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bout 1,500 members of the illegal Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar) will be housed in Semarang for re-education before they are sent back to their hometowns, officials have said.

'€œWe will accommodate them in Semarang. We'€™ll look for a place to house them '€” there'€™s quite a few of them. We could be considered a kind of crisis center,'€ Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo said after meeting with Central Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Nur Ali, Diponegoro Military Command chief of staff Brig. Gen Joni Supriyanto and other provincial leaders.

Ganjar explained that parties including ulemas, psychologists, military and police officials and the provincial administration would counsel the Gafatar members, who are currently being housed at a military barracks in Pontianak, West Kalimantan.

Three navy warships, he said, had been deployed and would pick up the group in Pontianak on Sunday.

The evacuees were expected to arrive in the Central Java capital on Wednesday, he said, adding that he had a responsibility to address the issue given that some of the 1,500 were residents of the province.

Ganjar revealed that Gafatar had been registered in Central Java from 2011 to 2014, at which point the group had not applied to extend its permit.

'€œAt that time, the organization planned to set up a rural agrarian Pancasila program. Their proposal was approved for financial assistance,'€ he said.

Gafatar executives have repeatedly denied that their organization, which was established in January 2012 and banned by the Home Ministry in November the same year, is based on or affiliated with any religion, insisting it cleaves instead to the state ideology, Pancasila.

The group is reportedly a successor organization to Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah, which was founded by Ahmad Mussadeq, who was sentenced by the South Jakarta District Court to four years in prison in 2008 for blasphemy. Ahmad reportedly claimed to be a new prophet.

Ahmad is not mentioned and his picture not displayed on the official Gafatar website, but some of his followers have reportedly become leaders of the movement.

Gafatar spokesperson Wisnu Windani said on Wednesday the organization had dissolved itself in August last year and its former members moved to Menpawah regency, West Kalimantan, to engage in communal farming.

Thousands of local people on Tuesday besieged Gafatar members'€™ houses in Menpawah, forcing police and military personnel to evacuate them. The mob then burned down the houses and a car belonging to the group.

National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) commissioner Sandra Moniaga criticized the police for failing to stop the attack.

The police, Sandra said, had a duty to protect the right to live peacefully and the right to freedom of movement of all citizens, including Gafatar members.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI)'€™s Central Java chapter chairman, Ahmad Daroji, denied that his organization planned to '€œbrainwash'€ Gafatar members, arguing that it was rather Gafatar that engaged in brainwashing.

'€œWe will take a psychological and religious approach based on their respective beliefs,'€ Daroji said, adding that the group'€™s members would be convened at the Hajj Dormitory in Boyolali for guidance sessions.

'€œIf they can come to their senses within three days, they'€™ll be returned to their families, though it'€™ll probably take five days,'€ he said.