There has been a “steady increase” in violent incidents against religious minorities, including persecution against Ahmadiyya and Shia Muslims, as well as some Christian communities, Kine said.

Source: ucanews.com | Katharina R. Lestari & Ryan Dagur, Jakarta

Around 100 members of the GKI Taman Yasmin and HKBP Filadelfia congregations attend a Sunday service in front of the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on October 12, 2014. Neither church has been able to obtain a building permit (Photo by Ryan Dagur)

Indonesia’s new president, Joko Widodo, must prioritize addressing religious intolerance by pursuing and prosecuting perpetrators, a rights watchdog is urging.

In a report launched Friday, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) contends that the Indonesian government has failed to protect religious minorities in the Muslim-majority country. This has effectively given a free pass to people who persecute minorities, according to Phelim Kine, HRW’s deputy director in Asia.

There has been a “steady increase” in violent incidents against religious minorities, including persecution against Ahmadiyya and Shia Muslims, as well as some Christian communities, Kine said.

“The government has absolutely failed to protect these people, to arrest perpetrators, and to ensure that it doesn’t happen again,” Kine told ucanews.com on Friday following a press conference to launch the Indonesia chapter of HRW’s yearly report on global rights.

The Indonesia report quotes statistics from the Jakarta-based Setara Institute, which counted 230 attacks on religious minorities in 2013 and 107 cases through November 2014. In almost all the documented cases, the alleged perpetrators came from the majority Sunni Islam community.

For example, the congregations of two prominent churches in… read more at ucanews.com