T

he House of Representatives plans to summon National Police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo for failing to prevent numerous acts of violence against religious minority groups across the country.

Benny Kabur Harman, chairman of House Commission III overseeing legal affairs and human rights, blamed the National Police for poor law enforcement and protection of minority groups.

He said police condoned violent acts carried out by hard-liners, triggering human rights violations.

“The police must not bow down to the Islam Defenders Front [FPI] or any other hard-liners,” the Democratic Party lawmaker told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

The FPI notoriously uses violence to push its ideology onto others.

The Cikeusik Muslim Movement, another radical group, has allegedly killed three members of Ahmadiyah sect in Banten.

The Shiite community in Sampang, Madura, has been the target of attacks by another group. Christians have been banned from performing religious services in church buildings in Bekasi and Bogor, West Java.

In some cases, arguments between groups turned violent despite the presence of police.

Benny said the commission would have an internal plenary meeting on Monday to set the date for a meeting with the police.

Fellow commission member Eva Kusuma Sundari expressed concern over the police’s bowing to the demands of hard-line groups to cancel or ban religious and cultural events that contradict their ideologies.

“Hard-liners such as the FPI don’t have the authority to ban such events, but it’s obvious that the police have always complied with these violent groups. This is a democratic country and the police are obliged to protect the rights of all people,” the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker said recently.

The attacks on Canadian liberal Muslim activist Irshad Manji’s book discussions, in addition to a number of unresolved violations of human rights in the past, has tainted the image of a country that is globally recognized as democratic, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) says.

Komnas HAM chairman Ifdhal Kasim said recently that the escalating violence has not only disgraced the country’s commitment to uphold rights, but also put Indonesia’s membership and leadership of international organizations at risk.

“Indonesia’s poor human rights record is mainly caused by the failure to enforce the law as the police have mostly chosen to evacuate victims of violence from ‘unwanted’ events instead of tightening security to prevent opposing groups from approaching them at all costs,” he said.

In a summary of Indonesia published on its website, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) quotes Komnas HAM as saying that any education on human rights for law enforcement officials “had not demonstrated results. This was evident from human rights abuses committed by security forces, especially the police.”

It also said that of 4,926 complaints it received in 2009, 890 were of concerns about police investigations and 177 questioned the legal basis for police detention.

In a report to the UNHRC, Komnas HAM identified cases, like the May 1998 riots, that the Attorney General knew of but took no action.

The UNHRC will begin a two-week review of Indonesia’s human rights record on Monday.