Indonesia has failed in facilitating pluralism to prevent violence, particularly at grass-roots levels, experts say.
Many interfaith dialogues involving leaders of large religious groups failed to promote pluralism at grass-roots levels, a dialogue on “Pluralism to Prevent Violence” organized by the Movement to Support Pluralism said Thursday.
“In the sense of majority supremacy, the violence we have been seeing lately has dishonored the national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity),” the movement’s national coordinator, Damien Dematra, said at the dialogue at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Central Jakarta.
“There is still violence against shi’ite sects in Java, such as in Pekalongan, Bondowoso and Pasuruan. And the police have done nothing,” Muslim scholar Jallaludin Rahmat said. The police had let the violence continue to maintain security, because they were afraid of the majority religious groups that were abusing minority sects, Jallaludin said.
Recently, there have been several incidents of religious, racial and gender violence in Indonesia. Among these incidents was the burning of a construction site belonging to the Christian organization Penabur Foundation, in Cisarua, Bogor; a confrontational ban on a regional conference of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association, in Surabaya, East Java; and a deadly clash at the Mbah Priuk memorial site in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta.
According to the Setara Institute there were 291 cases of violence directed at minority groups in 12 provinces nationwide between 2007 and 2009. The government, the police and authorities did nothing to prevent these incidents, Setara says.
A speaker, priest Benny Susetyo from the Indonesian Bishops Conference (KWI), emphasized that, “The government, through the police and the legislature, should prevent and stop the violence in this country. But the government lets it continue.”
“The pluralism movement has to courageously facilitate dialogues with fundamentalist groups and cults at grass-roots levels,” Slamet Effendi Yusuf of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) said. He added that pluralism could not be facilitated only by ideas on how to foster it, but people had to implement these ideas as well.
The discussants mostly agreed that violence against minorities primarily happened when majority groups oppressed minorities and the government looked the other way because it assumed the majority was right.
“The practice of diversity in religious culture does not condone defamation of other religions — and the permission by the government of violence against diversity is worrisome,” former religion minister Johan Effendi said.
Jalal added that some people viewed the Blasphemy Law as a legal basis for supremacy of the mainstream religious groups, and that this view would harm pluralism in Indonesia.
“We could try to amend the law through proposing a modified bill to facilitate pluralism,” Slamet said.
The discussion concluded that everyone could make more effort to promote pluralism in Indonesia.
“We hope the movement can facilitate pluralism because of the urgent need for a pluralist society that prevents violence,” Damien said. He added that the movement would facilitate interfaith dialogues at grass-roots levels, mostly in Java. It would also promote pluralism through culture, literature and film.
