F

ollowing yet another attack on the Ahmadiyah minority on Sunday, what will President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono do? From experience ' nothing.

Nothing significant enough to stop the growing list of incidents of intimidation and violence against minorities hoping to live in peace in a nation that prides itself on its Pancasila ideology.

As in previous reports, police officers at the scene in Tenjowaringin village, Tasikmalaya regency, West Java, did nothing to stop the rampage. Ahmadiyah spokesman Dodi Kurniawan posited that the attacks were linked to a meeting of the local branch of the Indonesian Ahmadiyah Congregation (JAI) on Friday and Saturday, which was attended by some 2,700 villagers. A small mosque and an elementary school were among 29 buildings damaged in the incident.

On the same day former first lady Sinta Nuriyah Wahid visited Ahmadiyah followers in Bekasi, also in West Java, who have stayed in their mosque that was sealed by the municipality on April 4.

In Tasikmalaya, as in other places where incidents like these have taken place, the authorities resort to laws and regulations that place minorities on the defensive. The predicted pattern nowadays is that authorities condemn violence though police take no action and then justify it by referring to national and local rules.

On the national scale a joint ministerial decree bans the Ahmadiyah from 'propagating' their beliefs while local regulations have been allowed to ban the minority's existence in their areas. The joint ministerial decree itself is based on the 1965 Blasphemy Law, and any belief can be stamped with the label of 'deviant' if considered so by those claiming to represent mainstream Muslims.

In 2010 the Constitutional Court upheld the Blasphemy Law, which activists saw as its failure to contribute to inter-faith harmony, and now some have urged that the law be amended.

In the meantime, only the government and police can protect our minorities although there is little evidence that they intend to do so. The silence on the part of the President ' and even his statement that local religious disputes are to be left to local authorities 'has added to the pressure on local administrations to bow to the will of religious bigwigs.

Tasikmalaya itself passed the 2009 Bylaw on the development of social values based on Islam and social norms. The bylaw bans the propagation of 'deviant beliefs', which conveniently justifies the harassment of minority faiths.

Such legal products, according to the Setara Institute, a human rights watchdog, reflect the trend of such minorities becoming a 'political capital' to local elites and the ruling government. As long as the central government is seen to endorse the power of local authorities to do what they want on the grounds of regional autonomy, local conditions only serve to encourage the tyranny of the majority ' in this case the background of Tasikmalaya being among former hotbeds of Darul Islam, the radical movement demanding an Islamic state and the local clerics riding on their popularity.

What is missing in this picture is a strong voice of moderate Islam ' wherever it is, its representatives need to stop the reformasi era becoming hell for Indonesia's minorities.