During campaign seasons, many candidates promote religious sentiments to draw votes and to curb popularity of the rivals. One of the issues that is often brought up is about the establishment of churches or the followers of Shiite and Ahmadiyah.
Source/Credit: Tempo News
By Tempo | January 25, 2015
The worsening religious freedom has now reached an alarming level. Violation of human rights can be found in almost all regions.
Setara Institute, an organization that conducts research on intolerance, recently reported 197 cases of violations of religious freedom in 2015.
The figure has drastically risen compared to that of the previous year, which saw 134 cases reported.
West Java has been named as a region with the most violations, which is 44 cases, followed with Aceh with 34 cases.
According to that institution, the issues have got more complicated because regency government and city government were also reported involved in the violations.
There are at least 31 policies that are discriminative and restrict religious freedoms.
The beginning of the involvement of regional governments can be traced during regional elections.
During campaign seasons, many candidates promote religious sentiments to draw votes and to curb popularity of the rivals. One of the issues that is often brought up is about the establishment of churches or the followers of Shiite and Ahmadiyah.
After they are elected, regional leaders who sell sentiment of intolerance, like it or not, have to repay their constituents although it is against the constitution.
Not only to repay the ‘debts’, supports from the regional governments to intolerance groups are also regarded as ‘investment’ for the next election.
Regional leaders should realize that the exploitation of intolerance issues will only bring long-term problems for the regions.
Many researchers on social issues al believe that terrorism stems from intolerance acts that are nurtured, which lead to radical groups.
Law enforces should not be afraid to take a strong stand against violation of religious freedom, which is protected by the 1945 Constitution.
The constitution says that everyone is free to embrace his or her religion and to worship.
It is the state’s duty to guarantee the right.
Supervision to the implementation of regional head elections must be strengthened, not only by the Election Supervision Agency (Bawaslu) but also by the general public, religious figures and people’s figures.
Along with the involvement of the public, through either formal or informal education awareness about the importance of tolerance must also be raised.
The people must be directed to make the vision of tolerance as one of the assessment measures in voting for a regional leader.
If understanding about tolerance has already been established, the chances are closed for candidates of regional leaders to sell intolerance issues.
On the contrary, the chances are wide open for candidates who pledge recognition to diversity.
The central government must not shun its responsibility.
President Joko Widodo will definitely not forget his Nawa Cita principles, which upholding diversity and strengthening social restoration.
As leader of this country, he is demanded to speak more to the public to reinforce the country’s recognition to diversity.
It is time that violence against those is considered ‘different’ must be ended.
Read original post here: Indonesia: Religious Freedom Under Threat
This content-post is archived for backup and to keep archived records of any news Islam Ahmadiyya. The views expressed by the author and source of this news archive do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of Ahmadiyya Times. Ahmadiyya Times is not an organ of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, nor in any way associated with any of the community's official websites.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comments. Any comments irrelevant to the post's subject matter, containing abuses, and/or vulgar language will not be approved.