BOGOR, Indonesia — With its tree-lined streets, Dutch colonial buildings and soothing botanical gardens, the quaint West Java mountain town of Bogor hardly appears a hotbed of religious intolerance. Yet Bogor is on the front line of a national debate in Indonesia about religious freedom, amid an increase in discrimination and violent attacks against minority Christians and Islamic sects.
Andri Tambunan for The International Herald Tribune
A local Christian congregation, known as GKI Yasmin, has been closed since 2008.
The battle of Bogor centers on its mayor, Diani Budiarto, who for two years has ignored a Supreme Court order to reinstate a building permit he revoked in 2008 for a local Christian congregation, known as GKI Yasmin, and sealed off its church construction site.
The Yasmin case has drawn international attention, including from the Vatican, the United Nations and the U.S. State Department. However, Mr. Diani, who is Muslim, insists he is not discriminating against Christians, but only following national regulations on houses of worship. He said 8 of the 60 required signatures from local residents supporting the new church were forged.
“This is an issue of regulations,” Mr. Diani said in an interview. “It’s not a religious issue.”
But many analysts, Christian groups, and religious and human rights advocates say the issue is very much about religion, not just in Bogor but across Indonesia. They link it to the implementation of regional autonomy in 1999 as part of the country’s transition toward democracy after the late President Suharto’s three decades of highly centralized, authoritarian rule.
Categories: Anti Islam act by Muslims, Asia