Jakarta – The United States' Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should raise concerns about the safety of religious minorities with the Indonesia government during her visit to the country this Monday, a human rights watchdog said on Sunday.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Indonesia had failed to adequately address increasing incidents of violence against religious minorities, particularly Ahmadiyah followers, Christians and Shia Muslims, in Java and Sumatra.
Indonesian authorities, the group said, did not charge all those involved in the attacks, and where punishments were handed down to perpetrators, they were remarkably light.
"Secretary Clinton should press the Indonesian government to take concrete steps to address the rising religious intolerance," the group's Asia advocacy director, John Sifton, stated in a release received by The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
The watchdog also criticized Indonesian authorities for using the 1965 Blasphemy Law and laws on criminal defamation to prosecute members of religious minorities, such as a Shia cleric Tajul Muluk, West Sumatran atheist Alexander An and an Ahmadiyah guardian, Hasan Suwandi.
"Indonesia needs to recognize that oppressive laws and policies against religious minorities fuel violence and discrimination," he added.
Pressure from some Islamist groups and government decrees restricting the construction of houses of worship had also led local authorities to close hundreds of Christian churches and dozens of Ahmadiyah mosques in recent years, the group reported.
Bogor and Bekasi local administrations demonstrated their strong aversion toward minorities by refusing to reopen Bogor's Presbyterian church and Bekasi's HKBP Filadelfia church, although the Supreme Court had ordered them to do so.
"Holding minority religious beliefs in Indonesia should not put one's life and property at risk. Secretary Clinton should not miss this important opportunity to speak out strongly on these issues," Sifton added.
In the upcoming visit, Clinton is scheduled to discuss the US-Indonesia Comprehensive Partnership. (yps)