I

t is in response to an article “Ahmadi’s want freedom of religious practices,” (April 15).

What I do get from this piece is that the Indonesian government is playing a double or triple game.  

That is, the decision to banish the Ahmadis is left to local governments, and then when these governments do take action the central government overturns their decisions.

This is what happened in East and West Java, according to the article. The first question here is why the central government does not apply the rule of law equally to all Indonesian citizens, allowing the Ahmadis to worship freely and punishing those who act violently to prevent them from worshipping.   

The second question is why the central government encourages or permits local governments to pass such decrees if the central government is going to overrule them in any case.

Either the central government protects religious communities equally and bans the promulgation of local discriminatory laws; or else the central government withdraws from the issue and allows local governments to violate the Constitution with impunity.  

But this cat and mouse strategy only increases tension and does not lead to a sustainable solution. This is what the author of your article should have looked at, but didn’t.

Eran Fraenkel
Bogor, West Java