Chaos marks hearing on blasphemy law judicial review request

A hearing in the Constitutional Court was tainted Wednesday with a brouhaha caused by a clash between followers of hard-line Islamic groups and lawyers for the petitioners of a judicial review of the blasphemy law.

The incident happened during the lunch-time break when several members of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and the Islamic Defenders Army (Laskar Pembela Islam) grabbed two members of the team of lawyers outside a basement cafeteria and tried to persuade them to drop their support for the petitioners’ attempt to review the law.

“The mob kicked my legs while talking me into doing what they wanted,” Nurkholis Hidayat, a member of the team, said. His colleague, Uli Parulian Sihombing, received similar treatment.

Several people immediately took out their cameras and mobile phones to take pictures. This ignited rage among the hard-liners. They crowded around three men who were seen taking pictures and yelled at them: “Erase the pictures!”

One of the three was Novel, a member of the Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI), who had come to the hearing to assist expert SAE Nababan who testified at the hearing. He captured several pictures and video clips of the incident.

“I was subjected to several slaps, kicks and punches to the stomach when a huge crowd chased me up the ramp leading to the first floor, where one of them tried to strangle me,” he said.

Filmmaker and cultural observer Garin Nugroho, who was among the experts who testified that day, also found himself in the middle of the chaos.

He was getting into his car with another fellow expert, Muslim Abdurrahman, after testifying and “around eight to 10 people surrounded my car and started banging on the windows and doors. We left immediately,” he said.

But Garin said he did not believe that the chaos highlighted the concern for possible conflict should the court decide to scrap the law.

“The ones who brought up [the idea of] potential conflict are just minor groups, not people in general. I don’t think the majority of people would trigger such conflict,” he told the Post.

He added that there should be measures against the hard-liners’ persuasive ways.

“Such ways are not in line with democracy or religious values,” he said.