Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta – With the government sitting idly by in the face of violence and discrimination against them, religious minority groups in the country have turned to each other for support, looking to build partnerships that could protect them from future attacks.
Representatives from minority groups gathered in Jakarta to discuss different ways to confront challenges in freely practicing their faiths as well as setting up a joint mechanism that they could use to deal with future attacks.
"We were left alone in the face of attacks from vigilante groups that claimed to be righteous. This [community] will be the source of power for us to maintain strength in dealing with such groups as well as in campaigning for our rights to be defended by the state," Dian Jennie from the Cooperation Body for Indigenous Faiths (BKOK), a new organization set up by representatives from 250 indigenous faiths in the country, said on Monday.
Dian said that the coalition, however, did not hold out much hope for help from the government.
"Together, we hope that we can one day open the hearts of government officials so that maybe they will actually care about us and fully embrace us as rightful citizens of this country. With this movement, we also hope that perhaps our neighbors could become more aware of our struggle to get equal treatment," she said.
Dian said members of the minority groups had suffered greatly just to exercise their basic rights. "Most of us have had to bury our relatives close to our homes because we are not allowed to have a public burial at local cemeteries," said Dian, who subscribes to a Javanese indigenous faith.
In the gathering sponsored by the Setara human rights group, subscribers of indigenous faiths and other minority groups agreed to form a community to protect themselves.
The community will also serve as a sanctuary group for members of persecuted minority groups, including adherents of Ahmadiyah and Shiism, particularly those from West Nusa Tenggara and Sampang, Madura in East Java, who have been living in temporary homes after their homes were torched by their Sunni neighbors.
Members of many Christian congregations, who have been barred from going to their churches have also joined the organization.
Uminah, a member of the Ahmadiyah community in Manislor, West Nusa Tenggara, said that the gathering of the minority groups could put pressure on the government to revoke, among others, a local bylaw that prohibits Ahmadis from receiving basic administrative services.
Uminah said members of the community, who have been living in a shelter over the past seven years, suffered more discrimination after they were attacked by the Sunni majority in the area.
She said that around 400 couples from the community have had to leave their neighborhoods to obtain marriage certificates due to the local ordinance.
"According to the 2002 joint decree by the regent, we must convert in order to get the administrative services. Many of us should temporarily leave the neighborhood to get married because we declined to convert," Uminah said.
She added that many children in the neighborhood also had to drop out from their schools because they were not able to deal with the verbal abuse they received from their teachers and friends who considered their faith blasphemous.
Similar experiences where shared by members of the Shiite community in Sampang, who had to rely on charitable contributions following an attack on their village in August last year.
Members of the Christian congregation said that it would be a long in the struggle for equal rights.
"The struggle for justice might take a long time, but we will not give up. We're done being silenced. We will fight back. We call on human right defenders and other fellow citizens who share our convictions to be with us in this struggle," Rev. Palti Panjaitan from Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP) Filadelfia church said.