Ahmadiyah is an Islamic religious movementfounded in India near the end of the 19 th

    century.

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    Back in Semarang, Huda continues: “We arehiding behind slogans like ‘A Tolerant IslamicState’, but if you go below the skin, we are nottolerant at all . To make things worse,Europeans and Americans are not critical of us.Why: because of our strategic and geopoliticalposition. For the West, Indonesia can serve as abuffer zone against the rise of China and India.We had proven, especially during the Suhartodictatorship, that we are prepared to ‘talk’ and‘negotiate’ with the West. Furthermore,Indonesia is the country with the largestMuslim population in the world. So to portrayIndonesia as a moderate Islamic nation isuseful in challenging existing beliefs in theWest about the inevitability of the ‘clash ofcivilizations’. This is all totally wrong and verymuch against the interest of Indonesian people.We are Asians – with very different ways ofthinking and solving problems. By acceptingdefinitions of ourselves from abroad we areselling our souls to the devil.”

    It is true that the mainstream press andacademia used plenty of self-restraint fordecades with respect to Indonesian religiousexcesses connected to the genocides in EastTimor and Papua, as well as the mass slaughterthat accompanied Suharto’s US-sponsored coupof 1965/66 in which between 500.000 and 3million people died (there has been no officialinvestigation to provide authoritative figures tothis day). Seven years ago I discussed the issuewith the former President of Indonesia –Abdurrahman Wahid (popularly known as GusDur). At that time he was still the head of NU(Nahdlatul Ulama – the largest Muslimorganization in the world) and he apologized oncamera to the victims of 1965/66 because, ashe said “I do not want Islam to go down inhistory as a bigoted religion.” (Documentaryfilm: “Terlena – Breaking of a Nation”, 2004).

    President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur)

    What he was referring to was participation ofthe religious cadres (mainly but not only NU) inmass murder of 1965/66. During that time,Indonesian Islam became an ally of Westerninterests in the region – destruction ofCommunism and all progressive parties,movements and individuals - thereforebecoming untouchable. It was also promoted as‘peaceful’ and ‘tolerant’. The next stage ofcooperation came with Afghanistan – whennumerous jihadi cadres from Indonesia were inthe forefront of the fight against the SovietUnion in Afghanistan.

    The mainstream media in the West had chosento largely overlook major milestones andindicators that were warnings of increasingintolerance inside Indonesian society underpressure from the main religion of the land.

    Abroad, there was almost no coverage of July25, 2008 attack against the ArastamarEvangelical School of Theology (SETIA) thatkept more than one thousand children living intents for almost a year (The US Ambassadorvisited the site but did not even bother toproduce an official communiqué). There wasvery little of coverage of burning churches, ofthe National Monument ‘accident’ (whenNational Alliance for the Freedom of Faith andReligion [AKKBB] activists had entered theMonument area to commemorate the 63rd year

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    of Sukarno’s tolerant Pancasila state ideologyand were confronted and beaten by extremistFPI members right in front of the police).

    SETIA students were forced to live andstudy in tents

    Since the secular clauses of the Indonesianconstitution were ignored and violated by theintroduction of sharia law in Aceh, Tangerangand other provinces, very little had been saidand written.

    Two recent attacks changed the atmosphere.

    “Indonesia – Land of Tolerance or Terror?”read the headline of Huffington Post onFebruary 14, 2011. The article begins with thissummary: “Indonesia once hailed itself as amoderate, diverse nation that protects freedomof religion for all its citizens, with a nationalmotto "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika," meaning unityin diversity. Three months ago, PresidentObama praised Indonesia as a model ofreligious tolerance when he said that Indonesiaand the United States share principles of unityand tolerance. The grim reality, however, isthat Indonesia is losing the right to call itself atolerant nation that promotes or protectsdiversity. Instead, due to failed policies, itsgovernment has allowed a real militant threatto grow within its borders.” A description of theevents follows:

    “Hard-line extremists are literally getting away

    with murder, as their vile attacks result in nopunishment. At the root of the problem isIndonesia 's misused 1965 Blasphemy Law,which makes it unlawful ‘to, intentionally, inpublic, communicate, counsel, or solicit publicsupport for an interpretation of a religion or aform of religious activity that is similar to theinterpretations or activities of an Indonesianreligion but deviates from the tenets of thatreligion.’"

    Temanggung after attacks

    Even usually tame press agencies this timeoffered some substantial coverage.

    While there is little prospect that substantialcriticism will come from abroad, oppositionmay yet grow from the ranks of Indonesianclerics themselves, some of whom are stillinspired by the social secularism of deposedPresident Abdurrahman Wahid, who passedaway December 30, 2009.

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    Prof. Yusny Saby at home in Aceh

    In his house in Banda Aceh, Professor YusnySaby from Islamic University (IAIN) Ar-Raniryis speaking with sadness and bitterness aboutmany Indonesian Muslims: “We always havereligion but not necessarily spirituality. Manyin Indonesia claim that Islam is the solution,but we Muslims often create the problemsourselves. Look at our country now. It is saidthat corruption is haram. But corruptionbecame an essential part of our culture. Andnobody does anything about it – there are norole models.”

