Source/Credit: The Australian
By Peter Alford | May 20, 2011
INDONESIA has been "strongly encouraged" to support a UN inquiry into abuses of religious freedom including murder, a potential serious embarrassment for the Yudhoyono administration.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay has asked Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa to allow her special rapporteur on freedom of religion to visit Indonesia this year. Her intervention comes as the UN General Assembly is due to vote tonight on Indonesia's bid for another term on the Human Rights Council, where it was vice-president last year.
In a firmly worded letter, Ms Pillay told Mr Natalegawa she was "particularly disturbed by the widespread violence and discrimination reported against the Ahmadiyah community".
Those include state-sanctioned closures of Ahmadi mosques, burning of homes and places of worship, violence and the mob murder of three members of the heterodox Muslim sect at Cikeusik, West Java, in February.
Ms Pillay raised recent attacks on Christian churches and congregations in Java, mostly by extremist Islamic groups, and the enforced dismantling of a Buddhist temple statue in North Sumatra.
Mr Natalegawa's spokesman was not available for comment yesterday afternoon but according to an earlier report, the Foreign Ministry had not yet received the letter, dated April 26.
Ifdhal Kasim, the chairman of Komnas HAM, Indonesia's official human rights guardian, said he also did not have the letter, although The Australian has seen a copy. It was essential, however, that the government respond and allow the rapporteur's visit, Mr Ifdhal said yesterday.
"We need an evaluation of human rights enforcement in Indonesia, and the national interest should not be claimed in an effort to shut that down," he said.
The Pillay letter underscores claims by Indonesian and international rights groups of a worsening climate of intolerance in the world's most populous Muslim nation -- more than 85 per cent of Indonesia's 238 million people are Muslim -- and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's reluctance to publicly confront it.
In the Ahmadiyah cases, the administration has stood back while provincial and local governments imposed suppressive regulations that are arguably unconstitutional. National ministers have blamed the Ahmadis' beliefs for the attacks on them, Jakarta's governor has publicly refused protective measures, and Dr Yudhoyono's public efforts have been limited to occasional and unspecific speeches urging tolerance.
Ms Pillay's letter calls for a complete review of national and local laws to ensure they comply with the national constitution and are in line with Indonesia's international treaty obligations.
"This increases considerably the pressure on the administration to account for its failures to protect the religious freedoms of the Ahmadiyah," said Greg Fealy, an Australian National University expert on politics and Islam in Indonesia. Dr Fealy said the situation justified more than ever Australian government support for moderate Islamic schools and education programs -- aid targeted for withdrawal last year by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.
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