Amir Tejo, Camelia Pasandaran, Arientha Primanita & Ezra Sihite, Surabaya/Jakarta – The bedraggled group of 162 men, women and children had since August last year been forced to live in squalor in a sports center that was meant to be their temporary refuge, after a mob drove them out of their home village in Sampang district on Madura Island.

If they thought they had scraped the bottom of the barrel, they were proven wrong on Thursday when the authorities, also backed by a mob, once again ordered them relocated, this time to a market in Sidoarjo, on the East Java mainland.

The offense that had condemned them into exile twice in less than a year was the simple fact that they were Shiites among a conservative Sunni majority.

The plight of the Sampang Shiites, as the world has come to know them, entered a dark new chapter this week with the latest forced eviction, which an advocate for the group says was instigated by Sunni clerics and district officials who wanted the Shiites out of Madura.

Akhol Firdaus, from the People's Anti-Violence Network (Jamak), told the Jakarta Globe on Thursday that Iklil Al Milal, the head of the beleaguered group, was summoned to the district police headquarters on Wednesday, where the police chief, district officials and clerics ordered his group to leave the sports center because a prayer gathering of Sunnis was planned at a nearby square.

"But Iklil said he couldn't speak for all the Shiites and so he couldn't make that decision on his own," Akhol said. He added that in response, the police and district officials said they would not be responsible for any harm that befell the group if it refused to leave.

The prayer gathering went ahead as scheduled on Thursday morning with around 5,000 people in attendance, with the preachers repeatedly denouncing the Shiites as heretics.

As the event ended, the Sampang deputy district chief, Fadillah Budiono, led a group of about 1,000 people to the sports center, where they confronted Iklil and once again told him to lead his group out of the facility. "I'm not sure how badly they intimidated him that he fainted and had to be taken to hospital," Akhol said.

He added that Fadillah had shown up with trucks and buses and was accompanied by several hundred police officers. In light of the overwhelming pressure, the Shiites agreed to be relocated.

"Let's be clear: This eviction was ordered by the Sampang administration and the Sunni clerics," Akhol said. "The prayer gathering had ended without incident when the deputy district chief showed up and, together with the clerics, went to the sports center to tell the Shiites to move to Sidoarjo."

Herstaning Ikhlas, a lawyer representing the affected group, confirmed separately that Fadillah and the district police chief, Adj. Sr. Comr. Irman Edwin Siregar, were at the sports center overseeing the eviction. Agus, a lawyer with the Universalia Legal Aid Foundation, which also advocates for the group, said that "Police are taking them on buses and trucks to the relocation place in Sidoarjo."

Driven from their homes and now their temporary shelter, the families have been taken to a market in Sidoarjo, where they will remain while the authorities prepare to move them into tenement housing.

History of discrimination

The group has long faced discrimination by others in the district, in part because of a falling out between two brothers: Tajul Muluk, the head of the Shiite community, and Rois Al-Hukama, who was vociferous in his denouncement of the group.

Tensions came to a head in August last year when a mob of around 500 people attacked the two Shiite villages of Karanggayam and Bluuran. Two Shiites were killed and dozens injured, while 48 homes were destroyed by the mob.

Tajul was later tried and convicted on a widely criticized charge of blasphemy, while Rois, who led the attack, was acquitted of inciting the violence.

Bowing to demands from the hard-liner antagonists, the government moved the Shiites into the sports center as a "temporary" solution until they could be moved to new homes elsewhere. They proposed Sidoarjo, in keeping with the demands that the Shiites leave Madura, but the group insisted that it just wanted to return home.

In recent months, the district authorities have cut off the supplies of food, water, medicine and other provisions that it had promised to keep giving the group, incensing supporters of the families who said it was an attempt to drive them out.

With that goal now achieved, the government says evicting the Shiites from their home district was the best solution.

Gamawan Fauzi, the home affairs minister, said that if the Shiites had returned to their home villages, the government could not guarantee their safety. "We wanted this to be resolved inside the district, but who's going to vouch for their safety if they go back home?" he said in Jakarta on Thursday.

He added the East Java administration had already prepared 70 homes for them in Sidoarjo that they could occupy "if they agree to relocate." He said he had not received any reports that the group was forced to leave Sampang because of mob intimidation.

Taking sides

Religious freedom advocates have lashed out at the authorities' treatment of the Shiites. Hendardi, the executive director of the Setara Institute, which promotes tolerance and pluralism, said now would be a good time for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to intervene and prove that he deserved a recent international award for religious tolerance.

"He must order the Sampang administration to end this ceaseless violence against the Shiites," he said in a statement on Thursday. "It's high time that Yudhoyono, through the chief security minister, takes direct control of this matter and resolves it."

For their part, the police denied they had forced the Shiites to leave, saying they were not taking any sides in the conflict.

Insp. Gen. Unggung Cahyono, the East Java Police chief, said his force was "professional, neutral and unbiased." "We only carried out security measures to ward off a potential clash," he said of the police's role in evicting the Shiites.

There are indications, however, that the authorities had prepared for the eviction long in advance and used the prayer gathering as a cover for their actions.

Akhol said the gathering was originally scheduled to take place in Pamekasan, a neighboring district, but was inexplicably moved to Sampang at the last minute.

The switch also coincided with a visit by Unggung to the Shiite shelter on Sunday – his first official outing after having been appointed the provincial police chief just two days earlier.