    Almost no one looks to President Yudhoyono —twice a student at Fort Benning, platooncommander in occupied East Timor, andgeneral during Suharto’s dictatorship — forsubstantial positive changes. He is considered‘weak’, but in fact he is powerful in stubbornlyrefusing to implement any significant reforms(including in the judiciary) in a society that stillmoves by deadly and destructive inertia afterSuharto stepped down in 1998.

    Katherine Demopoulos writes:

    Government passivity in dealingwith the attacks is also an issue,says Lutfi Assyaukanie, co-founderof the Liberal Islam Network and alecturer at Paramadina University."The roots of the problem lie in the

    firmness of government and in thereligious authority. We are a bignation with no big leader. SBY[Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono]doesn ' t do anyth ing . On lys t a t e m e n t s , s t a t e m e n t s ,statements."

    Assyaukanie says the leadership ofIndonesia's two main Muslimorganizations, Nadhlatul Ulamaand Muhammadiyah, is "so weak"and "very political". He says theIndonesian Council of Ulemas(MUI) is also to blame because in2005 it reiterated a fatwa (edict)denounc ing Ahmadiyah asheretical.

    In the meantime, my email and text messageexchange with some leaders of Ahmadiyahdried out; at least for the time being. Aftercountless attacks and the recent murder, theydo not feel like debating the issue. They are inmourning and scared.

    Mr. Asep, one of the members of Ahmadiyah inSukabumi did text me: “We are concerned.Islam is a peaceful religion. It was neversupposed to be put in the service of anarchy.”

    High security prison Porong, East Java,where some terrorists are doing time

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    Academic and Catholic priest Romo Baskorofrom PUSDEP in Yogyakarta offered histhoughts on the issue: “Recent violence againstreligious groups in West and Central Javareminds us of two things: One: In Indonesiareligions have the potential to be a constructivepower for the nation. Two: but at the same timecertain groups to serve their own interestscould manipulate religion. Evidence indicatesthat point number two is a strong suspectbehind the violence. Whoever is responsiblemust be brought to justice.”

    But who is behind these attacks? I coveredcountless outbursts of violence and intoleranceall over the archipelago. No one ever tookresponsibil ity. It was always ‘them’ –provocateurs, some invisible interests andhands. I saw real hands holding machetes,cutting into people’s flesh, mouths screaminginsults and threats. I would be more convincedif responsibility was at least spread equallybetween those ‘unknown forces’ (that inIndonesia always remain conveniently‘unknown’) and those who are actually openlybeating people, killing, cutting them to pieces.The second group also, somehow miraculously,never gets punished.

    Former President Abdurrahman Wahid oncetold me on the record that he knew who blewup The Hotel Marriott in Jakarta in 2003.According to him these were not Islamicfundamentalists – but security forces, thebranch of which would better not be named inthis article. But why then was no one arrested,charged with murder and tried?

    The problem remains that Indonesian society isexceptionally passive when it comes to fightinginjustice.

    Despite the tremendous outcry of the TwitterCommunity in Indonesia (social network groupsare thriving here, becoming they have becomea status symbol for middle and upper classes) –the social networks were unable to organizemore than 100 lonely figures to protest the

    recent deadly events in the rain in front of thelegendary Hotel Indonesia.

    Huda Ismail has a compelling suggestion:“Instead of listening to empty praise, it wouldbe much better for the Indonesian governmentto accept that we have serious problems hereand finally deal with it!”

    Church community consoles itself

    In Temanggung, Ibu Priyati sits at the back ofthe church destroyed by fire. There is adetermined look on her face: “We are onlyhuman so of course we are afraid, but we knowthat we can rely on God that is great. Almost allthe members of the church returned here afterthe attack.”

    Lavish mosque interiors in one of thepoorest countries in Asia

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    Relying on God was not what the foundingfather of Indonesia – Sukarno – had in mind asthe way forward for the nation. A religious manhimself, he strongly believed in socialism and‘nation and character building’; he believed insecularism and in secular justice. It may bet ime to rev is i t o ld s logans f rom theindependence era; ideas and pillars on whichIndonesia was supposed to stand before thebrutal interruption of its natural developmentin 1965. It is highly unlikely that the Indonesianarchipelago will succeed in achieving peace,prosperity and justice under the leadership ofthose who served faithfully during the years ofdarkness and terror.

    Andre Vltchek – novel ist , f i lmmaker,investigative journalist, author of numerousbooks and documentary films. His latest non-fiction book – Oceania – deals with westernneo-colonialism in Polynesia, Micronesia andMelanesia. His latest novel about warcorrespondents and Latin American revolutionis available in French.

    ©Andre Vltchek. Text and photos may not bereproduced without consent of the author.

    R e c o m m e n d e d c i t a t i o n : A n d r eVltchek, Intolerance, Religious Lynchings andthe Future of Indonesia, The Asia-PacificJournal Vol 9, Issue 8 No 2, Februrary 21,2011.

    Click on the cover to order.

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    Click on the cover to order.

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