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Bogor hots up as 7 buildings torched on religious grounds
Thousands of residents of Cisarua in the Puncak area, Bogor, on Tuesday burned a resort complex project belonging to a Christian organization said to have misused its building permit
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housands of residents of Cisarua in the Puncak area, Bogor, on Tuesday burned a resort complex project belonging to a Christian organization said to have misused its building permit.
Claiming themselves to be members of the Puncak Route Muslim Community, the residents, who gathered in front of the site from around 11.30 a.m., also burned at least two cars and seven buildings that were under construction on the BPK Penabur Christian education foundation site.
“We’ve asked the [Bogor] regent to close this place but he gave no clear response until today. We just can’t contain our anger,” community presidium and Cisarua Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) chairman Rahmatulloh said.
Rahmatulloh said the foundation had violated an agreement made with residents by building an additional Christian school and house of worship on the 2-hectare resort complex.
Cisarua district chief Bangbang Phadmanegara said his office had earlier invited local figures, ulemas and BPK Penabur management to discuss the issue.
The meeting, however, had ended in a deadlock as most of the local residents had wrongly assumed the resort project would include a church building because they witnessed a Christian ritual held during the project’s inauguration ceremony.
“I explained to the residents so many times that the project did not include any houses of worship, but they kept insisting on closing the place down,” he said.
Established in 1950, BPK Penabur has become one of Indonesia’s most respected education institutions, running hundreds of schools in more than a dozen cities.
In Jakarta it has 61 schools — from kindergartens to high schools — and more than 20,000 students.
Contacted separately, BPK Penabur managing director Winfrid Prayogi said the foundation had obtained a building permit for the resort earlier this year and had no intention to build structures aimed at facilitating other purposes, such as education or religious activities.
“We were still working on the construction stage. How come this group accused us of planning to use the place as a house of worship?” he asked The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Bogor Police chief Sr. Adj. Comr. Tomex Korniawan reiterated that the incident had been the result of a misunderstanding.
As of Tuesday evening, the police had questioned six witnesses related to the incident, he said.
“If we found someone who convincingly provoked the incident, we would of course take any necessary legal action,” he said.
The hilly Puncak resort area has become a favorite getaway destination for Jakarta residents.
For years, religious activisties held by schools and universities have also become a common sight in the area, for Christian students or tafakur alam (contemplation) for Muslims, for example.
The Tuesday attack, however, expands a list of religious-driven incidents in Bogor recently.
At least two Christian congregations in the city have to run their religious activities in a gauche situation after coming under pressure from authorities and locals to close down their churches.
In Parung, the Saint Johannes Baptista Catholic parish had to relocate its Good Friday mass on April 2 because of strong opposition from the local MUI branch that prevented it from obtaining a building permit.
A week later, the Bogor administration sealed off the Indonesian Christian Church (GKI) in the Taman Yasmin housing complex, to placate protests from the Indonesian Muslims Communication Forum (Forkami), a group of local residents and several Islamic organizations.
