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Police told to be firm on hardliners who assault
Human rights activists have renewed their call for law enforcers to process hard-line religious groups who have committed a series of assaults on minority groups recently
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uman rights activists have renewed their call for law enforcers to process hard-line religious groups who have committed a series of assaults on minority groups recently.
Veteran human rights activist Hendardi said such groups had enjoyed justification of their violence as the police had displayed a reluctance to process the groups in accordance with the law.
“Even if the police arrested members of the groups, such as the Islam Defenders Front [FPI], for assault, they prefer to let attackers walk away, saying an arrest is socially sensitive,” said Hendardi, who currently chairs the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace.
“There’s always a possibility they will use the law as a legal stance to justify their assault,” he said.
He referred the recent Constitutional Court decision to uphold the existence of the anti-pornography and blasphemy laws as another instance that could give those hardliners a reason to attack other groups they claim as deviant.
Similarly, Edwin Partogi from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence said the relationship between the police and hardliners had made things worse.
Edwin suspected that it was common to witness police providing leeway to groups to intimidate minority groups.
“It is no longer a secret that the police are still wary about non-mainstream movements such as those promoted by transgender, gay or lesbian groups,” he said.
“Instead of directly confronting the [minority] groups, the police prefer to let the hard-line groups deal with them in their own way,” he added.
On Friday, the hardliners prolonged its track record after storming a human rights workshop jointly organized by the National Commission for Human Rights and the Indonesian Transgender Communication Forum, held at a hotel in Depok.
The workshop had just begun when dozens of FPI activists forced their way into the room past several police officers, banging on the meeting room door and shouting the name of God.
Despite massive media coverage on the attack and the presence of several police officers at the crime scene, the Depok Police have so far not arrested the attackers and have instead planned to question the workshop organizers.
Aside from the FPI, the Betawi Brotherhood Forum and the Islamic Community Forum have an unblemished criminal record for their violent raids on nightspots in Jakarta, usually conducted during the fasting month of Ramadan.
The hardliners also involved forcible closure and rallies against the construction of places of worship belonging to religious minorities in some areas across the country.
The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute director Nurkholis Hidayat urged the police to immediately impose the law on the attackers.
“The leader of the attack must be charged with, at least, Article 160 of the Criminal Code for instigating violent acts, while FPI members can be charged with Article 170 on the destruction of other people’s properties,” he said.
