Arientha Primanita – The government has no plans to disband the Ahmadiyah congregation in Bekasi, despite a request from the municipality.

"The government's position is to uphold the constitution, which guarantees religious freedom and freedom to one's own beliefs," Coordinating Minister of Security, Political and Legal Affairs Djoko Suyanto told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday. "There must not be any coercion or violence by anyone to anyone else."

Djoko, who is on a state visit to Poland alongside President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said that his office came to its conclusion yesterday in a meeting led by the ministry's secretary. Officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Attorney General's Office, the National Police and the Military and State Intelligence Agency were in attendance.

Djoko said that the government would uphold a joint ministerial decree to preserve religious tolerance.

In a letter dated July 26, the Bekasi municipality requested that President Yudhoyono disband the local Ahmadiyah congregation. If the denomination were to be allowed, Bekasi asked that Yudhoyono reclassify it by presidential decree as an accepted religion other than Islam.

"The request is the result of the community of believers and its leaders, in their discussion of the Ahmadiyah presence," Bekasi Mayor Rahmat Effendi told Indonesian news portal Antara.

Jumhana Lutfi, Bekasi's municipal assistant, said that the city had brought the request to the central government because local authorities did not have the power to decide. Calls from local clerics, along with social unrest, prompted the request, he said.

In Jumhana's view, disbanding the Ahmadi group would serve to protect it. "It is not discrimination," he told the Globe. "They are minorities and the protestors outnumber them. This is our way to protect them from being attacked by the masses."

Preventing a minority group from practicing its religion, even as a supposedly protective measure, is an act of religious intolerance according to the UN's definition.

Jumhana said that Bekasi hopes to avoid a direct attack against the Ahmadi. Such an attack killed three adherents in Cikeusik, Banten province, in 2011. Nonetheless, the city will adhere to the central government's decision. "It is the government's authority to decide, and we just follow it through and try to convince the public," he said.

Deden Sudjana, Ahmadiyah's Bekasi chairman, said that Ahmadiyah representatives were not invited to the meeting in which the group's fate was decided.

"We only practice what we believe in," he said. "If they oppose it, they can have a dialogue with us or go through the legal process, because Indonesia is a state of the law." He said that members of the group had suffered enough.

He also said that the Ahmadi had filed a suit with the State Administrative Court in Bandung against Mayor Rahmat Effendi, over the municipality's March 8 decision to seal the Al-Misbah mosque, which the group said violated their fundamental right to worship.

Since a 2008 joint ministerial decree, the Ahmadiyah have been prohibited from proselytizing and worshiping in public.

The Ahmadis have been under attack from hard-line Muslim elements in several regions, including in West Java and West Nusa Tenggara, with their mosques burned or vandalized and some adherents killed in violent attacks. In July, two Ahmadiyah teachers were ousted from a school in Cianjur. Despite these hardships, the congregation in Bekasi celebrated the Idul Fitri holiday just as they have done every year, and they continue to worship as a community.

The Ahmadiyah follow many of the central tenants of mainstream Sunni Islam, but they also have distinctive beliefs and practices.

Yudhoyono had said that he opposed religious intolerance against the Ahmadiyah and other groups. "It cannot be justified if an individual or a group forces its beliefs onto others," he said in a speech preceding Independence Day. "And certainly not with threats, intimidation or violence."

The president said that diversity is in the best interest of the nation. "I want to remind all Indonesian people that the state fully guarantees the existence of individual or minority groups," he said. "We have to prevent violence that disturbs the social fabric and national unity."

Cases of religious intolerance in the country have caught the eye of international watchdog groups, and many minorities here face discrimination in the practice of their beliefs and the construction of places of worship. Such groups include the Ahmadiyah, Shiites in Madura, the embattled church of GKI Yasmin and others.