Vaudine England, Jakarta – A busload of militant Muslims walked into the offices of the English-language Jakarta Post to "deliver a strong protest" over an editorial that described Indonesians who fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan as mercenaries, the newspaper reported yesterday.

The members of the Laskar Jihad (Holy War Legion) said Monday's editorial, entitled "Soldiers of Fortune" and referring to Muslim resistance against Soviet occupation, was insulting. Although they left peacefully after talking to editors, the intrusion was the latest in a series of attacks on press freedom.

The paper had discussed police claims that two suspects in the Christmas Eve bombings of churches were trained in Afghanistan and might be part of a larger Muslim movement, including the Laskar Jihad now active in the Maluku Islands.

One of the delegation's leaders described the piece as "a vulgar, direct attack on the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan. It is also a slanderous [description] of us, as if the mercenaries gave birth to Laskar Jihad. This is a great insult."

In May, members of the Banser youth group affiliated to the country's largest mainstream Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama, invaded and damaged offices of the Surabaya-based Jawa Pos newspaper. They were offended by unflattering coverage of their former leader and mentor, now President Abdurrahman Wahid, and by allegations of corruption in the NU.

Also last year, a delegation from the Front to Defend Islam invaded the studios of the private SCTV station and forced it to cancel showings of the popular Latin-American soap opera Esmeralda. The show was deemed to defame Islam because it featured a less-than-perfect character called Fatimah (also the name of the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed).

Meanwhile, a house usually used for prayer meetings in Sleman, Jogjakarta, in Central Java, was stoned, allegedly by the Muslim Community Front of Prambanan.

People on motorbikes and in cars threw stones at the house, described by its largely Irian Jayan congregation as the Evangelical Church of Indonesia. "For prayers, the adherents were advised to look for another location which is acceptable to the local people," the Sleman police chief said.