Vento Saudale, Bogor, West Java – The row over a ban on a church congregation from holding a service on Christmas Day continued on Tuesday as Bogor Mayor Bima Arya Sugiarto said the GKI Yasmin church was not recognized by the umbrella Christian organization.
"GKI Pengadilan does not recognize GKI Yasmin," Bima said. "So, there is no such thing as the GKI Yasmin congregation."
GKI Yasmin obtained a permit to open a church in Bogor in 2006, but the permit was later revoked by the municipal government following pressure from local hard-line Islamic groups. The building was eventually sealed by local authorities in 2010.
But a Supreme Court ruling later overruled the local authority decision, compelling Bima to reopen the church – something he has hitherto failed to do, previously citing unspecified reasons.
"I said [the church would not be allowed to conduct a Christmas service] based on the recognition of the official church organization, GKI Pengadilan, as the mother organization for Christian church congregations in Bogor," Bima said on Tuesday.
Bima added that a lack of space was the problem, and that his decision was not a transparent attempt to curry favor with intolerant local Sunni Muslims – a view his critics have frequently aired. The current location had space for only 800 worshippers and that the church required a larger venue, he said.
Bima said he did not wish to prevent anyone from practicing their chosen faith and that his government would aim to find an alternative site for the worshippers.
"So don't make it out as if this is a violation of religious freedom," the mayor said. "It certainly is not. It's [GKI Pengadilan] that proscribes them, so who's being stubborn now?"
Bima said the city administration and GKI Pengadilan would meet to try and find a long-term solution. In the meantime, however, the congregation must not hold any service in public because it may disrupt public order, he said.
GKI Yasmin spokesperson Bona Sigalingging said that the GKI Yasmin congregation would stick to their plan to conduct Christmas service at their now-sealed church.
Bona said Bima was repeating the same line used by former Bogor mayor Diano Budiarto. It was not up to the mayor to interfere or be guided by the internal politics of the churches, Bona said.
"We only hope that Bima Arya will focus on obeying the Supreme Court ruling and the ombudsman's recommendation," Bona said. "Those rulings have nothing to do with GKI's internal situation."
The latest incident is another setback for a congregation that has been forced to go to the country's highest court in search of recognition.
Since 2012, scores of GKI Yasmin congregation members have held prayer meetings outside the State Palace to raise awareness that their house of worship remained sealed despite rulings from the Supreme Court and the Indonesian ombudsman.
Some see GKI Yasmin's Kafkaesque plight as instructive of a wider problem of religious intolerance in Indonesia where local government heads contrive to stifle religious minorities' freedom of expression using labyrinthine planning regulations – forcing local churches and Ahmadiyah mosques, for example, to go through a protracted legal battle to obtain recognition.
Church officials and worshippers repeatedly claimed that their pleas to previous president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to intervene fell on deaf ears – GKI Yasmin had hoped that newly-elected President Joko Widodo would step in over what they see as a clear rejection of a Supreme Court order by an elected mayor, who had previously said that he hoped to handle the church dispute differently than his predecessor.
"How can we just let Bogor be – like it's not a part of the Republic of Indonesia and the Supreme Court and Ombudsman decisions can be safely ignored?" GKI Yasmin spokesman Bona said in November.