Indonesia: Police Across the Country Heed Calls To Boost Protection of Sect Communities

In the capital, Jakarta Police Chief Insp. Gen. Sutarman offered his guarantee that Ahmadiyah members were safe in the city and its immediate surroundings.

File photo: Security forces guarding an Ahmadiyya location

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: The Jakarta Globe
By JG | February 8, 2011

As the National Human Rights Commission launched a team on Monday to probe the violent attack on the Ahmadiyah community in Banten, police and authorities in Java and Lombok stepped up measures to prevent similar incidents from erupting in their areas.

The commission, also known as Komnas HAM, had already formed a team charged with investigating the case, chairman Ifdhal Kasim said.

“The team has started working [on Monday] and they will depart soon for Pandeglang,” he told a news conference.

In the capital, Jakarta Police Chief Insp. Gen. Sutarman offered his guarantee that Ahmadiyah members were safe in the city and its immediate surroundings.


Sutarman said he had ordered stepped-up patrols and close monitoring of areas where Ahmadiyah communities were known to live.

Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Baharudin Djafar said that there were 13 such locations being watched in the city.

In West Java, which has seen a series of attacks on Ahmadiyah communities in the past years, Governor Ahmad Heryawan said the provincial police chief had ordered all district and municipal police chiefs to anticipate and prepare for any violence against Ahmadiyah communities in their jurisdictions.

Heryawan also issued a message to district and municipal leaders to work to prevent any outbreaks of violence in their locales.

“What is expected is that there should be no cases of violence. There should be no violence in our region,” he said.

In West Lombok, a district which has also seen eight cases of violence against Ahmadiyah communities since 1998, district chief Zainal Arony said Sunday’s fatal attack in Banten “should not infect other regions.”

Central Java Police Chief Insp. Gen. Edward Aritonang ordered all district and municipal police chiefs to display a show of force on Monday while guarding pockets of Ahmadis in the region.

“Guards them openly, by uniformed police as well as plainclothes detectives,” he said.

Yogyakarta governor Sultan Hamengkubuwono X called on all residents to learn from the Banten tragedy and prevent it from repeating itself in the province.

“The point was not who sparked the dispute, but [people are] not supposed to impose their will for personal or class interests,” he said.

In Solo, Mayor Joko Widodo gave assurances that the city remained safe for all believers. He added, “Harmony between people is the non-negotiable final value.”

Alissa Qotrunnada Munawaroh, better known as Alissa Wahid, daughter of the late President Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, said she was redoubling efforts to establish networking with various groups in the country to continue her father’s goal of safeguarding pluralism in Indonesia.

“We call it a movement of the Gusdurian Network,” she said.

Indriaswati Saptaningrum, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), said the violence in Banten involved a mob claiming to act in the name of their religion.

Condemnation of the incident on Monday also came from the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) and the Forum of the Muslim Community of South Sulawesi. JG



Read original post here: Police Across the Country Heed Calls To Boost Protection of Sect Communities