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resident Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono must use the final year of his second term to take radical measures to end discrimination against religious minorities, an NGO advocating religious freedom says.

“The President’s stern actions to address the issues of intolerance in the country could boost the waning public trust in him,” Setara Institute chairman Hendardi told a press conference on Thursday.

Setara had conducted a consultation meeting with members of religious congregations who have been persecuted and discriminated against due to weak law enforcement and the absence of legislation to protect their rights.

The meeting produced nine recommendations that were forwarded to Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister on Thursday.

In their recommendations, the groups asked the President to scrap existing regulations which they said were discriminatory, such as the Blasphemy Law, the joint ministerial decree regulating the building of houses of worships and the joint ministerial decree on Ahmadiyah.

“The government must create a law that guarantees freedom of religion,” Hendardi said, explaining that while the Constitution guaranteed religious freedom, the existing legislation did not.

He argued that without a special law on religious freedom minorities would continue to suffer. He cited as an example the frequent hate-speech made by leaders of dominant religious groups and public officials. “This problem will go on as there is no legal instrument to regulate it.”

The groups also call on the government to rehabilitate the rights of the victims of religious violence and take action against public officials who have failed to enforce court rulings arbitrating religious disputes. They also demanded that the government prosecute perpetrators of religious violence and stop criminalizing victims of intolerance.

“Minority groups which have been targets of violence and abuse, have been seen as the ones who triggered violence. Shia cleric Tajul Muluk, for example, was sent to prison for blasphemy last year,” Hendardi said.

President Yudhoyono has been criticized for being lethargic in ending the plight of persecuted minorities such as the Ahmadiyah and Shia followers.

In its report released last week, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Yudhoyono had been inconsistent in defending religious freedom. The report also said that the government had been complicit in the persecution of religious minorities by failing to enforce laws and issuing regulations that breached minority rights.

Setara recorded increasing hostility against religious minorities, from 299 cases in 2011 to 371 incidents in 2012. They said those attacks against minorities had claimed 10 lives nationwide, including two Shiites in Sampang, Madura, last August, and three others in Bireuen, Aceh.

Presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha dismissed the report, saying the HRW failed to see Indonesia in its entirety. He also considered the international rights group to be naive.

Also on Thursday, the Religious Affairs Ministry’s Research and Development Center for Religious Life launched a report challenging the HRW’s report. The 2012 National Survey of Religious Harmony, conducted in 33 provinces across the country and involving 3,300 respondents, claimed that Indonesia’s religious life was “quite harmonious”. In a scale from 1 to 5, the report said the country’s harmony index was 3.67.