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GKI Yasmin faithful break into church for Sunday mass
Hard-earned freedom: Christian worshippers from the Taman Yasmin Christian Church attend their first Sunday mass in more than a year in Bogor, West Java, on Sunday
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span class="inline inline-left">Hard-earned freedom: Christian worshippers from the Taman Yasmin Christian Church attend their first Sunday mass in more than a year in Bogor, West Java, on Sunday. They broke into their sealed-off church building Sunday after a Supreme Court verdict affirmed their legal right to worship there. The Bogor administration sealed off the church several months ago. JP/Theresia Sufa
Members of the Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church (GKI) congregation were forced to break into their sealed-off church for Sunday mass, despite a recent Supreme Court verdict affirming the legality of their house of worship.
Worshippers were only allowed inside the church construction site after a tense argument with Bogor Police and public order officers.
The Sunday morning mass was their first in more than a year.
“We are determined to break the locks to the church that has been sealed off for the past year by the Bogor administration,” Jayadi Damanik, the congregation’s lawyer, said before the service.
“Also, a Supreme Court decision overturned the city’s decision to outlaw the church,” he added.
On Jan. 13, lawyers of the congregation received a copy of a Supreme Court ruling overturning the Bogor administration’s request to uphold a lower court’s decision to shut down the church.
The verdict was disclosed on the date only after lawyers of the church and Bogor City secretary Bambang Gunawan came to the Supreme Court to obtain a copy of the ruling.
On Sunday, Bogor Police beefed up security for churchgoers attending the service.
More than 200 officers from the Bogor Police, Mobile Brigade and Indonesian Military soldiers were deployed to guard the service.
Soon after the worshippers left the church, public order officers moved swiftly to once again seal off the premises.
Bogor Police chief Sr. Comr. Nugroho Selamet Wibowo said he deployed additional officers to prevent clashes between churchgoers and hardliners who wanted to disrupt the Sunday service.
“We were not standing in their way. We were guarding them to prevent any conflicts,” Nugroho said.
Late last year, the congregation performed Christmas service on the side of the road close to the church under the watchful eyes of 1,000 police officers — despite a barrage of verbal abuse from hard-line Muslim protesters.
The chairwoman of the Indonesian Conference on Religion for Peace, Siti Musdah Mulia, who also attended the Sunday service at the invitation of the congregation, called on the public to resort to non-violent means to settle religious differences.
“Let us unite our efforts to build religion for peaceful purposes. We must fight against violence committed in the name of God and religion,” she said.
Siti Musdah also called on religious leaders to issue peaceful interpretations of their religious
teachings.
“There will always be bias in the way we interpret the holy books. So we should be humble enough to make a new interpretation that is consistent with the universal values of humanity,” she said.
Siti Musdah also praised the Supreme Court ruling, saying it sent the right message.
“It goes to show that we can still rely on the Supreme Court to produce an unbiased decision, free from intimidation from those who threaten in the name of God and religion,” she said.
